1) Britain only took so long to declare war because our prime minister at the time felt guilty about the Versailles treaty (though it's interesting to note that Winston Churchill was saying in the House of Commons that Hitler was bad news since 1935 odd). Also, no government wants to declare a war, and as someone said before, the horrors of WW1 were still in peoples minds.
Intriguingly, the politicians of the time considered Russia to be a bigger threat...
2) It goes like this:
a) Britains position without American involvment at all: Starved to submission
b) Britains position with American logistical support: Stalemate, small chance of victory by cooperating with the Russians.
c) All three- victory.
What people seem to be overlooking is that it wasn't just American scientists working on the Manhattan Project, directly or indirectly, it would have been impossible without the British imput (look at Rutherfords alpha particle scattering experiment for example- without that we'd still think atoms looked like a deformed plum-pudding!). Also the Russians had a large amount of spies in the Manhattan project, which is why they developed their own nukes so quickly.
The Battle of Britain and 90% of the African campaign was British success only, though to me it seems that the war in the Pacific vs Japan would have been lost without American intervention, though I confess I know much less about that than the European and Pacific theatre.
As for American involvment without Britain, I would point several things out to you:
At the start of WW2, the American Army consisted of a small amount of men and something like 15 WW1 tanks (A British invention of course
).
When the U-Boats attacked the Eastern Seabord, the devastation was massive. In the convoys across the Atlantic, the British, American and Canadian, yes CANADIAN (I feel no one quite appreciates how much of a role THEY played in WW2, a suprisingly significant one) escorts were not only preventing sinkings in the convoys but sinking U-Boats at a relativly high rate.
However, the arrogant US Navy wouldn't even consider forming coastal convoys, and innocent people payed the massive price.
In operation Drumbeat, a massive amount of American shipping was destroyed for the cost of NO U-Boats sunk, one dissapeared. Everytime the Germans sank a ship, the American news would say they sank it when in fact they didn't sink one in the original Drumbeat operation.
Don't get me started on this- it's one of my hobbies and I could talk about it for hours.
Finally though, it is true that the Germans had the best overall tanks, the Allies only had weight of numbers and mobility on their side. However th British Army did have a tank that not only had front armour that could turn a Tiger 88mm shell but could actually penetrate the frontal armour of a Tiger- the Churchill VIII. It's front armour was actually thicker than that of a Tiger tanks. Unfortunatly, the Standard Allied tank was the Sherman M4... with paper thin armour and a crap 75mm gun, it did eventually evolve into a better tank, but it cost many lives before it got there.
One last note on the subject of Tanks... the Abrams isn't the best tank in the World, the British challenger 2 is. And as for the Abrams being "All American", I have only 2 words for you:
Chobham Armour. Spelt with a U.
And it's Al-U-Minium, not Alooooominum. Get it right
Edit: U-571 was a travesty of history.
As a note: Us brits had cracked every single German code except for the naval one until a British Destroyer (I think it was the Bulldog- no time to look at the mo) blew a German U-Boat to the surface, sent a boarding party and actually took not only the enigma machine but all the the codes as well. We kept breaking the codes on a daily basis until doenitz introduced the 4 rotor version- he was the only person who thought the transmissions might be cracked, even Rommel didn't suspect it and tore his staff apart looking for traitors.
