One naval catastrophe would be intense without producing all the cumulative effects of total war. France and Belgium avoid years of battlefield destruction, while industries, towns, civilians, and mobilized societies escape the same scale of prolonged damage. Britain and France also do not accumulate their historical wartime debts to the United States. The Channel battle remains extraordinarily bloody, but the postwar fiscal and social foundations are different.
Notable Point · 2:14:45-2:15:43
A short war avoids the economics of total war
A war ending in weeks still kills on a terrible scale in the Channel, but it avoids four years of industrial destruction, mass mobilization, and Allied debt to the United States.