Could Nazi Germany have knocked the UK out of World War 2, assuming no Battle of Britian?

Let's say that instead of the Battle of Britian, the Germans decide on a different strategy to knock the UK out of the war. What could they have realistically done to acheive this result?
 

thaddeus

Donor
fleet of LRMP aircraft (not 100s but at least? dozens? by onset of the war)

my view a larger fleet of ... larger S-Boats. the OTL version served as minelayer but could only carry 6 mines so it was relatively ineffective in that role. the immediate post-war version was 50% larger and could carry couple dozen mines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar-class_fast_attack_craft

larger fleet of auxiliary cruisers, have read that there were weapons for at least a few dozen ships.

IMO a mistake not to further develop the smaller coastal u-boats Type II, have a parallel minelaying campaign with S-Boats. also modify them to be transported overland (to the Med, Black Sea, wherever warranted)
 
.realistically. Nerve gas was the only WMD that they had. The only means to force a British surrender.

However. It was not ready in 1940. The Nazis needed more time.

Let the USSR in the axis and have them sell Japan oil.

Do not let Japan in the axis.

That may be all the Nazis can really do.

It may be possible for the tabun plant to come online in 1941 if the Nazis cut the delays. Come 1942. The Nazis absouletely must start hitting the UK with nerve gas.

The longer the Nazis wait the longer the Japanese have to do something idiotic.

I think it is imperative to rush sarin production also and move off tabun as quiclky as possible. Do not wait until 1945 until the Nazis have a big sarin plant being built.
 
Let's say that instead of the Battle of Britain, the Germans decide on a different strategy to knock the UK out of the war. What could they have realistically done to achieve this result?

I'm not sure there's a lot they could have done. Knocking the UK out of the war is possible, but requires some luck or a political collapse by the Brits. I mean...even at best, let's say they take Egypt and spill into the Middle East after focusing on the Med. Then what? India's far beyond the logistical capacity of the Germans, and taking Jerusalem and Baghdad leaves them no closer to London than they were before.

To beat the Brits, the Germans need to make them give up. They're on a timer as well, since odds are the US joins the war sooner or later. Maybe if they can knock out the Soviets in '41 or '42, look invincible and continue to pressure UK interests they could do it, especially if they do it before the US joins. Even then, it takes the British deciding that throwing in the towel is the right thing to do, a tall order with Winston Churchill as PM. They simply don't have a way to apply the Wehrmacht to UK soil, no way to trample them like they did the French and almost did to the Russians.

Now an eventual white peace based on political realities if possible if the Soviets collapse and the UK gets a bad case of war weariness, but that's not really knocking them out of the war, it's simply outlasting them. Even then, it still comes down to the UK deciding to quit, as the Germans have no way of directly enforcing a surrender on the British.
 

thaddeus

Donor
a credible alliance with USSR and Italy remaining neutral would help, as the Med front, thought to harm British actually gave them an avenue to strike at Germany.

OR some miraculous cooperation between Germany-Italy-Japan not seen in WW2, especially where they don't lose huge portion of their merchant fleet(s) at the beginning of the war.
 

hammo1j

Donor
How about a deliberate message to say that they are not going to bomb UK because of the risk of civilian casualties. Then sit back and wait for the RAF to go on the offensive the only way it can, night bombing.

Once the pictures of killed children show up, win the propaganda war in America by stating that the UK is targeting civilians.

Additionally foment unrest in the British Empire, supplying weapons and support. Again highlight the Imperialist nature of the UK which wont play well with the US.
 
How about a deliberate message to say that they are not going to bomb UK because of the risk of civilian casualties. Then sit back and wait for the RAF to go on the offensive the only way it can, night bombing.

Once the pictures of killed children show up, win the propaganda war in America by stating that the UK is targeting civilians.

Additionally foment unrest in the British Empire, supplying weapons and support. Again highlight the Imperialist nature of the UK which wont play well with the US.

... and the clock ticks on in the East for the years this would take as Stalin builds up, until it rings out with explosions as the Soviets out-build you. That is assuming your war economy can keep running at the rate it was before.
 

SwampTiger

Banned
Germany develops modular construction of U-boats before the war plus thaddeus's suggestions. DON'T use nerve gas. They did not have a reliable delivery system, while Britain had anthrax.
 
Realistically the only way the UK is out is the U-boat war. As much as losing Suez is painful, that is probably not enough to cause the UK to seek terms. More U-boats, some more long range air to find convoys, use the Luftwaffe to mine ports and hit docks to make the receiving end of the supply chain as limited as possible. Do this from the start, you can use some of the Luftwaffe to hit RAF airfields and the radar sites but don't waste time on the Blitz or even attacking the factories - you really don't know where they are and damaging them is not happening. If Germany starts with this early on, and then really pushes this after the fall of France the UK may have no choice. Without imported food, without imported raw materials, the population starves and the factories produce very little.

Even if the USA escorts convoys in the western half of the Atlantic on the same schedule as OTL, politically there is no way the USA goes any further than that. Germany has to get the UK to end the war before 12/41 (let's assume the Japanese attack as per OTL). Once the USA is in the war the UK giving up is pretty much ASB. While the longer Hitler waits to go east the stronger the USSR gets, starting a two front war was a huge mistake - better to use spring/summer 1941 to finish off the UK if they are still fighting and put the USSR off until spring 1942.

Whether this strategy will work I don't know, but creating a larger "anti-shipping" force of U-boats and MPA prior to 1939 is doable, and it does not rely on wonder weapons. IMHO the keys are Britain must be out before PH, and don't attack Russia until this. Taking Yugoslavia, Greece, and the North Africa campaign can proceed as these don't use resources that are needed to knock out the UK with this strategy, and if they do better fine, at worst in the 1940-41 time frame they expend more British resources that they can't replace.
 
Germany develops modular construction of U-boats before the war plus thaddeus's suggestions. DON'T use nerve gas. They did not have a reliable delivery system, while Britain had anthrax.

Reliable delivery system? Most of the tabun was put into air bombs. (Really all of them should have been) The Nazis had been developing chemical bombs since WWI with mustard gas. And how effecrtive was British anthrax? You must realize that anthrax can also be a rather lackluster weapon. Why should British anthrax do any better than aum shinrikyo anthrax ? Please answer me that. British anthrax was untested. Nerve gas is not untested.

Even if British anthrax is particularly deadly. Why would they use it? It opens themselves up to Nazi anthrax theoretically.

And even were they to use it. It serves the purposes of the Nazis well enough. They will inflict comparable damage... The British will have to go for peace or millions of their people will die as a result of continuing the war.

And the British needed the US to supply them with the anthrax bombs which would need until at least 1945.

Otherwise theyre stuck with cattle cakes which wont do much imo
 
Realistically the only way the UK is out is the U-boat war. As much as losing Suez is painful, that is probably not enough to cause the UK to seek terms. More U-boats, some more long range air to find convoys, use the Luftwaffe to mine ports and hit docks to make the receiving end of the supply chain as limited as possible. Do this from the start, you can use some of the Luftwaffe to hit RAF airfields and the radar sites but don't waste time on the Blitz or even attacking the factories - you really don't know where they are and damaging them is not happening. If Germany starts with this early on, and then really pushes this after the fall of France the UK may have no choice. Without imported food, without imported raw materials, the population starves and the factories produce very little.

Even if the USA escorts convoys in the western half of the Atlantic on the same schedule as OTL, politically there is no way the USA goes any further than that. Germany has to get the UK to end the war before 12/41 (let's assume the Japanese attack as per OTL). Once the USA is in the war the UK giving up is pretty much ASB. While the longer Hitler waits to go east the stronger the USSR gets, starting a two front war was a huge mistake - better to use spring/summer 1941 to finish off the UK if they are still fighting and put the USSR off until spring 1942.

Whether this strategy will work I don't know, but creating a larger "anti-shipping" force of U-boats and MPA prior to 1939 is doable, and it does not rely on wonder weapons. IMHO the keys are Britain must be out before PH, and don't attack Russia until this. Taking Yugoslavia, Greece, and the North Africa campaign can proceed as these don't use resources that are needed to knock out the UK with this strategy, and if they do better fine, at worst in the 1940-41 time frame they expend more British resources that they can't replace.
It's a little more complex than that - British rationing in OTL was vastly more generous than they thought they actually needed, indeed the Government knew very soon after the start of the war that they could function just fine with zero food imports. Morale would probably be affected because it wouldn't taste very nice and there would be a lot of flatulence but health would be unaffected - see https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/sep/24/fighting-fit-britain-second-world-war
The other aspect to be wary of is the US response - in WW1 they entered the war largely because U-boats were sinking their shipping. A much more effective blockade than OTL is going to have to walk a very fine line indeed to avoid the US gradually being dragged in.

Otherwise theyre stuck with cattle cakes which wont do much imo
Ummm... you need to read up a bit more on the German farming economy of the time. Put bluntly, it was very primitive - forget tractors, they didn't even have horses relying almost entirely on oxen instead. If the British drop anthrax-laden cattle cakes, even if not one single German catches the disease it's an utter catastrophe for them because they've just lost their ability to sow and harvest crops along with a large fraction of their fat and protein supplies.
 
I think it would take more than one divergence, but let's see what I can do. This is a bit Rube-Goldberg, so bear with me.

Step One: Winter 1939/40 gets serious about three weeks early and ends three weeks to a month early.
Implications:
(a)The Soviets postpone the Winter War with Finland rather than send unprepared troops into ongoing blizzards. The Soviet attack is postponed until spring.
(b) The Allies don't have the "help Finland" excuse to intervene in Norway and proceed with contingency plans at a much slower rate.
(c) Mussolini doesn't grandstand by sending weapons to Finland as he did historically--which historically was a bad move because the Soviets cut off sales of their oil to the Italian navy, leaving it with precariously low supplies.
(d) With no imminent Allied threat to Norway, Hitler figures Norway can wait until France falls.
(e) Without the disastrous Allied response in Norway, Chamberlain hangs on as British Prime Minister through the Battle of France
(f) The Battle of France starts around April 10-15, as soon as the mud dries enough and the sky clears. The Germans were ready and champing at the bit by that time and the French had adopted the Breda variation of their Dyle plan, which disastrously sent the bulk of their mobile reserves about as far from the crucial part of the battle as they could have been. The crucial variable that historically postponed the German attack was the late spring and persistent mud.
(g) Without the Norway attacks, German use of airborne troops in Holland is more of a tactical surprise, something that had been theorized about rather than something the Germans had actually used already. As a result, the German airborne attacks are more successful/less costly, succeeding in the attempted decapitating strike on the Dutch government and cutting airborne and transport plane losses.

Step two: The Battle of France happens about the way it did historically, but about a month earlier.

Something similar to the Dunkirk evacuation probably happens, but with less success. Historically the Brits got lucky in that several crucial days were rainy, keeping the Luftwaffe at bay and allowing the Brits to load during the day for several crucial days, but the channel was calm. That's a very unusual combination. No rain would mean that the evacuation would be restricted to the eight hours of night, as it was historically on clear days. Historically, that cut the guys evacuated to about one-third the rate they managed during the rainy patch (8 hours versus 24 hrs). There are other variables, such as the evacuation possibly lasting longer, but as an approximation the Brits get out one-third of the guys they did historically. They might not be as generous in getting French troops out in that situation, but allied unity would require that some French troops get evacuated. So the Brits get somewhere between one-third and one-half the troops out that they did historically.

So it's late May. France has surrendered.
(a) The Brits have considerably fewer of their best-trained troops available.
(b) The German navy hasn't been virtually destroyed in the Norway invasion as it was historically.
(c) The German airborne forces are in considerably better shape, both because they did better in Holland and because they didn't lose the 300-odd transport planes that they historically had to write off in Norway.
(d) The Brits still have Chamberlain as prime minister, at least for a time. I doubt that he would have been displaced during the Battle of France. He would be vulnerable once it ended.
(e) The Brits would have had a month less to outproduce the Germans in fighter planes and train more pilots
(f) Historically, the Brits just had to survive until early October, when weather in the channel made an invasion essentially impossible. The earlier fall of France means the Germans have an extra month when the Brits are vulnerable.
(g) (From old and possibly faulty memory) The Brits were historically temporarily cut off from ultra intercepts by some German code changes, but got their capability back in time to realize in early July that the Germans were nowhere near ready to invade and there was no immediate need to negotiate.

At that point, it's all a matter of how leaders perceive the situation and react. Sea Lion is probably still not possible, but the Brits situation is dependent on perceptions. The Brits themselves have to perceive, after the shock of defeat in France, that the Germans aren't ten feet tall. The US has to perceive that Britain will fight and can survive. Otherwise they'll hoard military equipment instead of sending it to the Brits. No fifty destroyers. No 500,000 small arms sent to Britain. Probably fewer planes. Japan has to be sufficiently deterred to not go after the Far East colonies. If Japan realizes how weak Britain is at this point, they can grab 90-95% of the world's rubber supply and humiliate Britain, possibly loosening the Brit hold on India, which historically became precarious after the Brit defeat at Singapore. Spain has to be deterred from letting German planes on bases within easy range of Gibraltar.

Under this scenario, I would still say the Brits have a 60% chance of avoiding defeat, but if they lose their nerve a whole lot of bad tumbles down on them, with a lot of other jackals joining Mussolini to try to grab a piece of what they perceive as a dying lion.
 
Ummm... you need to read up a bit more on the German farming economy of the time. Put bluntly, it was very primitive - forget tractors, they didn't even have horses relying almost entirely on oxen instead. If the British drop anthrax-laden cattle cakes, even if not one single German catches the disease it's an utter catastrophe for them because they've just lost their ability to sow and harvest crops along with a large fraction of their fat and protein supplies.

You havent proven even remotely it would be what you described. If this was Cold War Soviet anthrax? Yeah, that would do it. However, this cattle cake thing is untested. The Germans can vaccinate their animals if it were actually a danger, but good luck proving dropping 5 million cattle cakes over Germany will do anything remotely like what you describe. As of now you haven't done so. How much anthrax was even used in the cattle cakes. That is unclear. Tests done to see how many animals it would actually kill. The only "catastrophe" is when Vegetarian invariably fails spectacularly all the while millions of British are dying. And the British givernment is left powerless to stop the Nazi onslet. Hitler may ask Churchill to surrender to him in person too.

Late in 1940, they tried to get the USSR to join the axis but Stalin's price was too high for the nazis.

Eh. Not as high as losing the war though but the Nazis didnt know it then
 

SwampTiger

Banned
The Germans could not afford to use chemical or biological weapons. The Brits could easily respond with WW1 style chemicals, which if used over cities will result in higher than OTL losses and a huge morale hit for the Germans. Even the use of gas masks and protective clothing is not fail safe, assuming the Germans had sufficient supply for all civilians in bombing range. The public relations fallout would be severe worldwide. Its a case of whether winning is worth the price.
 
How about a deliberate message to say that they are not going to bomb UK because of the risk of civilian casualties. Then sit back and wait for the RAF to go on the offensive the only way it can, night bombing.

Once the pictures of killed children show up, win the propaganda war in America by stating that the UK is targeting civilians.

Given that the nature of the RAF area bombing campaign was largely enabled by the Blitz and other German bombings of civilian targets I would argue this is unlikely.
 
http://ibiblio.org/pha/Gallup/

IF you take the time to study the above Gallup poll results through 1939-1941, you will see that there is only slim chance of America entering WW-II before Pearl Harbour. More convoy escorts and munitions sales is the best you can expect.
 
With Goering Himmler etc. It is a moot point anyways. As in any case none of them would be able to keep the US out of the war. As doing so necisitates keeping the navy in port.

The only one that might be able to make this decision is maybe Heydrich. Otherwise Nazi victory is impossible.

Heydrich though. He could concievably win it big for the Nazis if he uses chemical weapons.

Of course unlikely he winds up on top anyways. So the whole thing is moot.

What happens IMO is the US will defeat the Nazis every conceivable time realistically.

The ideal way would be to wait until sarin prosuction comes online and is stockpiled then hit the British massively and force a quick surrender.
 
You havent proven even remotely it would be what you described. If this was Cold War Soviet anthrax? Yeah, that would do it. However, this cattle cake thing is untested. The Germans can vaccinate their animals if it were actually a danger, but good luck proving dropping 5 million cattle cakes over Germany will do anything remotely like what you describe. As of now you haven't done so. How much anthrax was even used in the cattle cakes. That is unclear. Tests done to see how many animals it would actually kill. The only "catastrophe" is when Vegetarian invariably fails spectacularly all the while millions of British are dying. And the British givernment is left powerless to stop the Nazi onslet. Hitler may ask Churchill to surrender to him in person too.
The strain of anthrax that the British used was a deadly strain known as Vollum 14578. The reason we know that it is so deadly is because of tests that were done, including those carried out by the British on Gruinard Island during WWII. In fact, the British proved unable to clean Gruinard Island up because the spores were extremely durable (it ultimately took about 4 years to make the island habitable again). And the amount of anthrax needed is so small that even a little bit in the cattle cakes would be deadly (this is why anthrax was chosen). Finally, the Germans couldn't just vaccinate all of their animals. Once the anthrax has been used vaccination doesn't really work because a large chunk of the animals are already infected. They could do this before the attack, but that would require them knowing about the plan, which AFAIK they didn't.
 
The strain of anthrax that the British used was a deadly strain known as Vollum 14578. The reason we know that it is so deadly is because of tests that were done, including those carried out by the British on Gruinard Island during WWII. In fact, the British proved unable to clean Gruinard Island up because the spores were extremely durable (it ultimately took about 4 years to make the island habitable again). And the amount of anthrax needed is so small that even a little bit in the cattle cakes would be deadly (this is why anthrax was chosen). Finally, the Germans couldn't just vaccinate all of their animals. Once the anthrax has been used vaccination doesn't really work because a large chunk of the animals are already infected. They could do this before the attack, but that would require them knowing about the plan, which AFAIK they didn't.

Even in a best case scenario you would kill 5 million animals.Im sure the Nazis have far more than 5 million. And you may find it is the French that starve not the Germans. However. I will ask a very simple question. How do you know it will kill even 10 thousand animals? Not even 5 million but 10 thousand. The truth is that the chances you could even get 100 cakes where they the German animals stay is not good. This plan is so hilariously desparate and unworkable which is why no one other than the British has even considered it. Let alone done it.

The British would need to locate the Nazi big animal farms, then hit them accuretly with the cakes. Very unlikely. Even then the Nazis could just go around and pick up the cakes/wait until they decompose to let the animals out.
 
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