We must remember we're watching things with almost 80 years of hindsight. War is a contest of wills. From 1940 viewpoint, Seelöwe might be seem to have a reasonable chance of succeeding - before you yell, let me explain. Democracies were seemingly weak as displayed by many examples in years before, and there might be thought to be a chance that actual German boots on English ground might have driven Britain to negotiations. We know it's a pipedream and actual landing would have been a mess of gigantic proportions, but looking at it from 1940 viewpoint there's some logic to thinking.
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I take your point, but looking at it from a 1940 viewpoint they did decide it wasn't workable.
Estimates for German losses in a 'Sea Lion' attack vary from 10,000 PoW and casualties in a aborted attack, to 100,000 in a complete catastrophe. What were the German losses in the 1944 Ardennes offensive in killed, wounded, and captured? My memory is about 60,000. Any experts able to comment?
Apparently:
German
63,222
[10][11][c] – 98,000
[12]
(includes killed, wounded, missing, captured)
but also:
554 tanks, tank destroyers and assault guns lost
[13]
~800 aircraft lost, at least 500 in December and 280 during
Unternehmen Bodenplatte[8]
that's in a 6 week period
but of course there's wider contexts, Germany was always tight on men and equipment but 1944/5 it's even worse and its a bad time for them to be losing men and machines (and what ever fuel they had) since it not like they can dictate the conflict anymore
but equally Sealion likely means losing a good chunk of German Industrial transport capacity, likely a chunk of the KM and more LW as well and gives the Britain two in row for wins which in 1940 is no small thing