Why not? I think that his attempt to "soften-up" Britain from the air during the Battle of Britain kind of put a hamper into the rolling out of Operation Sea Lion - the planned invasion of Britain. He invaded Russia. He never heeded the past experience of Napoleon on that one. I think that if the RAF was never able to hold back the Luftwaffe, then he would have definitely attempted to invade Britain. We owe a big dept of gratitude to Rolls-Royce and their engines used in the RAF Spitfire and Hurricane fighters that beat-back the Nazis. Not sure if Hitler could have stably occupied the British Isles though...

Barry,

While I have not studied this aspect of Hilter's ambitions, I think that he realized that Britain was an important staging area for the allied forces. He could bomb it by sea and air, but invasion by land was nearly impossible. If he could have successfully invaded and occupied Britain, he likely would have gained a huge advantage in the war. He likely entertained hopes that an opportunity would come along to invade Britain, but he first had to get Europe under better control before he attempted it. That never happened.

JAG

''Would, or more likely could Hitler have ever occupied Britain in 1940?'' In my opinion, not. Although, Hitler was an unpredictable leader, there were leaders more unpredictable than him, who finally dominated. And thanks to them, we enjoy our life today.

''Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.''

-Winston Churchill

Regards 

https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-Germany-invade-Britain-in-1940-after-the-fall-of-France

''Hitler cancelled the German plan to invade Britain - Operation Sea Lion - because it no longer had the means. “ On 17 September 1940, Hitler held a meeting with Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt during which he became convinced the operation was not viable.”

This was for a number of good reasons:

• Germany had no military invasion fleet, being forced to use wooden river barges, which were collected in rivers of northern France, where they were bombed repeatedly by the RAF.

For the seaborne invasion to have crossed the English Channel, Germany needed to sink the Royal Navy, a feat it never looked liked being able to accomplish.

To have crossed the Channel and maintained logistics, Germany also needed to defeat the RAF, so after Germany had lost the Battle of Britain by 11 October, 1940, such an invasion was doomed to failure.

“In Memoirs of WWII, Churchill stated, "Had the Germans possessed in 1940 well trained [and equipped] amphibious forces their task would still have been a forlorn hope in the face of our sea and air power. In fact they had neither the tools or the training".  He added, "There were indeed some who on purely technical grounds, and for the sake of the effect the total defeat of his expedition would have on the general war, were quite content to see him try."   ”

Dear Dr Turner

I agree with Lewis, Hitler had plans to invade Britain but he cancelled it for two reasons: First the courageous resistance of the British people and their withstand of the German air attacks, secondly, he thought that the million of tones of bombs will prevent Britain for effective contribution in the war against him. He was wrong as the history said .

Regards

Louis makes some interesting points.  A successful invasion of the English coast seems unlikly to have been possible because the German Army had neither the equipment, the military intelligence or the training to secure a beach head.  Even four years later with an allied invasion force many time larger and far better equipped D Day was by no means guaranteed successful.

Hitler was not known for taking advice from Generals and he famously described Von Runstedt as a witless nincompoop.  It would appear that if he had really intended an invasion he would have been reckless enough to launch one irrespective of his readiness. 

The commencement of Operation Barbarossa is a further indication that he had little interest in taking on Britain.  Attacking Russia without a long term plan was militarily reckless in the extreme but Hitler worked on providence and will, not strategy.

From all accounts Hitler believed that the British would be sufficiently marginalised and isolated to be any serious threat to his plans for the 'reckoning' with Russia & Lebensraum.  It is suggested that he thought Britain would eventually 'see sense' and acquiesce to his plan to dominate Europe.   

Hitler's military mistakes were to numerous to mention here.  He was never a general and acted on impulse relying on his unwavering belief in providence, no matter how many times it went against him.  Operation Sealion seems to have been little but a distraction and the Battle of Britain was but one factor in his abandonment of it.    

Hitler seems to have believed that Germany and 'England' (his term) were natural allies as his ambitions for Germany were continental, the British were preoccupied with command of the seas. There's a great deal of evidence that he wanted to avoid war with 'England' at all costs. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 was considered to be  prelude to a 'general accommodation' between the two nations. He hoped to eliminate the possibility of a western front when he implemented his long-held ambition of expansion into Eastern Europe. He hoped that the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August 1939 would negate the British guarantee to Poland and even early in 1940 Hitler still hoped for some sort of settlement with 'England'.

''Five days in London, May1940'', John Lukacs

''The days from May 24 to May 28, 1940 altered the course of the history of this century, as the members of the British War Cabinet debated whether to negotiate with Hitler or to continue what became known as the Second World War. ...

Lukacs takes us hour by hour into the critical unfolding of events at 10 Downing Street, where Churchill and the members of his cabinet were painfully considering their war responsibilities. We see how the military disasters taking place on the Continent—particularly the plight of the nearly 400,000 British soldiers bottled up in Dunkirk—affected Churchill’s fragile political situation, for he had been prime minister only a fortnight and was regarded as impetuous and hotheaded even by many of his own party. Lukacs also investigates the mood of the British people, drawing on newspaper and Mass-Observation reports that show how the citizenry, though only partly informed about the dangers that faced them, nevertheless began to support Churchill’s determination to stand fast.

Other historians have dealt with Churchill’s difficulties during this period, using the partial revelations of certain memoirs and private and public papers. But Lukacs is the first to convey the drama and importance of these days, and he does so in a compelling narrative that combines deep knowledge with high literary style.''

''During the five days in question--Friday, May 24, 1940 to Tuesday, May 28--Mr. Churchill, named Prime Minister earlier in the month and still being challenged for power within the Conservative Party by Lord Halifax, who favored appeasing Hitler, was trying desperately to save as much of the army from Dunkirk as he could. With prospects for continuing the fight looking bleak, particularly if the army was lost, and with Churchill still distrusted by many colleagues,  

... by beating off the Halifax challenge and keeping England active in the war, Churchill prevented Hitler from consolidating his grip on Europe and preserved the possibility of later Allied victory.''

http://brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1181

It's a lecturer from Department of Economics in University of AJK Pakistan.

I would like to invite you in the class to give 30-60 Minutes Skype lecture about European History in undergraduate course class of History of Economic Thought.

In response to that we can volunteer for your students in any affordable virtual activity. 

The class will be every Monday to Wednessday at 11am (Pakistan time)

Dear Barry,

A lot was said already.

I am trying to answer your question by speculating what was going on inside Hitler's mind during those critical months in 1940.

First at all, I believe he missed the opportunity to invade England immediately after Poland's defeat. Given the Germans extraordinary forces and victories during those initial months and winter coming, they would have tremendous leverage and strategic advantage that could result in victory..

But Hitler's mind considered that making peace with England would be the best policy and strategically an important asset. So he was determined to achieve that goal by diplomatic means.

Meanwhile he was consulting his generals and all he got was a mishmash of opinions, plans and speculations about Britain's real military force to defend herself as well as discourses about the risks of such undertaking.

Since from the beginning of the war Hitler's main objective was to invade the Soviet Union and given that such enterprise required tremendous amounts of military resources, adding the Battle of Britain failure (due to Göring's screwup) he decide that invading England (and opening a new front) would not worth the "bounty". So he abandoned that plan.

As history tells, he was right about that decision but dead wrong about Operation Barbarossa that followed.

The entries above are based on the assumption that Hitler was a "rational actor." He was not. He didn't hate Great Britain enough to wage total war against them. They were "honorary aryans." When he decided to attack the Soviet Union, he declared that he was "returning to his roots:" to his objective from the beginning: to destroy "Jewish-Bolsheviks," or more accurately, "Jewish Bolshevik bacteria."

Below is an excerpt from a review of Andre Mineau's SS THINKING & THE HOLOCAUST. 

"Historians twist about, straining to maintain their belief in rationality: to pretend sense exists within a sea of senselessness. Hitler could have defeated Great Britain had he focused exclusively on achieving this goal. However, he was preoccupied—distracted by his belief that Europe was being inundated by “disease bacilli which at the moment have their breeding ground in Russia.”

Andreas Hillgruber sees a parallel between the launching of the war against the Soviet Union and the beginning of the Final Solution, suggesting that the conquest of European Russia, for Hitler, was inextricably linked with the extermination of these bacilli, the Jews.

The racist component of Hitler’s thought was so closely interwoven with the central political element of the program that “Russia’s defeat and the extermination of the Jews were—in theory and later in practice—inseparable for him.”

https://blog.libraryofsocialscience.com/total-war-as-total-health/

I agree that Hitler was not a 'rational actor'.  His military decisions were absurd in the extreme.  

The attack on The Soviet Union motivated entirely by ideological hatred of its people both political and racial virtually guaranteed the eventual Untergang of the 3rd Reich.  There was no possibility of eventual conquest of the country and from the commencement of Operation Barbarossa it was inevitable that the 1000 year Reich was a fantasy.

The conquest of 'European' Russia would never have been enough and the conquest of Russia in total was impossible.  At best this conflict would have come to resemble the Crusades with centuries of warfare between two implacably opposed ideologies

The attack on the United Kingdom was not pressed home with any sensible strategy.  Hitler was easily distracted from his reasonably successful aerial campaign against airfields and radar stations into redirecting his bombers at London.  There was no possibility of a successful seaborn invasion at that stage of the war. The Royal Navy & RAF would have annihilated it.  While it is possible that Britain could have been neutralised by political or economic means invasion was not a realistic strategy. 

I agree with Richard Koenigsberg that this hideously distorted and hugely magnified ideology drove him to make endless reckless and inevitably fatal decisions.  In the absence of rationality no military actor will succeed.  

Gee Barry, I really like your response. More to follow.

From a conventional military perspective, Hitler had lost the war. But if his goal was to kill as many Jews (and other humans) as possible, did Hitler fail?

On February 4, 1945, Hitler dictated a note to Martin Bormann, proudly declaring that National Socialism had “tackled the Jewish problem by action & not by words.” This action had been an essential “process of disinfection.” Hitler had been true to himself: had achieved the objective he set out to achieve when he entered politics 25 years before. He set forth the substance of his achievement: “We have lanced the Jewish abscess, and the world of the future will be eternally grateful to us.”

Do a search of MEIN KAMPF. See if you can find a single reference to "conquest" or "conquering." He wanted to destroy the Jewish race, this desire was ten times stronger than his wish to obtain "living space." And there it is, toward the end of his life, declaring that he had LANCED THE JEWISH ABSCESS.

From the beginning, he wanted to cure the "disease" within the nation by destroying "Jewish bacteria."

https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/reviews/Mineau.html

I do not think that the state of Israel would have been created without Hitler.  Before Hitler, Germany was in an deep economic crisis triggered by the terms of the Versaille treaty.  A wiser leader could have through another course of action managed to mobilize germans and particularly german jews towards a renewal and today most probably germany would be THE super power economically, scientifically and culturally and the german money would be the international trade reference and the german language would be the international language.  He litterally sabotaged his own country.  Targeting the german jews was a national harakiri.  Here is one example when the so-called ultimate patriots are in fact the worse ennemy of a nation and they generally target those that are truly the best of their nation.  What is this curse that took over that Nation.  A single man, Hitler cannot be the only element of this curse.  I have read a few that have puzzled on this question and found a few elements of solution but nothing remotly satisfactory.  Sorry for coming out of topic.

The commentaries of Barry Turner and Louis Brassard thoroughly cover this question. The more interesting question, in my opinion, was if Hitler deliberately let the British Expeditionary Army escape at Dunkirk?

Dear Barry Turner,

Your question sounds naive, because Hitler fought with Britain in the same way that Britain fought against Germany, that is, it was a "give-away game". All events indicate that Britain and France had absolutely no interest in fighting Hitler, since their main goal from the very beginning was to push Hitler against Stalin. Let's talk calmly.

1. Britain and France declare war on Germany on September 2, 1939, but no military action is carried out. This period is known in history as the "strange war".

2. France surrendered on June 22, 1940, while France imitated its resistance to Hitler.

3, French soldiers fought on Hitler's side, and the number of these soldiers exceeded the number of soldiers in the Resistance movement against Hitler by ten times.

4. French prisoners of war sat in camps in normal conditions, played cards all day and received parcels from their relatives through the Red Cross.

5. All of Europe supplied Hitler with weapons and resources, including neutral Sweden, France supplied 5,000 steam locomotives.

6. Hitler was not going to go to war with Britain, because it was not his goal.

7. Now regarding the Jews: Hitler laughed when he found out that the ships with the Jews returned to Amsterdam, because no one wanted to accept Jews in the USA and Canada, and this is a fact.

Isn't that why Hitler was so impudent with the Jews, because the Jews did not find protection? Many Jews jumped into the ocean because they knew what awaited them if ships brought them back to Europe. Then it happened - most of them were destroyed in the Holocaust.

You can still enumerate further and further, but one thing is clear - Hitler brilliantly used the hatred of Britain and France against Russia. This is why there was no need for Hitler to fight Britain.

Well, see for yourself: Paris remained completely unscathed, nothing was damaged. Because the overwhelming majority of the French fought on Hitler's side. In particular, the French SS division "Charlemagne" defended the Reichstag. Therefore, after 80 years, it is finally necessary to call a spade a spade.

HITLER'S OBJECTIVE WAS TO KILL JEWS: his fundamental objective. People of the Soviet-Union were conceived as Jews (Jewish-Bolsheviks), so he waged a "war of extermination" (war = Holocaust).

The people of Great Britain were somewhat Ayran, from Hitler's point of view. Hess understood Hitler's thinking, and flew to Great Britain to try to convey this idea. Hitler TURNED AWAY from Great Britain (Goebbels agreed) in order to be TRUE TO HIMSELF: to get back to his lifelong desire: TO KILL JEWS.

Dear Richard Koenigsberg,

You would probably be interested in reading this

https://nvo.ng.ru/history/2002-09-20/5_gitler.html

Hitler's Jewish soldiers.

The ISRAELI newspaper "Vesti" published a sensational material about 150 thousand Jewish soldiers and officers who fought in the Nazi army.

The term "mishlinge" in the Reich called people born from mixed marriages of Aryans with non-Aryans. The racial laws of 1935 distinguished between "mishlinge" of the first degree (one of the parents is Jewish) and the second degree (grandmother or grandfather is Jewish). Despite the legal "spoilage" of people with Jewish genes and despite the noisy propaganda, tens of thousands of "mishlinges" lived peacefully under the Nazis. They were usually called up in the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine, becoming not only soldiers, but also part of the generals at the level of commanders of regiments, divisions and armies.

Hundreds of "mishlinges" were awarded Iron Crosses for bravery. Twenty soldiers and officers of Jewish origin were awarded the highest military award of the Third Reich - the Knight's Cross. However, many veterans of the Wehrmacht complained that the authorities were reluctant to submit to the orders and were drawn to promotion in rank, mindful of their Jewish ancestors.

For a long time, the Nazi press posted a photo of a blue-eyed blonde in a helmet. The picture read: "The ideal German soldier." This Aryan ideal was the Wehrmacht fighter Werner Goldberg (with a Jewish dad).

Major of the Wehrmacht Robert Borchardt received the Knight's Cross for a tank breakthrough of the Soviet front in August 1941. He was then sent to Rommel's Afrika Korps. At El Alamein he was captured by the British. In 1944 he was allowed to come to England to reunite with his Jewish father. In 1946 Borchardt returned to Germany, telling his Jewish dad: "Someone has to rebuild our country." In 1983, shortly before his death, he told German schoolchildren: "Many Jews and half-Jews who fought for Germany in World War II believed that they should honestly defend their Fatherland while serving in the army."

Colonel Walter Hollander, whose mother was Jewish, received a personal letter from Hitler, in which the Führer certified the Aryanism of this Halachic Jew (Halacha is traditional Jewish law, according to which a Jew is born from a Jewish mother - K.K.). The same certificates of "German blood" were signed by Hitler for dozens of high-ranking officers of Jewish origin.

During the war, Hollander was awarded the Iron Crosses of both degrees and a rare insignia - the Gold German Cross. In 1943 he received the Knight's Cross when his anti-tank brigade destroyed 21 Soviet tanks at the Kursk Bulge in one battle.

When he was given leave, he went to the Reich via Warsaw. It was there that he was shocked by the sight of the destroyed Jewish ghetto. Hollander returned to the front broken. The personnel officers wrote in his personal file: "too independent and little controlled", hacking to death his promotion to the rank of general.

Who were the Wehrmacht "mishlinge": victims of anti-Semitic persecution or accomplices of the executioners?

Life has often put them in absurd situations. One soldier with the Iron Cross on his chest came from the front to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp to visit his Jewish father there. The SS officer was shocked by this guest: "If it were not for the award on your uniform, you would have quickly ended up where your father is."

And here is the story of a 76-year-old resident of the Federal Republic of Germany, one hundred percent Jew. In 1940, he managed to escape from occupied France with forged documents. Under a new German name, he was drafted into the "Waffen-SS" - select combat units. “If I served in the German army, and my mother died in Auschwitz, then who am I - a victim or one of the persecutors?” He often asks himself. “The Germans, feeling guilty for what they have done, do not want to hear about us. The Jewish community also turns its back on like me. After all, our stories contradict everything that is used to consider the Holocaust. "

In 1940, all officers with two Jewish grandparents were ordered to leave military service. Those who had been tainted with Jewry only by one of the grandfathers could remain in the army in rank-and-file positions.

But the reality was different: these orders were not carried out. Therefore, they were repeated to no avail once a year. There were frequent cases when German soldiers, driven by the laws of the "front-line brotherhood", hid "their Jews" without handing them over to the party and punitive bodies.

There are 1,200 known examples of the "mishlinge" service in the Wehrmacht - soldiers and officers with closest Jewish ancestors. A thousand of these front-line soldiers had 2,300 Jewish relatives killed - nephews, aunts, uncles, grandfathers, grandmothers, mothers and fathers.

In January 1944, the Wehrmacht personnel department prepared a secret list of 77 high-ranking officers and generals "mixed with the Jewish race or married to Jewish women." All 77 had Hitler's personal certificates of "German blood". The list includes 23 colonels, 5 major generals, 8 lieutenant generals and two full generals.

This list could be supplemented by one of the sinister figures of the Nazi regime - Reinhard Heydrich, the favorite of the Fuhrer and the head of the RSHA, who controlled the Gestapo, criminal police, intelligence and counterintelligence. All his life (fortunately, for a short time), he fought against rumors of Jewish origin.

Heydrich was born in 1904 in Leipzig in the family of the director of the conservatory. The family story says that his grandmother married a Jew shortly after the birth of the father of the future chief of the RSHA. As a child, older boys beat Reinhardt, calling him a Jew.

It was Heydrich who held the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 to discuss the "final solution to the Jewish question." His report said that the grandchildren of a Jew are considered Germans and not subject to reprisals. They say that one day, having returned home drunk to smithereens at night, he turned on the light, saw his image in the mirror and shot him twice with a pistol saying: "Disgusting Jew!"

Air Field Marshal Erhard Milch can be considered a classic example of a "hidden Jew" in the elite of the Third Reich. His father was a Jewish pharmacist.

Due to his Jewish origin, he was not admitted to the Kaiser's military schools, but the outbreak of the First World War gave him access to aviation. Milch got into the division of the famous Richthoffen, met the young Goering and distinguished himself at the headquarters, although he himself did not fly in airplanes. In 1929 he became the general director of Lufthansa, the national air carrier. The wind was already blowing towards the Nazis, and Milch provided planes for free for the leaders of the NSDAP.

This service is not forgotten. Having come to power, the Nazis declare that Milch's mother did not have sex with her Jewish husband, and Erhard's real father is Baron von Beer. Goering laughed for a long time about this: "Yes, we made Milch a bastard, but an aristocratic bastard." Another aphorism of Goering about Milch: "In my headquarters, I myself will decide who is a Jew and who is not!"

After the war, Milch served nine years in prison. Then, until the age of 80, he worked as a consultant for the Fiat and Thyssen concerns.

The vast majority of Wehrmacht veterans say that when they joined the army, they did not consider themselves to be Jews. These soldiers tried with their courage to refute the Nazi racial chatter. Hitler's soldiers with triple zeal at the front proved that their Jewish ancestors did not prevent them from being good German patriots and staunch warriors.