If givingg up any of the French fleet is a non-starter then the Brits should be more willing to make peace after the Brits have destroyed their relationship with Vichy France by seizing, destroying and damaging much of the French Fleet. Btw even Winston "no surrender" Churchill mentioned giving up Gibraltar, Malta and African colonies if Britain can get the Germans out of France.
Dunkirk Disaster and colonies exchanged for withdrawal from France and Netherlands
- Thread starter John Gault
- Start date
Germany will not be able to fight a war on the Eastern Front without the ressources provided by a occupied France and occupied Netherlands. Even if France and the Netherlands payed an indemnity, it will not replaced four years of total use of their economies and even then Germany loosed the war on the Eastern Front.
Not only Germany used 1.8M french POW's in their economy but they also used voluntary workers and slave labor from France.
The United Kingdom will not signed an Armistice because it was proved many times that Germany Honor is worth nothing.
Churchill said a lot of things. Where exactly are you getting this from. Those specifically make absolutely no sense. Why would Germany want Gibraltar or Malta? What the hell does that gain them in their quest for Eurasian dominance in the East?
hearsay from chamberlain' diary. Though probably Churchill would resign and let some other tory, like Halifax or Eden, do the negotiating with Hitler.
Coulsdon Eagle
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Aaaaand... The British attacked the Vichy fleet at Mers-el-Kebit OTL and showed no will to make peace.
Are you actually reading what you post? Your last two suggest not as they describe exact scenarios played out OTL with exactly the opposite effect to what you believe will happen.
At the height of the inasion scare Churchill sent troops and tanks to reinforce the Middle East and the RN kept a major fleet in the Med and yet here you are suggesting Churchill was basically willing to surrender access to the Med without a fight?
Well if it came from Chamberlain's diaries please give us the exact quote and a link to the website you found it on, or the name of the book you read it in and the page number its on. I mean you do have a source right?
ETA: So deciding not to hold my breath I did a quick google and here's the complete quote:
Was Churchill prepared to give up Malta?
In his letter ‘Churchill and Malta’ (March 7), Charles Xuereb referred to a quote implying that, before WWII, Winston Churchill was prepared to give up Malta. This is perhaps one of the most quotable quotes reportedly made by Churchill about Malta that keeps surfacing. I feel the specific quote...
timesofmalta.com
So even given this is Chamberlain's claim about what Churchill said it hardly seems a ringing endorsement of the idea.
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Churchill resigning? That's honestly one of the parts I find most difficult to believe.
So something not worth very much. Most people have a hard time remembering what they said a few hours later, not talking about what someone else said. There is a reason why official minutes are kept by secretaries in most official meetings.
Wait, I'm confused. If part of the price of getting Germany out of France is the French Fleet, what's their incentive to leave France if the British destroy a good chunk of the French fleet? Colonies they can't defend without said fleet (and not even with the fleet, but I digress)?
If Hitler wants peace with Britain, he has to offer Churchill something other than empty words or bits of paper ....
... and even then, something that can't be taken back the instance he (Hitler) decides
So 'Hitler getting out of France' means both French re-armenant plus the basing of British troops in France ... which, given how fast these could march on Berlin, I can't see Hitler ever risking that ...
I agree that the Brits will stick to the peace Treaty, but Hitler will, no doubt, expect the French to get their own back the instance he launches his eastern adventure ....
Of course if Hitler doesn't attack east, things get more complicated ... at some point Nazi death camps wil become public knowledge and there will be an increasing demand that 'something be done' (IMHO the most likley 'something' would be an agreement with Hitler to alow the non-German Jews into the British Mandate of Palestine)
... and even then, something that can't be taken back the instance he (Hitler) decides
So 'Hitler getting out of France' means both French re-armenant plus the basing of British troops in France ... which, given how fast these could march on Berlin, I can't see Hitler ever risking that ...
I agree that the Brits will stick to the peace Treaty, but Hitler will, no doubt, expect the French to get their own back the instance he launches his eastern adventure ....
Of course if Hitler doesn't attack east, things get more complicated ... at some point Nazi death camps wil become public knowledge and there will be an increasing demand that 'something be done' (IMHO the most likley 'something' would be an agreement with Hitler to alow the non-German Jews into the British Mandate of Palestine)
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I can't see the Brits allowing hundreds of thousands let alone millions of Jews into the Mandate by that point.
The alternative being to condem them all to Nazi extermination camps ???
(it would be playing straight into Hitlers hands == "look I'm tyring to do the right thing, sending all these poor refuges to their spiritual homeland, but Churchill's forcing me to resettle them in the east ...")
[OTL there were quotas, but that was in the late 1930's, before war and before anyone knew what alternatives the Nazi's had planned]
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We're talking about 1940, I don't think there were extermination camps then, and if there were, the allies didn't know about them yet.
Pretty much yeah. As it was during the War the British government and Foreign office did everything they could to prevent Jewish refugees from entering the Mandate. Even to the extent of applying significant pressure to other countries in the region (Like Turkey) in order to get them to refuse entrance to Jewish refugees (out of fear that the refugees upon entering Turkey would try to illegally enter the Mandate). This despite the British government having at least a vague idea of what was happening.
This policy led to some tremendous horrors like what happened with the Struma.
Basically the Struma was a ancient merchant ship (built in 1867) that was tiny to start with (only 240 Tons and less then 150 feet long). The ship was in terrible condition to start. Yet somehow they managed to cram 791 Jewish refugees (including a number of children) and 10 crew on the vessel. During the short journey from Romania to Istanbul the engines broke down multiple times. Yet somehow by some miracle the ship actually managed to make it to Istanbul with her engines finally dead for good. The Turks (under pressure from the Brits) refused to admit the refugees in and despite the fact that the ship's engines were completely dead and the refugees helpless the Turks ended up using a tug boat to tow her out back into the Black Sea and abandoned the helpless ship. Unfortunately shortly afterward a Soviet Submarine (presumably thinking she was an Axis merchant ship) sunk her. 791 refugees and 10 crewmen were on her. A single survivor ended up being picked up later.
The Brits were very heavily opposed to any Jewish immigration in any form to the Mandate by that point. They (rightfully) feared that any amount of immigration would piss of the local arab population and diminish British power in the Middle East. The Brits figured that during the war they couldn't afford to fight another rebellion (After the somewhat Axis aligned coup attempt in Iraq that the Brits had to put down) and needed it to be relatively quiet and peaceful so they could focus forces on other fronts.
The US did something slightly similar with the SS St. Louis a ship that set sail in 1939 I think that was loaded with hundred of German Jewish children. The US for various reasons refused the refugee ship entry. Then the vessel managed to sail to Cuba where I believe the government might have initially accepted the refugees. Unfortunately they later reneged (at least partially because of diplomatic pressure from the US Government.). So the poor St. Louis sailed back to Germany. I believe that every single one of the children ended up dying in various camps and Ghetto's.
Struma disaster - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
It's a terrible terrible thing. But odds are even if the British government were fully aware of everything that was happening they're very very unlikely to accept anything more then a handful.
Sorry if I was not clear ... I'm assuming that somehow Hilker makes peace with Britain (1940), then goes on to attack Russia (41) and then starts the Holocaust. At some point the British public then discovers what Hitler is doing to the Jews and demand that Churchill 'takes action' (so 42/43) ...
The point I was trying to make was that public pressue may force a choice between declaring war on the Nazi's or accepting a Jewish exodos to the Mandate i.e. Hitler making peace** in 1940 does not 'guarantee' Germanies western borders i.e. not guarantee that the French or British won't find cause to resume the war ..
[** I'm also assuming that Pearl Harobour does not take place, or if it is does Hitler is not stupid enough to declare war on USA]
Given the government itself was not that certain about what was going on OTL, how will the British public "discover" this?
In this scenario Hitler has one bargaining chip that he didn't have in OTL, namely the 1/3 of a million British POWs from the failed Dunquerque evacuation. What could he (realistically) get in exchange for them in y'alls opinion?