Bombing the enemy does not win wars. The infantry ultimately does. And for a succsessful invasion of Britain, Germany needs air superiority. Same as the Allies needed in Normandy.
All the bombing, alone, against Germany and Japan did not defeat either one. With perhaps the exception of Hiroshima/Nagasaki.
I do not believe the there ever could be a peace between Britain and Hitler at this point of the war.
I remember reading something that Churchill said, his biggest concern during the war was the ships being sunk by Germany's u boats.
You know what also wins wars? Politics. If the Churchill government can be toppled by the public after the war effort falls apart due to the collapse of imports, then the war is won. Britain doesn't need to be conquered, just brought to the table. Just as you say that Churchill was most concerned about shipping, which really means imports, it works to cut those imports at the end destination, just as well as in transit; its just more efficient to strike the port where you can hit both the ships, the goods, and demoralize the locals.
London never closed completely as a port during WW2, not even during the BoB or the Blitz. At worst, London's tonnage fell to about 1/4 of pre-war levels, which would imply it still handled 10-12 million tons annually.
London was not used for international shipping in 1940-1. It was deemed to dangerous and it therefore only took local coastal convoys shipping in coal and food that were loaded at Liverpool. Its shipping was not direct imports, so hitting Liverpool would put a serious dent in London imports.
Liverpool however was much more vulnerable to being bombed, because unlike London, it did not have a direct connection to the rail station with its port and warehouses. Blocking the streets with unexploded ordnance and rubble would prevent the goods being moved to the rails for distribution to the rest of the country. Then with more goods pilling up on the docks/warehouses, they can be destroyed, which forces the British to spend more of their dwindling financial resources rebuying those goods and using their shipping to reimport, making them vulnerable again to Uboats.
Yes Britain was able to eventually work out its rationing system and rationalize imports by 1942; that took time to work out effectively and it was much more costly financially to do so. There is a reason that it primarily happened after Lend-Lease started, because then the British could import finished goods instead of raw materials without worrying about the cost. As it was Britain was pretty much broke in January 1941 from all of the spending they had to do for the war; in March 1941 they had to have the Belgians pay for their imports because they couldn't pay for it anymore.
The bombing and mining of British ports would be a long term effort,somewhat like the Battle of the Atlantic. It is an effort to starve Britain out of the war. Even completely closing a port like Liverpool for periods won't accomplish this overnight. The British had many other options,don't under estimate their capacity for utilising other facilities to keep some supplies coming in.
You'd imagine that axis forces based in Sicily,60 miles from Malta,an island with only one major port,would have been able to starve her out but they didn't. Noone thought that more than 1/3 of a million troops could be retrieved from the beaches of Dunkirk either.
Yes to a degree; Britain was at a very low point in her stocks by July-August 1940, so was especially vulnerable to a coordinated, sustained effort at a trade war. Closing Liverpool at this point (I mean in the sense of badly disrupting shipping like during the May Blitz), a time when Britain had to totally reorient its trade and imports to account for the fact that now southern and eastern ports were shut down to international imports, especially London, would virtually collapse British abilities to import. They were already badly disrupted as it was and the waiting time to offload goods and oil in Liverpool was up to 10 days for things like oil tankers. It was very vulnerable to disruption, which would have shut down the disorganized mess that it was in mid-1940. There were only two other ports that had the ability to import goods and they were even more disorganized that Liverpool with far less capacity to import: Glasgow and Avonmouth/Bristol.
I'm not pulling this out of thin air, this was the conclusion of the British themselves in their official history of the civilian side of the war:
Merchant shipping and the demands of war. (Book, 1955) [WorldCat.org]
Britain did NOT have the ability to shift their shipping. It was one of three ports and Liverpool alone far outstripped the remaining capacity of the other two together to handle the volume necessary to keep Britain in the war.
Remember too that the point isn't to totally collapse British society, which would take more than a year likely, but rather convince the public and politicians to cut a deal, which could happen much more quickly and IMHO be accomplished before May 1941.
Many nations have shown themselves able survive blockades (which this is a version of) for extended periods.
Right, but Britain was very disorganized for one and the Germans never really attempted seriously to blockade Britain in WW2 until 1942. By then it was already far too late and the effort put in was absurdly small. Its also not about 'surviving', but about politics; if there is little hope of changing the negative dynamics developing, its very likely for the Churchill government will fall and whomever replaces him will cut a deal. That is all Germany needs/wants: convince Britain to deal. Hitler did not want to crush the British at this point, he wanted to deal and have a free hand to fight the USSR.
Time is something the Germans didn't have. I have already posted their oil situation three months prior to the launch of Barbarossa.To remove Britain from the war in time to proceed unhampered in the East they had to force terms on her by early 1941 at the latest,more practically before the winter weather closed in late 1940. The objective Dowding set himself and Fighter Command before the BoB was to avoid defeat until November 1940. It was by achieving this that he very probably cost Germany the war.
Depending on the dynamics, it can very easily be the British who don't have time. Germany at least has the Romanians and Soviets supplying them to help get around the import problem; the Spanish were also helping the Germans transship goods; the British are far more vulnerable to having their imports disrupted, because they didn't have domestic sources of supply. Everything for the British had to be brought in via overseas shipping, so if that shipping/importing could be disrupted even for a long enough period, politically it because impossible for the British to stay in the war. Dowding set November as an objective, because then they knew there would be no Sealion if the Germans were held off until then; here the situation is much different, because if the Germans had been bombing Liverpool at night from August with over 1000 bombers rotating in (not at once) night after night, by November Britain would be extremely desperate because they would have some very serious shortages of war materials.
BTW I screwed up earlier when I said the British consumed 300k of fuel a month, that was actually the weekly consumption. So in August 1940 they had 10 weeks of fuel. Bombing would disrupt import of fuel, as Liverpool was the main oil station left to import that. So if the RAF and RN are short of fuel, they won't be able to fight and stop the Germans...which means a political deal is on the horizon. The British had no idea of German fuel issues, just that the Soviets were supplying the Germans. Also the Germans have the benefit of knowing if Britain is knocked out of the war, then they can start importing fuel from overseas again, offsetting whatever the fuel spent knocking out Britain.
I still believe Germany's best chance was to defeat the RAF with all the consequences that would have had for Britain's coalition government.Another defeat on this scale after the humiliation of Dunkirk would have been disastrous,particularly for Churchill.Churchill's first famous broadcast was on 19th May 1940, I have no difficulty imagining his last,resignation broadcast,being in October.
I disagree for all of the above reasons. I don't think Britain was beatable even if they had to withdraw from some of their southern airfields. The Radar stations were too hard to knock out and keep out of service, especially thanks to the mobile radar stations that could be brought in to plug the holes in coverage.
I also believe that with a few relatively minor tweaks to the Luftwaffe's historical campaign that they could have done it. History is full of "what ifs" and "if onlys".
Cheers
Steve
We agree that changes were needed and Britain was certainly beatable. I just think that the RAF was too strong to beat during the day, so it would cost far too much to achieve a 'victory' during the day, which IMHO was not possible even if the RAF had to abandon their forward airfields. Also the lack of sufficient long range escorts like the Fw187 made it just that much more difficult. Having a night campaign against British imports could cost Germany a fraction of the casualties and cut off the flood of British weapons at the source.