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AH: Operation Sea Lion – the unmentionable sea mammal

You're right @Death's Companion, and that's why the most likely outcome is OTL's: Sea Lion just doesn't happen.

Realistically, the Germans cannot do Sea Lion '40, and Sea Lion '41 is a push. And that's assuming that they don't stick their dick in the hornet's nest of crazy that is the USSR. If they do that, then the Sea Lion is off the table indefinitely. Barbarossa or not, 1940 is too early.

And the UK will have recovered to repel a Sea Lion '41. So That's too late.

So it just doesn't happen. Or Adolf Notler and the Notzis make changes from about 1928, which nobody responds to, and the whole thing gets a bit silly, because the scales have a Maus sitting on them, just to get the Sea Lion across to Kent.

If they'd had literally nowt better to do from the Fall of France until the summer of 1942, then there might have been some plans that had a chance of success, and a modicum of thought put into them. But they had different priorities.

Thanks.

Though...I would have a lot of time for a TL which defies expectations and has the Germans start working on an Amphibious force or doctrine and nothing much comes of it in regards to Sea Lion but those troops and pieces of equipment and thinking instead cause a change somewhere else maybe not necessarily in their intended role. Maybe better opposition to D-Day or the various Med theatre operations due to butterflies including a high command with a better grasp of the concept and priorities? Maybe the British hold more forces back for longer to defend Britain with knock ons in North Africa? I don't know.


I know why Sea Lion is a topic of such debate and I don't know why so many people can't see its batshit nuts but there isn't much really to say about it on its own without drastically changing everything to to get it to a stage where its actually attempted. In the meantime though maybe something more interesting would come about from it.
 
So are we allowed to talk about Sea Lion the operation that never happen, because i like to read and hear more about it, despite it having been dissected, analyze to death by the few who who toughed the Germans could succeed and the majority who toughed it would fail.
 
I saw the post on the facebook page and thought ... why not?

The question of precisely what would have happened if Sealion had been attempted, unsuccessfully, has been rattling around my head for a few hours.

First, there are limits to how much the Germans can lose. The vast majority of their ground forces cannot be shipped to Britain regardless of everything else, so even if the entire invasion force is wiped out the Germans will not be so significantly weakened that there is an immediate collapse. Germany is still going to be top swinehund in Europe for quite some time.

That said, those losses will be incredibly concentrated. Parachute (and glider) landing formations will be wiped out (they pretty much were in Crete). The air force will have taken a serious beating. The navy will have lost most of its surface combatants, along with - worse - the internal barges the Germans used to keep their economy ticking. A lot of elite forces will be crushed, limiting the German ability to cause mischief in the Middle East.

Second, German prestige will have taken a major blow. Sealion was one hell of a gamble even in the best-case scenario. The occupied lands to the west will take heart. Germany’s allies will edge away, to the degree they’re allowed. At the same time, Stalin will be much less impressed by the Germans than he was in OTL; this will be misleading, for all the reasons I noted above. The Germans cannot lose most of their panzers, which ensures they are still a threat to Russia; however, they have lost a lot of aircraft they need to support their offensive (if it happens in ATL).

Hitler will probably not lose his head (literally) over the disaster. However, he will either find himself being more careful or (more likely) in a weaker position that will allow his generals more say in overall planning and offences. The generals might come up with more realistic plans for a version of Barbarossa or simply try to convince Hitler that invading in 1941 is a bad idea.

Where does this leave us?

Well, absent a major change, the war in North Africa is likely to be wrapped up very quickly. The Italians were losing before the Germans got involved. The UK can probably push them out of Libya in ATL, because the German logistics have been screwed and, now Sealion has been and gone (and crashed), the RN can move more ships to the Med. Italy falls before the Germans can get Rommel (who might be dead in this TL) to the desert. This makes the British look stronger, so Spain and Turkey try to remain neutral rather than have anything to do with Germany. The war probably stalemates in 1941 as the British can’t invade Europe and the Germans can’t knock the British out of the war. The U-Boats are unlikely to starve Britain as they probably took a beating in the invasion too.

Lots of ways this could go. Hitler (and/or his generals) might invade Russia anyway, with more realistic objectives. Stalin is going to be getting stronger in numbers, if not in experience, every month he’s not fighting. There’s a prospect of Stalin calculating he’ll never have a better chance to spread communism all the way to Normandy and invading German-held Poland from the east. This would be interesting - the Germans would still be tactically superior, but they wouldn’t have the flexibility of OTL. Britain would be unsure if they want to work with the Russians or fear Stalin would be just the same as Hitler, only worse. The Japanese would see Britain as a stronger power and might think twice about declaring war in all directions in 1941.

So would America, which might take some of the urgency out of the lend-lease program. Lots of spin-off implications there.

Or Germany might decide to offer peace talks and see if the UK turns them down.

Thoughts?
 
Completely random thought- does the historiography of Mers el-Kebir get drastically altered by this? Britain is invaded, the poor quality of the German navy is a key part of the victory, suddenly 'the French fleet cannot be available to Germany by any means' looks even more arguable.

I suspect it probably ends up reliant on what happens with Vichy, but still.
 
Completely random thought- does the historiography of Mers el-Kebir get drastically altered by this? Britain is invaded, the poor quality of the German navy is a key part of the victory, suddenly 'the French fleet cannot be available to Germany by any means' looks even more arguable.

I suspect it probably ends up reliant on what happens with Vichy, but still.

Didn't the attack take place before Sealion could reasonably take place? Or do you mean how it is seen in post-war France?
 
Didn't the attack take place before Sealion could reasonably take place? Or do you mean how it is seen in post-war France?
I imagine that that TL's alternate historians would posit that, sans Mers-el-Kebir, Hitler could have seized the Vichy Fleet. In these circumstances, the RN would have had a far harder time throwing back Sea Lion. This would therefore make the decision to destroy the fleet at anchor a regrettable, yet ultimately wise, course of action.
 
I imagine that that TL's alternate historians would posit that, sans Mers-el-Kebir, Hitler could have seized the Vichy Fleet. In these circumstances, the RN would have had a far harder time throwing back Sea Lion. This would therefore make the decision to destroy the fleet at anchor a regrettable, yet ultimately wise, course of action.
I don't know much about this particular question, but I have wondered about it before: how practical would it have been for the Germans to put any significant elements of the French fleet into action? I know they used all kinds of captured and amalgamated foreign equipment on land, but aren't naval affairs more challenging? Did they have the personnel to crew them? How quickly could they become accustomed to the French equipment, or retrofit replacements to specific technical systems? Would any significant portion of their French crew have alleviated these issues by cooperating with the Germans?
 
I don't know much about this particular question, but I have wondered about it before: how practical would it have been for the Germans to put any significant elements of the French fleet into action? I know they used all kinds of captured and amalgamated foreign equipment on land, but aren't naval affairs more challenging? Did they have the personnel to crew them? How quickly could they become accustomed to the French equipment, or retrofit replacements to specific technical systems? Would any significant portion of their French crew have alleviated these issues by cooperating with the Germans?

It's hard to say.

There are real problems when transferring from one nation's ships to another. The Germans didn't have the manpower to run the French Navy even if they got it intact and their crews would have a very steep learning curve. They could probably put the smaller ships into service reasonably quickly, but the bigger ships would be one hell of a pain. They might wind up taking crew from Bismarck (she was commissioned in 1940, but I'm not sure how many of her 2000-strong crew were onboard; she certainly wasn't ready to join Sealion) to run the fleet, but they'd still have immense shortages in nearly all areas. My best guess is that it would take a year to even begin to do it and that would be very optimistic.

If the French collaborate, it would be a great deal easier. But there would still be a lot of problems.

Chris
 
To be honest, I wasn't even thinking that anything about the Fleet actually changes from the historical events (though later events involving Petain and Vichy may), just that the way it gets interpreted may be much more influenced by a greater perception of threat than actually existed.
Given the number of people in OTL who believe that a) the Germans were about to invade, and b) any such attempt would have been successful, I think you're bang on the money.

Whether the Vichy fleet could have been used isn't particularly important. If the narrative emerges that the reason it wasn't is because HMS Hood et al smashed them at anchor, then it'll be "The Betrayal That Saved Britain", "Churchill's hardest decision".

The rest, as they don't say, is alternate history.
 
Given the number of people in OTL who believe that a) the Germans were about to invade, and b) any such attempt would have been successful, I think you're bang on the money.

Whether the Vichy fleet could have been used isn't particularly important. If the narrative emerges that the reason it wasn't is because HMS Hood et al smashed them at anchor, then it'll be "The Betrayal That Saved Britain", "Churchill's hardest decision".

The rest, as they don't say, is alternate history.

The impact on post-war relations with France would be fascinating. Especially if North Africa is a swift roll-up of Italian troops, followed by sitting around unable to invade Europe so somebody comes up with the bright idea that the next step will need to be French Africa.
 
I imagine that that TL's alternate historians would posit that, sans Mers-el-Kebir, Hitler could have seized the Vichy Fleet. In these circumstances, the RN would have had a far harder time throwing back Sea Lion. This would therefore make the decision to destroy the fleet at anchor a regrettable, yet ultimately wise, course of action.

This book strongly suggests "Vichy fleet in Nazi hands" would be a major/deciding factor in a successful Sea Lion. It makes for good AH storytelling, but like others on this thread have pointed out, probably wouldn't have been so decisive, or not within the maybe 2-3 months between the OTL Mers-el-Kebir and the anticipated landings in September. It would be interesting, though, to see how an intact Vichy fleet might eventually be used by the Germans, esp. with regards to Operation Torch if that still happens.
 
Given the number of people in OTL who believe that a) the Germans were about to invade, and b) any such attempt would have been successful, I think you're bang on the money.

Just look at say, The Other Side Of Midnight, a (bad) historical novel from the early 1970s set in a period including World War II, where the narrator mentions that the war was razor close. Pop culture, including pop-AH, loves "for want of a nail" situations where one small change dramatically alters history.
 
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