You're correct, Keith. The British fought in 1940 because they had no choice but to fight...and hope for the best. The odds against them at the time did not look good at all...and had the Germans handled the Battle of Britain a little better and kept bombing the fighter airfields, then the UK would probably have fallen to a German invasion.

There is a possibility that the British could have negotiated with Hitler...Hitler certainly hoped and expected they would, and this delayed his attack on England and greatly hampered its effectiveness when it came.

Churchill, however, had no intention of making any such arrangement...nor, I think, did the British population in general.

Hitler grossly misread the British character, probably because Hitler was under the impression that he was a "good guy" and that other people would see that he had all the answers to make life wonderful if they just thought about it a little... ;-)

Every political leader thinks his own ideas are just exactly what the world needs, after all! He probably could not fathom why the British didn't want to stop fighting Germany, join up with the Germans, and go knock out the Communists in Russia.