[tcolvin]

You forget the war in the ME would have been shut down by taking Tunis (which would have happened if Churchill had refrained from his bizarre idea of ordering Wavell to send the army to Greece).

Building up the RCN would have saved the convoys, which is what actually happened, while building up the Indian Army and Indian industry would have saved the far East.

These were the options proposed at the time by the Chiefs of Staff, but overruled by Churchill who insisted on a) Balkan intervention b) building up Bomber Command at enormous cost and c) creation of Commandos and SOE "to set Europe ablaze". All three Churchillian strategies were failures, and he was told at the time not to go there.

Tony