Tell me all you know about olans of the invasion.
As far as i know he liked the british - he wanted something like an alliance.
It depends on what you mean by Empire - he certainly had plans for invading Britain itself (Operation Sealion - as to whether that was actually feasible has been debated many times). As to the other countries, the closest the Germans got to threatening the countries of the Empire was in North Africa (and even then Egypt and Sudan weren’t part of the Empire as such, even though Britain had a military and political presence there). In the Middle East, Palestine wasn’t part of the Empire either - it was a League of Nations mandate. That just leaves Gibraltar.
The greatest threat to the Empire was by the Japanese.
Initial dream of Alliance with British (Royal navy + german ground forces + RAF + Luftwaffe == world domination).
Beating England may have resulted chaos in british empire around the world - making other countries taking advantage of that and in progress making them stronger (like U.S., Japan).
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i too have read somewhere that he liked the british and would have liked the british and may be the americans to join them and defeat the ussr, apart from that he didnt have rule of the skys and without that no attempt. thats as far as i know.
I think we need to distinguish between the prewar and wartime relationships between Britain and Germany.
Gerwin Strobl’s excellent book “The Germanic Isle: Nazi Perceptions of Britain” highlights the high regard that Germans, and the Nazis had for Britain and the Empire, before the war. This was expressed in their newspapers, speeches and exchanges between the military and cultural groups in both countries.
However by Dunkirk, the decisions about invasion were purely military. There were attempts at conciliation at the public level (i.e. newspapers, radio etc). However, it was clear to Hitler and the military that Britain were not going to surrender, and the tone in the public pronouncements (again radio, newspapers etc) changed to negative propaganda. This clear change in policy would not have occurred without the explicit agreement of Hitler and Goebbels. Thus to say that Hitler didn’t invade because of some desire for frienship with Britain is simply not true. He didn’t invade because he was not able to, militarily.
Ummm… he tried to. Egypt was after all effectively part of the British Empire, and the canal zone certainly was. He also lost however - ever hear of a battle named El Alamein? Hence, the reason he didn’t invade the British Empire was that we beat him when he tried. Simple enough for you?
I think prior to the British declaring war on Germany, Hitler wanted some kind of alliance enabling the Germans to take continental Europe and European Russia and enabling the British to keep (+ i imagine expand it)
this was linked in part to a core common heritage and strong links between Britain and Germanys ruling elites from a traditional aristocracy and industrial powerbase,
lets not forget at this stage the Americans were still as a whole isolationist, partly due to the largest ethnic group in the USA at that time after the British decedents where decedents of the “German speaking peoples” of central Europe - (wasn’t there a vote around the time of the American War of independence to decide if the national language should have been English or German)
although I m not too sure how this plays into the German /Japanese relationship, certainly Japan would have loved to get its hands on India, Burma + Australia etc.
you could imagine there being a split where Japan gets most of Asia and German got most of Europe, Russia and Africa. As to what they did with the Americas who can tell ? - would the Germans and Japanese divided Canada or used it as a base to invade the US, or would the USA have preemptiveliy taken over Canada ( either through direct military intervention or via a political pact?) – and what about mexico, it had strong links with Germany too!?
or would the British empire ironically have become a global Indian empire?
even Churchill had to call it close as to which was the biggest evil the nazi regime of the USSR.
after the declaration of war the game plan changes…
ultimately the economic and industrial might of the USA comes into play and changes the course of the war, with the USA never coming under any real direct threat.
the supply of the American factories keeping the western allies going and stocked up gave the brits and ussr the breathing space to rebuild and reorganize their industrial complexes.
the Russians obv had the advantage of space to retreat and rebuild
if Britain had been connected to mainland Europe then it surely would have been different. Wales, Scotland and similar mountainous parts of Britain could have become a Yugoslavian type bog requiring many German divisions being tied up in suppressing the locals? Britain certainly didnt have the pace to retreat into as the Russians did?
as for the other moments of good fortune, Dunkirk - an remarkable calm period on the channel enabling all those small boats to assist in the evacuation of the men if not the equipment - ironically immediately after Dunkirk the only well equipped division in the south (if not whole) of England was a Canadian division from the commonwealth
and what if the weather and gone nasty for dday and rommel had been able to get his own way… some of the landing beaches nearly failed as it was, imagine if the invasion had been pushed back into the sea - it would have been years before another invasion of mainland Europe could have occurred and where would it have happened? they would have been the next time on the beaches of Normandy and by that time the Germans would have had the breathing space they needed to regroup.
Would the Americans ultimately just nuked the Japanese and Germans?
Would the German rockets been able to smash the east cost cities?
Wht would the Japanese have done if they had been unchallenged until it was to late by the Americans?
as any conventional intercontinental invasion be it US Of Europe or Japan or vice versa wouldn’t have been a even greater undertaking.
…just some thoughts for dicussion
As none of the other in this site 
will do it, I’ll welcome you.
Good first post covering a broad range of issues.
Welcome bluedonkey.
I think the only one wich seriuosly attemp to invade the British empire was Rommel…Hitler was too busy in Russian to help him 
