What would the world today have been like if Hitler hadn't started the war?
I think there are several scenarios flowing from that, depending on the circumstances.
1) Hitler in power but he didn't start a war. I think that's an impossible scenario. Massive expansion was the foundation of his position and that made war inevitable.
2) Hitler not in power but instead some other Nazi was in power. Himmler, perhaps. In short, someone else used the same way to obtain power. I think that's a possible scenario and I think the outcome would have been the same. It's commonly believed that Hitler was incompetent or even downright insane and made ludicrous mistakes that cost Germany the war, but I think that's wrong. I think a different Nazi in charge wouldn't have been more successful. Hitler's famous "mistakes" either weren't mistakes or weren't Hitler's. Operation Barbarossa, for example, was forced on the Nazis by an extremely inadequate supply of oil. It wasn't a mistake in itself. Some of the faults in the way it was done were a result of the German military and political infighting. Others were due to incorrect information about the USSR. If a different Nazi was in charge, those things would still have been true.
3) Nazi party never came to power in Germany. I think a likely result of that would be Germany becoming pseudo-communist and probably eventually a part of the USSR either by choice or by "liberation", i.e. conquest. I think that the expansion of the USSR would have continued. In this scenario, no other country would be on a war footing but the USSR would be a dictatorship geared towards conquest. I think all of Europe would have been "liberated" by the USSR and much of the rest of the world too.. That might well have been even worse than WW2.
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The first question is could england have been invaded after the fall of france, in my opinion yes if the RAF was neutered. Some people claim it would be impossible because of the royal navy, but the royal navy in 1940 was not in a position to blockade the english channel, as an example when the dutch royal family was en route to england in a ship, it was all done hush hush, the navy were scared in the north sea of been sunk, not the actions of a dominant navy. A ship close by did in fact get sunk by some german subs. Also in 1940 anti sub tech was weak, so the germans e.g. could have made a path for the invasion force to cross with each side of the path flanked by subs waiting for approaching destroyers etc. and dive bombers as well on standby. Once on land beating a beaten down land army would have been easy. [..]
I disagree, even if the RAF completely disappeared somehow.
The Royal Navy
vastly outnumbered the German navy in 1940. The mismatch was huge. The RN had types of ships that the kriegsmarine didn't even have at all, such as aircraft carriers. It had many more of every type of ship. Even just the British Home Fleet by itself outnumbered the entire kriegsmarine. It's true that the RN was reluctant to commit to a full scale naval war in the channel, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't or couldn't have done it.
u-boats were not really submarines as we understand them today. They were
boats that could submerge (hence the name). They were far less capable than a true submarine. They were slow-moving when submerged. They couldn't attack while submerged. They couldn't communicate while submerged, so any kind of co-ordinated attack would have been impossible. They couldn't remain submerged for extended periods of time. Their biggest strength was stealth. Blockading the English channel with uboats, as you suggest, wouldn't have worked. They would have had to be on the surface quite a lot, i.e. just plain boats, in order to co-ordinate a blockade and in order to remain there for long enough. It's not a large area - they would be located and thus very vulnerable. It wasn't difficult to sink a u-boat if you knew where it was, which is why the main thrust of developments to counter the threat of u-boats focussed on locating them.
Amphibious invasion is always a bad idea and has been strenuously avoided throughout history, even in the days before guns and navies and air forces. Germany in 1940 had precisely zero ships designed for an amphibious invasion. None. Not a single one. There was no such thing. They also had no plan for an amphibious invasion of the UK. An amphibious invasion over infamously dangerous waters. Without even adequate troop transport ships. The thrown-together semi-plan involved river barges, some of which didn't even have working engines, to supplement the limited number of troop transport ships! Even if the RAF and the RN mysteriously disappeared, the invasion would have taken heavy losses due to natural conditions and accidents, without any enemy action at all.
But it would have been even worse than that because it would have been an
opposed amphibious invasion and that's a whole new level of death. It was savagely bloody in the days of bows and spears and swords. With machine guns and artillery, it's a horror show. It's true that Britain was short of guns in 1940, but there were still quite a lot around.
But suppose that somehow the RN and the RAF disappeared and the Germans ate the losses due to natural conditions and accidents and somehow survived the opposed amphibious landing, what have they gained? A beachhead held by a small number of very lightly equipped soldiers. A beachhead on a very hostile island, facing a million soldiers (yes, there were a million soldiers in the UK at that time, albeit mostly barely trained) and tens of millions of civilians armed to varying extents. Oh, and tanks. With a supply line stretching over the sea that has already killed thousands of the invaders by itself, so not much hope there. The only possible chance of success would be a seize a working major port and use that to bring in supplies, far more soldiers and heavy equipment. Which Germany couldn't have done because they didn't have the ships available to do it. Also, every major port (and some not so major ports) in Britain that a German invasion might possibly have taken were prepped for destruction so even if the Germans did take them they wouldn't have had a
working port. The issue of ports was so important that one of the things the Allies deemed necessary for their own amphibious invasion later on was for the invading force to build ports. Prefab ports ("Mulberry harbours")were invented for that purpose. Another thing needed for an amphibious invasion that Germany didn't have in 1940.
Shortly before then, Germany did an amphibious invasion of Norway. Norway didn't have a military navy or air force of any significance, so Germany had extreme naval and aerial superiority. Norway was taken by surprise, so there wasn't much in terms of shore defences and a properly prepared opposition to the landing. Even so, Germany took heavy losses in that attack.
You just don't do an amphibious invasion without overwhelming force, a good plan and specialised equipment. Even with all those things, it's still a very bloody affair. Look at Omaha beach for an example. Without them, it's madness.
The concern about a German invasion was real in 1940, but
with hindsight it wasn't a significant threat. They couldn't have done it and even if they could have done it they couldn't have done it because they didn't have enough oil. Even that early on, Hitler and the better informed of his senior people knew that inadequate supplues of oil was a huge issue. Wasting any of it on trying to conquer Britain in 1940 would have been a very bad idea even if Germany had the plan and the equipment and the naval superiority and the air superiority that they needed and didn't have.
