swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 3,954
- Jun 25, 2013
I think in general terms, the appeasement of Hitler was a lost cause from the gate, except of course I have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, but the premise of this thread is "what if" based and honestly it would certainly have changed things if Europe as a whole had stood up to Hitler's early moves. He himself was initially amazed that no one did, and then labelled the British and French governments rightly as fools when they continued the appeasement. Pretty good exchange if you ask me, off one or 10 idiots and save literally millions.
The problem with that argument is that, even in 1938, Britain probably was probably relatively weaker than Germany. France had a whole host of internal problems, including politicians from the left and right who were so antagonistic to their political opposition they'd prefer invasion to actually working across the aisle ("better Hitler than Blum")
Trying to scramble back onto the thread, when the British picked a 40 mm for their tanks they were very much in the main stream of tank development. They could have made an alternative choice, and they had used larger guns in the past -- their WW1 tanks carried 6 pounders -- so it seems to me that they could use historical precedent as a selling point.
The other issue I would look at would be improvements in logistics and in some sort of formal alliance with France. It would be interesting had the French and British armies worked together to improve their mutual distrust and command and control problems.