Quote Originally Posted by Greyblades View Post
I didnt say that they could only conquer a province.

With the royal navy making outright invasion impossible and giving a distinct advantage in the atrition game the only sure way that Germany on it's own could have prevailed against Britain would have been to make them not want to continue, and thus give up. That said, the more they wanted to take the more it would have taken to get the British to back off.

If they wanted something small like alsaice lorraine Britain would have likely relented after dunkirk. Indeed after the french surrender they could have taken quite a bit and britain would have likely been forced to let it happen, however annexing half of poland and half of france while making the other half a puppet state, well, that would have required a series of defeats of Austerlitz proportions.

Such defeats Germany was incapable of quickly inflicting on Britain herself without getting past the royal navy, which with it's 1939 levels of naval and aerial capacity Germany could not do. I do not believe that Germany could have won a war of attrition with Britain without breaking the British blockade, and it is likely this theoretical sanely-lead Germany would have sooner decided to relent and settle for a lesser concession that Britain would be willing to live with.

Now a sanely lead Imperial Japan would be a different story, that would have been a hell of a close contest.
Only a matter of time until Germany had anti-ship cruise missiles and could have blown the entire Royal Navy out of the water from the air.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henschel_Hs_293