Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruy Horta
iirc
Didn't high octane fuel and new props (from the USA) have a direct impact for fighter command in the summer of 1940?
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Surely the point is that even if they had come from the USA, they would have been paid for in dollars/gold on the barrel-head (like the German machine tools, if there were any, used in Spitfire and Hurricane production).
Ponting categorises August 22, 1940 as "one of the most significant yet least famous in British history", because on that date the War Cabinet was given the Most Secret 7-page Treasury Paper 'Gold and Exchange Resources' (CAB 66/11, WP (40) 324). This paper predicted that in 3 to 4 months Britain would run out of foreign exchange and gold, leaving two options; become a dependency of the USA, or make peace with Hitler. Of course we chose the first.
I am trying to work out whether Britain's appalling choice (not appalling but rather interesting to Churchill) was inevitable. It would seem not necessarily to have been so.
If, as we appear to agree, the BofB was not a close run thing, then Britain could have avoided invasion without incurring all of the bankrupting costs associated with making FC a world-leader. With the money saved, Britain would have had enough time to make itself secure in North Africa and Singapore. It would have done this by going on to Tunis instead of to Greece after the victory of Wavell and O'Connor in Operation Compass. The elimination of an Italian presence in North Africa would have removed the possibility of Rommel's arrival, and infinitely simplified and cheapened Britain's strategic task.
Hitler would then have invaded Russia, and Japan would have attacked the USA, leaving Britain to negotiate from strength with the USA and/or with whichever side won the Russo-German war (hopefully neither). If Germany had succeeded in taking Moscow, Leningrad and the Baku oilfields before winter 1941 (a development that would have been more likely given the time and resources saved by avoiding the Balkan and North African diversions), and if Germany had threatened the Persian oilfields in 1942, then the USA would probably have decided to engage in the Middle East to save itself.
In this scenario Britain would have retained its independence, and still been on the winning side. That is my line of thinking.
Tony