The point I was making was that the sneers we've been hearing about France's defeat in 1940 are unworthy and essentially dishonest.

Noone can say whether, in the absence of the Channel, Britain wouldn't have gone the way, while the United States has found itself in the happy situation of never (since 1812) having to fight a war against a country of comparable size and strength to itself, and therefore has no way of knowing how it would cope in such circumstances.