I sometimes enjoy playing a World War II-based game called Axis and Allies. I recently played a few games with my neighbor, and started thinking about whether the scenarios that can occur in that game could have happened in the actual war. I have found that historians often do the same thing, and there is one scenario they consider quite often: what if Hitler had decided to pursue and defeat the British instead of turning his attention to Russia? As the Nazis were completing their conquest of France, British and French troops were scrambling to evacuate in what became known as the evacuation of Dunkirk. They managed to make it to Britain, but many historians hold that the Nazis more or less allowed them to escape because Hitler still hoped for peace between Germany and Britain. If troops had been stopped at Dunkirk, Hitler would have found an invasion of Britain to be much more feasible, and perhaps would have executed Operation Sea Lion. Britain may have fallen.

The real question is, would America have stood idly by even if their brothers across the Atlantic had fallen? Could we possibly be at peace with an evil empire that had conquered Europe? Japan bombed Pearl Harbor pre-emptively because they saw American intervention in the Pacific as inevitable. If they were right, then the answer to the other question would be no. The war would have been fought, but on terms much more favorable to the Axis. My guess is that neither side would have a complete victory, and there would be an armistice and an uneasy truce lasting for a long time, as was the case with the Korean war. A different kind cold war would have happened, with multiple sides aiming missiles at each other instead of just an Eastern or Western bloc. We are lucky that history chose the path that it did.