>>>>>So you could have just sat there across the Atlantic saying "Come on then if you think you're hard enough" and left it to the Allies to fight the war for you, then just step in and mop up when both sides were exhausted. No, wait a minute, that's what you did! :-)
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>>>>Fight the war for us? It wasn't our war yet. No one was fighting the war for us.
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>>>You're missing the point: I mean after Adolph had declared war on you. Yes, you could have just sat there as his declaration was essentially meaningless in that he didn't have the means to engage you unless you came to him - other than like the U-boat losses you'd already incurred before you joined the party.
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>>First, I assume you accept that my Anglophile credentials are pretty firmly established ( and for a more fulsome iteration see other messages in this thread )
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>>But I fear it is you who are missing the point. Our position in 1941 was very much the product of an Anglophile president who firmly believed we should have been in in 1939 but knew it would not fly domestically so through policies like Lend_Lease gradually nudged the nation toward involvement. Equally true in the Pacific where the trick was to get Japan to create a causus belli ( tho admittedly not one as devastating as Pearl Harbor )
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>No, I know all that. I'm not missing a point. I made the Alamo allusion to you. I said that once Germany had declared war on America, no matter what president was in office, if the US had not entered the war vs Germany then it would have been a case of leaving the British Commonwealth and other allies to carry on the war for you
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>>Had we taken a different direction starting in 1936 as Ford, Lindbergh, Kennedy etc were advocating we would have remained very strictly neutral, probably strengthening the hand of Halifax, Rab Butler, the Duke of Windsor and the rest of the pro-German element in Britain. Without FDR offering at least hope that America would eventually come in or would at least remain pro-British it is quite possible Churchill would not have been able to put together his coalition with Foot et al, may never have been PM, and after the fall of France Britain would have been quite tempted to come to terms.
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>>Of course such a policy by the US would have been morally and historically indefensible and not in our own best interests, but the way things unfolded were by no means an inevitability. The English Channel was a pretty formidible barrier in 1940
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>and its Royal Navy patrolling it. BTW, I heard recently that we had plans to set the Channel on fire if the Germans had attempted an armada.
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>>but a Sea Lion would have had to be an even better swimmer to cross the Atlantic.

Well, of course once Hitler declared war on the US we were at war with Germany.

And do remember that on the same day Pearl Harbor was attacked the Japanese rolled on Singapore. Britain ( and Holland ) were in many ways as invested in the Pacific as we were and the threat to Burma and India definitely pointed at you.

But my point is 1941 was the product of 3 years of US policy that was designed to have us involved in the war on the side of Britain. A different policy in the US would have probably resulted in a different policy in Britain. Surely you realize how close Britain came to cutting a deal with Germany before May 9, 1940.

Actually, had Edward VIII not been forced to abdicate it may have radically changed the history of the world ( sad to think that such a dreadful human being could have been significant in any way. ) His social circle - who were overwhelming pro-German - were dealt a severe blow with the abdiction and it is even possible the Abwehr were denied a very valuable agent in Buckingham Palace.

But of course the real moment when Britain won the war was when Churchill came out of that meeting with Halifax and Chamberlain as PM.