If Germany had conquered Britain it would have been in 1940 before America entered the war. I think Britain never would have been liberated like France was because there would have been a Cold War between the US and Germany, or possibly a Super Soviet Union in the unlikely event they beat the Germans.

So, never. Pretty sucky time line.

england can never be conquered

Anyplace can be conquered if you don't mind killing a whole lot of people for a very long time.

Well, I suspect things would've gotten messy with the atom bomb in that scenario, to say the least.

I think, actually, at that point we would be so scared we wouldn't declare war since no one was left in Europe to fight besides the shifty Russians. Assuming the Japanese still attacked us ast Pearl Harbor, we would then enter the war and get trounced, but maybe we would be able to stalemate it out at sea and hold long enough for other areas to come around, like South America, Africa, Asia, Russia, and maybe even resistance movements in Europe.

Australia would maybe be able to team up with India....

And Canada could have helped us defend ourselves. Then again they might have been the back door akin to Belgium for a land assualt.

Why would we get trounced? Hitler probably wouldn't have declared war on the US along with Japan since he wouldn't have needed the hypothetical help of Japan against the USSR and had already beaten England so had no direct reason to go to war with the US. I doubt Congress would ever have let Roosevelt give aid to Russia if it weren't part of a larger war to help Britain. Japan and Germany weren't actually as cozy with each other as you'd think.

That said, we'd bury Japan without having to send the lion's share of American resources to Europe, and in the end you'd have an even worse Cold War between the Third Reich and America. Dueling Eagles, as it were.

"england can never be conquered" um yeah tell that to the celts and the saxons.

If Hitler managed to conquer England, we'd all be saying Heil Hitler to each other every morning....

Do you mean England or Britain? They are not interchangeable quantities?

And talking of Celts and Saxons, perhaps the fact that you have to go back over 1000 years to find someone who has successfully invaded should give you pause to consider that Alamothe has a point.

If England fell, Wales and Scotland could guerrilla war Germans for a long time, but for no good.

Likely as not the Third Reich would have its Empire and would probably have declared war on the Russians, because Hitler was an idiot with aspirations of world conquest. Only this time he would have the full power of the army at his disposal to throw against them.

From there though it's uncertain what would happen. Who would run out of troops first? Germany, with the combined population of Europe, or Russia?

It would have been interesting. Churchill vowed to carry on the war in this event. There were carefully laid plans to move the War Cabinet and as much of the army as possible (and the Royal Family) to Canada. The fleet would also have departed there as well.

It really depends when it would have happened. If in mid 1940, with America not yet in the war, I believe that Japan may not have fought the USA, leading to the 'Fatherland' scenario (a Robert Harris novel, I think). Essentially, a German dominated Europe. With Russia left to fight on her own, Germany could have thrown most of her armies against the Russians, and probably could have withstood a Stalingrad, which was the real turning point of the actual war.

If the invasion had been in 1941 (unlikely due to Britain winning the day air war over the South coast of England - you need air power to cover the invasion fleet), then it is possible that America may have intervened. Certainly FDR was a stout British defender, but the rest of Congress was not - hence the lack of intervention early in the war.

There are some interesting articles out there on this subject - I'll have to see if I can dig some out.

'"england can never be conquered" um yeah tell that to the celts and the saxons.' - I believe that England did not exist as a single country when they invaded. Of course, the Normans did take advantage of Harold II's battle-weary army to conquer what was at that stage definitely a united England. And the Vikings certainly conquered England. But, since 1066, no invading army has set foot on English soil. Britain did not exist before 1707, when the Act of Union was passed (Scotland and England were separate entities before then).

Going to the actual question, Germany was remarkably close to taking Britain put of the equation. However, there was one thing that stopped them: Hitler. He was of the belief that Britons were Aryan, too, so he did not dislike them. He even offered peace to Churchill, who refused. Sadly, as he discussed in Mein Kampf, he had an extreme dislike of Slavic peoples, meaning that his desire to take out the Soviet Union was greater than the rationale of neutralising Britain first.

Obviously we can never be sure what would have happened had he been persuaded the other way, but I have a suspicion that the US would not have intervened in Britain's favour (or at all for that matter) as I agree with cgwhite above in that I don't think the Japanese would have attacked the US. I wouldn't like to predict what would have happened when Germany did eventually invade the Soviet Union, though!

Did you know Parliament actually removed the government's power to surrender to Germany? It's true. They weren't allowing themselves to give up, even if Germany threatened to slaughter everyone unless Churchill told them to.

As has been mentioned, there are a lot of sources that actually view the Japanese attack on Pearle Harbour as the worst tactical move of the war. There were very strong German interests in WW2 US, so I must admit I'm not sure what would have happened.
Another interesting point is to consider what the cost would have been for Germany to invade England. Without air supremacy, the crossing would have had devastatingly high casualties, and then the British forces themselves would have had to be overcome. In doing so there would have been terrible losses, such that further expansion would have been very difficult.
Saying that, if Britain had fallen, who knows what the drop in morale would have done to resistance fighters around Europe.

"england can never be conquered"

We're not arguing over weather it can or can't. We're discussing the possible situation of Germany's occupation of England.

Allow me to spark another discussion. Would Canada help America defend Alaska? (In case you don't know, Japan invaded a couple of the Aleutian Islands during the war. It was the first occupation of American soil since the War of 1812 with England. America kicked Japan out, by the way)

@Diplomat: No.

Yes, they did. Are you trying to argue with history?

I'd say we'd all be speaking Russian in western europe if England got conquered.

I know Americans like to think they liberated Europe and Russia was just poking around in the back yard a bit... but don't forget the Russians like to think the exact opposite, and the truth is somewhere in between. In the end I think Hitler's megalomania would have killed him anyway, and without England as a foothold for D-day it would have been the Russians who would have had most of the spoils.

to quote an english comedian: If your not in the fight from the start your not in the fight at all.

I don't think it would have been necessary for Hitler to conquer Britain. Had the evacuation of Dunkirk failed then public opinion would have been turned against the war, Churchill would almost certainly have had to resign, and there probably would have been a ceasefire. With fewer troops having to be stationed in northern France and Benelux, 90% of the Luftwaffe facing eastwards, and virtually no bombing of German cities, the war between Germany and Russia probably would have been a much closer thing, and I think Germany probably would have been able at least to push the USSR back beyond the Urals (the scenario in that Fatherland book). Then you'd just have a different cold war, between a German-dominated Europe and America.

Giwald - that is definitely not the impression most Americans have of Russia in WW2.

Trin - good thing comedy doesn't equate to reality, eh?

trin = trim

sometimes it can maybe not in this case, :p he did also say how does a country get suprised 2 years into a world war :p

Who was this trim? And to be fair, to be attacked by someone greatly inferior to you must be rather a shock.

its a joke, point still stands though :p te comedians name is al murray

The Vikings never managed to fully conquer England...Alfred stopped them at the Battle of Edington, and then his successors slowly reconquered England. So successful invasion, not successful conquest.

USA-German Cold War is the most likely outcome of that scenario in my opinion.

The Ruskies WERE just poking around in Hitler's backyard. They just conquered more land because they had to recapture part of their own country. Also, they only started winning because Hitler diverted his resources to defend the German homeland. BECAUSE the Americans were kicking arse on the Western front.

Whoa. Let's celebrate the Battle of the Bulge but don't demean the Russian campaign either. The USSR was absolutely a power player in the war and definitely took on a great deal of the German army. Their casualties and their power after the war attest to that. I'm with gremlins but I think that the USSR had a good chance of defeating the Germans even with England out of the equation. Well, as long as America at least crushed Japan before they got too uppity and started coming in on Russia from behind.