The spring and summer of 1940 were high-water marks of the Blitzkrieg, but German margins of triumph were narrower by far than they seemed to participants. The campaign of 1940 offers corresponding prospects for the consideration of alternative lines of development. The “what ifs” presented in this chapter focus on the campaign itself. They eschew broader questions. Had France possessed a different kind of army; had Britain begun rearming earlier; had political relationships among the western powers been closer – these and similar possibilities postulate essential differences in the warring societies and their military systems. Developing them requires exploring issues outside the scope of this volume, much less this chapter; and the result would be an alternate history of the twentieth century rather than the Second World War. The following discussion avoids contrary-to-fact assumptions at the operational level as well: a second Napoleon in command of France; a Wehrmacht equipped with different models of tanks and aircraft; or a British Expeditionary Force deployed along the Meuse River instead of in central Belgium. It highlights instead behaviors possible in the context of circumstances, behaviors requiring concrete decisions other than those actually made.
Within these guidelines, among the alternatives unpursued in the first six months of 1940 five stand out as offering significant opportunities for changing the path of history. The first involved a clear choice:
On 8 April,1940, German forces invaded Denmark and Norway in a combined-arms tour de force whose strategic results were at best questionable. To heavy naval losses were added the long-term burden of garrisoning a vulnerable coastline and a hostile population. During and after the war, Germany's leaders claimed they acted in part to forestall an allied initiative in Scandinavia. What if Germany had accepted the risk of sustaining Scandinavian neutrality, relying on diplomatic and economic means to secure the Reich's position in that region?
A Scandinavian operation was extremely tempting to French and British governments that initially sought large returns for small investments. Almost from the war's beginning Winston Churchill had proposed to block shipments of iron ore to Germany from Sweden through the north Norwegian port of Narvik by mining Norwegian territorial waters. On February 16,1940, the British destroyer Cossack boarded a German tanker in Norwegian waters to rescue seamen captured by the Graf Spee. And the allies did finally lay mines in Norwegian waters on the night of 7/8 April, independently of German movements and expecting a German response. The presumed German action against Norway would then inspire Norwegian acceptance of allied forces in Narvik and the southern ports.
Had Germany eschewed the invasion option it would have been highly imprudent for the allies to land troops in a Norway that stubbornly asserted its neutral rights. Had they done so, a German counterattack, with results paralleling the historical scenario, would certainly have followed.
A more promising, though perhaps less likely, alternative involved supporting the mine campaign with submarines and surface ships. German responses to this maritime campaign would have depended heavily on the strategic visions of Hitler and Raeder. The German admiral's concept of the navy's role suggest that his preferred reaction would have been to employ Germany's entire surface fleet to secure passage for the ore ships. Hitler might have agreed at least initially. But fleet and squadron actions under the conditions prevailing in the Arctic Ocean during April and May heavily favored the British. In these circumstances, particularly given the Luftwaffe's short-ranged aircraft and lack of interest in maritime operations, the Kriegsmarine may well have lost as heavily in this alternate scenario as in the historical sequence of events. The allies might have gained an advantage without the losses and humiliations they sustained in Norway during the spring of 1940.
Materially at least, the invasion of Norway was an unmitigated disaster for the Kriegsmarine. After World War I German naval strategists had touted the advantages of Scandinavian bases for Germany's surface fleet. When the fighting was over, too few warships were left for the new bases to matter: three cruisers, and only nine destroyers. But the losses off Norway had a more immediate consequence. Might the presence of the three cruisers, the ten destroyers, and the smaller vessels lost in Norwegian waters have altered the German navy's approach to an invasion of the British Isles?
The question involves strategic as well as operational perspectives. The German navy under Raeder had developed as a force with blue-water pretensions. It possessed neither the plans, the staffs, nor the material for a major amphibious operation. Improvising the necessary organization, and impressing the necessary shipping from a civilian economy already overstrained by war or disrupted by conquest, were formidable tasks in themselves. No “genius for war” the Germans might possess was likely to be carried over to the motley assemblage of barges, tugboats, and fishing smacks with civilian crews and civilian skippers, that would make up the German invasion fleet under the most favorable circumstances.
The prospects for an invasion seemed even more desperate in the absence of anything remotely resembling an effective naval screen for the proposed operation. Moreover the very ships the Kriegsmarine most lacked after Norway – cruisers and destroyers – were the ones most vital for the kind of close-quarter fighting, much of it at night, that was certain to accompany a landing attempt. Whatever Göring's promises, no sailor would trust the security of such an operation entirely to the Luftwaffe, particularly given the bitterness of inter-service rivalries in Hitler's Germany. The presence of the ships lost in the north would most likely have acted as a security blanket for the navy. Their operational role would be less important than their positive effect on the Kriegsmarine's overall confidence in the prospects of an invasion. Ultimately, however, the mounting of Sea Lion would have still depended on air superiority. The German navy of 1940 had a good deal more self-confidence than its Imperial predecessor – but that confidence did not extend to accepting an unsupported death-grapple in the English Channel with a British fleet defending its homeland.
A continued supply of iron ore from Sweden was perceived as an absolute requirement for the economy of the resource-poor Reich. As early as April, 1939, the Wehrmacht High Command stressed the necessity of sustaining both Sweden's willingness to make deliveries and the transport routes themselves. In fact Sweden remained for most of the war a reliable commercial partner. Did the invasion of her neighbors convince Sweden that discretion was the better part of neutrality? Would ore have continued to flow so freely into Germany without the example set in Norway and Denmark?
The weight of evidence suggests that Sweden's German policy was only marginally influenced by events elsewhere in Scandinavia. Though public opinion was markedly anti-Nazi, the government saw no merit before or after Operation Weser in provoking what was clearly a hopeless fight. Swedes entertained no significant delusions about Hitler. But neither did they perceive any feasible alternative to supping with the devil and using the longest possible spoon. Germany was too close; the Baltic was too small; potential allies were too far away to facilitate heroic defiance. The Transit Agreement of July 1940, making Swedish railways available for German troop movements, was a direct product of Norway's collapse, but there are no grounds for believing Sweden would have resisted such a demand even without the invasion. Particularly after the fall of France, Britain could have offered Sweden no more than token land and air forces, routed through Narvik – a move certain to provoke a German response. Compliance with Germany's less outrageous demands, combined with judicious reminders about the vulnerability of iron mines to sabotage, would have been Sweden's most probable first lines of defense even had Hitler honored Norwegian and Danish neutrality.
On 10 May 1940, Neville Chamberlain resigned as Britain's premier. While his conduct of the war had been the subject of consistent criticism both from the opposition benches and within his own party, it was the botched Norwegian campaign that produced the vote of confidence that reduced the government's margin to the point where Chamberlain could no longer govern. What if the Germans had not invaded Scandinavia in April? Would Chamberlain have remained in office for another month during the crucial early days of the Battle of France?
Almost certainly the government would have fallen within a week of the German attack. Chamberlain's credibility was unlikely to survive Guderian's breakthrough at Sedan and French General Gamelin's one-word reply to the question of where were the French reserves: aucune. That week might, however, have proved decisive. Winston Churchill would have had just that much less time to find his feet, to establish himself as a presence around which Britain could rally. Churchill, moreover, would have assumed office in the middle of a debacle rather than at its beginning. His grasp of events in historical fact was by no means as secure as his memoirs assert. In this alternative scenario, Churchill's energy and determination might well have generated a “Galloping Gertie” effect, adding to the confusion while attempting to overcome it. In this context, perhaps the most important consequence of the German invasion of Scandinavia was the role it played in bringing Churchill in touch with his destiny just a few vital days earlier.
A second significant turning point in 1940 came when the Germans decided to make the focal point of their attack the Ardennes instead of the more obvious and traditional route through Belgium. The high command was reluctant to mount a western offensive under any circumstances. Initial plans for “Case Yellow” proposed sending seventy-five divisions, including most of the army's armored and motorized divisions, across the low countries to engage the enemy in what was expected to be an encounter battle in central Belgium. Even before Hitler became involved in the planning process, the army's high command was growing increasingly dissatisfied with this unpromisingly conventional proposal. The concept was modified, then abandoned. Instead the Schwerpunkt of the German offensive was fixed in the Ardennes – and the rest is history. But what might have happened had the general staff remained committed to the original notion? What if Hitler's solipsistic instincts had led him to reject the recommendations of Erich von Manstein, and instead insist on a drive through Belgium – which was, after all, the plan of campaign he had repeatedly and emphatically ordered implemented between October and January?
Despite its significant resemblance to the German operations plan of 1914, the original version of “Case Yellow” owed more to Ludendorff than to Schlieffen. As in 1918, the army high command proposed to punch a hole and see what developed. It expected the western allies to move to Belgium's support, and anticipated a hard enough fight from the Belgians on the frontier to render further decisions heavily dependent on contingencies. Apart from this, the original German concept incorporated no proposals for destroying the enemy armed forces. This reflected to a significant degree the tactical/operational orientation of a German military whose concern for winning battles and campaigns led to an increasing neglect of strategic and grand-strategic issues. On the other hand wars are decided at their sharp ends, and the German General Staff knew its professional business.
The most likely final version of a sweep through Belgium and Holland, projected from the modifications made to “Case Yellow” between October and January, would have involved parallel thrusts on either side of Liège. Army Group B, the northern wing would have two panzer corps; Army Group A, one. The Schwerpunkt could be adjusted according to the pace of events. The aim of the campaign would be “to engage in a battle forces as large as possible … and to defeat them, creating thereby favorable conditions for carrying on the war ...”
An attack made under these conditions would have reflected the continued reluctance of its planners to mount an offensive in the west at all. It would also have played into a French war plan that emphasized the necessity of advancing as rapidly as possible into a Belgium that still refused a military alliance, then, presumably supported by the British, establishing a defensive position that could halt the German advance. French generals and French staff officers were students and creatures of a doctrine emphasizing the importance of firepower as opposed to maneuver. They had no intention of becoming engaged in an encounter battle that would highlight the weak points of their system and the strengths of the Wehrmacht. “Case Yellow 1” would have been a corresponding test of strengths. What factors might have governed the initial encounter?
The first was surprise. “Case Yellow 1,” like its historical version, depended heavily on the Germans' getting the jump on their adversaries. There appear to be no significant reasons why a Belgian variant should have been any more obvious to its intended victims than the Ardennes alternative actually proved. Neither allied intelligence nor allied reconnaissance was more obviously capable of discovering concentrations across the Meuse than in the Eifel.
The second crucial consideration was speed: breaking through the Belgian frontier fortifications and the Belgian army as quickly as possible. Here again the Germans would have been at no significant disadvantage compared to historical events. The sophisticated surprise attack on Eben Emael, using glider troops and hollow charges, was a tactical operation, not dependent on the overall strategic focus of the campaign. The Belgian army put up a harder fight than is generally recognized, but common sense indicates it was unlikely to improve its performance against German forces that would have been considerably stronger in numbers and armor. A third consideration involved Holland – specifically the “Breda variant” that allotted a half-dozen of France's best divisions to drive north and support the Dutch. French commander Maurice Gamelin had planned this move in November 1939, independently of any sense or knowledge of specific German intentions. There is no reason to assume he would have abandoned it in this alternative scenario, and instead sent the Breda divisions into central Belgium or held them in reserve.
With the underbrush trimmed away, the progress of “Case Yellow 1” would have depended heavily on air superiority. The Luftwaffe's excellent communications and highly-developed ground organization gave it a high degree of operational mobility. That mobility, however, would have been at a significant discount in a battle for air superiority over Belgium that, perhaps even more than on the ground, would have been a head-on encounter depending heavily on the respective fighter arms. Recent accounts have shown that the French air force gave an excellent account of itself in 1940 despite being taken badly off-balance. The Hurricanes of the BEF's Air Component also proved successful against the Messerschmitts. As much to the point, the Luftwaffe's Stukas and medium bombers would have had to focus their efforts in a limited operational area, becoming correspondingly vulnerable to enemy fighters. And – though this is more speculative – allied attack aircraft might not have been sacrificed in hopeless interdiction strikes against German bridges, as they were along the Meuse. In the final analysis numbers, quality and organization favored the Germans enough to give them victory in this alternative scenario. The victory, however, was likely to have been far less spectacular than was the historical case.
German Plan for a drive into Belgium rather than through the Ardennes.
A similar point can be made for the ground fighting. The key to the blitz campaign of 1940 was mobility – getting inside the enemy's loop of initiative and forcing him off balance. How well might that concept have been implemented in Belgium? It is first of all questionable whether the panzer divisions would have been used in a breakthrough role, as opposed to exploitation. Once turned loose they would have found far less scope, geographic and military, for maneuver than was the actual case in 1940. The set object of the campaign involved engaging and defeating the enemy. German tanks, unlike their successors of 1944-45, were not designed for stand-up fighting. When the light mechanized divisions of the French Cavalry Corps met XVI Panzer Corps in the Gembloux Gap on 12-13 May, tactical honors were about even. Would the presence of more Mark II's, with their thin armor and 20 mm guns, have done more than offer the Somuas additional targets? The German advance in “Case Yellow 1” would have been unprecedentedly swift – but not probably quick enough to prevent the French and British forces from concentrating as planned, along the Dyle River.
Once in position the allies put up a hard fight even as their flank and rear disintegrated. What might they have achieved in this alternate scenario? Certainly both flanks would have been vulnerable to German mobile forces, and their rear areas subjected to even heavier attacks than they actually received from a Luftwaffe most probably able by now to concentrate its forces. On balance the test would have been of doctrines and fighting power. The French army's methods emphasized defense at the tactical level; British troops demonstrated their traditional stubbornness time and again during the actual fighting. While antitank warfare was still in its infancy, BEF two-pounders and French 25- and 47-millimeter guns might well have taken a heavy toll even of boldly-handled panzer formations. The Germans, on the other hand, with their emphasis on initiative, decentralization, and infiltration, were almost certain to erode enemy positions somewhere. And once that erosion was accomplished the panzers, or what remained of them, could have been turned loose a second time.
But to what end? In the most logical development of this scenario the Channel ports would fall into German hands, cutting off escape for a BEF in any case likely to be too closely engaged on its front to make a Dunkirk feasible. The military destinies of France and Britain would have been correspondingly linked, even should Belgium – as seems likely – have concluded a separate peace before being completely overrun. That link, however, was not necessarily a step to joint catastrophe. While “Case Yellow 1” might have generated a French collapse, the more likely outcome would appear to be a tactical/operational victory in Belgium and northeastern France, but one leaving Germany's mobile forces, ground and air, too weakened to exploit decisively.
A feasible sequel might have involved an operational pause before proceeding deeper into France – particularly in the context mentioned above, of the army high command's doubts about the entire project. And the results? Perhaps a negotiated peace as France and Britain counted their losses and thanked their stars for nothing worse. Perhaps the overthrow of Hitler by an officer corps disaffected by incomplete success. In any case the Führer's stock would have stood by no means as high at the end of this hypothetical campaign as it did in the historical scenario. Nor would the Wehrmacht have been as likely to cultivate the insouciant overconfidence that paved its road to Stalingrad. What if?
On 24 May the later Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, commanding Army Group A, ordered his armored divisions to close up to the “Canal Line” of Lens-Gravelines, and halt there. Hitler endorsed the order the next day. Not until the 27th did the tanks roll again, and by that time the British had the way to Dunkirk barred. There seems to be no question that the German mobile forces could have continued advancing. Their surprise and indignation at being stopped is clear even in those relatively sober documents, the formation war diaries. With an unbroken string of successes behind them, officers and men were confident they could end the fighting in the north in a matter of days. Instead 338,000 French and British escaped through Dunkirk between 27 May and 4 June.
German failure to halt the evacuation is generally and appropriately recognized as a major long-range turning point in the Second World War. It has been variously explained as a desire to spare the panzers for later operations, as a sop to Göring's pride in his Luftwaffe, and as a reflection of Hitler's vague hopes for a peace with Britain. Not only Hitler, but many of the army's senior officers, had served in Flanders during World War I. They retained vivid memories of the region's all-devouring mud, and feared getting their tanks hopelessly bogged. But what if these concerns had not inhibited action? After the war Heinz Guderian, commanding XIX Panzer Corps, said that Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch later told him that the army high command hoped Guderian would disobey the order, as he had others during the campaign. What if the Wehrmacht had followed its own aphorism of “klotzen nicht kleckern,” and concentrated its full efforts on capturing Dunkirk or reducing the Dunkirk perimeter before the allies could remove their forces?
On 24 May Guderian's lead elements were thirty miles closer to Dunkirk than the bulk of the BEF. No significant combat forces barred their way. Any ad hoc opposition scraped up in Britain and thrown ashore was no more likely to engage the panzer divisions in a debilitating street fight than had the garrisons of Boulogne and Calais. Possibilities for a British counterattack against Dunkirk were even more limited. The BEF was already heavily engaged, and in this scenario likely to be even more heavily pressed along its front by the Germans of Army Group B. Apart from that fact, neither doctrine, training, nor command had prepared British forces for this kind of improvised operation. As late as 1945 the British army performed best in set pieces.
The most obvious positive allied response to the loss of Dunkirk involved a reprise of the abortive counterattack at Arras of 21 May. This operation would have presumably involved stronger forces, and the British high command would not have been looking over its collective shoulder towards the Channel ports as frequently as some accounts say was the historical case. On the other hand, the ad hoc nature of the attack would have been even greater than was the actual case, and the available tanks far fewer in number. Lord Gort and his subordinates, moreover, were by 24 May psychologically detached from the Battle of Flanders, mentally committed to an evacuation in ways difficult to reverse overnight. The most likely outcome of a German thrust to Dunkirk, in short, would not have been exactly the collapse of the BEF, but its paralysis – ending in a Kesselschlacht, somewhere between Lille and Ypres, engulfing all nine of the BEF's regular and first-line territorial divisions. The remaining labor and service troops could have been rounded up at the Germans' leisure. They would have had nowhere to go.
A second alternative scenario involving Dunkirk begins with the German armor held back and the British and French establishing a defensive perimeter, as in the historical version. But what if the Germans had mounted a concentrated, all-out effort to prevent the evacuation by increasing the force of their attacks against the allied positions, perhaps using armored forces extensively for support and short-range exploitation? What if, after the Belgian surrender, Fedor von Bock had driven – or been ordered to drive – the infantry of his Army Group B harder? What if the Germans had made more use of their medium and heavy artillery against the Dunkirk perimeter?
Here the outcome would have been decided at the tactical level. In the historical scenario, French and British rear-guards bought enough time for most of the fighting formations to be evacuated. Their sacrifices and successes, however, were in good part reflections of a “last man syndrome” on the German side. If the generals were looking forward to the coming Battle of France, the lieutenants, sergeants, and privates had no desire to be the last one killed in Belgium. Overcoming this inertia – itself a reflection of the hard fighting of the previous two weeks – would have challenged the higher commands, but not necessarily daunted them.
Whether greater efforts in this context inevitably prefigured a decisive German breakthrough to the beachheads is open to question. With nowhere to run, the fighting elements of the BEF and the French 1st Army can reasonably be expected to have stood their ground. Far fewer of them, however, would have been likely to disengage successfully – two or three divisions' worth of British, half that many French, seem optimistic estimates. The troops evacuated from Dunkirk would have included a much higher proportion of rear echelon formations, service elements, and stragglers. Staffs and senior officers could have been selectively withdrawn to serve as the nucleus of a reconstituted army. The probable negative effect on the morale in the armed forces and the nation at large might well have prevented even this move. One thing is certain. After this scenario the cutting edge of any subsequent British war effort would have had a correspondingly different structure. In the context of actual events in the desert, the Mediterranean, and northwest Europe, that might not have been entirely disadvantageous!
A third alternate possibility moves into the air. What if the Luftwaffe had mounted a more concentrated effort over Dunkirk? Unfavorable weather conditions hindered the German air crews by day. The absence of any effective night-fighting capacities gave the evacuation between six and eight undisturbed hours in twenty-four. But suppose, instead of attacking the aircraft factories of Paris or the roads and railroads of the Rhône Valley, the Luftwaffe had focussed on the port and the beaches of Dunkirk?
The most promising targets, left relatively undisturbed in the historical scenario, were the British Channel ports. Heavy medium-bomber raids on Dover and the smaller harbors were well within the Luftwaffe's capacity. Launching them, however, would have done little more than inaugurate the Battle of Britain on terms highly unfavorable to a Luftwaffe still without a network of forward bases for its short-ranged fighters. Presuming a German refusal to be drawn into such a struggle, Dunkirk itself would have been the focus of a major air battle. For most of Operation Dynamo the harbor, not the open beaches, was the major evacuation route, and it was there the Heinkels and Dorniers were likely to do the most damage. They might also have confronted the RAF with a vital decision.
From the beginning of the German Offensive, Fighter Command's Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding had insisted – steadfastly or rigidly, depending on one's viewpoint – that his Spitfires and Hurricanes must be held back for the defense of Britain itself. Even over Dunkirk, British aircraft were committed sparingly. What might have been the pressure on Dowding with Dunkirk's port facilities ablaze, with beaches even more heavily crowded than was the historical reality? Might Fighter Command have been drawn into, or committed itself to, an air-superiority battle on the far side of the Channel? As late as 1942, the RAF's offensive fighter sweeps over France were characterized by significant weaknesses of command and control. Would 1940 have witnessed a better performance? And how many of the men who bailed out over England four months later, then returned to fight as squadron or wing commanders, might instead have finished the war as German prisoners?
Had the RAF done no more than it did in reality, the limitations of air power have been sufficiently highlighted by later events to suggest strongly that the Luftwaffe of 1940 could not by itself have halted the evacuation as long as the British were willing to send in their ships. What it could have done was to increase the evacuation's material and moral costs. The bulk of the British troops came home with a sense that at least part of the system worked. The army had been ruinously beaten. The “brylcreem boys” of the RAF had been conspicuously absent over the beaches. But everyone could “thank God for the Navy!” Had the evacuation been disrupted, had it been brought nearer to the level of sauve qui peut as would be the case at Singapore, the effect on both British morale and British politics might well have been significant.
The Luftwaffe lost something else over Dunkirk: its reputation for infallibility. This was no small sacrifice in the Byzantine world of German military politics, and might well have been averted had the British been driven off the Dunkirk beaches instead of being pushed off. Would a command structure without something to prove have fought the Battle of Britain in quite the same way? We will never know.
A final alternative scenario for Dunkirk involves the possibility of a German “hot pursuit.” Operation Sealion proved abortive. But in the aftermath of the evacuation, what might have happened if the Germans had sent what remained of their airborne troops across the Channel, supporting them with a relatively small ground force, packed into anything that would float and launched against a narrow front?
The prospects for such an operation seem limited. The Luftwaffe would have faced significant problems gaining even temporary air superiority of the kind necessary for an air assault, given the lack of suitable bases and a developed administrative structure in the forward operational area. A large-scale airborne operation is an extremely complex process, and in 1940 lacked any precedents. Planning for such a contingency was legitimately at the very lowest priority of a Luftwaffe with far bigger and more dangerous fish to fry. Nor had the German paratroopers and air landing forces recovered from their mauling in Holland, where Dutch forces held in light regard had inflicted heavy losses in men and decimated the vital transport wings. The shock of an invasion in the aftermath of Dunkirk might – just might – have taken Britain out of the war. But Germany did not possess, and could not reasonably have created, an airborne force strong enough to deliver that kind of initial punch.
And could the paratroopers have been reinforced? Especially in the context of the Kriegsmarine's continued preoccupation with Norway, could it have collected and organized enough shipping in the immediate aftermath of Dunkirk to transport and land even two or three divisions in the face of a Royal Navy committed to a fight to a finish? The complexity and the vulnerability of subsequent amphibious operations for Tarawa to Salerno suggests that an improvised German attempt to land in England during the summer of 1940 would have more closely resembled Dieppe than Normandy. There was no guarantee that German assault troops could either have fought their way ashore or been effectively supported in a beachhead. Once inland and reinforced by a panzer division or two, the Germans would have given Britain its most formidable external military challenge since 1066. Getting there, however, was the rub in summer 1940, as it proved to be in the fall.
The evacuation of Dunkirk brought almost a quarter-million men of the BEF home in organized formations. What might have been the consequences of a disaster on the beaches, or a surrender further inland? If only fragments of her first-line forces had returned, might Britain have been more receptive to peace terms? Or might Operation Sealion, the projected large-scale German invasion, have appeared more attractive to Hitler and the Wehrmacht in the absence of the Dunkirk veterans?
That the loss of the BEF would by itself have brought Britain to the conference table is questionable. Operation Dynamo brought back men, not equipment – and experience from Norway to Flanders showed that rifles and bayonets made only marginal contributions to the kind of war the Germans had introduced. Certainly Britain's defenses were stronger with the BEF than without it. But there were enough trained and partially-trained formations to man Britain's beaches and furnish an operational reserve, even if most of Lord Gort's men had vanished into German POW camps. What was lacking in the summer and fall of 1940 were not men in uniform, but tanks, antitank guns, artillery pieces. These shortages did not encourage surrender in 1940, and would have been no greater had the BEF itself failed to return. Certainly its loss would have been a major blow to national morale, but the army was no more than Britain's third line of defense. Especially given Churchill's determination to continue the fight, the Royal Navy and the RAF would have to have been broken to make negotiations a probable aftermath to a surrender at Dunkirk.
It is similarly difficult to perceive Operation Sealion as being facilitated by the BEF's capture. The German army was confident in its capacity to defeat with relative ease any land forces the British could pit against an invasion, even one of the strength projected in Sealion's later, limited version. Whether this confidence was misplaced may be open to debate, but nothing in the German records indicates the kind of respect for the British army's fighting power that might have encouraged greater optimism in the absence of that army's first line. Operation Sealion was doomed by the Luftwaffe's failure to establish air superiority and the Kriegsmarine's inability to mount the landing – not the presence of the Dunkirk divisions in Britain's order of battle.
One final, more remote speculation might be offered in this context. Had the BEF been destroyed, would Britain have committed the resources it did in fact to building up a heavy bomber force? Would the national focus have changed, by necessity, to forming and equipping ground divisions? Or would Britain, perceiving no other alternative, have committed herself even more fully to Trenchardian concepts of air power and its potential? Important though the bomber offensive was as the only means of striking directly at Germany until 1943, it seems most likely that Churchill's government would in fact have taken the more cautious path and rebuilt an army strong enough to project Britain's power overseas, as well as to defend the homeland. But how long would that process have required? Many of the British formations that fought in Tunisia in 1942-43 had been evacuated from Dunkirk, yet they showed to limited advantage against an improvised German resistance. What might have been the fate of entirely new divisions? It is one more question that tantalizes by having no answer.
The final battle for France began on 5 June. Twelve days later the French government asked for an armistice. The necessity of France's capitulation remains a subject for debate. But what if instead France had continued the fight, either voluntarily or because Hitler refused to negotiate? The latter point is by no means improbable. A total victory over France might not have been in Hitler's interest, but the Nazi dictator was a man of whim as well as will. Besides, what better way to show Britain the hopelessness of her situation than by laying France completely prostrate?
What might have been the consequences for Germany had a Vichy government never existed, had Hitler instead forced a choice between surrender and exile? The most logical outcome would have been an enhancing of Germany's westward and Mediterranean orientations. While resistance might have been no greater in a totally-occupied France than a partitioned one, opposition would probably be enhanced by the absence of a “middle way.” Consolidating German rule would in itself have absorbed significant attention from a Nazi order that produced conquerors rather than proconsuls. It is unlikely that a German occupation of France in 1940 would have completely distracted Hitler from his ideologically-based concern with Russia. But such a scenario offered significant opportunities for attracting Hitler the opportunist. Diplomatically, German relations with Spain and Italy would have become more comprehensive and complex. Militarily, with German troops all along the Pyrenees, Operation Felix, the projected strike against Gibraltar through Franco's Spain, might have seemed a more practical option. Choking off the Mediterranean might have appeared far less of a strategic diversion than was the actual case in 1941. What might Erwin Rommel have done with a battle-hardened panzer group in lieu of his improvised Afrika Korps?
A second alternative consequence of France remaining in the war as a government in exile would have been the continued presence of the French navy on the allied side. This factor must not be exaggerated. Britain's great need between 1940 and 1943 was for escort ships; the French navy was a surface-action force. The decisive naval operation of those years took place in the Atlantic; French warships were best adapted to the Mediterranean. Friction between the allies would doubtless have been enhanced while the navy remained France's principal military contribution and negotiating counter. But aside from the advantages gained by Britain's avoiding the tragedy of Mers-el-Kebir and the fiasco of Dakar, French naval forces would have provided a useful margin of security, if not superiority, in the Mediterranean. French destroyers might have freed their more adaptable British counterparts from fleet work for escort duties. And French crews, with large cadres of experienced seamen, could have manned enough escort vessels to deserve their own chapter in an alternative history of the Battle of the Atlantic.
A third scenario with significant possible consequences involves French withdrawal to North Africa. This was far more likely than a simple flight to London. The local commander-in-chief, General Noguès, enthusiastically urged the prospect. Premier Paul Reynaud seriously considered it. His successor, Philippe Pétain, went so far as to order part of the government to relocate. What prospects existed for carrying on France's war from her colonies?
While North Africa's military resources had been drained for the metropole, they were far from exhausted. The North Africans had done some of the best and hardest fighting in France and Belgium. As many as fifteen divisions could easily have been raised from formations held back as garrisons, supplemented by troops from sub- Saharan Africa and recruits drawn from the still-plentiful manpower of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. The colonial formations actually engaged in Italy and France in the war incorporated large numbers of Frenchmen. In this scenario, while not many organized formations would have escaped the collapse, enough individuals and small units were likely to make their way across the Mediterranean, or be transshipped from Britain, to provide cadres and specialists for the new divisions.
Equipment would have posed a far greater problem than manpower. North Africa had no armament industry. Britain had no resources to spare. U.S. lend-lease (itself a speculation in this presumed context) was most likely to be sent to the British Isles, the point of greatest ostensible danger. The French “Army of North Africa” would have emerged as a throwback to the early 1930s: infantry armed with rifles and machine guns, supported by horse-drawn artillery and screened by cavalry employing a mix of horses, trucks, and motorcycles, with a few battalions of modern tanks giving the whole scene cachet.
The French, however, could have counted on a relatively strong air force. Many of the Armée de l'Air's surviving first-line fighters and bombers were capable of making a one-way flight across the Mediterranean. Those that were not, the Morane-Saulnier 406s and Bloch 152s, were no great loss. Even during the fighting these obsolescent models had been giving way to Dewoitine 520s and Curtiss Hawks. France, moreover, had placed orders for modern aircraft in the U.S. – orders that could be delivered to Casablanca as well as Marseilles, and that would have provided useful mounts for the relatively large numbers of planeless pilots that were likely to hitch rides south rather than accept German captivity.
The Hawks and Havocs from the U.S. were not an equal match for the Luftwaffe's first line. But the prospects of a German pursuit across the Mediterranean under the conditions of 1940 were negligible. Not only was Britain the more threatening enemy; it offered a far easier target. The English Channel was narrower than the Mediterranean Sea. A Wehrmacht unable to cope with the former would hardly have been likely to tackle the latter except under administrative, as opposed to operational, conditions.
That point suggests that a hypothetical “Army of North Africa” might have done its first fighting against the Italian colony of Libya. Its existence alone would probably have deterred the disastrous Italian invasion of Egypt. And while prewar French plans vis-à-vis Libya were essentially defensive, as indicated by the existence of the Mareth Line, a British attack with anything like the success of Sir Richard O'Connor's actual offensive would probably have evoked a French response. The probable outcome would have been the occupation of Tripoli three years earlier.
As for Axis reinforcements, a French fleet that in this scenario would almost certainly have been concentrated in the Mediterranean was in a good position to challenge successfully Italian convoys – not least because that was the kind of mission on which the French navy had concentrated its prewar training. French naval forces added to a British Mediterranean fleet handled by an admiral of Cunningham's capacities would have thrown the material deficiencies and command shortcomings of the Regia Marina into even bolder relief than did the actual course of events – and might have made the African campaign no more than an occupation of hopelessly-isolated Italian outposts.
One final scenario based on French continuance of the war deserves consideration. While metropolitan France would have been spared the worst of the Vichy/Gaullist hostility, the evidence of Belgium and Holland suggests that tension between those were left and those who stayed would still have infused postwar French politics to a significant degree. A more promising alternative involves the relationships that might have developed between a French government based in Algiers, and the governments and peoples of North Africa. Even before the war there was talk of the French Empire becoming a French Common wealth. It is unnecessary to hypothesize gratitude on the part of an administration in exile to suggest that a hard-line attitude of the kind France manifested after 1945 might have been more difficult to sustain in a situation where the power to act independently, as opposed to being a British or U.S. puppet, depended heavily on North African participation. The client governments of Tunisia and Morocco, and the budding Algerian nationalist movement, would have been in the position of interacting on an everyday basis with a government whose members were likely to be drawn from a Left and Center already inured to compromise. On s'arranger has been a motto of French politics at least since 1870. Might French-North African relationships have been differently “arranged” had Renaud decided to continue the fight for French independence from the French Empire?
To generations nurtured on Winston Churchill's rhetoric of Britain's finest hour, the question may seem a particular absurdity. But Churchill's accession to his country's highest office was by no means inevitable. Chamberlain's failure to form a national coalition after the Commons vote on 8 May, 1940, initially brought to the fore not Churchill, but Foreign Secretary Viscount Edward Halifax. Unlike Churchill, Halifax enjoyed the confidence of the Crown, the prime minister, and his own party. He would have been supported by the Liberal and Labour parties. His peerage was not an insurmountable barrier to the effective exercise of office, however much Halifax might have thought so. And while in actual history it was 1963 before peers were allowed to disclaim their titles, a national emergency of the kind Britain faced in 1940 would certainly have facilitated an earlier version of the Peerage Act, or some equivalent enabling Halifax to enter the Commons as premier – if he had wanted the job. At the crunch, however, Halifax lacked confidence in himself and stood down in favor of Churchill. What if Halifax had accepted the opportunity?
Edward Halifax had for years been closely identified with Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, from both principle and pragmatism. As Viceroy of India he had negotiated successfully if temporarily, with Mohandas Gandhi, and possessed corresponding faith in the power of negotiations to control ideologies. His support for war had been a reluctant acceptance of a choice between two great evils. His reaction to events in France blended shock and despair. Like everyone else in the cabinet, Halifax was stunned by the French army's collapse. In December 1939, he had expressed a belief that should France make peace, England could not carry on alone. In the War Cabinet meetings of 26-28 May, with the BEF apparently on the edge of destruction around Dunkirk, Halifax urged using Mussolini as a mediator to ascertain Hitler's peace terms. Even if these included surrendering part of the empire, Halifax believed that might be preferable to further destruction or a hopeless last stand.
Halifax was as determined as Churchill to secure Britain's integrity and independence. But in the contest of his actual behavior it seems quite likely, that as prime minister he would have at least sought to open negotiations for peace. Mussolini would almost certainly have seized the opportunity to establish himself – in his own mind, at least – as Europe's new power broker. The Battle of France had left the Italian dictator eating the dust of his one-time emulator. A British initiative of the kind favored by Halifax was just the thing to pique Mussolini's vanity.
The outcome of the negotiations would have depended heavily on Adolf Hitler. Insofar as the Nazi dictator had policies, as opposed to goals, he seems during the summer of 1940 to have been interested sincerely in at least testing England's interest in what Andreas Hillgruber calls a “global grand solution” involving a compromise with England. Such a peace would discourage U.S. intervention, clear the way for an ideologically-based war with Russia, and – not least – divide Britain's counsel, making her correspondingly vulnerable to what later generations would call “Finlandization.” He believed “one more demonstration of our power” was necessary to bring about the negotiations he sought. Had Halifax in fact made the overtures, they would almost certainly have been accepted.
The outcome of these hypothetical peace talks moves into the realm of pure speculation. Much would have depended on the skill of the participants. Certainly Halifax by this time entertained no delusions about Hitler. The British premier would have balked at anything remotely resembling the terms imposed at Compiègne. The Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force would have been non-negotiable issues. Hitler for his part was almost certain to demand colonial concessions – which Halifax might have granted for the sake of a cease-fire. Assuming the parties were able to reach terms, an armistice, rather than a peace, seems a logical outcome for this alternative scenario. Both sides could see obvious short-and long-term benefits. The Kriegsmarine would have the opportunity to continue with its Z-Plan to build an ocean-going battle fleet. Hitler and his generals would be free to concentrate on a form of war they understood, waged against an enemy they were certain of defeating. Britain for her part would have bought time – time to restore her shattered armed forces, to develop an American connection, to mobilize a Commonwealth whose participation in the war to date had been much less enthusiastic than in 1914. The Halifax-Hitler armistice would have meant little more than a pause between rounds.
A second scenario involving a British peace initiative depends on Winston Churchill being freed of his belief in the prospect of rapid, large-scale American help for his beleaguered island. As early as 15 June he urged Roosevelt to declare war, if only for its psychological effect. His chiefs of staff insisted that without full economic and financial support from the U.S. prospects for success were grim.
Churchill's hopes for immediate U.S. participation in the war was the product of wishful thinking reinforced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt's mastery of obfuscation. The American president never discouraged Churchill's optimism. But suppose Roosevelt had been less sanguine about Britain's prospects. Suppose that, under pressure from Republicans, America-Firsters, and peace advocates, he had informed the British Premier, bluntly and unmistakably, that Britain indeed stood alone?
Winston Churchill in 1940 was a man without a party, a man whose political behavior over the past thirty years had generated mistrust and hostility on both Left and Right. He was also both less and more than the single-minded paladin of his own legend. He was plagued by objective doubts, as well as his more familiar “black dog.” However inspiring he might be in public, he spoke in private on several occasions in 1940 of the prospects of a negotiated peace. The question, he argued, was whether Britain could get acceptable terms. But his definition of “acceptable” might well have been altered by an unambiguous American declaration of non-intervention. His decision to fight on was by no means absolute. The historical Churchill was almost as prepared as Halifax to trade territory for peace. “Malta, Gibraltar, and some African colonies” are mentioned in Neville Chamberlain's diary. Further concessions might have been at least thinkable in a context of complete isolation.
Whether Churchill would himself have initiated the negotiations is more debatable. Certainly his critics in and out of Parliament would have attacked him – accurately – as the British politician least likely to bring peace talks undertaken from weakness to a successful conclusion. Under pressure, Churchill might have resigned. More likely he would have either been ousted or like Chamberlain in May, retained in office with a margin too small to be effective in the situation. And his probable successor? Almost certainly Halifax would have overcome his self-deprecation to serve his country in its hour of need – with results along the lines discussed above.
A third possibility for a British peace initiative lay at the grass roots. Recent research in the social history of wartime Britain indicates that national morale was by no means dominated by the grim determination to endure and prevail that has been enshrined in national mythology. The war itself came as a shock to a people dominated by the memories of 1914-18 and the illusions of the 1930s. The disaster in France and the helterskelter retreat from Dunkirk generated a widespread apathy by no means the most promising matrix of national resistance. Britain in 1940, moreover, was still a class society, “a nation of hats and caps,” deeply scarred by depression and unemployment. Even Churchill was by no means confident in public morale at the outbreak of war. What if, in the aftermath of Dunkirk, the British public had demanded a new version of “peace with honor”? Censorship had not entirely muzzled the press; wartime controls were by no means as rigid as they later became; Parliament was a locus of free speech. Could popular agitation, popular reluctance to continue a struggle whose outcome even the country's leaders questioned, have brought about a change in Britain's German policies? Could Britain's social revolution have begun in 1940 instead of 1945?
The answer would have depended first of all on the intensity of the protests, and on their capacity to generate leadership from outside the existing political establishment. The British Communist Party, obsessed with internal concerns, was an unlikely source. “Red Ellen” Wilkinson had the necessary charisma, but her gender was against her. Sir Oswald Moseley comes to mind from the right, but would almost certainly have been too controversial. The leaders of a “peace now” movement were most likely to be unknown – back-benchers at the most, acting from a mix of opportunism, enthusiasm, and conviction. The level of support would have depended heavily on a bandwagon effect that generated a sense of purpose in a time when no one knew what would happen next.
And the outcome? Most probably a new government – arguably a national coalition with Clement Attlee as premier and Halifax playing a major role. Such a government was unlikely to seek a war on two fronts; almost certainly it would have sought negotiations. And that process in turn might well have generated a paradox. The temptation in such a scenario would have been very strong for Hitler to overplay his hand by demanding concessions unacceptable even to determined advocates of peace. It is not impossible to imagine Halifax returning from a final meeting brandishing a paper and saying “we sought peace with honor; Hitler offers only war to the knife!” The rest must remain pure speculation, in the context of a Britain whose future development would have differed in essence from the Britain of history.
Peace between Britain and Germany would have had wider implications as well. Even before Hitler announced on 31 July, 1940, his intention to “destroy” Russia, the army high command had regarded a Soviet war as only a matter of time. And that war was not merely a means to the greater end of convincing Britain to surrender by eliminating her last potential continental ally. It is virtually certain that even in the aftermath of peace in the west, preparations for Operation Barbarossa would have continued. Nazi Germany's next set of goals, ideological and geopolitical, lay in the Slavic East. It was Russia that offered the resources, the living space, and not least the slave labor demanded by Hitler's predatory system both as ends in themselves and as means to the further enhancement of Nazi power.
Strategically, Germany would have likely benefited from an enhanced bandwagon effect both in her occupied territories and in east-central Europe. With Britain removed from the equation, accommodation would have been the only reasonable choice from Norway to Vichy France. Neither Yugoslavia nor Greece could have entertained hopes for a British-supported “third way” between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. The extent of the actual delay imposed on Barbarossa by the Balkan campaign of 1941 remains a subject of debate. But without a British military presence in the eastern Mediterranean, it is virtually certain that the Balkan states would have made the best terms they could with Europe's new hegemonic power and its Italian ally.
What would have been the operational results of an Anglo-German peace on a Russo-German war? It seems highly unlikely that the invasion would have been launched earlier than the spring of 1941. Even when he hoped for Britain's capitulation, Hitler set May 1941 as his target month. There were no real prospects of an immediate shift of forces to occupied Poland and a lightning strike against an unprepared enemy. It would have been impossible to transfer the bulk of the German army eastwards after the fall of France and still have enough time left to mount a decisive campaign before winter changed the equation. Even if contingency plans for such an operation had existed, the risks of alarming the Soviet Union were too great to be accepted in the context of an alternative. Britain's surrender in the summer of 1940 would have offered the chance to strengthen Germany's diplomatic position with Russia's neighbors while integrating the resources of Europe into an irresistible mass attack on Nazism's principal enemy – and all without the distraction of an air and sea campaign in the west, or of sideshows in the Mediterranean. For Hitler and his generals, the decision would have been obvious: lull Russia into a sense of temporary security, then strike when the rasputitsa, the spring thaw, was over: attack, that is, in later April or early May, 1941.