The Atlas Asylum of absurd/ignorant posts IX

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Will maybe engage in more detail when properly awake, but a plan being stupid and unlikely to succeed does not mean that a government as fundamentally irrational and as utterly delusional as that of the Nazis never intended to go ahead with it, or that such a plan did not amount to a credible threat to the target. Sea Lion was a completely mad idea and would likely have ended very badly, yes: how does this differ from Barbarossa, exactly? The idea that Britain was never under serious threat of invasion during the Second World War is utterly risible and not something that anyone who ever knew anyone who lived through the period could believe.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Churchill himself told his war Cabinet July 10, 1940 that the threat of Sea Lion being launched could be ignored because it was so obviously suicidal that no one could ever seriously consider launching it.

A month earlier he was convinced that an invasion was going to happen and that he would likely die during it. He had also been the first member of the Cabinet to suggest that an invasion was possible in the first place, this back in 1939. Preparations for a possible invasion (which were quite extensive: lines of fortifications were built all over the place and just about every Channel beach had, at least, a pillbox overlooking it. You think governments spend massive amounts of money on things like that just for the sheer hell of it?) and the general mobilisation of the population had both gone very well, and there are only a few months of the year in which an invasion of Britain is ever anything more than monstrously risky because the Channel is a very dangerous body of water. The optimistic view (which turned out to be correct) by the early Summer of 1940 was that if there were no signs of imminent invasion, then the bullet would have been dodged as by the next time an invasion was physically plausible, then the fortification of Britain and the mobilisation and arming of its population would have reached the point where an invasion could be repulsed with confidence. This was not the case in the first half of 1940 and it is worth noting that even a completely catastrophic invasion would have completely devastated a substantial part of the South of England, particularly Kent and Sussex. The general view of the British public throughout most of 1940 was that an invasion was probably going to happen, but that if it did it would be unsuccessful: the will to fight was extraordinary, a rather relevant point given the nasty and stupid argument of yours that kicked all of this off.

Also, while Barbarossa had a 0% chance of occurring successfully, the idea of Nazi Germany raising it’s flag over the Kremlin didn’t. Of course, that’s not true of Sea Lion.

The critical difference is that Stalin was convinced that his new best friend would not invade, refused to prepare for an invasion and had any intelligence officer that suggested that an invasion was imminent shot. Had the Soviet Union been as prepared in 1941 as Britain was by the end of 1940, then there is no way that the invasion force would have penetrated as far into the Soviet Union as it actually did and millions of lives would have been saved.

Even the most generous Historian analysis’ of Sea Lion don’t even see Germany reaching London.

Real historians (and I ought to know as I am one) generally don't concern themselves with hypotheticals, not professionally anyway. The classic view is that the Historian should be concerned to discover only 'what actually happened' (and the reasons for this), not what might have been, and to the extent that this position has been challenged it is only because of the view that it is often not possible to know 'what actually happened' with iron certainty.

A famous Sandhurst wargame (designed largely by the great Paddy Griffith) conducted in 1974 concluded that an invasion in September 1940 would have ended in a catastrophic defeat for the invaders, and this is about as far as we can go in terms of certainties: a well-designed and meticulously executed simulation. Does it supply us with facts, as such? No, merely probabilities. Does it supply us with the full range of probabilities in response to all possible events during 1940? Certainly not and it was not designed to do so. Does the likelihood that an invasion would have been comprehensively repulsed mean that there was no threat posed to Britain or to its government by an invasion? The suggestion is self-evidently absurd. Does the likelihood that an invasion would have been comprehensively repulsed due to well-planned defences and a highly motivated population suggest that the British people of the time were somehow lacking in martial spirit or 'toughness' or whatever other nonsense you were drooling on about in the other thread? Only if you are hallucinating.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

-snip-

Absolutely none of what you wrote changes the fact than a successful invasion/occupation of the UK, and subsequent overthrow of the British government, was impossible. Hence, no, the British Government was never at any threat by the Nazis.

End of discussion.

No, that is not correct. If you wish to argue that there was never any threat and that a successful invasion at any point was impossible and that everyone who 'mattered' knew this, then you have to provide some actual evidence, which thusfar you have failed to do. An invasion being unlikely to succeed from the summer of 1940 onwards and extremely unlikely to do so from the autumn of 1940 onwards does not mean that there was never a realistic threat of invasion and does not mean that the British government was not deeply concerned at the prospect for a significant and frightening length of time. And of course the issue here was:

Handguns were banned in Great Britain after the Dunblane Massacre and I do not think you can accuse Britain of having a 'if threatened, surrender without fighting' mentality (see: WW2).

Which means that what matters is the attitude of the people. And that, as I say, is clear enough and well known: most thought that there would be an invasion and that when it came they would beat it off comfortably. People who favoured suing for peace were routinely lambasted as traitors and Nazi-sympathisers.

You do not get to decide what other people are arguing and use your dishonest mischaracterisation of their arguments as proof that you are correct. Doing so does not make you look like an intellectual titan, it makes you look pathetic and dishonest, which, by the way, is how nearly everyone here sees you.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

https://books.google.com/books?id=A81zQGMykeUC&pg=PT42#v=onepage&q&f=false

Here’s a book on the history of Sea-based invasion of territory. It has a quote from a German historian on the subject.

You might, perhaps, consider in future actually reading things that you cite to back up your arguments, as the general position taken by that book is essentially the one that I have argued for in this thread.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The quote from the German Admiral makes clear that even if Germany had won the Battle of Britain, the invasion would’ve still been a total failure.

Seriously, why are you even still doing this? Arguing that Sea Lion had a >0% of success just makes you look like a complete moron.

As you insist on being serially dishonest, this is the critical paragraph from the section of the book that you have just cited:

_{'At the end of the campaign in France in 1940, both sides found themselves unready for an invasion of Britain. The Germans were unprepared to conduct an amphibious operation, and the British were not ready to defend against one. As ill-prepared as the Germans might have been, their chances for success were greatest right after Dunkirk when the British were still in a state of shock and at their weakest in terms  of material preparedness. The British realized that any delay would work to their advantage. As General Ironside noted on 17 June regarding the German failure to act, "They will be very stupid if they delay much longer".'}

This view, which is not the one that you have been espousing, is essentially the historical consensus on the matter, to the extent that there is one, and is the position that I have been consistently advocating since this absurd 'debate' began as anyone with the intellectual capacity of Winnie the Pooh can see from my posts.

The book then goes on to note the opinion of Vice Admiral Assmann that had the Battle of Britain been successful, an invasion would have followed and would have been, in his words, 'smashed', and indicates agreement with his assessment. Which, as you should note from my earlier citation of the 1974 Sandhurst war game, I actually agree with: an autumn invasion would almost certainly have ended very badly for the invaders. This does not mean that it would still not have constituted a severe threat to the British state* and this does not mean that a hypothetical earlier invasion would not have been quite so hopeless an assault, as the book notes in the quoted paragraph above. I am uncertain whether your misunderstandings here stem from dishonesty, poor reading comprehension or simply not reading the material that you have chosen to cite.

_{*And if the British people had the sort of 'surrender mentality' you suggested in the other thread to explain the fact that hand guns were banned after the Dunblane massacre (a suggestion that remains grotesquely offensive in a remarkable number of different ways), then the response to that would have been to surrender anyway.}