Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
Note where it was tested. Certainly wasn't in the UK!!!
Middle of Australia, Woomera to be exact.
India was still in the fight as was Australia and New Zealand, not to mention South Africa as well as a number of other countries of somewhat lesser strategic importance (although able to supply troops and materials). Although at the time there was a great deal of fear that the Japanese would continue southward and roll over Australia and New Zealand, there was in reality little need for them to do that, nor did they really have the available forces anyway. Australia is HUGE. They'd need hundreds of thousands of troops to take it in the 1940s (more today with our greater population), troops they simply didn't have as it turned out.
With the constant threat of German aerial attack it's likely much of the UKs industrial production would be shifted to safer colonies (such as South Africa) with finished products shipped in via convoys. Eygpt and the suez canal would likely have become even more important with Commonwealth efforts against the Axis forces concentrated there while the UK itself carried out only holding actions to prevent invasion. Instead of D-Day landings being in France, the main thrust (when it finally came, likely several years later) may have been up through the middle east in an attempt to link up with the Soviets.
All in all though it's really impossible to say what might have happened, but it is foolish to say the UK would definitely have been defeated without the US.
It was possible. Even with the multiple fronts the Commonwealth were holding their own using substandard equipment (mainly god awful tanks with underpowered guns and dodgy tactics). It may have taken a few years but the Commonwealth may have been able to strangle Germany just enough to force a stalemate, and eventually, after another decade or two, maybe even take back some areas.
It would be a radically different world that which we live in today, one I imagine would somewhat resemble that shown in the George Orwell book, 1984 with war a constant background and the people generally living in poverty.
|
Although it is doubtful that Germany would have beaten Britain through military invasion, if America wasn't involved in the war and German progress in submarine warfare, jet aircraft and rocket technology had continued at the pace it did in reality there is also a strong possibility that Germany might have beaten Britain into submission.
Relocating British industry to other parts of the Commonwealth to fight on is however wishful thinking. Canada (mainly Ontario and Quebec) were the only part of the British Empire outside the UK that were heavily industrialised before the war, and that is the only place were any continuation of British military and industrial power would remain due to the fact that it is also protected by its proximity to the United States. It is possible to transplant factories and use blueprints to restart war production but only to a point. In WW2 arms and related industrial factories were only built on a limited scale in the British Empire outside of Canada, and that was when the British Empire was allied with and under the protection of the United States. With Britain defeated how long will India and the non-white colonies remain part of the British Empire, or in fact would Afrikaaner dominated South Africa remain British? Also with no alliance with America and Britain knocked out, were will the technical expertise and the finance to support a Commonwealth led British Empire come from?