I had to come out of lurking for this one. Honestly, RR doesn't know what he's talking about.
Here's part of the reason why:
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87...campaigns.html
The Battle of the Atlantic resulted in western allied forces being scaled down pretty damn significantly.
The idea that British people would have accepted peace without a fight after Dunkirk is laughable. It's just as laughable as saying the Texans would have accepted peace after the Alamo, or that the US would have accepted peace after pearl harbor.
The logic that Uboats guaranteed US entry into the war in the form of us lending destroyers to the British is also laughable, since we where also quite happy to provide every other form of arms and equipment to both the British and the soviets before we entered the war anyways. If it wasn't destroyers, it would have been even more tanks, rifles, and aircraft.
His assertion that there was no plan to knock Brittan out of the war is blatantly false. The plan was:
1: Attrit the RAF's fighters to the point that they could not put up an effective defense. Until they tried and failed, German command believed that this would take four days.
2: The bombers would then have free reign to operate unescorted, thus being able to strike deeper targets more effectively. (Despite his assertion to the contrary, if bomber operations weren't limited by the range of their escort fighters, the he-111 and ju-88 have a range that covers the whole of the British isles.) They would then spend the next four weeks dismantling the British military production. Notably, *every* British naval base was within bomber range. This would force the British navy to leave the home islands or be sunk. This may possibly force a military surrender.
3: The German navy could then blockade at will quite effectively. Also possibly resulting in a surrender.
4: Terror bombing may force a surrender.
5: If not, an invasion of a starving terrorized England at some later date TBD (never really seriously considered).
Obviously, they failed at point 1, but that doesn't mean they didn't have a plan.
I think that's enough. I could go on, but I won't. The one thing I do agree with him on though is that opening the war with 300 u-boats was probably an unrealistic desire. If the Germans had listened to Donitz better from the outset, maybe they could have had a hundred though and that would have *really* helped.