Swastikas on the Strand

From what I've been reading, it looks like there's a good chance that Britain will end up as a neo-fascist state post-Brexit. That's not good, but it's not as bad as what could have happened, either if Britain lost World War II, or reached an accommodation with the Nazis before or during the war. 

It's a subject that's been hotly debated by historians and the subject of many novels and a few films. The article, Swastikas on the Strand, by Catherine Gallagher looks at several in detail in the context of counterfactual historical analysis.

The Germans called their cross-Channel invasion plans Operation Sea Lion. They made little attempt to conceal the operation. The whole world watched in part because Germany seemed at that point to be unstoppable; its blitzkrieg across western Europe had taken it to the coast of the English Channel. There it paused, confronting a nation that refused to make peace despite the defeat and retreat of the British Expeditionary Force from the Continent. All the action of the war had narrowed to the confrontation across the Channel. The tides and the weather would do much to determine when and if the invasion began. Would Hitler’s war machine be defeated in the attempt or deliver another deadly blow? Ultimately, Nazi Germany did not launch an invasion. But suppose the Luftwaffe had managed to defeat the RAF? Might the Germans then have started across the Channel? And if so, what might have happened then?

The question requires counterfactual historical analysis. Counterfactual history uses hypothetical thought-experiments to imagine the probable results of changes in the historical record. The hypotheses are two-part conditional statements, consisting of an ‘if’ and a ‘then’ clause: if the Luftwaffe had won the air battle, then the Germans might have successfully invaded Britain. Military historians have used counterfactual analysis for centuries. Among professional historians, they are still the most consistent practitioners. As soon as the German records for that summer had been fully declassified in the mid-1950s, military historians did not hesitate to pass judgment on the feasibility of an invasion. Their verdict: even if the Germans had won the air war, their invasion might never have launched and would have failed if it had. A Luftwaffe victory would have been a necessary but by no means sufficient condition for a sea landing.

She looks at three books in detail: Comer Clarke’s England Under Hitler (1960), David Lampe’s The Last Ditch (1968) and Norman Longmate’s If Britain Had Fallen (1972). Given the number of alternate histories I've read, I was surprised that I haven't read any of them; something I will try to remedy.

I should add to this a mention of some other related books that cover similar ground. First is Jo Walton's "Spare Change" trilogy: Farthing, Ha'penny, and Half a Crown. Also worth reading is C. J. Samsom's Dominion.