If Hitler had concentrated his efforts on Operation Sealion (instead of Operation Barbarossa) to take Britain out of...

If Hitler had concentrated his efforts on Operation Sealion (instead of Operation Barbarossa) to take Britain out of the game and just dug in his heels in the east, waiting for Stalin to make his move, could he have won WWII?

No

That scenario seems impossible in the first place. If I'm not mistaken, he needed to invade the Soviets because their oil reserves were depleting.

>boxheads somehow manage to invade with river boats lol
>supply lines just get btfo by the rn

>waiting for stalin to build up his war machine
Are you fucking insane?

>implying he could have sent anything over the channel with the Royal Navy standing guard

When they wargamed sealion after the war they didn't have the royal navy do anything on the first day just to make it easier on the germans. They still lost a quarter of their boats. lol

>Could Hitler have won WW2 thread #5476337

Kek.
Must have been super fucking depressing for the Nazis knowing they fucking lost before they even had a chance.

>Let's invade the Soviet Union
>Kill any and all Slavs because they are Sub-human.
>Why aren't they siding with us.
>Why is this land so cold?
>Fuher what are you doing?

>Let's invade Britain with Operation Sealion
>Are you mad! We must invade the Soviet Union first and foremost.
>But Sir a Two-front war, we can't win that
>And if we invaded the Soviet Union and Britain will be allies.
>Muh Aryan Master Race screech.

>Fuck it did the Japs just bombed America?
>Declares war
>America, Britain and Soviet union are Allies

Did they take into account that Barbarossa would be completely postponed until after Britain had been dealt with? That German preparations would be far more thorough as a result? That it would not necessarily have to happen on the originally scheduled date either?

>it's another "What if Hitler did this instead of that" thread

What if Hitler read through all the "What if Hitler..." threads on /pol/ before invading the USSR? Would my dad still have walked out on us when I was 9 years old?

I doubt it would have worked, considering how much stronger the royal navy is

The core issue with sealion is that it relies not only the royal navy not being there but also that the UK will give up soon after invasion. Even if you somehow managed to get troops in through air you'd have hell trying to supply them that way.

No, don't be stupid.

It wasn't actually oil, it was primarily foreign exchange to pay the Soviets with, and while the Soviets sent oil to Germany, it wasn't the main source of German Oil (Romania provided a lot more), but on the other hand, the USSR provided lots of other important stuff, from grain to iron to bauxite to oil. I'd have to really dig to see what among the lot was the most important, but it was a pretty big goody bag.

It wasn't to make it easier on the Germans. Rather, it assumed that Germany had the upper hand but not complete dominance in the air over southern England. That makes it dangerous to base your ships there. Furthermore, the RN doesn't know when or exactly where the invasion would land, so it's really difficult and expensive to be waiting in the channel, getting bombed all the time, to deter an attack. Rather, the plan was to keep the strenght of the Home Fleet up in Hull, which is outside Me-109 range and thus very difficult to get a bomber alive to, and wait for the invasion, and THEN strike. Since it will take some time to land troops, and then they will need a constant source of supply and reinforcement, you now have solved two problems, namely knowing where and when to strike, since there is now a big obvious supply chain going over the channel that you can interrupt.

Honestly, what I would love to do is some sort of game where the Wehraboo/Naziboos get to take back an arbitrary number of "Hitler Mistakes", if they give me the chance to take back an equal number of allied mistakes, and show them how their position is likely far, far worse.

The Sandhurst sealion wargame posits an invasion in September of 1940.

If Germany tries a much later invasion, say 1941 or even 1942, even though they can make more thorough preparations, so can the British. Given that British wartime production was significantly higher than German production, and that things like Cash and Carry were already in effect in 1940, and Lend-Lease would go into effect in the spring of 1941, the longer they wait, the worse things get for them. They can't ramp up as quickly as the Brits can.

Britain couldn't be taken unless they destroyed the RAF and the Royal Navy
They were dug in and they had a million civilian soldiers ready to take the fight to the Germans if they invaded

I thought it was possible to invade Russia in HoI3. What about this?

>waiting for Stalin to make his move

Stalin's move would be to negotiate with the USA and coördinate a joint attack.

Or if that does not work, do nothing. The idea that Stalin was going attack is of course nonsense.

Why do you think Stalin wouldn't make a move himself?

Sea Lion was probably the most fantastical and doomed operation of the entire war. IIRC they coined some new term in alt-history circles for people who thought Sea Lion was ever remotely possible

Because he was a cautious, risk-averse politician, who took enormous steps to isolate and even find allies against tiny nothing powers like the Baltic States, Romania, and Poland before attacking them. Plunging his empire into a war with a major power is not something he's likely to do, even when he has a temporary advantage. It's why he didn't just throw out things like the Yalta Agreement and facerolled Greece and Western Germany.

With what Naval vessels? How are they gonna supply troops?

I'm not saying it is impossible, unlike what some with Nazi sympathies assert, there is no evidence that he would have attacked.


While he was a convinced Marxist, he did not share an internationalist view and did not truly desire spreading socialism. Stalin was very geopolitically minded, his only concern was the survival of the Soviet Union and making socialism work in the Soviet Union.

ASB: alien space bats, as in the most plausible way for sea lion to succeed is if alien space bats made it happen.

Subjugating France within weeks was considered fantastical and doomed too, before Hitler made it happen.