I don't know why this started as a WW2 discussion, people keep missing key factors like, Hitler went completely bonkers, simple things like his generals not wanting to wake him up to ask his permission to move the panzer divisions in early enough to make a difference, which had they been in place, alone, could have put a halt to the invasion but most were dozens of miles away for no real reason except Hitler went mental.
Half the generals were called back to Germany IIRC for a meeting even though many said it was critical they stayed where they were, the French front lacked command and control basically. They fell for the scottish radio tricks and moved vast numbers of forces into Norway I believe to prevent a non existant invasion and they had vast numbers on the east front starting a campaign in Russia.
If they'd focussed their forces in France, our invasion was done for and USA/UK wouldn't have had the forces required for a LONG time to try again, if the panzers were in place, we'd have been screwed, if the Generals phoned Berlin, had HItler woken and he ordered getting ready earlier before our troops arrived on the beach, we'd have likely lost, etc, etc.
Then there was them focusing really on the wrong military idea's, V2's rather than various better planes, though had our invasion of France failed, V2's arguably, made better and continually launched into the UK, maybe might have been half useful for them.
Either way, people are forgetting little things like without air support, errm, boats need refuelling they couldn't go on forever. With air superiority they don't NEED to attack the boats, they attack the boats support infrastructure, unopposed, or at least without total dominance they would have blown the living crap out of every dock we had, and every boat that was in dock, it would have been a matter of time, as someone said, not if but when.
But this, again, is the reason WE won the war and not them, at the end of it, mass production. IF the USA hadn't turned most of their manufacturing power into making war materials, we lose, if they hadn't built so many planes, boats, jeeps, tanks, guns and munitions, we lose.
Germany by contrast got so strong and were so successful because, they did exactly the same in the first place, several months build up, well years, of mass production of war materials. They were an economy in trouble and instead spent big money on creating jobs in manufacturing, tanks, jeeps, guns, planes, u-boats, and roads.
AS for the ridiculous way England blames France, if France/UK's position was reversed, we'd have been completely over run and France would have been bailing us out, thats just life, there was really smeg all between Germany/France in terms of military might, and you had a country that had been in MASSIVE scale production of war materials for a couple years vs one that, frankly, hadn't.
It took an entire MASSIVE nation with massive manufacturing capability, and billions borrowed/spent in IOU's to secure the necessary equipment to fight back Germany.
If we were connected by land, Germany needed no time to stop, change strategy they would have roled us aswell. The air force was instrumental in making the channel a VERY difficult prospect.
Without that time and space and the ability to defend shipments of equipment from the states we'd have been over run VERY easily in our early war state, in terms of numbers of tanks, planes, trained personel, munitions, defences and frankly also the level of our technology.
