Had Germany won WWII what would the UK be like?

[Delvis]

Maybe he's Jewish, or Romany or Slav. Or a communist, a homosexual or has mental problems. Maybe he's a member of the scouting movement or has someone in his family who spoke out against National Socialism or perhaps fought in Spain against Franco.

Maybe he's just going to be in a town or village where someone took a potshot at a passing German, or is just an able bodied person who would have been transported to Germany and literally worked to death.

But hey the trains would have run on time

He said none of us, so I presume he was talking about most people in England, as this is theoretically an English forum.

yet his statement was silly.

So meh.

 

[Tefal]

No. Built by Germans. They never used concentration camp labour for anything but the most basic projects. High level infrastructure and architecture would have been built by professionals.

Because buildings don't have foundations and tracks don't need land clearing ?

 

[Stolly]

He said none of us, so I presume he was talking about most people in England, as this is theoretically an English forum.

yet his statement was silly.

So meh.

poo to you too

 

[Stolly]

Because buildings don't have foundations and tracks don't need land clearing ?

He's wrong Tefal. The Germans used slave labour to build V2 rockets which even by modern standards is a complex task

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelbau-Dora

They also worked in every type of war production making everything from components to munitions to assembly of aircraft, tanks, uboats and everything in between.

 

[Stolly]

You certainly have a good point there, and I'm no historian (as I've already said).

I would point out though, that British Naval superiority would not have been enough to stop a massive amphibian invasion - only to prevent significant reinforcement. A 500,000+ man invasion of the British isles by highly trained German forces would have been difficult to repel.

Besides, once air superiority was achieved, the luftwaffe could have begun targetting British ports and shipping almost at will. It may have taken a few more months, but the British supply system could have been heavily worn down.

I admit, though, that Churchill made as much as possible out of the air war over Britiain, for propaganda purposes. This was probably a good thing, since it wasn't until El-Alamein (almost 2 years later) that he had another real victory to report, and that almost cost him his job!

Sealion was an amazing plan. Even if everything went 100% to plan, the whole RN being sunk at port by some act of God etc etc the plan was that because they had only enough lift to get the divisions ashore, they would have to return to port to reload with their supplies. They candidly admitted that this would take 4 to 5 DAYS to tow over the channel at a brisk 2-5 knots, load up and do the return trip.

What they expected to find when they got there is anyones guess, having left the poor troops with nothing more than what they landed with almost a week ago.

Also in the 70's Sealion was staged in a large simulation at Sandhurst. They found that if the Germans could block the channel with mines, they would be able to get troops ashore. These troops then became bogged down in the various stop lines north of the coast, by which time the minefields were breached by the RN who sank so much of the German shipping that the German troops ahsore were forced to surrender.

All that supposed that a storm didn't come along and sink the German barges for us, something that happened in June 1944 to us, never mind in October.

 

[Sankari]

Because buildings don't have foundations and tracks don't need land clearing ?

Pouring cement & land clearing are not wildly complex tasks. If they were, council workers wouldn't be able to perform them.

In any case, Stolly has just corrected me, so fair play to him. Edit: or has he? Reading through Wikipedia, it seems that any slave involvement in the construction of V2 & A4 rockets would have consisted of little more than the basic assembly of rocket parts in mass production factories. We're not talking about a horde of prisoners expertly fiddling with high level electronics!

Having said that, it is probably fair to say that any prisoner with a trade (ie. mechanics or engineering) was doubtless put to use on more complex projects.

 

[Stolly]

Pouring cement & land clearing are not wildly complex tasks. If they were, council workers wouldn't be able to perform them.

In any case, Stolly has just corrected me, so fair play to him.

Well played sir

 

[Domi]

as several posters have now pointed out the idea that operation sealion had any real chance of success is actually a bit of a joke the more you look in to it.

Germany never intended to attack Britain and so was almost completely unprepared to do so at the outbreak of ww2 there are also some huge misconceptions about the relevant strengths of the 2 nations.

Britain was stilll the British empire the Royal Navy was significantly stronger than the German Navy and although the RAF was slightly smaller than the Luftwafe the differance was mostly in bombers of which most of the german bombers were quite small and nothing like the sort of aircraft that decimated cities at the end of the war.

Make the effort to read up on the Battle of Britain and you will find that far to the contrary to popular opinion it was not as close as most people think and the RAF was winning pretty much from Day 1 the biggest problem being that neither side at the time actually realised this.

Even if the luftwafe had completely destroyed the RAF , almost an impossible task as has already been pointed out they simply would not have been able to sink enough of the Royal Navy to avoid a complete and utter slaughter of any seaborne invasion fleet.

You have to understand in the early part of the war U boats were not the uber powerful super weapons you get from films , they were actually quite slow and very very vulnrable in tight waters like the channel, Dive bombers although still quite deadly would need to be used in huge numbers to sink even a single destroyer and against the combined flak the combined fleet could put up would be dropping out of the sky like flies

Oh and sealion advocated the use of Rhine barges barely seaworthy craft packed to the gunnels with men , the chances are the British destroyers would not even have had to shoot at them and simply tearing past at full speed would have swamped them.

 

[Sankari]

And of course, we Australians were busy pwning the Krauts in Africa. That had to hurt.

 

[Stolly]

And of course, we Australians were busy pwning the Krauts in Africa. That had to hurt.

I'd say man for man the ANZAC's had no betters in any army of the time.

 

[mjt]

I think, had Hitler's Eugenics policy been put into practise, we would be far better off, because only the 'superior' humans would be around. This would surely lead to faster evolution, and thus a better technological position.

what, white people?

although to be fair, retards like you wouldn't have been born..

 

[Stolly]

Pouring cement & land clearing are not wildly complex tasks. If they were, council workers wouldn't be able to perform them.

In any case, Stolly has just corrected me, so fair play to him. Edit: or has he? Reading through Wikipedia, it seems that any slave involvement in the construction of V2 & A4 rockets would have consisted of little more than the basic assembly of rocket parts in mass production factories. We're not talking about a horde of prisoners expertly fiddling with high level electronics!

Having said that, it is probably fair to say that any prisoner with a trade (ie. mechanics or engineering) was doubtless put to use on more complex projects.

Official visits included a December 10, 1943 visit to Dora by Albert Speer,[1][5] and Wernher von Braun visited the Nordhausen plant on January 25, 1944. Von Braun returned for a May 6, 1944,[1] meeting with Walter Dornberger and Rudolph where Albin Sawatzki discussed the need to enslave 1,800 more skilled French workers.[5]

 

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

If our army had the same uniforms that the Germans had in the second world war I'd be signing right up.

Those uniforms were awesome.

 

[eddiemcgarrigle]

I thought that was a myth, i thought the german subs and boats were far more capable than the Uk equivilants.

Or did the Uk just totally out number the germans?

The UK had broken the German Enigma code and as such, knew the location of almost every ship and sub in the Kreigsmarine. The Wolf Packs, who relied on ambush, stood little chance when confronted by Destroyers armed with depth charges.

If our army had the same uniforms that the Germans had in the second world war I'd be signing right up.

Those uniforms were awesome.

Those uniforms where designed by Hugo Boss.