Thread 18007449

It's October 1940, Hitler won the Battle of France but lost the Battle of Britain. Instead of continuing with Blitz, he decides to negotiate a peace with the UK in good faith at any cost to himself. What would a realistic peace settlement look like if the Germans were open to ceding a lot of their gains?

For example, if Germans were to agree to end the occupation of the Low Countries and France, would the UK have accepted the German annexation of Poland?

Or were the UK bent on Germany's unconditional surrender and regime change already in 1940?

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>>18007496
>this is fine because at least we own nigeria

Any peace settlement would automatically mean the end of occupation, since the whole point of occupation is by its necessity for the war.

That wasn't the crux of the debate tho.
During the 1940 May cabinet crisis, the British leadership simply argued that Germany couldn't be trusted with any treaty because it would merely be treated like a scrap of paper that the Germsns would walk over, but this time from a position of strength.
This isn't ME arguing, it was how THEY argued.

The fear was also that Germany would likely retain pro-german regimes even if they officially ended the occupations of these western states, thus solidifying German continental hegemony, added with her free reign in Central and Eastern Europe.
We obviously have no proof of this since it's alt-history, but it's what the British feared would happen. The remaining states would abandon their pro-British/France position in favor if the German orbit. Romania was the most feared since Romania had the oil, and with oil Germany can match the British.

Obviously the British couldn't also know about Hitlers plans to invade the USSR (in fact the plans did not even exist at this time), so to Britain, it also seemed that Germany may stick with the USSR to solidify their supremacy over Britain's hegemony.

Germany and Britain may conclude a peace that gives Germany a position of strength based on promises not to overstep on British affairs, but the fear of a potential falling-out with Britain in the future would make Germany an existential threat, especially since Hitler often threatened war in every negotiation prior to ww2, he may continue to do so even after the war.
Again, we don't know, but this is how the British reasoned. There couldn't be any treaty of trust with a Germany under NSDAP.

And for the inevitable bullshit about this being all Churchills doing; Churchill wasn't a dictator. This was how Attlee and Chamberlain and Sinclair and Greenwood and Eden and the entire parlament reasoned.

>>18007449 (OP)
>Instead of continuing with Blitz, he decides to negotiate a peace with the UK in good faith at any cost to himself.
Another unispired "what if the Nazis weren't Nazis" thread.
le sigh

>>18007500
I'm prepared to believe that even if France and Britain accepted peace in 1940, they would likely declare war on Germany again to prevent a Germany that stretches from the Alps to the Urals to the Caucasus.
I really don't believe they would just sit idle by and watch this materialize. If Poland was too much to be allowed into Germany then the Soviet Union absolutely would be too.

Ultimately the Germans may have lost anyway because even if Britain exit the war in 1940, Barbarossa will still likely fail. It didn't fail irl because Britain was still in the war, it failed because of fatal overestimate the wehrnacht and underestimate the Red Army, and USA would still likely provide aid.

Sure, it relieves Germany from the Mediterranean front, but it also deprives her of confiscated resources and material from occupied territory (such as French trucks) which was vital for Barbarossas success

Germany would have collapsed from the internal rivalries and corruption anyway. If it weren't the allies, it would have been nazi civil war.

>>18007449 (OP)
>What would a realistic peace settlement look like if the Germans were open to ceding a lot of their gains
Back to 1938 borders

>>18007510
Well in OP defence, the Blitz doesn't happen if the British agree to peace in May 1940, which was when peace with Germany was seriously discussed in the British cabinet.

However, OP kinda outlines an impossible scenario because he argues that Germany and Britain negotiate a peace AFTER the RAF the has defeated the Luftwaffe, which is extremely unlikely because at this point British resolve was firm, as opposed to the chaotic retreat from France when British resolve was shaken.

>>18007507
You're also not completely putting it in context. One of the main foreign policy motivations of the British government, for centuries by the time WWII started, was to avoid a continental hegemony of a single power - as that would be an existential threat to the UK for as long as it lasted. That's why Britain was so comfortable fighting with, funding, and organising coalitions against whoever was the rising power in Europe for centuries. Even if the main goal of Nazi ideology had been 'serve Britain and its interests as faithfully as possible' the UK couldn't accept a peace that left Germany as the dominant power in Europe, it would have been suicidal for them to do so when you look at it in the long term.

>>18007449 (OP)
Fat chance. The British love Poolacks. Or at least they did until they started to mass migrate to London

Hitler himself was never actually willing to give up Belgium. For him, keeping those conquests was the point. His peace feelers in 1940 always assumed Britain would accept a German-dominated Europe.

>>18007816
That was exactly what I was arguing tho, even if I didn't spell it out as bluntly as you did (2000 word limit was reached), however I still feel that this exact point was made. They didnt want a continental hegemony because it's an existential threat in case Germany and Britain ever does have a falling-out in the future even with the promose of being BFF's, and they certainly wouldn't trust the NSDAP with it, given their track record of walking over treaties and using threats of war a d actual war to conduct diplomacy.

>>18007947
We actually don't really know what his peace offers were in mid-1940 after the fall of France.
His peace offers in late 1939-1940 (pre-case yellow) was about a restored but much smaller Poland, along with some other points of disarmament and rearrangement of Eastern Europe.

The UK at that point was completely in the grip of the Focus Group, who had a vested interested in the destruction of Germany and used bribery and threats to turn politicans to their side. The only way to make a peace settlement would have been if Rudolf Hess' insane idea of directly appealing to the British Royalty somehow worked out, but typically for a German, it was way too idealistic and shattered when confronted with the reality of the world.

>>18007816
>One of the main foreign policy motivations of the British government, for centuries by the time WWII started, was to avoid a continental hegemony of a single power - as that would be an existential threat to the UK for as long as it lasted. That's why Britain was so comfortable fighting with, funding, and organising coalitions against whoever was the rising power in Europe for centuries. Even if the main goal of Nazi ideology had been 'serve Britain and its interests as faithfully as possible' the UK couldn't accept a peace that left Germany as the dominant power in Europe, it would have been suicidal for them to do so when you look at it in the long term.
now you realize nazis wouldn't be a thing without Britain's schizophrenia

>>18008513
Ok so the focus existed when Britain fought exact same existential wars against French and Habsburg continental hegemony?

And the focus controlled every member of parlament and the British cabinet and the monarchy and the parlament of every British dominion whom also voted for war?

Idk you stormfags never actually elaborate further on argument this so it's hard to accept...