Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeC1980
If Hitler had defeated the RAF, he would have given the order to invade Britain. He would have eventually defeated Britain.
|
That's largely what we're discussing, and most here believe he would not have been able to successfully invade even if he'd won the battle of Britain.
Quote:
Now here is the bit nobody has thought of.
Without the D-Day invasion, the Russian forces would have had to fight the Nazis on their own... and eventually would have forced them back to Berlin... and beyond.
There is no reason to think the Russians would have stopped at Germany.
The Soviet Iron curtain would have covered the whole of Europe.
The entire history of the world would have been very, very different.
|
If you read just this thread alone, you'll see that of course people have thought of that. This has been studied the world over, it's not likely we're about to come up with some new breakthrough.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeC1980
That's why Hitler decided the Luftwaffe should wipe out the RAF before he would give the command to invade Britain.
|
As people have explained here, the Luftwaffe didn't have the range to have air superiority over the north of Britain, so even if they won in the south, the RAF would have been able to keep bombers and fighters in the north which, combined with the navy, would have been too much for a German land invasion to cope with.
Quote:
Originally Hitler targeted only British airbases. Things were going well, at one point the English air force was down to only 200 planes.
Then a flight of German bombers accidentally bombed London. In retaliation Churchill ordered Berlin bombed. Hitler wigged it and ordered the destruction of London which gave the beleaguered RAF time to rebuild and change strategy.
|
This is what we were taught at school 30 years ago, but modern research has suggested that Hitler could have carried on bombing the RAF bases and it would have made no difference. There were too many airfields that were too easy to get back into operation - their success was limited to something like 1 airfield out of action for 1 day.