The Second World War in 100 Facts

by Clive Pearson

  On 19 July 1940 Hitler had had enough of waiting. He had received no offers of peace from the British and so he set out his stall in a speech to the Reichstag (German parliament). As a magnanimous conqueror he was prepared to offer a peace deal, but if the British continued in the war then he would have no alternative but to destroy her empire. Hitler and his entourage were incredulous when the offer was rebuffed almost out of hand.

  The Nazi dictator now knew that he had to take the war to the British mainland in order to force a settlement. He had already given a directive for ‘Operation Sea Lion’, which was for an invasion of Britain if all else failed. It required air supremacy and secure passage for the invasion fleet across the English Channel. However, Hitler hoped that invasion would be unnecessary. He envisaged that the superior German Air Force together with the U-boats lurking in the seas around Britain would be able to bludgeon and so strangle the perfidious British so that they would come begging for peace terms.

  Fortunately for the British events did not go according to plan. The British fighter force proved a worthy foe to the Luftwaffe and so Hitler was never able to secure the right conditions for ‘Operation Sea Lion’. By September 1940 the Führer had scrapped his ideas for invasion.

  By this time the Nazi warlord had already turned his attention east towards the Soviet Union.

  18. THE GERMAN AIR FORCE GETS ITS COMEUPPANCE

  One of the rather surprising aspects of the Battle of Britain is the initial view each side had of their opponent’s capabilities. Hitler had given the German pilots the task of establishing air supremacy prior to invasion. They were fresh from victories over Poland and France and believed that the British air force would be no match for them. They expected their opposite numbers to be very inexperienced and the numbers of planes and pilots to be low. Confidence was sky-high! On the other hand, British air intelligence vastly overestimated the strength of the Luftwaffe and its efficiency. Both sides were wrong.

  Perhaps this last statement should be qualified. British pilots were initially much less experienced on the whole than their opponents. However, they had time to practise in the two months while Hitler dithered after the fall of France. The respective size of the air forces was an issue that proved decisive. The British believed the Germans had around 7,000 fighter planes. The truth was far different. In fact, the Germans only had 1,011 operational fighters in August 1940, which was slightly fewer than the British! Furthermore, despite the British suffering higher losses during the battle, they easily out-produced the supposedly efficient Third Reich. The reality was that Hitler’s Germany was very chaotic and German fighter production was relatively low. During the months of June to October 1940, the Nazi state was only able to turn out 919 ME 109 fighter planes whereas British factories managed to get over 2,000 Hurricanes and Spitfires into the front line. So you can see that Winston Churchill’s famous speech about ‘the few’ should in fact refer to the Germans.

  German fighter pilots soon found out that they were not the overwhelming favourites to win as they had expected. Although the ME109 was a superb plane at the forefront of technology it, performed less well at lower altitudes, although at 30,000 feet it was unmatched in its performance. The pilots of the British Hawker Hurricane and the Spitfire on the other hand found that while they were hampered at the higher altitudes, they could actually out turn their opponents at 20,000 feet. Unfortunately for German pilots, the Head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering, understood little about modern aerial warfare and demanded that the fighters accompany the slow, lumbering bombers that flew at the lower altitudes. The idea was that the bombers would be a lure for the British fighters. These strictures, as you can imagine, put German fighters at a severe disadvantage. By the end of October German losses were becoming unacceptably high and it was clear that the RAF was far from being destroyed. Hitler now decided to call off his aerial offensive.

  The German fighter pilots had arrogantly expected an easy victory. In the end they found themselves embroiled in a costly war of attrition, which they were clearly losing. Britain would now emerge as a beacon of hope for those enduring Nazi occupation across Europe.

  19. CHURCHILL’S SPEECHES INSPIRED THE NATION … MOSTLY

  Winston Churchill’s stirring oratory during the Second World War has become part of the collective memory for British people. During the bleakest moments of the war when events had conspired to leave the British alone in Europe, Churchill inspired the British people to struggle on. His speeches were always his own carefully crafted words and never those of a professional writer. For many people at the time who gathered around their radios, his rather grand style would strike a chord in their emotions. His broadcasts were eagerly awaited.

  Churchill’s speeches are well known and include many memorable phrases. These are some examples. On becoming prime minister in May 1940 he told the people that he had ‘nothing to offer but blood, tears, toil and sweat’. Soon after Dunkirk, on 4 June, he addressed the House of Commons with this rousing speech: ‘We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets … we shall never surrender.’ After the fall of France he rallied the people by telling them that the ‘Battle of Britain’ was about to begin and that this was to be their ‘finest hour’. At the height of the air war over Britain in August 1940 when the RAF was battling for survival, he made a speech that included the line, ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’

  The reason that Churchill’s speeches and phrases still resonate is that he was very adept at using classical rhetorical devices. This involved repetition of words and phrases as well as contrasting pairs. He also used short punchy Anglo-Saxon words for maximum effect. Indeed his speeches are masterpieces of the art of speech-making and the sound bite. Before the war many British people thought his speeches were ridiculously grandiose and inappropriate. However, during Britain’s darkest hour the rhetoric seemed to suit the mood much more.

  Not everybody was enthusiastic about his speeches, however. Churchill often had to deliver some tough messages about the course and duration of the war. People were fearful about what the future held. This meant that people were focusing on the message rather than the lofty words and quite a few listeners were quietly critical. In addition, others felt that during his ‘finest hour’ speech he was actually drunk, although this may have been due less to the brandy but rather to his slurred pronunciation of the letter ‘S’. In the end, more people were less inspired at the time than we like to think.

  Strangely, Churchill was rather loath to broadcast the speeches he had already made to the House of Commons. A myth grew up after the war that a Churchill impressionist had recorded them for the radio instead. This is untrue. The radio broadcasts we have today are the genuine Churchill ones and form an important part of the story of the British war effort.

  20. THE HORROR OF THE BLITZ WAS INCESSANT

  The Blitz was the period of continual heavy bombing of British cities from September 1940 to May 1941. For Hitler it was a continuation of the Battle of Britain by other means. The aim was to so demoralise the British people and to degrade the infrastructure so drastically that Britain in desperation would sue for terms.

  It all started when London was heavily bombed on September 7 1940. It heralded a further fifty-seven successive nights of bombing for the capital. As was to be a common feature the docks and the East End were particularly badly hit. Soon after this, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were to join in the misery when Buckingham Palace was hit while they were in residence. They afterwards said that at least now ‘they could look the East End in the face’. Seeing the plight of bombed-out Londoners reduced Churchill to tears. A further example of the horror was the hit on Balham High Street in October resulting in a London bus falling into a crater created by a massive explosion. A bomb had hit the tube there and water and sewage gushed into the station killing sixty-eight people.

  The bombing
, however, was not just located in the London area. Hitler was keen to hit ports and industrial centres if he was to undermine Britain’s war-making capacity. So Coventry was hit on the nights of 14 and 15 November. The city was so devastated that a new word was coined by the Germans – ‘to coventrate’. Among other places hit during the Blitz were Birmingham, Liverpool, Grimsby, Swansea, Bristol, Glasgow and Clydeside. Fortunately for the British, the attacks on sites outside the capital were rarely prosecuted for more than two consecutive nights allowing them to make a fairly rapid recovery and production soon got going again. As the weeks and months passed a defiant spirit grew up and ‘We can take it’ became a refrain of the period.

  The raids actually intensified in the spring of 1941 and 10 May proved to be the worst night of the Blitz for London. Churchill would often view the bombing from the roof of the Air Ministry, much to the dismay of his ministers. However, suddenly the bombing stopped as Hitler turned his attention away towards Eastern Europe.

  In order to provide some variety during the Blitz the Germans had utilised an array of bombs. To begin with there were the usual high-explosive bombs. Others in their arsenal were more fearsome, such as the ‘Satan’ bomb weighing in at 4,000 lb and the Max at 5,500 lb. One of these could create a crater big enough for two double-decker buses! Perhaps most destructive were the magnetic mines dropped by parachute, which on contact with the ground could cause damage scattered over a very wide area.

  The grizzly death toll of the Blitz was around 44,000 people with some 71,000 injured. Nevertheless, it was not as devastating as had been feared and Britain struggled on resiliently.

  21. THE BRITISH LIVED IN CAVES

  The intensive bombing of the Blitz almost on a daily basis meant many ordinary British citizens were desperate to find secure places to bed down for the night. Londoners had recourse to the underground tube stations. Many others decided to brazen it out in the ‘safety’ of their own homes with their own forms of bomb shelter. Others still managed to secure protection in the most unexpected ways.

  Some, who had a garden, opted for the Anderson shelter. This was created by digging deep into the ground and placing corrugated iron over the top in order to create a sturdy roof. Extra protection was offered by placing turf and soil over it. If you preferred to stay inside your home, however, you could climb into something resembling a metal cage called a Morrison shelter. The hope was that should your dwelling suffer a direct hit, you would have a somewhat better chance of being pulled out alive.

  If you didn’t favour either of those options you could try to get protection using ‘public shelters’. These, for example, could be town halls or railway stations, but these all too often afforded the user little safety. You could, if you were lucky, find peace of mind in the basement of a department store, a railway tunnel or a church crypt.

  In London, where possible, people found shelter in the underground stations. At first the government tried to prevent this as they didn’t want people living down there on a permanent basis and thereby impeding the running of the transport system. However, in the end, ‘people power’ won through. The main concern was sanitation and hygiene. Chemical toilets and bunk beds were provided, but conditions remained cramped. As time went by systems were developed to ease the misery. Platform canteens and tube trains offered such treats as cigarettes, tea, coffee, cakes and buns. People soon started to provide their own entertainment by organising various activities such as parties, quizzes and discussion groups. Others brought along wind-up gramophones. Later educational lectures and classes became available. A high point was reached when ENSA (Entertainments National Service Administration or ‘Every Night Something Awful’) brought in various entertainers such as George Formby and Shakespearean actors. Films also became available when projectors were imported.

  Large numbers of people, however, also resorted to sheltering in caves. Those in Ramsgate in Kent boasted 3 miles of tunnels with space for 60,000 people. The local council had set up an electricity supply with ample seating and bunks. In Dover and Chislehurst the caves were initially more basic. In the latter donkeys were employed to take away the ash bins used as latrines. But later on, as with the underground, conditions became more civilised with dances and singsongs being organised and a cinema provided. There were even shops and a hospital!

  So Hitler may have dreamt of bombing the British people back into the Stone Age, but the truth is that only a small minority used caves as temporary shelters.

  22. THE ITALIAN FLEET GETS A DRUBBING

  When Benito Mussolini declared war on Britain in June 1940 he believed she was about to surrender and her empire was ripe for dismemberment. This was surely the time to make the Mediterranean an Italian sea, as in the days of ancient Rome. As we have already seen in the Desert War (Fact 16), however, things did not go according to plan. The Italian fleet, though, did pose a greater potential threat for the British in the Mediterranean as the sea represented a vital link to India and their Far Eastern possessions via Egypt and the Suez Canal.

  The Italian Navy on paper was quite formidable. It contained six battleships, nineteen cruisers, fifty-four destroyers and various other vessels such as submarines and torpedo boats making a grand total of 262. The British fleet may have dwarfed this but the Royal Navy was spread out across the world patrolling the shores at home, the Atlantic and the seas of the Far East. Fortunately for the British, Mussolini was loath to commit his fleet in a straight battle but preferred to keep it as a ‘fleet in being’.

  The British did not waste time in asserting their strength. The first blow was struck not in a battle directly with British surface ships but by planes despatched from an aircraft carrier. Admiral Cunningham, Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean, moored the carrier Illustrious east of the Italian port of Taranto. This base situated in the south-east corner of the Italian peninsula had already been reconnoitred and had revealed itself as home to a large group of Italian battleships. On 11 November 1940 twenty-one Swordfish torpedo bombers lifted off from the British carrier. With little opposition the planes were able to fly in low and release their loads. Three battleships were hit. One, Cavour, was sunk and another two were severely damaged. Cunningham had dealt the Italians a severe blow and had reasserted Britain’s position of dominance.

  In March 1941 the Italian fleet was dealt a further blow when Admiral Cunningham, using decrypts from Bletchley Park, was able to catch up with the Italian fleet west of Crete. The Italian fleet had sallied forth in the hope of disrupting the British operations in the eastern Mediterranean. In an action known as the Battle of Matapan, much of the enemy fleet escaped; however, the British commander was able to sink three fast, heavy cruisers and two destroyers. Such aggressive actions encouraged Mussolini to keep his fleets in ports back at home and out of harm’s way.

  However, the British Navy did not have it all its own way. The German Luftwaffe, with its bases in Italy and Greece, represented a fearsome weapon inflicting massive losses during the evacuation from Crete in May that year. The situation for the British fleet in the Mediterranean became precarious.

  23. THE ‘DESERT FOX’ CAUSES AN UPSET

  In February 1941 Hitler decided that he needed to shore up the desperate position of his ally Mussolini in North Africa. In February 1941 he despatched General Erwin Rommel (the Desert Fox) with a makeshift army dubbed the Afrika Korps down to Tripoli. His task was to save the Italian empire in North Africa. British forces there had been within an ace of taking the whole of Libya and pushing the Axis out of North Africa. However, Churchill’s sudden decision to switch some of these forces to Greece had forced the British desert army to halt their advance.

  General Archibald Wavell, the Commander-in-Chief of British forces in the Middle East, mistakenly believed that Rommel was still awaiting further reinforcements and that his ambitions were limited to only trying to seize Benghazi nearby. Instead Rommel struck immediately with the intention of driving the British back and seizing Egypt itself. The s
peed and direction of the attack left British forces reeling. Rommel cut across the desert inland and headed for Tobruk further along the coast. In the process he cut off a large number of British forces and embarrassingly even seized two leading British generals. Amazingly, Tobruk held out for over seven months before the British launched a counter-attack with the new Eighth Army. Rommel was forced into a temporary withdrawal, but in January 1942 he once again launched a surprise attack, which sent British forces into a headlong retreat back to a line inside Egypt at El Alamein.

  The British would need new generals with fresh ideas if they were to stave off disaster.

  24. OPERATION BARBAROSSA KICKS IN LATE

  The reader may recall that Hitler had signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet leader, Josef Stalin, in August 1939 (Fact 4). However, Hitler viewed Communist Russia as his greatest enemy and so war with the great leviathan was inevitable sooner or later. Russia was also part of his ideological goal of gaining ‘living space’ in the east at the expense of the ‘inferior’ Slavs. He was not concerned about an undefeated Britain. Once the Soviets were crushed the perfidious Brits, lacking allies, would sue for peace.

  In December 1940 Hitler had issued Directive No. 21 for the invasion of the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation Barbarossa. The date set was for 15 May 1941. On paper Stalin had formidable armed forces. But appearances flattered. When Stalin had launched a huge offensive against little Finland in December 1939, Soviet forces had suffered a series of humiliating defeats before eventually prevailing. The Soviet Army was revealed to be very poorly led and equipped. Hitler gleefully commented, ‘You only have to kick in the door, and the whole rotten structure will collapse.’