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Boston:
Japan didn't want a war with us, they wanted us unable or unwilling to interfere while they invaded the Philippines. So I can derail their actions for the purposes of my story idea; just give them something else to worry about besides conquering the South Pacific. That solves part of my problem.
As for Dunkirk, yeah, according to what I've read, Hitler had already made overtures to Churchill, hoping for a political "solution." He was even hurt that Churchill didn't recognize the Halt of 1940 as a political gesture of conciliation.
So let's remove the political overtures from the equation. Maybe he makes them, maybe he doesn't. But when push comes to shove, he goes ahead with decimating the troops at Dunkirk and then follows them across the Channel.
Now what? How does that change things?
I'm thinking, as RA implied, he'd have a hell of a time holding onto the U.K. He'd already encountered internal resistance all over Europe; the Netherlands and Scandinavia leap to mind for their creative and implacable attitude of "F*** your troops, we're not knuckling under!* I think he'd have gotten the same thing, in spades, from the Brits.
I think you're right, the rest of us English speakers would be hot to get in their and help the Mother Country, particularly America and Canada (not excluding the Anzacs, but they're hell and gone on the other side of the planet, which makes any immediate action problematic).
But -- and this is where I'm struggling -- it would be damned hard for the rest of us to get a foot in the door. The fact that England had held out against the Nazis, and the fact that they were an island detached from the rest of Europe, gave us all a unique opportunity. They served as a staging area for launching a consolidated attack against Europe. Launching such an invasion across 50 miles of Channel is hard enough. Trying to launch it from, oh, say, New York, across an entire ocean? Impossible. The only option would have to be up through Africa or the Middle East, and that brings its own problems.
Or am I completely out to lunch on this?
What about the via Iceland, or way the heck up north in Scotland, like the Orkneys?
Or heck... Ireland. Would the Germans taken Ireland along with GB? Or launching from Scandinavia?