If you were prime minister....

If we'd stayed out of WW2 or if we'd folded in 1940, then the whole of Europe would be either a Nazi dictatorship or a communist dictatorship.

A better question might be, should we have stayed out of the First World War?

And the planet you live on,? Because theirs no democracy,here, plenty of dictatorship and communism though

Most of the Fifth Columnists on here would have been on the side of the Führer.

If Hitler hadn't been so greedy we'd likely have been fooked

Next you will be saying that the Royal Family were teaching their kids the Nazi salute

Most of the Fifth Columnists on here would have been on the side of the Führer.

Actually in the event it was Stalin who had a pact with Hitler in the early part of war.
Russia was offered a deal to join in the war on the side of Germany, but Hitler invaded Russia before he received his answer.

So what if Hitler had not been determined to invade Russia and double cross Stalin? And a deal had been struck to include Russia in the Axis powers?
American couldn't have saved us.

Russia was offered a deal to join in the war on the side of Germany, but Hitler invaded Russia before he received his answer.

Never happened. On the contrary, Hitler never ever wanted war with England and always hoped that they would join Germany in their aim to destroy Communism. The Ribbentrop Pact was a mere invention to give Hitler freedom to invade Poland and deal with the Russians later.

The destruction of Bolshevism and Lebensraum in the East was Hitler`s plan from the outset. Try reading Mein Kampf.

Would Mr Crippen care to furnish us with the usernames of chit-chat 'Fifth Columnists' ?

Better ask DRY LINKE about that Reynard - I was quoting him.

it would never have ended under the nazi's. germans would have been the ruling class, then part germans,
then whites of non germanic origin. everyone else is probably screwed.
it is so insane it seems like a joke but it was so close to happening.
anyone who thinks the world would have been better off just isn't getting a shag imo

I am so glad to hear all these very clever historians on here making their cases.  But may I remind you


IT NEVER FKN HAPPENED  ok -!!!

and as for Hitler never wanting war with England I have to laugh  - I am just wondering all those guys in france getting killed by the nazis, the invasion plans and the 'battle of britain' and the blitz  -   which must not have happened in the world of fanatasy that appears to have emerged on here with some of you quite brilliant historians.

Hitler was firstly a politican - they use all sorts of tactics and systems to confuse, obfuscate to get themselves in a position of power to strike or not as the case may be

this is exactly what happened.   Strangely - the chamberlain discussions/delays etc,  actually gave the uk more time to prepare for war.  Nothing is as it seems

Chamberlain was a good man and firmly believed that he could prevent war with Germany and died a broken man knowing he had failed. To suggest that Chamberlain was playing Hitler to get Britain more time to prepare for war is a load of bollocks. If Chamberlain had stood up to Hitler in the first instance, Hitler would have been removed as planned by Beck and the German military. When German soldiers moved into the Rhineland, Hitler was bricking himself but gambled on the British and French taking no action.

It is well documented that Hitler had a great respect for the British Empire and never wanted war with them in the first place and always hoped in secret that they would join him in his plan to destroy Bolshevism. Believe what you want. It was Britain that declared war on Germany. He stopped his Panzers when they reached the channel at Abbeyville, much to the surprise of Guiderian and Rommel, and the British and French escaped from Dunkirk. Operation Sea Lion was never ever taken seriously by the German command and again it is well documented.

A huge section of the British aristocracy were in secret negotiations with Hitler`s government and plans were drawn up to put King Edward the abdicator, who met with Hitler at Berchtesgaden on numerous occasions, back on the throne with Mrs Simpson becoming Queen. The Hess files, which will never be released in our lifetime, shall prove this in the future and rock the establishment, if they are still in power then. And that is why they assassinated Hess when it became evident following Perestroika that he would be released. They killed him to shut him up.

In answer to the opening question, I would stand against Hitler and curtail his evil regime.

It is well documented that Hitler had a great respect for the British Empire

for "respect" replace envy
plenty to ponder over the British empire. did they have "death camps"
maybe not quite the same but some shady sh1t went on & people died

Hitler and Mussolini both came into power because of The Great Depression and both economically were a great success.

Probably proves (lucky) timing is everything

or bad timing imo

Clydebank29 seems to have little knowledge of Clydebank41

I typed out a multi paragraphed reply to mighty mac and then accidentally deleted and am  going to have to go through  it all again- i hate laptops!!

I NEVER SAID CHAMBERLAIN DELIBERATELY DELAYED WAR - read what I actually said and do not twist my words thank you.

my actually words are  --  Strangely - the chamberlain discussions/delays etc,  actually gave the uk more time to prepare for war. 

OK !!??

Next - you are wrong - hitler never ordered the panzers to stop

the generals did as they were concerned that they would suffer a flanking counter attack which needed to be addressed.
This is a standard danger for divisions over extending themselves.They had dangerously out run their infantry support and needed time for them to catch up.  You simply cannot throw tanks at defences with out some infantry support.
The divisions were worn out, tired, maintenance was badly needed. There had already been one attempt by the allies to do this and german commanders were most concerned about another attack which there flanks and supply lines were open to.
My suggestion to you is to read up on combined arms tactics which even apply today.
I think you have made the error of believing what appears to be the common understanding of what happened here and what politicos and uninformed people have created  at the time and subsequently.    It is also thought that part of the issue could have been solved by the Luftwaffe to finish the allies off on the beach and town.
The rest of the halifax and secret negotiations were possibly more to do with unseating hitler internally than making a peaceful settlement.  But then what politician would not turn down the idea without considering it. You would be a fool not to debate it within cabinet.   But then you go on to say there are no published papers so there is little or no evidence available anyway.

Sea Lion was a serious issue for the army but the navy disliked the idea. Of course the boasting of the Luftwaffe must have convinced hitler it was a good idea but proved to be a false promise.  That year's delay actually helped here as well (unintentioned but it did)

Some Germans were convinced near the end of the war that after surrendering to the Allies we'd all join forces and turn on Russia.

you can pick over the bones of the past but forget that the flesh was real.

I typed out a multi paragraphed reply to mighty mac and then accidentally deleted and am  going to have to go through  it all again- i hate laptops!!

I NEVER SAID CHAMBERLAIN DELIBERATELY DELAYED WAR - read what I actually said and do not twist my words thank you.

my actually words are  --  Strangely - the chamberlain discussions/delays etc,  actually gave the uk more time to prepare for war. 

OK !!??

You conveniently left the little bit off the end from your original post - "Nothing is as it seems" which implies that it was a tactical move by Chamberlain. If you are going to quote a previous quote please quote it in full - OK!

Next - you are wrong - hitler never ordered the panzers to stop

No, you are wrong. The infamous "Halt Order" of the 24th to which you refer, was a Fuhrer Order. It may have been first suggested by von Rundstedt and von Kluge (4th Army Commander) but it could never have been instigated without Hitler`s approval. A Fuhrer Order comes direct from Hitler. Hitler had fought in the area during WW1 and he and von Rundstedt concluded that the area was unfit for panzers. Halder was disgusted and strongly protested and Guderian was frustrated and very angry but the order was validated.


Nothing to do with "being tired" and "out running their supplies". Guderian`s words not mine. Blitzkrieg was a new type of war which re wrote military tactical manuals of the past. But you seem to think that you know more about tactical warfare than the man who invented the "Blitzkrieg" - Heinz Guderian. I suggest you read his biography, "Achtung - Panzer!" OK!

p.s. always copy and paste lengthy replies half way through, then if you lose your post (which I agree drives one nuts), you can paste it directly back from paste board.

no it did not imply that chamberlain made a tactical move by chamberlain - you sure are able to convert the meaning
why do people do this?

anyway
Hitler never issued a halt order of the advance on Dunkirk, period.

It is a common misunderstanding, and a popular prop to support some wild theorizing about Hitler's strategy - like Hitler really wanted to make peace with Britain and thought that letting the BEF escape at Dunkirk would make that more likely, or Hitler wanted the Luftwaffe to destroy the BEF at Dunkirk since it was a more Nazi branch of the military than the Wehrmacht - but there is scant evidence for the theories and a whole lot of evidence to show that Hitler's commanders were the ones asking for a halt and that Hitler was not the micromanager of his armies he was later the in war.

Here's what happened: the British and French counterattack at Arras on May 21, 1940 put a fright into German commanders. Though the counterattack had been pretty much a fizzle (some French troops barely got off the start line before running headlong into German spearheads and the British attack had been mauled), it had caught the German panzers with their pants halfway down.

The German armored divisions had outrun the slower infantry divisions and German commanders were worried about their flanks. Erwin Rommel contributed to the general angst among German commanders by claiming he was attacked by "hundreds" of British tanks at Arras and was in favor of sitting tight until the infantry caught up.

While the counterattack had been fended off, German commanders feared another attack at Arras.

General Ewald von Kleist, commanding Panzer Group Kleist, pulled out the 10th Panzer Division from Heinz Guderian's XIX Corps's advance on Boulogne and Dunkirk, put it into in reserve in case Britain and France renewed their attack at Arras. Kleist complained that his XIX and XIV corps weren't strong enough to continue their advance until Arras was dealt with.

These moves were kicked up the chain of command to 4th Army's Gunther von Kluge and on to Army Group A commander Gerd von Rundstedt. von Kluge ordered a halt on May 23. von Rundstedt approved of the halt and kicked it up to OKH where Field Marschal Walter von Brauchitsch and Hitler okayed the halt. OKH's orders to von Rundstedt gave him the discretion of when to resume the advance.

von Rundstedt thought 36 hours would be enough for the infantry to catch up and stabilize the flanks but it took more than 48 hours before the panzers got rolling again on May 25, and they did so on von Rundstedt's orders, not Hitler's.

While the relative respite between May 23 - 25 gave the BEF, French and Belgian troops a little bit of breathing room, they were still in a dire situation with little hope.

So the halt order originated with the lower level Wehrmacht commanders, not Hitler, and wasn't part of some elaborate double-flip fakeout move by Hitler in service of some grand strategy. Of course that didn't stop surviving Wehrmacht generals from blaming Hitler after the war for all the bad decisions and taking credit for the good decisions, of which the halt before Dunkirk, with 20-20 hindsight, was judged a bad decision.
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The Panzer Divisions were exhausted, short on supplies and had out-run the rest of the army. Throughout the war, German armour suffered from poor mechanics - especially in 1940, when a large percentage (ca 25%) were the outmoded Czech models captured in 1938.

No tank commander would ever attack a well-entrenched defensive position without infantry support, so the idea that they just had to drive a bit further along the beach isn't valid. The area around Dunkirk is criss-crossed by canals and waterways; combine that with fighting in urban areas and even the boldest Panzer commander would pause for thought.

Even if no one got off the beaches, the war would not have been over. Britain and France lost 2.7 million dead between 1914–1918 without giving in.

Dunkirk is now seen as the final act in the Fall of France but combat continued until 17th June (though a number of units ignored it) and the Armistice only signed on 22nd. The vast majority of the 100,000 French soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk were recycled back through Brest and Cherbourg a week later and at least half of them saw combat again. Churchill ordered the Canadian Division to be shipped to Brest in early June - they subsequently had to be evacuated from ports in NW France over the period 15-25 June along with 180,000 other troops. At the time, Dunkirk was simply a lost battle.

The Germans shared this view - they assumed the war was far from over and since the Panzers were their main offensive weapon, why throw that away on an enemy that was surrounded.

Goring often gets blamed, because he promised Hitler the Luftwaffe could destroy the BEF in pursuit of his ambition to make it more than air support for the Wehrmacht. He was definitely a boastful idiot in doing so but even the British thought they’d be lucky to evacuate 10,000 so not quite as stupid as it seems. The losses suffered by the RAF over Dunkirk led Dowding to demand their withdrawal.

Himmler often gets missed out; he was anxious for his Waffen-SS to participate in a big victory - the SS-Totenkopf Regiment was over-run at the Arras offensive on 21st May, which the Wehrmacht claimed proved their inferiority as an armed force - and thus delayed the attack on Dunkirk until his units were in position. Any non-military issues had more to do with internal conflict within the Nazi Party rather than any 'sympathy' towards the British (although Goring tried to claim otherwise at Nuremberg to show what a reasonable man he was).





it was actually Von Rundstedt who halted the panzers and for what were good reasons at the time. They were worn out and in urgent need of maintenance, the terrain was unfavourable to armour, the infantry had been outrun and panzers without infantry support are vulnerable. They also faced a battle for the heart of France and the French still had a LOT of men under arms. The panzers would be necessary for those battles and not squanderd in fighting in a built up area.
Hitler merely rubberstamped the decision which was taken at lower levels. The respite allowed the panzers and their crews to regroup and refresh for the thrust into the underbelly of France as well as to pressure the Dunkirk pocket when they resumed operations


The British did a surprise attack armoured and infantry attack at Arras and hit Rommels division in its flank taking it completely by surprise and forced their way through half his division before the British tanks started to break down through lack of maintenance over the previous weeks. So they were forced to withdraw. The attack worried the germans but did not stop them heading for Dunkirk. The French slowed them down and put up a magnificent defence holding up their advance while the British were pulling off their men from the beaches. One of the problems that the German armoured divisions had was the same as the British. They had been going no stop for 5 weeks without proper maintenance and they were beginning to need a complete over-hall of tracks, drive wheels and engines. So a decision was made to stop the armoured advance and do what needed to be done to the tanks before they had major problems with them. So the heavy artillery was employed to bombard the beach and town and the Luftwaffe was sent it to attack the ships and the beach as well. The Germans were convinced their aircraft, especially the Stuka’s would sink so many ship hardly any British would get away. As it was they sunk 39 ships over 1000 tons including 9 destroyers and numerous smaller vessels.


Hitler didn’t make that decision, he merely confirmed it. The German tank divisions had been pressing on for a long time and were almost worn out. The quick advance had also separated the breakthrough units very far from the infantry base and it was unclear whether the front units would be able to contain a breakout from Dunkirk. 4th Army Commander von Kluge requested to be allowed to halt to rest and recuperate the tank divisions and consolidate the line around Dunkirk. Commander of Army group A von Rundstedt concurred, and Hitler, again, confirmed the order.

All three hadn’t expected the tank divisions to be as potent as they had turned out to be, and it is possible that they all underestimated what their tanks could achieve at that point. Still, the German tank divisions were still mostly equipped with the inadequate Panzer I and II tanks, and on many occasions the German units closest to Dunkirk did show signs of being exhausted.

It wasn’t Hitler’s intention to let the BEF get away, though. When the tanks halted, he ordered the Air force to prevent an evacuation and to begin the destruction of the enemy units at Dunkirk.

hope this helps - what you have done is simply swallow the usual casually accepted common view of the battle

The OP's question is, imho, based at least partially on a false premise in so much as it wouldn't be the PM's decision alone.

Although, there was no Parliamentary vote as such to declare war on Germany, there was a debate, the result of which was unanimous.

There were, however, a number of Parliamentary votes on legislation necessary to facilitate the war effort. Eg conscription and military expenditure.

If you actually tried reading other people`s posts, you could have saved yourself an hour or so typing all that info to substantiate exactly what I said.

it was actually Von Rundstedt who halted the panzers

Hitler merely rubberstamped the decision which was taken at lower levels


Regardless of how the Halt Order evolved, it was a Fuhrer Order instigated by Hitler and the declassified documents of the OKW confirms this.

Whether Hitler let the BEF escape at Dunkirk in hope that they would later join him in the fight to destroy Bolshevism remains open to question. The answer may lie in the Hess files, which as I said earlier, will never be made public in our lifetime.

Good luck with your football bets, which is more important.

If we hadn't went into world war two we'd have missed out on plenty of fantastic war films like the Dambusters and series such as Dads Army. Pink floyd would never had made the Final Cut. Iron Maiden wouldn't have made Aces High. Something to ponder.

I'd have gone into war and in 45 got the US to agree with me and told Hitler Mk2, "Stalin" to get the **** back to the russian border and let Poland and the rest of eastern Europe live in freedom and not suffer decades of communism, and if he didsn't agree point out what a B29 with a nuke could do to Moscow.