by Ted Stewart
Chapter 7
The Battle of Britain
“ . . . victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”
Winston Churchill
He may have been as young as seventeen. He may have flown, fought, and died without any other member of his squadron even knowing his name—his entire combat experience lasting but a fraction of a day. He may have reported one morning, tossed his bag into the tent, heard the scramble horn go off, jumped into his single-engine fighter, and lifted into the sky.
Fifteen minutes later, he may have been dead.
He was one of “The Few” (there were only about a thousand of them): the pilots of the Royal Air Force (RAF) who battled—and beat—the German Luftwaffe in the air war over England during the summer of 1940. He was one of those young men whose courage in the face of a seemingly unstoppable enemy was set to change the history of the world.
The Battle of Britain was the first military campaign limited entirely to air forces, breaking significant new ground in modern warfare tactics. It also was the largest and longest aerial campaign ever experienced up to that day. It proved to be the decisive tipping point in the Second World War, shaping the future of the world in many critical ways.
One eminent scholar described the Battle of Britain as “the single greatest event in world political history.”1
Or, as Winston Churchill said, in a quote that is as memorable as the story that it tells, “Never in the field of human combat has so much been owed by so many to so few.”2
Time would prove that he chose his heroes well.
RAF Biggin Hill Twelve Miles Southeast of London
He sat in the cockpit, 1,175 horses vibrating in front of him, the enormous Rolls Royce engine pushing back the smell of exhaust and compressed air, its twelve cylinders sucking down his precious fuel. His name was Gilbert Manson, but everyone called him Snap. Seconds before, he had taxied to the end of the runway, but now he had to wait for the leader of his formation to take off. He hated this moment, the final seconds of hesitation while waiting for the signal to go. It was the only time that he was really scared, and his feet were tapping nervously on the metal floor, his gut already rolled into a knot. A drip of sweat stung his left eye. He had slid the cockpit cover closed and it was getting warm, the midmorning sun pouring through the bulletproof glass. Without looking, he reached down and extracted his leather flask for a quick drink, swishing the water around in his dry mouth and then swallowing it down.
The pilot was eighteen, or would be in just a few weeks. (In the situation in which he found himself, it was better to round up.) He had blond hair and green eyes, and, judging by the young women who were attracted to him, he must have been good-looking (or so he had concluded, despite some of the things that his little sister used to say). The Spitfire was fresh as well, having never seen combat. He could smell the factory newness of the fabric on his seat, the clean engine oil, the metal welds that still bore a whiff of sulfur. And that wasn’t all he smelled. If he took a deep breath, he could capture a hint of deep perfume, a special gift from the female WAAF pilot who had delivered the aircraft from the factory just a few hours before.
Pilots were a suspicious lot, and it had to be a good sign, he thought, having such a fresh bird underneath him, let alone one that smelled of roses. Surely the combat gods were going to smile on him today.
Unless, of course, they didn’t . . .
Turning in his seat, he glanced back along the smooth lines of the fuselage. The Spitfire was such a beautiful machine. Smooth. Fast. Powerful. It was a bull, not a bronco, all muscle, spit, and power. It climbed like a bat, could take a heavy punch before going down, and, with eight machine guns, give a fistful in a fight. But it wasn’t perfect: it rolled like a rock, taking literally all of his strength against the stick to put the fighter on its side, but once it was over, it rolled out smoothly and never shuddered. An aircraft was like a rifle—it had to be steadied before he fired, and the Spitfire was very smooth, making it easier to be accurate with his guns.
Which was good. Really good. Because right now, there were something like 250 German bombers and fighters heading toward him. Sitting in the sweaty cockpit, he was ready to do some damage to those Krauts.
Hearing the fighters in front of him push up their power, the young pilot turned back to face the runway. The first two aircraft in his formation started rolling, staying in line abreast. He glanced around the cockpit quickly, checking his engine instruments a final time. Behind him, fourteen other Spitfires waited to take off, every one of the pilots at least as scared as he was. Some of them, he knew, had already thrown up. He hadn’t yet, and wouldn’t. Everyone dealt with fear a little differently. Some threw up. Some tapped their feet. Some smoked cigarettes until their teeth were brown. Besides, his greatest fear wasn’t dying in a flame of combat, it was bailing out over the cold waters of the English Channel and then freezing to death before he could be found. But he didn’t have to worry about that today. Unless all of the German bombers abandoned their targets and turned to run, he would never get that far south.
But even if he did end up in the Channel, he was okay with that. Truth was, he had accepted the knot of fear inside his chest. He had accepted the weariness that seemed to sap him to the very bone.
There was something important going on around him. A brief moment of glory, maybe. He knew that he was part of it, and that made the other things all right.
A Million Reasons Not to Go to War
The Battle of Britain was fought just twenty-two years after the close of World War I, ironically called the “Great War,” or the “war to end all wars.” Great Britain had been on the victorious side of that bloody conflict, and for the first decade after the war’s end in 1918, it felt like it had won. But starting in about 1929, the narrative changed in a dramatic way as the nation began to realize the terrible price that it had paid. With the bitter reality setting in, England stopped feeling like a victor.
This staggering 180-degree shift was generated by a number of sources. A popular London play, Journey’s End, stunned its audiences with its antiwar theme. Books, many of them personal memoirs by those who had served in the Great War, began to appear, telling of the horror of that war. Newspapers and magazines began to focus on the stories that either had not been told or had not been believed: stories such as the stark truth that sixty thousand young Englishmen had fallen on the first day of fighting at the First Battle of the Somme.
Sixty thousand soldiers! Without gaining an inch of ground!
The antiwar fervor was fed by the grim facts. World War I had resulted in the death of almost one million of Great Britain’s finest, with twice that number wounded—this from a nation with a total population of only thirty million people. The war also left half a million widows and an unknown number of children without their fathers.
Such stunning figures simply could not be ignored.
The intensity of the antiwar fervor was remarkable, with pacifism coming into vogue not only in Britain but also throughout much of Europe. One well-known and not unusual example of the attitudes of the time came in 1933 when the Oxford student union approved a resolution that “‘this House will in no circumstances fight for King and Country.’”3 The same year, a victorious Labor Party candidate ran on the promise that he would close all recruiting stations and do away with the army and the air force. He called for England to set the example by demanding worldwide disarmament. And he wasn’t the only pacifist candidate to win.4
The pacifist wave that rolled over England was also fed by other factors besides the terrible human cost of the previous war. Its time having come and gone, the once-great British Empire was on an irreversible downward slide. After generations of belonging to the most powerful nation in the world, the English found that sad fact dif
ficult to accept. Traditional economic principles were in shambles as the nation found itself in the throes of the worldwide Great Depression. Nearly one-fourth of the workforce was unemployed. In some parts of the country, the unemployment rate was 70 percent. Britain’s export industry was dying. Hunger riots broke out. Feelings of betrayal and resentment boiled over, resulting in many symbols of wealth or privilege being attacked. In an embarrassing indication of the nation’s steep decline, the venerable British navy found its sailors rebelling as their wages were reduced.
While the ruling elite found imperialism still attractive, the working people were no longer enamored by its cost in money and men, leaving a philosophical vacuum that had to be filled.
In the midst of this political uncertainty, the Communist party emerged as an acceptable alternative, many of England’s intellectual elite enlisting in the Communist cause. Russia was held up as a great success story, visitors to Stalin’s sadistic empire having been brainwashed into believing that the fairy-tale harmony and prosperity created by the Russian propaganda machine were real.
With the Russian Bear rising up in Eastern Europe, a genuine fear that England might be the victim of a Communist revolution began to dominate the political thinking of the time.
But through this great fear, a ray of hope began to shine.
Unexpectedly, and with astonishing speed, Germany rose as a counterweight to the Communist Bear. Feeding on the seeming success of the Fascist rulers in Italy (though a tyrant, Benito Mussolini did appear to create stability and economic growth), the Fascist movement began to stir in Germany, a desperate country that was suffering not only from the ravages of the Depression but also from the shame of a lost war and the oppressive peace agreement that had followed.
With the rise of Fascism, a man named Adolf Hitler forced himself onto the national stage.
Some in England welcomed the new movement as a bulwark against a Communist wave sweeping over Europe. With a desire for peace at any cost, and the dread of Communism hanging over their heads, French and English leaders decided to befriend any anti-Communist government that might emerge in Germany.
Adolf Hitler was more than happy to oblige them.
Rise of the Reich
At the conclusion of World War I, the victorious Allies had imposed a new government upon Germany in the form of the Weimar Republic, a system that was completely foreign to the German mind-set. Under the best of circumstances, it might have succeeded. Under the desperate environment facing Germany after 1918, it was doomed to fail.
First and foremost, Germany had lost its honor in the Great War, no small matter to a nation where pride was an essential element of the national psyche. While the thought of another war caused the French or English to recoil in horror, many Germans viewed it as the only way to retrieve their national honor.
The costs imposed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles (which ended the First World War) were beyond punitive. A sum of more than $31 billion was demanded in reparations—an impossible amount for the Germans to pay. Severe limits were placed on the German military, which was not permitted to have airplanes, tanks, submarines, a draft, or a general staff. Its total army was limited to one hundred thousand soldiers. Germany’s national boundaries were reduced, and it was prohibited from fortifying its western border. Private property held abroad was confiscated. Its five great rivers were internationalized, meaning, essentially, that Germany had lost control over its own waterways.
The victorious Allies seemed intent on totally humiliating the German people.
It was a dangerous thing to do, for, even in defeat, Germany remained the most powerful nation in all of Europe. Its geographical location gave it enormous strategic advantages, and its population exceeded that of either France or Great Britain by more than thirty million people.
With the German people roiling under these oppressive conditions, the stage was set for a sudden and drastic change.
Adolf Hitler’s emergence as the leader of the National Socialist Party (the Nazis) was dramatic. In the election of 1928, that Nazi party won only 2.6 percent of the votes. It was viewed then as only a fringe party; no one took it seriously. But the Depression and the decadence of the Weimar Republic led to a dramatic acceptance of the Nazi creed. Just four years later, the Nazis were the largest political party in the country. The president of the Weimar Republic was forced to make Hitler the nation’s chancellor. Within months, the evil genius had maneuvered to be granted dictatorial powers by the elected Reichstag. With total authority to make laws, control the budget, and negotiate treaties, Hitler’s rise to power was complete.
Only fourteen years after its inception, the Weimar Republic came to a sudden end. Hitler immediately began to ignore the limitations of the Treaty of Versailles. Germany began to rearm. At first it did so secretly. By 1935, it was openly preparing for war.
A Fool’s Errand
From 1933 until 1939, a great melodrama unfolded in Berlin and London. While Germany rearmed, Britain engaged in what could only be described as purposeful ignorance, an ostrich with its head stuffed firmly in the sand. When Hitler demanded that Germany be allowed to rebuild its army, navy, and air force, three British prime ministers (McDonald, Baldwin, and Chamberlain) took up his cause, arguing that peace was possible only if Hitler’s demands were met.
Most of Britain’s other leaders and elites had nothing but praise for Hitler. After a brief visit, former Prime Minister David Lloyd George declared that Hitler had a single-minded purpose: to keep the peace. He happily assured his countrymen that as long as Hitler was Germany’s leader, the Germans would never invade any other land. A popular British journalist wrote of Hitler’s “‘large, brown eyes—so large and so brown that one might grow lyrical about them if one were a woman.’”5 Church of England clergymen spoke of Nazi devotion to religion and Christianity.
But Adolf Hitler was not a Christian. And he was not religious. He was a pagan and a man whose heart was full of murder and evil.
Fortunately, the pacifists were not the only leaders who had an opinion about the rising German Reich. Winston Churchill understood how evil Hitler really was. He understood the genuine threat that a rising Germany held for the rest of Europe—for the rest of the world. And though he was not the only voice of dissent, he was by far the most eloquent and persistent.
Regrettably, Churchill was not given the same attention and acclaim that Hitler was. While Hitler’s crude speeches were met with near delirium, Churchill was “distrusted, disliked—even hated—by those who did not share his conviction that Germany threatened the peace and England must arm to defend her shores.”6 His voice of dissent was even mocked. On one occasion, when addressing students at Oxford University, he stated that England needed to rearm if it was to remain safe in its island home. The laughter and raucous response to his statement grew so intense that he was forced to abandon his presentation.
In Germany, Hitler rebuilt his army and navy and created a powerful air force known as the Luftwaffe. He reinstituted the draft while also building a core of professional and highly capable officers. To pacify the suspicions of his neighbors, he continually declared that Germany would never threaten anyone.
In London, appeasement became the official government policy. It was declared that Germany had the right to rebuild its military might. Many argued that, in order to show its good faith in the peace process, England should unilaterally disarm. Speeches by Churchill pointing out the insanity of such a policy were delivered to a largely empty Parliament chamber. Later in the 1930s, when he spoke of the urgent need to rearm in order to protect their great nation, the response from his political opponents bordered on the absurd. They argued that they favored disarmament because they were realists. One said, “‘We deny the proposition that an increased British air force will make for the peace of the world.’”7
Hitler’s meteoric rise to power,
the rebuilding of his military, and England’s pacifist stance in the face of the rising threat are well documented:
1935: Hitler renounces the Treaty of Versailles, invokes anti-Semitic laws, and obtains the capacity for air superiority over England.
1936: Germany drives France from the Rhineland; Italy joins Germany in an alliance.
1937: Neville Chamberlain becomes prime minister and establishes appeasement as his official government policy.
1938: Hitler seizes Austria; Churchill proposes an Allied response to Hitler; Chamberlain refuses, saying that it might anger the German leader. At Munich, Chamberlain sells out the Czechs.
1939: Hitler seizes Czechoslovakia; Hitler invades Poland; the Allies (with England and France as the primary members) declare war on Germany.
By 1940, the clash of civilizations had finally come to a head.
On May 10, Germany unleashed a full-scale attack on Holland, Belgium, and France. That same day, Winston Churchill became the prime minister of England.8
One Man and One Nation Stand Alone
King George did not want Churchill to be his prime minister. Most within the government and among the nation’s elite preferred just about anyone else. His support was tepid even among his own party members. Many assumed that Churchill would quickly fail and that Chamberlain would return to replace him.
But Churchill possessed two rare and precious gifts: first, a clear vision of the great threat that faced the free world; and second, the power of words.
In his first speech to the Parliament as prime minister, he stated with absolute clarity what the new government’s goal was:
I would say to the House, as I have said to those who have joined this Government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” . . .
