Originally Posted by
abemnik
A UK winter warfare wouldnt really have bothered the Germans the Jaegger units were well trained in winter warfare and also at the forefront of it and tactics devised then are still in use now as a part of the marine and SAS mountain warfare syllabus, the UK was lucky in more ways the BEF was near exhaustion after Dunkirk the same year and most equipment was left on the beaches if it wasnt for the Russian front opening up it could have been a totally different thing and considering the Germans had only been rearming themselves from 1933 with some of the best experts have created some of nowadays weapons , the B2 stealth bomber was from a German design the cruise missile from a V1 doodlebug the V2 came to late the ME262 HE163 both jet planes before the Brits got their own Meteor , if the Yanks hadnt starved Japan of fuel pre Pearl Harbour they might not have been drawn into the whole affair , the German war machine was well oiled and well designed and with time who knows
No I don't think the Germans were were in any way "frightened" of invading Britain but the combination of circumstances I mentioned just meant it never took off though in hindsight of course Britain should ideally have been Knocked out of the War before the invasion of Russia.
I think one of the greatest unexplored what if's is the possibility of " The Grand Axis Strategy".
This strategy would have involved the strategic co-ordination of the efforts of the Japanese and German military.
To give you an idea of just how big an effect this could have had on the course of the WAr consider this.
As I said above one of the key reasons Moscow wasn't captured in the winter of 1941/42 was because of the Siberian re inforcements.
Now as a result of the Russo-Japanese War Japan had effectively occupied part of Russia and could have easily broken the peace treaty and opened up a second Russian front in 1941 that would have made sending those reinforcements all but impossible.
Without those re inforcements Moscow might have fallen, however as Napoleon's earlier 1812 campaign showed even this would not have guaranteed victory.
“The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”
Winston Churchill
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