We weren't defenseless but losing vast numbers of soldiers ( many experienced soldiers) along with their arms and equipment would be a big blow. It would make an already worried populace twitchy and make changes to the Government more likely especially if they thought the Wermacht were ready to roll in and crush us like everyone else.
It doesn’t matter what the populace feels, short of a complete collapse of domestic order. The government counts and the government were ready to fight on. The only thing the Wehrmacht were going to “roll in” to was the bottom of the Channel.
They don't have to force. Churchill (Gallipoli, having lost in Norway and in France, having lost the army and wrecked the navy trying to rescue the army ) MIGHT be removed by his colleagues reflecting the dreaded "will of the people". If Churchill goes so do many of his cabinet to be replaced by softer men. Can you not see how that might occur, Atlee or no Atlee? The cabinet supported Churchill because he hadn't lost and we could fight on. Would they support him with most of the BEF in the bag and what looked like reasonable terms on the table? How would he deal with a hostile house? What if they turned on him like Chamberlain? Would he survive that? I am not sure.
What part of no-one in government, near government or likely to enter government being keen on surrender do you refuse to accept? Churchill will only “go” if he loses a vote of no-confidence, which if he continues to sound confident and prepared to resist, is highly unlikely. It will not be a “hostile house” as the House is in favour of resistance. The Norway Debate that cost Chamberlain his Premiership should be a clue. I cannot see how that would occur when Attlee - Leader of the second Party in British politics
is in favour of resistance. Can you not see that there is nowhere for this quisling movement to come from? Absent of significant other PoDs, British politics will not collapse at the loss of the BEF, no matter how much you want it to.
In that event I think Halifax would have been pushed forward, reluctantly, as PM. I think he would have settled not because he was a bad man or coward but because he wanted to try and preserve our way of life and minimise death and destruction. Personally I think that would be the wrong move but i can see how, at the time , it might have looked attractive. The message of we have defeated your army, we are ready to invade but we want to give you an honorable way out and avoid death and destruction to civilians and property. All you have to do is agree our very reasonable terms and this can all go away. You can keep your empire ( minus a few places we want for strategic purposes) and you can keep your own institutions in exchange for a promise of neutrality and a non combative status. I can see how that might land. Cant you?
Pushed forward by whom? He played his hand in the Cabinet Crisis and lost. Where does he get his support to overcome Churchill’s support? Churchill was backed by the Labour and Liberal Parties as well as a large portion of the Conservatives which was growing all the time. Who stands for Halifax? Anyway, come the end of the Cabinet Crisis meetings, Halifax seems to have changed his tune.
One such interlude early in June 1940 is for ever graven into my memory. It was just after the fall of France, an event which at the time it happened seemed something unbelievable as to be almost surely unreal, and if not unreal then quite immeasurably catastrophic. Dorothy and I had spent a lovely summer evening walking over the Wolds, and on our way home sat in the sun for half an hour at a point looking across the plain of York. All the landscape of the nearer foreground was familiar—its sights, its sounds, its smells; hardly a field that did not call up some half-forgotten bit of association; the red-roofed village and nearby hamlets, gathered as it were for company round the old greystone church, where men and women like ourselves, now long dead and gone, had once knelt in worship and prayer. Here in Yorkshire was a true fragment of the undying England, like the White Cliffs of Dover, or any other part of our land that Englishmen have loved. Then the question came, is it possible that the Prussian jackboot will force its way into this countryside to tread and trample over it at will? The very thought seemed an insult and an outrage; much as if anyone were to be condemned to watch his mother, wife or daughter being raped.
Halifax, June 1940
Also, because these simplistic and sensible attempt at peace terms are 1) not “reasonable” or “attractive” 2) nothing like the frothing insanity that Hitler and his cronies would suggest I find it hard to believe they would be accepted. The BEF is not the British Army it is part of the British Army. Handing over colonial possessions at Herr Hitler’s whim is the start of a slippery slope and the act of a defeated nation, not one agreeing peace from a position of wanting to call it quits. For your touting of Halifax as a quisling (make no mistake, it would require a quisling to agree to these “terms”) I think you’ve picked the wrong figure. A brief attempt at peace he may have made, but Halifax was by no means in favour of sloughing off pieces of the Empire. What comes first? Malta, Gibraltar and Suez? Then what? South Africa or the former German Colonies? How about Hong Kong for Berlin to hand over to Japan? Maybe something in the Caribbean so the Nazis can get closer to America? Maybe Cyprus while we’re at it so they can bomb southern Russia easier? Once it starts, where does it stop?
I spoke to my grandparents and great grandparent about this before they died. They said at the time the fear of an invasion was real and they honestly felt it could come at any moment. All I am asking is that we imagine how the populace and parliamentarians would feel with the BEF captured or destroyed and the Nazi European conquest tour in full swing. You can rightly point to the RN or RAF as a bulwark against that invasion but how did it feel at the time? The Wehrmacht were invincible. They would cross the channel easily and then crush us like they crushed everyone else.
Your grandparents are entirely entitled to their opinions, that’s the wonder of a democracy. All I can say here is my grandfather was in the Home Guard and “keen for the buggers to come” as he had plenty of .303” he was willing to introduce them to and my Great Uncle was desperate to get amongst them on “his” Destroyer. YMMV, but plenty of people around the country were grimly anticipating an invasion, but not afraid of it succeeding. The Battle of Britain was widely recognised as the beginning stages of an “invasion campaign” as it were but there were no widespread public disorder that your allegations would require to be believable. You can handwave the RAF and Royal Navy away all you like and point to the testimony of grandpa MKD as evidence of the beliefs of the British public if you want, but the fact of the matter remains No 10, GHQ, the Admiralty and the Air Council were quite content that the Fleet and Fighter Command would have a role to play.
It is going to take quite a while without any outside influence. No one in Europe is going to stop them.
Blockades and trade embargoes don’t have to come from inside Europe.