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Germans are certainly prepared for, and have recently begun talking about, an Allied attack on the Lowlands or the French submarine coast from Brest to the south. The Germans themselves might take the great gamble of trying to knock Britain out. Success would not win the war for Germany (there would still be Russia), but the same sort of reasoning which impelled Hitler to turn on his Russian rear in 1941 might impel him to turn on his British rear in 1943.
Britain now is not the Britain which Hitler might have crushed in 1940; its defensive air power, which saved Britain then, is now the strongest concentration of sky-might anywhere. After Dunkirk, Britain literally had no army in 1940; it has forces for land & sea defense in 1943. And Britain keeps great defensive forces at home precisely because attack on Britain, however remote it may seem to others, is always a possibility to Britons.
Need for Speed. Time is short for the Allies. For good weather from Norway's North Cape to Cairo, they must strike Europe decisively before October. Just as Rommel shook the Americans out of offensive positions in Tunisia, the Germans might daringly attempt to disrupt the vaster forces of an incipient invasion, either in Africa or Britain. Or they may choose to carry out Hitler's published intent, solidify the defenses of western and southern Europe, and prepare yet another summer blow at Russia, where they are still within 125 miles of Moscow. In any one of these events, time, for a change is on the side of the Germans.
*The Red Army rallied few celebrants in the U.S. How far the U.S. was from Britain in outward appreciation of Russia was suggested by what Columnist Westbrook Pegler wrote three days after Red Army Day: "Communism is, for a fact, a menace to the United States. . . . But Hitler happens to be the military enemy of the moment and first things come first."