by Max Hastings
A widespread illusion persists, that in 1940 Churchill broadcast constantly. In reality, he delivered only seven speeches over the BBC between May and December, roughly one a month. But the impact of these was enormous, upon a nation which in those days clung to its radio receivers as storm-bound sailors once lashed themselves to the masts of their ships. There were no advancing British armies to follow on the map, no fleets reporting victories. Instead the prime minister’s rolling periods, his invincible certainties in a world of raving tyrants, anchored his people and their island.
Few interventions of his own that summer were more significant than that which he made on August 23, at the height of the perceived peril of German invasion. Britain’s threadbare defences were further denuded by the dispatch to Gen. Sir Archibald Wavell’s Middle East Command of 154 priceless tanks, to resist the anticipated Italian assault on Egypt. This was one of Churchill’s most difficult decisions of the war. Eden and Dill deserve credit for urging it, at first in the face of the prime minister’s doubts. It is impossible that they could have made such a commitment without a profound, almost perverse, belief that Hitler would not risk invasion—and perhaps also a recognition that Britain’s defence rested overwhelmingly on the Royal Navy and RAF rather than the army.
It is not surprising that an ignorant civilian such as “Chips” Channon should have written on September 16 of expecting “almost certain invasion.”179 It is more remarkable that Britain’s military commanders and intelligence chiefs shared this fear, supposing that a massive German descent might take place without warning. Amphibious operations, opposed landings where port facilities are unavailable, do not require mere mechanical transfers of troops from sea to shore. They rank among the most difficult and complex of all operations of war. Two years of planning and preparation were needed in advance of the return to France of Allied armies in June 1944. It is true that, in the summer of 1940, Britain lay almost naked, while four years later Hitler’s Atlantic Wall was formidably fortified and garrisoned. In 1940, Britain lacked the deep penetration of German wireless traffic which was attained later in the war, so that the Chiefs of Staff had only the patchiest picture of the Wehrmacht’s movements on the Continent.
Nonetheless it remains extraordinary that, at every suitable tide until late autumn, Britain’s commanders feared that a German army might arrive on the southern or eastern coast. The navy warned—though the prime minister disbelieved them—that the Germans might achieve a surprise landing of 100,000 men. The most significant enemy preparation for invasion was the assembly of 1,918 barges on the Dutch coast. Hitler’s military planners envisaged putting ashore a first wave of three airborne regiments, nine divisions—and 125,000 horses—between Ramsgate and Lyme Bay, a commitment for which available shipping was wholly inadequate. Another serious problem, never resolved, was that the Wehrmacht’s desired initial dawn landing required an overnight Channel passage. It would be almost impossible to embark troops and concentrate barges without attracting British notice. The defenders would be granted at least six hours of darkness in which to engage German invasion convoys, free from Luftwaffe intervention. The Royal Navy deployed around twenty destroyers at Harwich, and a similar force at Portsmouth, together with powerful cruiser elements. Channel invasion convoys would have suffered shocking, probably fatal losses. Once daylight came, German pilots had shown themselves much more skilful than those of the RAF and Fleet Air Arm in delivering attacks on shipping. The defending warships would have been badly battered. But for a German amphibious armada, the risk of destruction was enormous. It was less the RAF than the Royal Navy, outnumbering the German fleet ten to one, that provided the decisive deterrent against invasion.
The British, however, with the almost sole exception of the prime minister, perceived all the perils on their own side. Dill, the CIGS, seemed “like all the other soldiers180 … very worried and anxious about the invasion, feeling that the troops are not trained and may not be steady.” Brooke, as C-in-C Home Forces, wrote on July 2 of “the nakedness of our defences.”181 The Royal Navy was apprehensive that, if German landings began, it might not receive adequate support from the RAF. Adm. Sir Reginald Ernle-Drax, C-in-C Nore, expressed himself “not satisfied that … the co-operation182 of our fighters was assured.”
The service chiefs were justified in fearing the outcome, if German forces secured a beachhead. Brooke believed, probably rightly, that if invaders got ashore, Churchill would seek to take personal command of the ground battle—with disastrous consequences. In the absence of a landing, of course, the prime minister was able to perform his extraordinary moral function. The British generals’ fears of an unheralded assault reflected the trauma which defeat in France had inflicted upon them. It distorted their judgement about the limits of the possible, even for Hitler’s Wehrmacht. Churchill, by contrast, was always doubtful about whether the enemy would come. He grasped the key issue: that invasion would represent a far greater gamble than Germany’s May 10 attack in the west. Operation Sealion could not partially succeed. It must either achieve fulfilment or fail absolutely. Given Hitler’s mastery of the Continent, and the impotence of the British Army, he had no need to stake everything upon such a throw.
But in the summer and autumn of 1940, preparing a defence against invasion was not merely essential—it represented almost the only military activity of which Britain was capable. It was vital to incite the British people. If they were allowed to lapse into passivity, staring fearfully at the array of German might, all-conquering beyond the Channel, who could say whether their will for defiance would persist? One of Churchill’s great achievements, in those months, was to convince every man and woman in the country that they had roles to play in the greatest drama in their history, even if the practical utility of their actions and preparations was often pathetically small. Young Lt. Robert Hichens of the Royal Navy wrote: “I feel an immense joy183 at being British, the only people who have stood up to the air war blackmail.”
Between August 24 and September 6, the Luftwaffe launched six hundred sorties a day. British civilians were now dying by the hundreds. Devastation mounted remorselessly. Yet September 7 marked the turning point of the Battle of Britain. Göring switched his attacks from the RAF’s airfields to the city of London. A sterile debate persists, about whether Britain or Germany first provoked attacks on each other’s cities. On August 25184, following civilian casualties caused by Luftwaffe bombs falling on Croydon, Churchill personally ordered that the RAF’s Bomber Command should retaliate against Berlin. Some senior RAF officers resisted, on the grounds that such an attack, by the forces available, could make little impact and would probably incite the Germans to much more damaging action against British urban areas. Churchill overruled them, saying: “They had bombed London, whether on purpose or not, and the British people and London especially should know that we could hit back. It would be good for the morale of us all.” Some fifty British aircraft were dispatched to Berlin, and a few bombs fell on the city. Though the material damage was negligible, the Nazi leadership was indeed moved to urge a devastating response against London, though this would assuredly have come anyway.
On the night of September 7, two hundred Luftwaffe aircraft raided the capital. Air Vice Marshal Keith Park, commanding 11 Group, wrote on September 8: “It was burning all down the river. It was a horrid sight. But I looked down and said: ‘Thank God for that.’” The next day, Churchill visited the capital’s stricken East End. He saw misery and destruction, but knew how vastly these were to be preferred in Bethnal Green and Hackney than at Biggin Hill airfield or the south coast radar sites. The Germans had made a decisive strategic error. Thereafter, the urban centres of Britain paid a heavy price for the Luftwaffe’s raids, first by day and then by night. Daylight fighting continued over southern England until the end of October. But never again was Fighter Command’s survival in doubt. In a broadcast on September 11, Churchill told the British people that the German air force had “failed conspicuously�
�� to gain air mastery over southern England. As for invasion, “we cannot be sure that they will try at all.” But the danger persisted, and every precaution must be taken.
On September 12, when the prime minister visited Dungeness and North Foreland, on the Kent coast, with the C-in-C Home Forces, Alan Brooke wrote: “His popularity is astounding, everywhere crowds rush up and cheer him wildly.” U.S. general Raymond Lee perceived an improvement of temper even among the governing class, formerly so sceptical of Britain’s prospects. He wrote in his diary on September 15: “Thank God … the defeatist opinions185 expressed after Dunkirk are now no longer prevalent.” On September 17, Churchill told the Commons that in future its sessions should not be advertised beforehand: “We ought not to flatter ourselves by imagining that we are irreplaceable,” he said, addressing his fellow MPs in masterly language which suggested that he was confiding in a band of brothers, “but at the same time it cannot be denied that two or three hundred by-elections would be a quite needless complication of our affairs at this particular juncture.”
Once more, he asserted serene confidence: “I feel as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow that we shall be victorious.” He harangued Dalton, minister of economic warfare, with what that assiduous diarist described as his “usual vigorous rhetorical good sense,”186 pacing up and down his room all the while: “This is a workman’s war … The public will stand everything except optimism … The nation is finding the war not so unpleasant as it expected … The air attacks are doing much less damage than was expected before the war began … Don’t be like the knight in the story who was so slow in buckling on his armour that the tourney was over before he rode into the ring.”
The bombs that were now falling upon city streets, as well as upon aircraft factories and dockyards, at first caused some government alarm. Cheering cockneys cried “Stick it, Winnie!” and “We can take it!” as the prime minister toured blitz-stricken areas. But was this true? Tens of thousands of fugitives from cities became “trekkers,” plodding out into the countryside at dusk to escape the night raiders. There was evidence of near social breakdown in some bombed areas. Fighter Command, with its primitive air interception radar, had no effective counter to Luftwaffe assaults in darkness. Industrial production suffered severely. The destruction of homes and property, the incessant fear of bombardment, ate deep into many people’s spirits.
But as the blitz continued, the nation learned to live and work with its terrors and inconveniences. Ministers’ fears about morale subsided. Churchill rang Fighter Command one September night, to complain irritably to its duty officer: “I am on top of187 the Cabinet Office in Whitehall and can neither see nor hear a raider. Why don’t you clear London of the Red warning? We have all been down too long.” The RAF’s daily reports of losses inflicted on the enemy cheered Churchill and his people, though they were heavily exaggerated. On August 12, for instance, Churchill was told that 62 German aircraft had been shot down for 25 British. In reality, the Luftwaffe had lost only 27 planes. Likewise, two days later, Fighter Command claimed 78 for 3 British losses, whereas Göring had lost 34 for 13 RAF fighters shot down. The Duxford wing once alleged that it had destroyed 57 Luftwaffe aircraft. The real figure proved to be 8.
This chasm between claim and actuality persisted through the battle, and indeed the war. It attained a climax after the clashes of September 11, when the RAF suggested that 89 enemy aircraft had been lost for 28 of its own. In fact, 22 German planes had been shot down for 31 British. Yet the inflated figures were very serviceable to British spirits, and a towering reality persisted: Göring’s air groups were suffering unsustainable losses, two-to-one against those of Dowding’s squadrons. This was partly because almost all shot-down German aircrew became prisoners, while parachuting RAF pilots could fight again. More important still, British aircraft factories were outproducing those of Germany. In 1940, the Luftwaffe received a total of 3,382 new single- and twin-engined aircraft, while 4,283 single-engined machines were delivered to the RAF. The wartime direction of British industry was flawed by many misjudgements and failures. Here, however, was a brilliant and decisive achievement.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, C-in-C of Fighter Command, was a difficult man, not for nothing nicknamed “Stuffy.” He made his share of mistakes in the Battle of Britain, for instance in being slow to reinforce 11 Group when it became plain that the German effort was overwhelmingly directed against southeast England. Most of Fighter Command’s tactical doctrine proved mistaken. But Dowding was more farsighted than the Air Ministry; for instance, early in the war he urged the need for radar-equipped night fighters and long-range escorts. He displayed notable tenacity of purpose and made fewer blunders than the other side, which is how all battles are won.
His most significant contribution derived from understanding that his purpose must be to sustain Fighter Command in being, rather than to hazard everything upon the destruction of enemy aircraft. Each day, he husbanded reserves for the next. Churchill never acknowledged this refinement. Dowding’s policy offended the prime minister’s instinct to hurl every weapon against the foe. The airman, an austere spiritualist, could not offer Churchill congenial comradeship. Dowding’s remoteness rendered him unpopular with some of his officers. It was probably right to enforce his scheduled but delayed retirement when the battle was won. Nonetheless, the brutally abrupt manner in which this was done was a disgrace to the leaders of the RAF. Dowding’s cautious management of his squadrons contributed importantly to British victory.
Some historians today assert that Hitler was never serious about invading Britain. This view seems quite mistaken. It is true that the German armed forces’ preparations were unconvincing. British fears of imminent assault were unfounded, and reflected poorly upon the country’s intelligence and defence chiefs. But Hitler the opportunist would assuredly have launched an armada, if the Luftwaffe had gained control of the airspace over the Channel and southern England. Mediterranean experience soon showed that, in a hostile air environment, the Royal Navy would have found itself in deep trouble.
The Luftwaffe failed first because Fighter Command and its associated control facilities and radar stations were superbly organised. Second, the RAF had barely sufficient Hurricanes and Spitfires, and just enough skilled pilots, to engage superior numbers of enemy aircraft—though not as much superior as contemporary legend suggested. The Luftwaffe started its campaign with 760 serviceable Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighters, its most important aircraft, against some 700 RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires. Almost as important, the Bf-109 carried only sufficient fuel to over-fly southern Britain for a maximum of thirty minutes. The Luftwaffe had the technology to fit its planes with disposable fuel tanks, but did not use it. If the Bf-109s had indeed possessed greater endurance, Fighter Command’s predicament would have been much worse. As it was, the Germans could not sustain decisively superior forces over the battlefield, and were handicapped by failures of strategy and intelligence. In the early stages of the battle, Luftwaffe fighter tactics were markedly superior to those mandated by Fighter Command. But Dowding’s pilots learned fast, and by September matched the skills of their opponents.
The Royal Air Force, youngest and brashest of the three services, was the only one which thoroughly recognised the value of publicity. The Battle of Britain caused the prestige of the nation’s airmen to ascend to lofty heights, where it remained through the ensuing five years of the war. The RAF gained a glamour and public esteem which never faded. As Churchill always recognised, modern war is waged partly on battlefields, and partly also on airwaves, front pages and in the hearts of men and women. When Britain’s powers were so small it was vital to create an inspiriting legend for the nation, and for the world. To this in 1940 Britain’s airmen contributed mightily, both through their deeds and the recording of them. The RAF was a supremely twentieth-century creation, which gained Churchill’s admiration but incomplete understanding. He displayed an enduring emotionalism about the courage and sacrifices of th
e aircrews. The men of Bomber as well as Fighter Command were never subjected to the accusations of pusillanimity which the prime minister regularly hurled at Britain’s soldiers, and sometimes sailors. Like the British people, he never forgot that, until November 1942, the RAF remained responsible for their country’s only visible battlefield victory, against the Luftwaffe in 1940.
On October 11 at Chequers, Churchill said: “That man’s effort is flagging.”188 Göring’s Luftwaffe was by no means a spent force. The months of night blitz that lay ahead inflicted much pain and destruction, which Fighter Command lacked adequate technology to frustrate. When John Martin telephoned the Reform Club from Downing Street one night to enquire how it had been affected by a nearby blast, the porter responded: “The club is burning, sir.”189 But the RAF had denied the Germans daylight control of Britain’s airspace, and inflicted an unsustainable rate of loss. The Luftwaffe lacked sufficient mass to inflict decisive damage upon Britain. Hitler, denied the chance of a cheap victory, saw no need to take further risks by continuing the all-out air battle. Churchill’s nation and army remained incapable of frustrating his purposes on the Continent, or challenging his dominion over its peoples. German attention, as Churchill suspected, was now shifting eastwards, in anticipation of an assault upon Russia.
