The British have always been brilliant at war propaganda. Their portrayal of the so-called Battle of Britain was their supreme triumph of words. For uninformed people, their propaganda has hardened into history. A serious military discussion has to start by clearing away the fairy tales.
After the fall of France, Germany was incomparably stronger than England on the ground, about equally matched in the air, and gravely inferior at sea. Our surface navy was weak and meager; only the U-boat arm had real weight. The whole problem in the summer of 1940 was to force a decision across a sea barrier. In a set-piece invasion campaign, therefore, the British held the crucial advantage.
I have already stated, in my outline of Case Yellow, my belief that had we improvised a surprise crossing in June, when the disarmed British land forces were reeling home from Dunkirk, and their fleet was on far-flung stations, we might have conquered England in a short fierce campaign. But Hitler had passed up that chance. The resilient English had caught their breaths, instituted drastic anti-invasion measures, and marshalled their power navy to block a Channel crossing. At that point, Germany could only attack in the air, either to force a decision or to blast a path for invasion.
At the start one must compare the opposed air forces. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people, including Germans, still believe that a vast and power Luftwaffe was defeated by a valorous handful of Thermopylae defenders in RAF uniforms — or, in the words of the great phrasemaker, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” In fact, both Germany and England had about a thousand fighter planes when the contest began. Germany’s bombers, at least the newer ones, were heavier, longer-ranged, and more powerfully armed.
Hitler and Goring, of course, voiced the most extravagant boasts about the Luftwaffe, to induce the British to make peace. Churchill, on the other hand, played up the fact that England was outnumbered and alone, so as to pull the United States into the war. As a result, the contest took on a false aspect of David against Goliath.
British Advantages
Not only is the conventional picture distorted on the comparison of forces; it takes no account of the handicaps under which the Luftwaffe operated.
Most of the battle was fought over the British air bases. Every German pilot shot down over land was lost, either dead or a prisoner. But a downed British pilot, if he were unharmed, could soon take another plane into the skies. The German pilot had only a few minutes of flying time in which to do battle, for our fighters had a fuel limit of ninety minutes or so, most of which was consumed simply in getting to the scene and returning to base. The British pilot, as soon as he had climbed to combat altitude, could fight until he ran out of bullets or gas.
Because of our fighter planes’ short range, we could reach only the southeast corner of England. The Luftwaffe was like a tethered falcon, with London at the far end of the tether. The rest of the United Kingdom was fairly safe from air attack, because unescorted bombers ran a high risk of annihilation. The Royal Air Force could retire beyond range at will for rest and repair; and far beyond the firing line could keep fresh reserves and could rush the building of new planes.
Our fighters were further handicapped by orders to fly in close formation with the bombers, like destroyers screening battleships. No doubt this gave the bomber pilots a sense of security, but it hobbled the fighters. In air combat, “seek out and destroy” is the rule of rules. Fighter pilot teams should be free to roam the air space, spot the enemy, and strike first. Goring could never grasp this elementary point, though his fighter aces kept urging it on him. As our bomber losses climbed, he insisted more and more violently that the fighters should nursemaid the bombers, almost wingtip to wingtip. This seriously depressed pilot morale, already strained by prolonged combat and the death of many comrades.
Finally, the British in 1940 had one lucky scientific edge. They were first in the field with battle-worthy radar and the fighter control it made possible. They could follow our incoming flights and speed their fighters straight at us. No fuel was wasted in patrol, nor were forces dispersed in search. If not for this factor alone, the Luftwaffe fighter command might have won a quick knockout victory. For in the end the Luftwaffe did all but shoot the Royal Air Force out of the skies. Churchill himself — and he is not interested in praising the German effort — states that in September the battle tilted against his fighter command.
Our attack at that point shifted to strategic bombing of London. Churchill asserts that it was Goring’s fatal mistake. In truth, given the onset of bad weather, the provocative terror-bombing of our cities which required stern immediate retaliation, and the fact that invasion had to be tried before October 1 or not at all, the shift was almost mandatory. I discuss this point in detail in my day-by-day analysis of the campaign.
The Purpose of “Eagle Attack”
Adlerangriff, the Luftwaffe’s “Eagle Attack” on England in the summer of 1940, was essentially a peacemaking gesture. It was a limited effort, intended to convince the British that to prolong the war would serve no purpose. The effort had to be made before the attack on Russia, to protect our rear to the westward. That it failed was of course a tragedy for Germany, since we were condemned to carry on this climactic world battle on two fronts. Historians are curiously slow to realize that it was more tragic for England.
Germany, after all, entered the war with little to lose, but in 1939 England was the world’s first power. As a result of the war, though a supposed victor, she lost her world-girdling empire and shrank to the size of her home islands. Had the Adlerangriff induced her to make peace with Germany in 1940, that empire would almost surely still be hers, so it is hard to understand why the so-called Battle of Britain was her “finest hour.” Her pilots performed with dash and valor, like their German racial cousins. But England threw away her last chance to prolong her world role, linked to a vigorous rising continental power; after that, she allied herself with Bolshevism to crush that power, Europe’s last bastion against barbaric Asia; and she became as a result a weak withered satellite of the United States.
This debacle was all the work of the visionary adventurer Churchill, to whom the people had never before given supreme office. Churchill cast himself in the role of St. George saving the world from the horrible German dragon. He had the pen and the tongue to push this legend. He himself always believed it. The English believed it long enough to lose their empire, before becoming disillusioned and voting him out.
Hitler and England
Of all things. Hitler wanted no war with England. To this, I can personally testify. I do not need to, for it is written plainly in his turgid and propagandistic self-revelation,
No world-historical figure, when entering the scene, ever made his aims and his program clearer. By comparison, Alexander, Charles XII, and Napoleon were improvisers, moving where chance took them. In
In discussing England, Hitler in
