plan_D said:
My appologies on the spelling. One of the blank spots in the Armor. Never, never been able to spell consistently well. No offense to anyone from Scotland and Wales...does this forum have a spellcheck?
As for the resistance, I had seen a show on it as well as read some on it. Not a lot. But some. I based my belief on the effects being limited on a couple of things.
1. Islands are tough to get a long running successful insurgency running, Sri Lanka not withstanding. They are relatively easy to isolate.
2. The insurgency would need to be resupplied and Britian was out of friends in Europe. Nobody would take on the Wermacht. Their reputation was well reserved. That perspective was also bound to affect the moral of the partisans. In short, "Why bother?". Maybe not immediately, but eventually.
3. The Nazis successfully supressed every active resistance movement in the West. Part of that was the controllers in England telling the active units on the continent to go passive and spend more time gathering information. The active units tended to bring on retribution in extreme forms. That retribution brought the local populace, while not on the Nazi's side, against the partisans. The only exceptions were Yugoslavia and Russia. Only when allied troops were close did the partisans become active (as much from orders from England as from their own volition- recruitment went way up when the allies got close).
4. The Germans had well organized and effective antipartisan units that hunted down active cells. They were also very good at infiltrating cells.
5. Active partisan units tended to drift towards banditry and become a law unto themselves. This did not go over well with the local population.
I conceed that this is all potential but based my perspective on the results they garnered from Holland, France, ect. Some parts of the English isles lead to a better chance for an insurgency (Northern Scotland for example), but even active insurgencies those areas had been suppressed back in the 1700s.
The potential for an isurgency to exist and succeed is directly based on the simple question, Who would help them? Europe had England during the war, but a conquered England had nobody. However, it does make for interesting speculation to consider where the war might go from there. But beyone the scope of the original question.