[b]22: OPERATION SEA LION: THE THWARTED INVASION OF BRITAIN[/b]

 

 

"THE FINAL GERMAN VICTORY over England is now only a question of time," General Jodl, Chief of Operations at OKW, wrote on June 30, 1940. "Enemy offensive operations on a large scale are no longer possible."

 

Hitler's favorite strategist was in a confident and complacent mood. France had capitulated the week before, leaving Britain alone and apparently helpless. On June 15 Hitler had informed the generals that he wanted the Army partially demobilized -- from 160 to 120 divisions. "The assumption behind this," Halder noted in his diary that day, "is that the task of the Army is fulfilled. The Air Force and Navy will be given the mission of carrying on alone the war against England."

 

In truth, the Army showed little interest in it. Nor was the Fuehrer himself much concerned. On June 17 Colonel Walter Warlimont, Jodl's deputy, informed the Navy that "with regard to the landing in Britain, the Fuehrer ... has not up to now expressed such an intention ... Therefore, even at this time, no preparatory work of any kind [has] been carried out in OKW." [1] Four days later, on June 21, at the very moment Hitler was entering the armistice car at Compiegne to humble the French, the Navy was informed that the "Army General Staff is not concerning itself with the question of England. Considers execution impossible. Does not know how operation is to be conducted from southern area ... General Staff rejects the operation." [2]

 

None of the gifted planners in any of the three German armed services knew how Britain was to be invaded, though it was the Navy, not unnaturally, which had first given the matter some thought. As far back as November 15, 1939, when Hitler was trying vainly to buck up his generals to launch an attack in the West, Raeder instructed the Naval War Staff to examine "the possibility of invading England, a possibility arising if certain conditions are fulfilled by the further course of the war." [3] It was the first time in history that any German military staff had been asked even to consider such an action. It seems likely that Raeder took this step largely because he wanted to anticipate any sudden aberration of his unpredictable Leader. There is no record that Hitler was consulted or knew anything about it. The furthest his thoughts went at this time was to get airfields and naval bases in Holland, Belgium and France for the tightening of the blockade against the British Isles.

 

By December 1939, the Army and Luftwaffe high commands were also giving some thought to the problem of invading Britain. Rather nebulous ideas of the three services were exchanged, but they did not get very far. In January 1940, the Navy and Air Force rejected an Army plan as unrealistic. To the Navy it did not take into account British naval power; to the Luftwaffe it underestimated the R.A.F. "In conclusion," remarked the Luftwaffe General Staff in a communication to OKH, "a combined operation with a landing in England as its object must be rejected." [4] Later, as we shall see, Goering and his aides were to take a quite contrary view.

 

The first mention in the German records that Hitler was even facing the possibility of invading Britain was on May 21, the day after the armored forces drove through to the sea at Abbeville. Raeder discussed "in private" with the Fuehrer "the possibility of a later landing in England." The source of this information is Admiral Raeder,' whose Navy was not sharing in the glory of the astounding victories of the Army and Air Force in the West and who, understandably, was seeking means of bringing his service back into the picture. But Hitler's thoughts were on the battle of encirclement to the north and on the Somme front then forming to the south. He did not trouble his generals with matters beyond these two immediate tasks.

 

The naval officers, however, with little else to do, continued to study the problem of invasion, and by May 27 Rear Admiral Kurt Fricke, Chief of the Naval War Staff Operations Division, came up with a fresh plan entitled Studie England. Preliminary work was also begun on rounding up shipping and developing landing craft, the latter of which the Germany Navy was entirely bereft. In this connection Dr. Gottfried Feder, the economic crank who had helped Hitler draft the party program in the early Munich days and who was now a State Secretary in the Ministry of Economics, where his crackpot ideas were given short shrift, produced plans for what he called a "war crocodile." This was a sort of self-propelled barge made of concrete which could carry a company of two hundred men with full equipment or several tanks or pieces of artillery, roll up on any beach and provide cover for the disembarking troops and vehicles. It was taken quite seriously by the Naval Command and even by Halder, who mentioned it in his diary, and was discussed at length by Hitler and Raeder on June 20. But nothing came of it in the end.

 

To the admirals nothing seemed to be coming of an invasion of the British Isles as June approached its end. Following his appearance at Compiegne on June 21, Hitler went off with some old cronies to do the sights of Paris briefly [i] and then to visit the battlefields, not of this war but of the first war, where he had served as a dispatch runner. With him was his tough top sergeant of those days, Max Amann, now a millionaire Nazi publisher. The future course of the war -- specifically, how to continue the fight against Britain -- seemed the least of his concerns, or perhaps it was merely that he believed that this little matter was already settled, since the British would now come to "reason" and make peace.

 

Hitler did not return to his new headquarters, Tannenberg, west of Freudenstadt in the Black Forest, until the twenty-ninth of June. The next day, coming down to earth, he mulled over Jodl's paper on what to do next. It was entitled "The Continuation of the War against England." [6] Though Jodl was second only to Keitel at OKW in his fanatical belief in the Fuehrer's genius, he was, when left alone, usually a prudent strategist. But now he shared the general view at Supreme Headquarters that the war was won and almost over. If Britain didn't realize it, a little more force would have to be supplied to remind her. For the "siege" of England, his memorandum proposed three steps: intensification of the German air and sea war against British shipping, storage depots, factories and the R.A.F.; "terror attacks against the centers of population"; "a landing of troops with the objective of occupying England."

 

Jodl recognized that "the fight against the British Air Force must have top priority." But, on the whole, he thought this as well as other aspects of the assault could be carried out with little trouble.

 

[quote]Together with propaganda and periodic terror attacks, announced as reprisals, this increasing weakening of the basis of food supply will paralyze and finally break the will of the people to resist, and thereby force its government to capitulate. [ii][/quote]

 

As for a landing, it could

 

[quote]only be contemplated after Germany has gained control of the air. A landing, therefore, should not have as its objective the military conquest of England, a task that could be left to the Air Force and Navy. Its aim should rather be to administer the deathblow [Todesstoss] to an England already economically paralyzed and no longer capable of fighting in the air, if this is still necessary.[iii][/quote]

 

However, thought Jodl, all this might not be necessary.

 

 

[quote]Since England can no longer fight for victory, but only for the preservation of its possessions and its world prestige she should, according to all predictions. be inclined to make peace when she learns that she can still get it now at relatively little cost.[/quote]

 

This was what Hitler thought too and he immediately set to work on his peace speech for the Reichstag. In the meantime, as we have seen, he ordered (July 2) some preliminary planning for a landing and on July 16, when no word of "reason" had come from London, issued Directive No. 16 for Sea Lion. At last, after more than six weeks of hesitation, it was decided to invade Britain, "if necessary." This, as Hitler and his generals belatedly began to realize, would have to be a major military operation, not without its risks and depending for success on whether the Luftwaffe and the Navy could prepare the way for the troops against a far superior British Navy and a by no means negligible enemy Air Force.

 

Was Sea Lion a serious plan? And was it seriously intended that it should be carried out?

 

To this day many have doubted it and they have been reinforced in their opinions by the chorus from the German generals after the war. Rundstedt, who was in command of the invasion, told Allied investigators in 1945:

 

[quote]The proposed invasion of England was nonsense, because adequate ships were not available ... We looked upon the whole thing as a sort of game because it was obvious that no invasion was possible when our Navy was not in a position to cover a crossing of the Channel or carry reinforcements. Nor was the German Air Force capable of taking on these functions if the Navy failed ... I was always very skeptical about the whole affair ... I have a feeling that the Fuehrer never really wanted to invade England. He never had sufficient courage ... He definitely hoped that the English would make peace ... [7][/quote]

 

Blumentritt, Rundstedt's chief of operations, expressed similar views to Liddell Hart after the war, claiming that "among ourselves we talked of it [Sea Lion] as a bluff." [8]

 

I myself spent a few days at the middle of August on the Channel, snooping about from Antwerp to Boulogne in search of the invasion army. On August 15, at Calais and at Cap Gris-Nez, we saw swarms of German bombers and fighters heading over the Channel toward England on what turned out to be the first massive air assault. And while it was evident that the Luftwaffe was going all out, the lack of shipping and especially of invasion barges in the ports and in the canals and rivers behind them left me with the impression that the Germans were bluffing. They simply did not have the means, so far as I could see, of getting their troops across the Channel.

 

But one reporter can see very little of a war and we know now that the Germans did not begin to assemble the invasion fleet until September 1. As for the generals, anyone who read their interrogations or listened to them on cross-examination at the Nuremberg trials learned to take their postwar testimony with more than a grain of salt. [iv] The trickiness of man's memory is always considerable and the German generals were no exception to this rule. Also they had many axes to grind, one of the foremost being to discredit Hitler's military leadership. Indeed, their principal theme, expounded at dreary length in their memoirs and in their interrogations and trial testimony, was that if they had been left to make the decisions Hitler never would have led the Third Reich to defeat.

 

Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for posterity and the truth, the mountainous secret German military files leave no doubt that Hitler's plan to invade Britain in the early fall of 1940 was deadly serious and that, though given to many hesitations, the Nazi dictator seriously intended to carry it out if there were any reasonable chance of success. Its ultimate fate was settled not by any lack of determination or effort but by the fortunes of war, which now, for the first time, began to turn against him.

 

On July 17, the day after Directive No. 16 was issued to prepare the invasion and two days before the Fuehrer's "peace" speech in the Reichstag, the Army High Command (OKH) allocated the forces for Sea Lion and ordered thirteen picked divisions to the jumping-off places on the Channel coast for the first wave of the invasion. On the same day the Army Command completed its detailed plan for a landing on a broad front on the south coast of England.

 

The main thrust here, as in the Battle of France, would be carried out by Field Marshal von Rundstedt (as he would be titled on July 19) as commander of Army Group A. Six infantry divisions of General Ernst Busch's Sixteenth Army were to embark from the Pas de Calais and hit the beaches between Ramsgate and Bexhill. Four divisions of General Adolf Strauss's Ninth Army would cross the Channel from the area of Le Havre and land between Brighton and the Isle of Wight. Farther to the west three divisions of Field Marshal von Reichenau's Sixth Army (from Field Marshal von Bock's Army Group B), taking off from the Cherbourg peninsula, would be put ashore in Lyme Bay, between Weymouth and Lyme Regis. Altogether 90,000 men would form the first wave; by the third day the High Command planned on putting ashore a total of 260,000 men. Airborne forces would help out after being dropped at Lyme Bay and other areas. An armored force of no less than six panzer divisions, reinforced by three motorized divisions, would follow in the second wave and in a few days it was planned to have ashore a total of thirty-nine divisions plus two airborne divisions.

 

Their task was as follows. After the bridgeheads had been secured, the divisions of Army Group A in the southeast would push forward to the first objective, a line running between Gravesend and Southampton. Reichenau's Sixth Army would advance north to Bristol, cutting off Devon and Cornwall. The second objective would be a line between Maldon on the east coast north of the Thames estuary to the Severn River, blocking off Wales. "Heavy battles with strong British forces" were expected to develop at about the time the Germans reached their first objective. But they would be quickly won, London surrounded, and the drive northward resumed. [9] Brauchitsch told Raeder on July 17 that the whole operation would be finished in a month and would be relatively easy. [v] [10]

 

But Raeder and the Naval High Command were skeptical. An operation of such size on such a broad front -- it stretched over two hundred miles from Ramsgate to Lyme Bay -- was simply beyond the means of the German Navy to convoy and protect. Raeder so informed OKW two days later and brought it up again on July 21 when Hitler summoned him, Brauchitsch and General Hans Jeschonnek (Chief of the Luftwaffe General Staff) to a meeting in Berlin. The Fuehrer was still confused about "what is going on in England." He appreciated the Navy's difficulties but stressed the importance of ending the war as soon as possible. For the invasion forty divisions would be necessary, he said, and the "main operation" would have to be completed by September 15. On the whole the warlord was in an optimistic mood despite Churchill's refusal at that very moment to heed his peace appeal.

 

[quote]England's situation is hopeless [Halder noted Hitler as saying]. The war has been won by us. A reversal of the prospects of success is impossible. [11][/quote]

 

But the Navy, faced with the appalling task of transporting a large army across the choppy Channel in the face of a vastly stronger British Navy and of an enemy Air Force that seemed still rather active, was not so sure. On July 29 the Naval War Staff drew up a memorandum advising "against undertaking the operation this year" and proposing that "it be considered in May 1941 or thereafter." [12]

 

Hitler, however, insisted on considering it on July 31, 1940, when he again summoned his military chiefs, this time to his villa on the Obersalzberg. Besides Raeder, Keitel and Jodl were there from OKW and Brauchitsch and Halder from the Army High Command. The Grand Admiral, as he now was, did most of the talking. He was not in a very hopeful mood.

 

September 15, he said, would be the earliest date for Sea Lion to begin, and then only if there were no "unforeseen circumstances due to the weather or the enemy." When Hitler inquired about the weather problem Raeder responded with a lecture on the subject that grew quite eloquent and certainly forbidding. Except for the first fortnight in October the weather, he explained, was "generally bad" in the Channel and the North Sea; light fog came in the middle of that month and heavy fog at the end. But that was only part of the weather problem. "The operation," he declared, "can be carried out only if the sea is calm." If the water were rough, the barges would sink and even the big ships would be helpless, since they could not unload supplies. The Admiral grew gloomier with every minute that he contemplated what lay ahead.

 

[quote]Even if the first wave crosses successfully [he went on] under favorable weather conditions, there is no guarantee that the same favorable weather will carry through the second and third waves ... As a matter of fact, we must realize that no traffic worth mentioning will be able to cross for several days, until certain harbors can be utilized.[/quote]

 

That would leave the Army in a fine pickle, stranded on the beaches without supplies and reinforcements. Raeder now came to the main point of the differences between the Army and the Navy. The Army wanted a broad front from the Straits of Dover to Lyme Bay. But the Navy simply couldn't provide the ships necessary for such an operation against the expected strong reaction of the British Navy and Air Force. Raeder therefore argued strongly that the front be shortened -- to run only from the Dover Straits to Eastbourne. The Admiral saved his clincher for the end.

 

"All things considered," he said, "the best time for the operation would be May 1941."

 

But Hitler did not want to wait that long. He conceded that "naturally" there was nothing they could do about the weather. But they had to consider the consequences of losing time. The German Navy would not be any stronger vis-a-vis the British Navy by spring. The British Army at the moment was in poor shape. But give it another eight to ten months and it would have from thirty to thirty-five divisions, which was a considerable force in the restricted area of the proposed invasion. Therefore his decision (according to the confidential notes made by both Raeder and Halder) [13] was as follows:

 

[quote]Diversions in Africa should be studied. But the decisive result can be achieved only by an attack on England. An attempt must therefore be made to prepare the operation for September 15, 1940 ... The decision as to whether the operation is to take place in September or is to be delayed until May 1941, will be made after the Air Force has made concentrated attacks on southern England for one week. If the effect of the air attacks is such that the enemy air force, harbors and naval forces, etc. are heavily damaged. Operation Sea Lion will be carried out in 1940. Otherwise it is to be postponed until May 1941.[/quote]

 

All now depended on the Luftwaffe.

 

The next day, August 1, Hitler issued as a consequence two directives from OKW, one signed by himself, the other by Keitel.

 

[quote]Fuehrer's Headquarters

 

August 1, 1940

 

TOP SECRET

 

Directive No. 17 for the Conduct of Air and Naval Warfare against England

 

In order to establish the conditions necessary for the final conquest of England, I intend to continue the air and naval war against the English homeland more intensively than heretofore.

 

To this end I issue the following orders:

 

1. The German Air Force is to overcome the British Air Force with all means at its disposal and as soon as possible ...

 

2. After gaining temporary or local air superiority the air war is to be carried out against harbors, especially against establishments connected with food supply ... Attacks on the harbors of the south coast are to be undertaken on the smallest scale possible, in view of our intended operations....

 

4. The Luftwaffe is to stand by in force for Operation Sea Lion.

 

5. I reserve for myself the decision on terror attacks as a means of reprisal.

 

6. The intensified air war may commence on or after August 6 ... The Navy is authorized to begin the projected intensified naval warfare at the same time.

 

ADOLF HITLER [14][/quote]

 

The directive signed by Keitel on behalf of Hitler the same day read in part:

 

[quote]TOP SECRET

 

Operation Sea Lion

 

The C. in C., Navy, having reported on July 31 that the necessary preparations for Sea Lion could not be completed before September 15, the Fuehrer has ordered:

 

Preparations for Sea Lion are to be continued and completed by the Army and Air Force by September 15.

 

Eight to fourteen days after the launching of the air offensive against Britain, scheduled to begin about August 5, the Fuehrer will decide whether the invasion will take place this year or not; his decision will depend largely on the outcome of the air offensive ...

 

In spite of the Navy's warning that it can guarantee only the defense of a narrow strip of coast (as far west as Eastbourne), preparations are to be continued for the attack on a broad basis, as originally planned . . . [15][/quote]

 

The last paragraph only served to inflame the feud between the Army and Navy over the question of a long or a short invasion front. A fortnight before, the Naval War Staff had estimated that to fulfill the demands of the Army for landing 100,000 men with equipment and supplies in the first wave, along a 200-mile front from Ramsgate to Lyme Bay, would necessitate rounding up 1,722 barges, 1,161 motorboats, 471 tugs and 155 transports. Even if it were possible to assemble such a vast amount of shipping, Raeder told Hitler on July 25, it would wreck the German economy, since taking away so many barges and tugs would destroy the whole inland-waterway transportation system, on which the economic life of the country largely depended.16 At any rate, Raeder made it clear, the protection of such an armada trying to supply such a broad front against the certain attacks of the British Navy and Air Force was beyond the powers of the German naval forces. At one point the Naval War Staff warned the Army that if it insisted on the broad front, the Navy might lose all of its ships.

 

But the Army persisted. Overestimating British strength as it did, it argued that to land on a narrow front would confront the attackers with a "superior" British land force. On August 7 there was a showdown between the two services when Halder met his opposite number in the Navy, Admiral Schniewind, the Chief of the Naval War Staff. There was a sharp and dramatic clash.

 

"I utterly reject the Navy's proposal," the Army General Staff Chief, usually a very calm man, fumed. "From the point of view of the Army 1 regard it as complete suicide. I might just as well put the troops that have landed straight through a sausage machine!"

 

According to the Naval War Staff's record of the meeting [vi] Schniewind replied that it would be "equally suicidal" to attempt to transport the troops for such a broad front as the Army desired, "in view of British naval supremacy."

 

It was a cruel dilemma. If a broad front with the large number of troops to man it was attempted, the whole German expedition might be sunk at sea by the British Navy. If a short front, with correspondingly fewer troops, was adopted, the invaders might be hurled back into the sea by the British Army. On August 10 Brauchitsch, the Commander in Chief of the Army, informed OKW that he "could not accept" a landing between Folkestone and Eastbourne. However, he was willing, albeit "very reluctantly," to abandon the landing at Lyme Bay in order to shorten the front and meet the Navy halfway.

 

This was not enough for the hardheaded admirals, and their caution and stubbornness were beginning to have an effect at OKW. On August 13 Jodi drafted an "appreciation" of the situation, laying down five conditions for the success of Sea Lion that seemingly would have struck the generals and admirals as almost ludicrous had their dilemma not been so serious. First, he said, the British Navy would have to be eliminated from the south coast, and second, the R.A.F. would have to be eliminated from the British skies. The other conditions concerned the landing of troops in a strength and with a rapidity that were obviously far beyond the Navy's powers. If these conditions were not fulfilled, he considered the landing "an act of desperation which would have to be carried out in a desperate situation, but which we have no cause to carry out now." [17]

 

If the Navy's fears were spreading to Jodl, the OKW Operations Chief's hesitations were having their effect on Hitler. All through the war the Fuehrer leaned much more heavily on Jodl than on the Chief of OKW, the spineless, dull-minded Keitel. It is not surprising, then, that on August 13, when Raeder saw the Supreme Commander in Berlin and requested a decision on the broad versus the narrow front, Hitler was inclined to agree with the Navy on the smaller operation. He promised to make a definite ruling the next day after he had seen the Commander in Chief of the Army. [18] After hearing Brauchitsch's views on the fourteenth, Hitler finally made up his mind, and on the sixteenth an OKW directive signed by Keitel declared that the Fuehrer had decided to abandon the landing in Lyme Bay, which Reichenau's Sixth Army was to have made. Preparations for landings on the narrower front on September 15 were to be continued, but now, for the first time, the Fuehrer's own doubts crept into a secret directive. "Final orders," it added, "will not be given until the situation is clear." The new order, however, was somewhat of a compromise. For a further directive that day enlarged the narrower front.

 

[quote]Main crossing to be on narrow front. Simultaneous landing of four to five thousand troops at Brighton by motorboats and the same number of airborne troops at Deal-Ramsgate. In addition, on D-minus-l Day the Luftwaffe is to make a strong attack on London, which would cause the population to flee from the city and block the roads. [19][/quote]

 

Although Halder on August 23 was scribbling a shorthand note in his diary that "on this basis, an attack has no chance of success this year," a directive on August 27 over Keitel's signature laid down final plans for landings in four main areas on the south coast between Folkestone and Selsey Bill, just east of Portsmouth, with the first objective, as before, a line running between Portsmouth and the Thames east of London at Gravesend, to be reached as soon as the beachheads had been connected and organized and the troops could strike north. At the same time orders were given to get ready to carry out certain deception maneuvers, of which the principal one was "Autumn Journey" (Herbstreise). This called for a large-scale feint against Britain's east coast, where, as has been noted, Churchill and his military advisers were still expecting the main invasion blow to fall. For this purpose four large liners, including Germany's largest, Europa and Bremen, and ten additional transports, escorted by four cruisers, were to put out from the southern Norwegian ports and the Heligoland Bight on D-minus-2 Day and head for the English coast between Aberdeen and Newcastle. The transports would be empty and the whole expedition would turn back as darkness fell, repeating the maneuver the next day. [20]

 

On August 30 Brauchitsch gave out a lengthy order of instructions for the landings, but the generals who received it must have wondered how much heart their Army chief now had in the undertaking. He entitled it "Instruction for the Preparation of Operation Sea Lion" -- rather late in the game to be ordering preparations for an operation that he commanded must be carried out from September 15. "The order for execution," he I added, "depends on the political situation" -- a condition that must have puzzled the unpolitical generals. [21]

 

On September 1 the movement of shipping from Germany's North Sea ports toward the embarkation harbors on the Channel began, and two days later, on September 3, came a further directive from OKW.

 

[quote]The earliest day for the sailing of the invasion fleet has been fixed as September 20, and that of the landing for September 21.

 

Orders for the launching of the attack will be given D-minus-10 Day. presumably therefore on September 11.

 

Final commands will be given at the latest on D-minus-3 Day, at midday.

 

All preparations must remain liable to cancellation 24 hours before zero hour.

 

KEITEL [22][/quote]

 

This sounded like business. But the sound was deceptive. On September 6 Raeder had another long session with Hitler. "The Fuehrer's decision to land in England," the Admiral recorded in the Naval Staff War Diary that night, "is still by no means settled, as he is firmly convinced that Britain's defeat will be achieved even without the 'landing.''' Actually, as Raeder's long recording of the talk shows, the Fuehrer discoursed at length about almost everything except Sea Lion: about Norway, Gibraltar, Suez, "the problem of the U.S.A.," the treatment of the French colonies and his fantastic views about the establishment of a "North Germanic Union." [23]

 

If Churchill and his military chiefs had only got wind of this remarkable conference the code word "Cromwell" might not have been sent out in England on the evening of the next day, September 7, signifying "Invasion imminent" and causing no end of confusion, the endless ringing of church bells by the Home Guard, the blowing of several bridges by Royal Engineers and the needless casualties suffered by those stumbling over hastily laid mines. [vii]

 

But on the late afternoon of Saturday, September 7, the Germans had begun their first massive bombing of London, carried out by 625 bombers protected by 648 fighters. It was the most devastating attack from the air ever delivered up to that day on a city -- the bombings of Warsaw and Rotterdam were pinpricks beside it -- and by early evening the whole dockside area of the great city was a mass of flames and every railway line to the south, so vital to the defense against invasion, was blocked. In the circumstances, many in London believed that this murderous bombing was the prelude to immediate German landings, and it was because of this more than anything else that the alert, "Invasion imminent," was sent out. As will shortly be seen, this savage bombing of London on September 7, though setting off a premature warning and causing much damage, marked a decisive turning point in the Battle of Britain, the first great decisive struggle in the air the earth had ever experienced, which was now rapidly approaching its climax.

 

The time for Hitler to make his fatal decision to launch the invasion or not to launch it was also drawing near. It was to be made, as the September 3 directive stipulated, on September 11, giving the armed services ten days to carry out the preliminaries. But on the tenth Hitler decided to postpone his decision until the fourteenth. There seem to have been at least two reasons for the delay. One was the belief at OKW that the bombing of London was causing so much destruction, both to property and to British morale, that an invasion might not be necessary. [viii]

 

The other reason arose from the difficulties the German Navy was beginning to experience in assembling its shipping. Besides the weather, which the naval authorities reported on September 10 as being "completely abnormal and unstable," the R.A.F., which Goering had promised to destroy, and the British Navy were increasingly interfering with the concentration of the invasion fleet. That same day the Naval War Staff warned of the "danger" of British air and naval attacks on German transport movements, which it said had "undoubtedly been successful." Two days later, on September 12, H.Q. of Naval Group West sent an ominous message to Berlin:

 

[quote]Interruptions caused by the enemy's air forces, long-range artillery and light naval forces have, for the first time, assumed major significance. The harbors at Ostend, Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne cannot be used as night anchorages for shipping because of the danger of English bombings and shelling. Units of the British Fleet are now able to operate almost unmolested in the Channel. Owing to these difficulties further delays are expected in the assembly of the invasion fleet.[/quote]

 

The next day matters grew worse. British light naval forces bombarded the chief Channel invasion ports, Ostend, Calais, Boulogne and Cherbourg, while the R.A.F. sank eighty barges in Ostend Harbor. In Berlin that day Hitler conferred with his service chiefs at lunch. He thought the air war was going very well and declared that he had no intention of running the risk of invasion. [24] In fact, Jodl got the impression from the Fuehrer's remarks that he had "apparently decided to abandon Sea Lion completely," an impression which was accurate for that day, as Hitler confirmed the following day -- when, however, he again changed his mind.

 

Both Raeder and Halder have left confidential notes of the meeting of the Fuehrer with his commanders in chief in Berlin on September 14. [25] The Admiral managed to slip Hitler a memorandum before the session opened, setting forth the Navy's opinion that

 

[quote]the present air situation does not provide conditions for carrying out the operation [Sea Lion], as the risk is still too great.[/quote]

 

At the beginning of the conference, the Nazi warlord displayed a somewhat negative mood and his thoughts were marred by contradictions. He would not give the order to launch the invasion, but neither would he call it off as, Raeder noted in the Naval War Diary, "he apparently had planned to do on September 13."

 

What were the reasons for his latest change of mind? Halder recorded them in some detail.

 

[quote]A successful landing [the Fuehrer argued] followed by an occupation would end the war in a short time. England would starve. A landing need not necessarily be carried out within a specified time ... But a long war is not desirable. We have already achieved everything that we need.[/quote]

 

British hopes in Russia and America, Hitler said, had not materialized. Russia was not going to bleed for Britain. America's rearmament would not be fully effective until 1945. As for the moment, the "quickest solution would be a landing in England. The Navy has achieved the necessary conditions. The operations of the Luftwaffe are above all praise. Four or five days of decent weather would bring the decisive results ... We have a good chance of bringing England to her knees."

 

What was wrong, then? Why hesitate any longer in launching the invasion?

 

The trouble was, Hitler conceded:

 

[quote]The enemy recovers again and again ... Enemy fighters have not yet been completely eliminated. Our own reports of successes do not give a completely reliable picture, although the enemy has been severely damaged.[/quote]

 

On the whole, then, Hitler declared, "in spite of all of our successes the prerequisite conditions for Operation Sea Lion have not yet been realized." (The emphasis is Halder's.)

 

Hitler summed up his reflections.

 

[quote]1. Successful landing means victory, but for this we must obtain complete air superiority.

 

2. Bad weather has so far prevented our attaining complete air superiority.

 

3. All other factors are in order.

 

Decision therefore: The operation will not be renounced yet.[/quote]

 

Having come to that negative conclusion, Hitler thereupon gave way to soaring hopes that the Luftwaffe might still bring off the victory that so tantalizingly and so narrowly continued to evade him. "The air attacks up to now," he said, "have had a tremendous effect, though perhaps chiefly on the nerves. Even if victory in the air is only achieved in ten or twelve days the English may yet be seized by mass hysteria."

 

To help bring that about, Jeschonnek of the Air Force begged to be allowed to bomb London's residential districts, since, he said, there was no sign of "mass panic" in London while these areas were being spared. Admiral Raeder enthusiastically supported some terror bombing. Hitler, however, thought concentration on military objectives was more important. "Bombing with the object of causing a mass panic," he said, "must be left to the last."

 

Admiral Raeder's enthusiasm for terror bombing seems to have been due mainly to his lack of enthusiasm for the landings. He now intervened to stress again the "great risks" involved. The situation in the air, he pointed out, could hardly improve before the projected dates of September 24-27 for the landing; therefore they must be abandoned "until October 8 or 24."

 

But this was practically to call off the invasion altogether, as Hitler realized, and he ruled that he would hold up his decision on the landings only until September 17 -- three days hence -- so that they still might take place on September 27. If not feasible then, he would have to think about the October dates. A Supreme Command directive was thereupon issued.

 

[quote]Berlin

 

September 14, 1940

 

TOP SECRET

 

The Fuehrer has decided:

 

The start of Operation Sea Lion is again postponed. A new order follows September 17. All preparations are to be continued.

 

The air attacks against London are to be continued and the target area expanded against military and other vital installations (e.g., railway stations).

 

Terror attacks against purely residential areas are reserved for use as an ultimate means of pressure. [26][/quote]

 

Thus though Hitler had put off for three days a decision on the invasion he had by no means abandoned it. Give the Luftwaffe another few days to finish off the R.A.F. and demoralize London, and the landing then could take place. It would bring final victory. So once again all depended on Goering's vaunted Air Force. It would make, in fact, its supreme effort the very next day.

 

The Navy's opinion of the Luftwaffe, however, grew hourly worse. On the evening of the crucial conference in Berlin the German Naval War Staff reported severe R.A.F. bombings of the invasion ports, from Antwerp to Boulogne.

 

[quote]... In Antwerp ... considerable casualties are inflicted on transports -- five transport steamers in port heavily damaged; one barge sunk, two cranes destroyed, an ammunition train blown up, several sheds burning.[/quote]

 

The next night was even worse, the Navy reporting "strong enemy air attacks on the entire coastal area between Le Havre and Antwerp." An S.O.S. was sent out by the sailors for more antiaircraft protection of the invasion ports. On September 17 the Naval Staff reported:

 

[quote]The R.A.F. are still by no means defeated: on the contrary they are showing increasing activity in their attacks on the Channel ports and in their mounting interference with the assembly movements. [ix] [27][/quote]

 

That night there was a full moon and the British night bombers made the most of it. The German Naval War Staff reported "very considerable losses" of the shipping which now jammed the invasion ports. At Dunkirk eighty-four barges were sunk or damaged, and from Cherbourg to Den Helder the Navy reported, among other depressing items, a 500-ton ammunition store blown up, a rations depot burned out, various steamers and torpedo boats sunk and many casualties to personnel suffered. This severe bombing plus bombardment from heavy guns across the Channel made it necessary, the Navy Staff reported, to disperse the naval and transport vessels already concentrated on the Channel and to stop further movement of shipping to the invasion ports.

 

[quote]Otherwise [it said] with energetic enemy action such casualties will occur in the course of time that the execution of the operation on the scale previously envisaged will in any case be problematic. [28][/quote]

 

It had already become so.

 

In the German Naval War Diary there is a laconic entry for September 17.

 

[quote]The enemy Air Force is still by no means defeated. On the contrary, it shows increasing activity. The weather situation as a whole does not permit us to expect a period of calm ... The Fuehrer therefore decides to postpone "Sea Lion" indefinitely. [29][/quote]

 

The emphasis is the Navy's.

 

Adolf Hitler, after so many years of dazzling successes, had at last met failure. For nearly a month thereafter the pretense was kept up that the invasion might still take place that autumn, but it was a case of whistling in the dark. On September 19 the Fuehrer formally ordered the further assembling of the invasion fleet to be stopped and the shipping already in the ports to be dispersed "so that the loss of shipping space caused by enemy air attacks may be reduced to a minimum."

 

But it was impossible to maintain even a dispersed armada and all the troops and guns and tanks and supplies that had been assembled to cross over the Channel for an invasion that had been postponed indefinitely. "This state of affairs," Halder exclaimed in his diary September 28, "dragging out the continued existence of Sea Lion, is unbearable." When Ciano and Mussolini met the Fuehrer on the Brenner on October 4, the Italian Foreign Minister observed in his diary that "there is no longer any talk about a landing in the British Isles." Hitler's setback put his partner, Mussolini, in the best mood he had been in for ages. "Rarely have I seen the Duce in such good humor ... as at the Brenner Pass today," Ciano noted. [30]

 

Already both the Navy and the Army were pressing the Fuehrer for a decision to call off Sea Lion altogether. The Army General Staff pointed out to him that the holding of the troops on the Channel "under constant British air attacks led to continual casualties."

 

Finally on October 12, the Nazi warlord formally admitted failure and called off the invasion until spring, if then. A formal directive was issued.

 

[quote]Fuehrer's Headquarters

 

October 12, 1940

 

TOP SECRET

 

The Fuehrer has decided that from now on until the spring, preparations for "Sea Lion" shall be continued solely for the purpose of maintaining political and military pressure on England.

 

Should the invasion be reconsidered in the spring or early summer of 1941, orders for a renewal of operational readiness will be issued later ...[/quote]

 

The Army was commanded to release its Sea Lion formations "for other duties or for employment on other fronts." The Navy was instructed to "take all measures to release personnel and shipping space." But both services were to camouflage their moves. "The British," Hitler laid it down, "must continue to believe that we are preparing an attack on a broad front." [31]

 

What had happened to make Adolf Hitler finally give in?

 

Two things: the fatal course of the Battle of Britain in the air, and the turning of his thoughts once more eastward, to Russia.

 

[b]THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN[/b]

 

Goering's great air offensive against Britain, Operation Eagle (Adlerangriffe), had been launched on August 15 with the objective of driving the British Air Force from the skies and thus achieving the one condition on which the launching of the invasion depended. The fat Reich Marshal, as he now was, had no doubts about victory. By mid-July he was confident that British fighter defenses in southern England could be smashed within four days by an all-out assault, thus opening the way for the invasion. To destroy the RA.F. completely would take a little longer, Goering told the Army High Command: from two to four weeks. [32] In fact, the bemedaled German Air Force chief thought that the Luftwaffe alone could bring Britain to her knees and that an invasion by land forces probably would not be necessary.

 

To obtain this mighty objective he had three great air fleets (Luftflotten): Number 2 under Field Marshal Kesselring, operating from the Low Countries and northern France, Number 3 under Field Marshal Sperrle, based on northern France, and Number 5 under General Stumpff, stationed in Norway and Denmark. The first two had a total of 929 fighters, 875 bombers and 316 dive bombers; Number 5 was much smaller, with 123 bombers and 34 twin-engined ME-110 fighters. Against this vast force the R.A.F. had for the air defense of the realm at the beginning of August between 700 and 800 fighters.

 

Throughout July the Luftwaffe gradually stepped up its attacks on British shipping in the Channel and on Britain's southern ports. This was a probing operation. Though it was necessary to clear the narrow waters of British ships before an invasion could begin, the main object of these preliminary air assaults was to lure the British fighters to battle. This failed. The R.A.F. Command shrewdly declined to commit more than a fraction of its fighters, and as a result considerable damage was done to shipping and to some of the ports. Four destroyers and eighteen merchant ships were sunk, but this preliminary sparring cost the Luftwaffe 296 aircraft destroyed and 135 damaged. The R.A.F. lost 148 fighters.

 

On August 12, Goering gave orders to launch Eagle the next day. As a curtain raiser heavy attacks were made on the twelfth on enemy radar stations, five of which were actually hit and damaged and one knocked out, but the Germans at this stage did not realize how vital to Britain's defenses radar was and did not pursue the attack. On the thirteenth and fourteenth the Germans put in the air some 1,500 aircraft, mostly against R.A.F. fighter fields, and though they claimed five of them had been "completely destroyed" the damage was actually negligible and the Luftwaffe lost forty-seven planes against thirteen for the R.A.F. [x]

 

August 15 brought the first great battle in the skies. The Germans threw in the bulk of their planes from all three air fleets, flying 801 bombing and 1,149 fighter sorties. Luftflotten 5, operating from Scandinavia, met disaster. By sending some 800 planes in a massive attack on the south coast the Germans had expected to find the northeast coast defenseless. But a force of a hundred bombers, escorted by thirty-four twin-engined ME-110 fighters, was surprised by seven squadrons of Hurricanes and Spitfires as it approached the Tyneside and severely mauled. Thirty German planes, mostly bombers, were shot down without loss to the defenders. That was the end of Air Fleet 5 in the Battle of Britain. It never returned to it.

 

In the south of England that day the Germans were more successful. They launched four massive attacks, one of which was able to penetrate almost to London. Four aircraft factories at Croydon were hit and five R.A.F. fighter fields damaged. In all, the Germans lost seventy-five planes, against thirty-four for the R.A.F. [xi] At this rate, despite their numerical superiority, the Germans could scarcely hope to drive the R.A.F. from the skies.

 

Now Goering made the first of his two tactical errors. The skill of British Fighter Command in committing its planes to battle against vastly superior attacking forces was based on its shrewd use of radar. From the moment they took off from their bases in Western Europe the German aircraft were spotted on British radar screens, and their course so accurately plotted that Fighter Command knew exactly where and when they could best be attacked. This was something new in warfare and it puzzled the Germans, who were far behind the British in the development and use of this electronic device.

 

[quote]We realized [Adolf Galland, the famous German fighter ace, later testified] that the R.A.F. fighter squadrons must be controlled from the ground by some new procedure because we heard commands skillfully and accurately directing Spitfires and Hurricanes on to German formations ... For us this radar and fighter control was a surprise and a very bitter one. [33][/quote]

 

Yet the attack on British radar stations which on August 12 had been so damaging had not been continued and on August 15, the day of his first major setback, Goering called them off entirely, declaring: "It is doubtful whether there is any point in continuing the attacks on radar stations, since not one of those attacked has so far been put out of action."

 

A second key to the successful defense of the skies over southern England was the sector station. This was the underground nerve center from which the Hurricanes and Spitfires were guided by radiotelephone into battle on the basis of the latest intelligence from radar, from ground observation posts and from pilots in the air. The Germans, as Galland noted, could hear the constant chatter over the air waves between the sector stations and the pilots aloft and finally began to understand the importance of these ground control centers. On August 24 they switched their tactics to the destruction of the sector stations, seven of which on the airfields around London were crucial to the protection of the south of England and of the capital itself. This was a blow against the very vitals of Britain's air defenses.

 

Until that day the battle had appeared to be going against the Luftwaffe. On August 17 it lost seventy-one aircraft against the R.A.F.'s twenty-seven. The slow Stuka dive bomber, which had helped to pave the way for the Army's victories in Poland and in the West, was proving to be a sitting duck for British fighters and on that day, August 17, was withdrawn by Goering from the battle, reducing the German bombing force by a third. Between August 19 and 23 there was a five-day lull in the air due to bad weather. Goering, reviewing the situation at Karinhall, his country show place near Berlin, on the nineteenth, ordered that as soon as the weather improved, the Luftwaffe was to concentrate its attacks exclusively on the Royal Air Force.

 

"We have reached the decisive period of the air war against England," he declared. "The vital task is the defeat of the enemy air force. Our first aim is to destroy the enemy's fighters." [34]

 

From August 24 to September 6 the Germans sent over an average of a thousand planes a day to achieve this end. For once the Reich Marshal was right. The Battle of Britain had entered its decisive stage. Though the R.A.F. pilots, already strained from a month of flying several sorties a day, put up a valiant fight, the German preponderance in sheer numbers began to tell. Five forward fighter fields in the south of England were extensively damaged and, what was worse, six of the seven key sector stations were so severely bombed that the whole communications system seemed to be on the verge of being knocked out. This threatened disaster to Britain.

 

Worst of all, the pace was beginning to tell on the R.A.F. fighter defense. In the crucial fortnight between August 23 and September 6 the British lost 466 fighters destroyed or badly damaged, and though they did not know it at the time the Luftwaffe losses were less: 385 aircraft, of which 214 were fighters and 138 bombers. Moreover, the R.A.F. had lost 103 pilots killed and 128 seriously wounded -- a quarter of all those available.

 

"The scales," as Churchill later wrote, "had tilted against Fighter Command ... There was much anxiety." A few more weeks of this and Britain would have had no organized defense of its skies. The invasion would almost certainly succeed.

 

And then suddenly Goering made his second tactical error, this one comparable in its consequences to Hitler's calling off the armored attack on Dunkirk on May 24. It saved the battered, reeling R.A.F. and marked one of the major turning points of history's first great battle in the air.

 

With the British fighter defense suffering losses in the air and on the ground which it could not for long sustain, the Luftwaffe switched its attack on September 7 to massive night bombings of London. The R.A.F. fighters were reprieved.

 

What had happened in the German camp to cause this change in tactics which was destined to prove so fatal to the ambitions of Hitler and Goering? The answer is full of irony.

 

To begin with, there was a minor navigational error by the pilots of a dozen German bombers on the night of August 23. Directed to drop their loads on aircraft factories and oil tanks on the outskirts of London, they missed their mark and dropped bombs on the center of the capital, blowing up some homes and killing some civilians. The British thought it was deliberate and as retaliation bombed Berlin the next evening.

 

It didn't amount to much. There was a dense cloud cover over Berlin that night and only about half of the eighty-one R.A.F. bombers dispatched found the target. Material damage was negligible. But the effect on German morale was tremendous. For this was the first time that bombs had ever fallen on Berlin.

 

[quote]The Berliners are stunned [I wrote in my diary the next day, August 26]. They did not think it could ever happen. When this war began, Goering assured them it couldn't ... They believed him. Their disillusionment today therefore is all the greater. You have to see their faces to measure it.[/quote]

 

Berlin was well defended by two great rings of antiaircraft and for three hours while the visiting bombers droned above the clouds, which prevented the hundreds of searchlight batteries from picking them up, the flak fire was the most intense I had ever seen. But not a single plane was brought down. The British also dropped a few leaflets saying that "the war which Hitler started will go on, and it will last as long as Hitler does." This was good propaganda, but the thud of exploding bombs was better.

 

The R.A.F. came over in greater force on the night of August 28-29 and, as I noted in my diary, "for the first time killed Germans in the capital of the Reich." The official count was ten killed and twenty-nine wounded. The Nazi bigwigs were outraged. Goebbels, who had ordered the press to publish only a few lines on the first attack, now gave instructions to cry out at the "brutality" of the British flyers in attacking the defenseless women and children of Berlin. Most of the capital's dailies carried the same headline: COWARDLY BRITISH ATTACK. Two nights later, after the third raid, the headlines read: BRITISH AIR PIRATES OVER BERLIN!

 

[quote]The main effect of a week of constant British night bombings [I wrote in my diary on September 1] has been to spread great disillusionment among the people and sow doubt in their minds ... Actually the bombings have not been very deadly.[/quote]

 

September 1 was the first anniversary of the beginning of the war. I noted the mood of the people, aside from their frayed nerves at having been robbed of their sleep and frightened by the surprise bombings and the terrific din of the flak.

 

[quote]In this year German arms have achieved victories never equaled even in the brilliant military history of this aggressive, militaristic nation. And yet the war is not yet over or won. And it was on this aspect that people's minds were concentrated today. They long for peace. And they want it before the winter comes. [/quote]

 

Hitler deemed it necessary to address them on September 4 on the occasion of the opening of the Winterhilfe campaign at the Sportpalast. His appearance there was kept secret to the last moment, apparently out of fear that enemy planes might take advantage of the cloud cover and break up the meeting, though it was held in the afternoon, an hour before dark.

 

I have rarely seen the Nazi dictator in a more sarcastic mood or so given to what the German people regarded as humor, though Hitler was essentially a humorless man. He described Churchill as "that noted war correspondent." For "a character like Duff Cooper," he said, "there is no word in conventional German. Only the Bavarians have a word that adequately describes this type of man, and that is Krampfhenne," which might be translated as "a nervous old hen."

 

[quote]The babbling of Mr. Churchill or of Mr. Eden [he said] -- reverence for old age forbids the mention of Mr. Chamberlain -- doesn't mean a thing to the German people. At best, it makes them laugh.[/quote]

 

And Hitler proceeded to make his audience, which consisted mostly of women nurses and social workers, laugh -- and then applaud hysterically. He was faced with the problem of answering two questions uppermost in the minds of the German people: When would Britain be invaded, and what would be done about the night bombings of Berlin and other German cities? As to the first:

 

[quote]In England they're filled with curiosity and keep asking, "Why doesn't he come?" Be calm. Be calm. He's coming! He's coming![/quote]

 

His listeners found that crack very funny, but they also believed that it was an unequivocal pledge. As to the bombings, he began by a typical falsification and ended with a dire threat:

 

[quote]Just now ... Mr. Churchill is demonstrating his new brain child, the night air raid. Mr. Churchill is carrying out these raids not because they promise to be highly effective, but because his Air Force cannot fly over Germany in daylight ... whereas German planes are over English soil every day ... Whenever the Englishman sees a light, he drops a bomb ... on residential districts, farms and villages.[/quote]

 

And then came the threat.

 

[quote]For three months I did not answer because I believed that such madness would be stopped. Mr. Churchill took this for a sign of weakness. We are now answering night for night.

 

When the British Air Force drops two or three or four thousand kilograms of bombs, then we will in one night drop 150-, 230-, 300- or 400,000 kilograms.

 

At this point, according to my diary, Hitler had to pause because of the hysterical applause of the German women listeners.

 

"When they declare," Hitler continued, "that they will increase their attacks on our cities, then we will raze their cities to the ground." At this, I noted, the young ladies were quite beside themselves and applauded phrenetically. When they had recovered, he added, "We will stop the handiwork of these night air pirates, so help us God!"

 

On hearing this, I also noted, "the young German women hopped to their feet and, their breasts heaving, screamed their approval!"

 

"The hour will come," Hitler concluded, "when one of us will break, and it will not be National Socialist Germany!" At this, I finally noted, "the raving maidens kept their heads sufficiently to break their wild shouts of joy with a chorus of 'Never! Never!'"

 

Ciano in Rome, listening to the broadcast, which was made from records some hours later, confessed to being perplexed. "Hitler must be nervous," he concluded. [35]

 

His nerves were a factor in the fatal decision to switch the Luftwaffe's winning daylight attacks on the R.A.F. to massive night bombings of London. This was a political as well as a military decision, made in part to revenge the bombings of Berlin and other German cities (which were but pinpricks compared to what the Luftwaffe was doing to Britain's cities) and to destroy the will of the British to resist by razing their capital. If it succeeded, and Hitler and Goebbels had no doubt it would, an invasion might not be necessary.

 

And so on the late afternoon of September 7 the great air attack on London began. The Germans threw in, as we have seen, [xii] 625 bombers and 648 fighters. At about 5 P.M. that Saturday the first wave of 320 bombers, protected by every fighter the Germans had, flew up the Thames and began to drop their bombs on Woolwich Arsenal, various gas works, power stations, depots and mile upon mile of docks. The whole vast area was soon a mass of flames. At one locality, Silvertown, the population was surrounded by fire and had to be evacuated by water. At 8:10 P.M., after dark, a second wave of 250 bombers arrived and resumed the attack, which was kept up by successive waves until dawn at 4: 30 on Sunday morning. The next evening at 7:30, the attack was renewed by two hundred bombers and continued throughout the night. Some 842 persons were killed and 2,347 wounded, according to the official British historian, during these first two nights, and vast damage was inflicted on the sprawling city. [36] The assault went on all the following week, night after night. [xiii]

 

And then, stimulated by its successes, or what it thought were such, the Luftwaffe decided to carry out a great daylight assault on the battered, burning capital. This led on Sunday, September 15, to one of the decisive battles of the war.

 

Some two hundred German bombers, escorted by three times as many fighters, appeared over the Channel about midday, headed for London. Fighter Command had watched the assembling of the attackers on its radar screens and was ready. The Germans were intercepted before they approached the capital, and though some planes got through, many were dispersed and others shot down before they could deliver their bomb load. Two hours later an even stronger German formation returned and was routed. Though the British claimed to have shot down 185 Luftwaffe planes, the actual figure, as learned after the war from the Berlin archives, was much lower -- fifty-six, but thirty-four of these were bombers. The R.A.F. lost only twenty-six aircraft.

 

The day had shown that the Luftwaffe could not for the moment, anyway, now that it had given Fighter Command a week to recover, carry out a successful major daylight attack on Britain. That being so, the prospect of an effective landing was dim. September 15 therefore was a turning point, "the crux," as Churchill later judged, of the Battle of Britain. Though Goering the next day, in ordering a change of tactics that provided for the use of bombers in daylight no longer to bomb but merely to serve as decoys for British fighters, boasted that the enemy's fighters "ought to be finished off within four or five days," [37] Hitler and the Army and Navy commanders knew better and two days after the decisive air battle, on September 17, as has been noted, the Fuehrer called off Sea Lion indefinitely.

 

Although London was to take a terrible pounding for fifty-seven consecutive nights from September 7 to November 3 from a daily average of two hundred bombers, so that it seemed certain to Churchill, as he later revealed, that the city would soon be reduced to a rubble heap, and though most of Britain's other cities, Coventry above all, were to suffer great damage throughout that grim fall and winter, British morale did not collapse nor armament production fall off, as Hitler had so confidently expected. Just the opposite. Aircraft factories in England, one of the prime targets of the Luftwaffe bombers, actually outproduced the Germans in 1940 by 9,924 to 8,070 planes. Hitler's bomber losses over England had been so severe that they could never be made up, and in fact the Luftwaffe, as the German confidential records make clear, never fully recovered from the blow it received in the skies over Britain that late summer and fall.

 

The German Navy, crippled by the losses off Norway in the early spring, was unable, as its chiefs admitted all along, to provide the sea power for an invasion of Britain. Without this, and without air supremacy, the German Army was helpless to move across the narrow Channel waters. For the first time in the war Hitler had been stopped, his plans of further conquest frustrated, and just at the moment, as we have seen, when he was certain that final victory had been achieved.

 

He had never conceived -- nor had anyone else up to that time -- that a decisive battle could be decided in the air. Nor perhaps did he yet realize as the dark winter settled over Europe that a handful of British fighter pilots, by thwarting his invasion, had preserved England as a great base for the possible reconquest of the Continent from the west at a later date. His thoughts were perforce turning elsewhere; in fact, as we shall see, had already turned.

 

Britain was saved. For nearly a thousand years it had successfully defended itself by sea power. Just in time, its leaders, a very few of them, despite all the bungling (of which these pages have been so replete) in the interwar years, had recognized that air power had become decisive in the mid-twentieth century and the little fighter plane and its pilot the chief shield for defense. As Churchill told the Commons in another memorable peroration on August 20, when the battle in the skies still raged and its outcome was in doubt, "never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

 

[b]IF THE INVASION HAD SUCCEEDED[/b]

 

The Nazi German occupation of Britain would not have been a gentle affair. The captured German papers leave no doubt of that. On September 9 Brauchitsch, the Commander in Chief of the Army, signed a directive providing that "the able-bodied male population between the ages of seventeen and forty-five [in Britain] will, unless the local situation calls for an exceptional ruling, be interned and dispatched to the Continent." Orders to this effect were sent out a few days later by the Quartermaster General, in OKH, to the Ninth and Sixteenth armies, which were assembled for the invasion. In no other conquered country, not even in Poland, had the Germans begun with such a drastic step. Brauchitsch's instructions were headed "Orders Concerning the Organization and Function of Military Government in England" and went into considerable detail. They seem designed to ensure the systematic plunder of the island and the terrorization of its inhabitants. A special "Military Economic Staff England" was set up on July 27 to achieve the first aim. Everything but normal household stocks was to be confiscated at once. Hostages would be taken. Anybody posting a placard the Germans didn't like would be liable to immediate execution, and a similar penalty was provided for those who failed to turn in firearms or radio sets within twenty-four hours.

 

But the real terror was to be meted out by Himmler and the S.S. For this the dreaded R.S.H.A., [xiv] under Heydrich, was put in charge. The man who was designated to direct its activities on the spot from London was a certain S.S. colonel, Professor Dr. Franz Six, another of the peculiar intellectual gangsters who in the Nazi time were somehow attracted to the service of Himmler's secret police. Professor Six had left his post as dean of the economic faculty of Berlin University to join Heydrich's S.D., where he specialized in "scientific matters," the weirder side of which cast such a spell over the bespectacled Heinrich Himmler and his fellow thugs. What the British people missed by not having Dr. Six in their presence may be judged by his later career in Russia, where he was active in the S.S. Einsatzgruppen, which distinguished themselves in wholesale massacres there, one of the professor's specialties being to ferret out captured Soviet political commissars for execution.  [xv]

 

On August 1, the R.S.H.A. captured archives reveal, Goering told Heydrich to get busy. The S.S. Security Police and the S.D. (Security Service) were to

 

[quote]commence their activities simultaneously with the military invasion in order to seize and combat effectively the numerous important organizations and societies in England which are hostile to Germany.[/quote]

 

On September 17, which, ironically, was the date on which Hitler postponed the invasion indefinitely, Professor Six was formally appointed to his new post in England by Heydrich and told:

 

[quote]Your task is to combat, with the requisite means, all anti-German organizations, institutions, and opposition groups which can be seized in England, to prevent the removal of all available material and to centralize and safeguard it for future exploitation. I designate London as the location of your headquarters ... and I authorize you to set up small Einsatzgruppen in other parts of Great Britain as the situation dictates and the necessity arises.[/quote]

 

Actually, already in August Heydrich had organized six Einsatzkommando for Britain which were to operate from headquarters in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh -- or in Glasgow, if the Forth Bridge was found blown up. They were to carry out Nazi terror; to begin with, they were to arrest all those on the "Special Search List, G.B. [Great Britain]," which in May had been hurriedly and carelessly compiled by Walter Schellenberg, another one of Himmler's bright young university graduates, who was then chief of Amt (Bureau) IV E -- Counterespionage -- of R.S.H.A. Or so Schellenberg later claimed, though at this time he was mainly occupied in Lisbon, Portugal, on a bizarre mission to kidnap the Duke of Windsor.

 

The Special Search List, G.B. (die Sonderfahndungsliste, G.B.) is among the more amusing "invasion" documents found in the Himmler papers, though of course it was not meant to be. It contains the names of some 2,300 prominent persons in Great Britain, not all of them English, whom the Gestapo thought it important to incarcerate at once. Churchill is there, naturally, along with members of the cabinet and other well-known politicians of all parties. Leading editors, publishers and reporters. including two former Times correspondents in Berlin, Norman Ebbutt and Douglas Reed, whose dispatches had displeased the Nazis, are on the list. British authors claim special attention. Shaw's name is conspicuously absent, but H. G. Wells is there along with such writers as Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, J. B. Priestley, Stephen Spender, C. P. Snow, Noel Coward, Rebecca West, Sir Philip Gibbs and Norman Angell. The scholars were not omitted either. Among them: Gilbert Murray, Bertrand Russell, Harold Laski, Beatrice Webb and J. B. S. Haldane.

 

The Gestapo also intended to take advantage of its sojourn in England to round up both foreign and German emigres. Paderewski, Freud [xvi] and Chaim Weizmann were on its list, as well as Bend, the President, and Jan Masaryk, the Foreign Minister, of the Czechoslovak government in exile. Of the German refugees there were, among many others, two former personal friends of Hitler who had turned on him: Hermann Rauschning and Putzi Hanfstaengl. Many English names were so badly misspelled as to make them almost unrecognizable and sometimes bizarre identifications were attached, as the one for Lady Bonham Carter, who was also listed as "Lady Carter-Bonham" and described not only as "born, Violet Asquith," but as "an Encirclement lady politician." After each name was marked the bureau of R.S.H.A. which was to handle that person. Churchill was to be placed in the hands of Amt VI-Foreign Intelligence -- but most were to be handed over to Amt IV -- the Gestapo. [xvii]

 

This Nazi Black Book actually formed a supplement to a supposedly highly secret handbook called Informationsheft, which Schellenberg also claims to have written, and whose purpose seems to have been to aid the conquerors in looting Britain and stamping out anti-German institutions there. It is even more amusing than the Search List. Among the dangerous institutions, besides the Masonic lodges and Jewish organizations, which deserved "special attention" by R.S.H.A., were the "public schools" (in England, the private schools), the Church of England, which was described as "a powerful tool of British imperial politics," and the Boy Scouts, which was put down as "an excellent source of information for the British Intelligence Service." Its revered leader and founder, Lord Baden- Powell, was to be immediately arrested.

 

Had the invasion been attempted the Germans would not have been received gently by the British. Churchill later confessed that he had often wondered what would have happened. Of this much he was certain:

 

[quote]The massacre would have been on both sides grim and great. There would have been neither mercy nor quarter. They would have used terror, and we were prepared to go all lengths. [38][/quote]

 

He does not say specifically to what lengths, but Peter Fleming in his book on Sea Lion gives one of them. The British had decided, he says, as a last resort and if all other conventional methods of defense failed, to attack the German beachheads with mustard gas, sprayed from low-flying airplanes. It was a painful decision, taken not without much soul searching at the highest level; and as Fleming comments, the decision was "surrounded by secrecy at the time and ever since." [39]

 

This particular massacre on which Churchill speculates, the unleashing of this kind of terror which the Gestapo planned, did not take place at this time in this place -- for reasons which have been set down in this chapter. But in less than a year, in another part of Europe, the Germans were to unleash horrors on a scale never before experienced.

 

Already, even before the invasion of Britain was abandoned, Adolf Hitler had come to a decision. He would turn on Russia in the following spring.

 

[b]POSTSCRIPT: THE NAZI PLOT TO KIDNAP THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF WINDSOR[/b]

 

More amusing than important, but not without its insight into the ludicrous side of the rulers of the Third Reich that summer of their great conquests, is the story of the Nazi plot to kidnap the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and induce the former King of England to work with Hitler for a peace settlement with Great Britain. The evolution of the fantastic plan is told at length in the captured German Foreign Office documents [40] and touched on by Walter Schellenberg, the youthful S.S.-S.D. chief who was designated to carry it out, in his memoirs. [41]

 

The idea, Schellenberg was told by Ribbentrop, was Hitler's. The Nazi Foreign Minister embraced it with all the enthusiasm to which his abysmal ignorance often drove him, and the German Foreign Office and its diplomatic representatives in Spain and Portugal were forced to waste a great deal of time on it during the climactic summer of 1940.

 

After the fall of France in June 1940, the Duke, who had been a member of the British military mission with the French Army High Command, made his way with the Duchess to Spain to escape capture by the Germans. On June 23 the German ambassador in Madrid, Eberhard von Stohrer, a career diplomat, telegraphed Berlin:

 

[quote]The Spanish Foreign Minister requests advice with regard to the treatment of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor who were to arrive in Madrid today, apparently en route to England by way of Lisbon. The Foreign Minister assumes that we might perhaps be interested in detaining the Duke here and possibly establishing contact with him. Please telegraph instructions.[/quote]

 

Ribbentrop shot back instructions by wire the next day. He suggested that the Windsors be "detained for a couple of weeks in Spain" but warned that it must not appear "that the suggestion came from Germany." On the following day, June 25, Stohrer replied: "The [Spanish] Foreign Minister promised me to do everything possible to detain Windsor here for a time." The Foreign Minister, Colonel Juan Beigbeder y Atienza, saw the Duke and reported on his talk to the German ambassador, who informed Berlin by "top secret" telegram of July 2 that Windsor would not return to England unless his wife were recognized as a member of the royal family and he himself given a position of importance. Otherwise he would settle in Spain in a castle promised him by the Franco government.

 

[quote]Windsor has expressed himself to the Foreign Minister and other acquaintances [the ambassador added] against Churchill and against this war.[/quote]

 

The Windsors proceeded to Lisbon early in July and on July 11 the German minister there informed Ribbentrop that the Duke had been named Governor of the Bahamas but "intends to postpone his departure there as long as possible ... in hope of a turn of events favorable to him."

 

[quote]He is convinced [the minister added] that if he had remained on the throne war would have been avoided, and he characterized himself as a firm supporter of a peaceful arrangement with Germany. The Duke definitely believes that continued severe bombing would make England ready for peace.[/quote]

 

This intelligence spurred the arrogant German Foreign Minister to get off from his special train at Fuschl a telegram marked "Very Urgent, Top Secret" to the German Embassy in Madrid late on the evening of the same day, July 11. He wanted the Duke to be prevented from going to the Bahamas by being brought back to Spain, preferably by his Spanish friends. "After their return to Spain," Ribbentrop advised, "the Duke and his wife must be persuaded or compelled to remain on Spanish territory." If necessary Spain could "intern" him as an English officer and treat him "as a military fugitive."

 

[quote]At a suitable occasion [Ribbentrop further advised] the Duke must be informed that Germany wants peace with the English people, that the Churchill clique stands in the way of it, and that it would be a good thing if the Duke would hold himself in readiness for further developments. Germany is determined to force England to peace by every means of power and upon this happening would be prepared to accommodate any desire expressed by the Duke, especially with a view to the assumption of the English throne by the Duke and Duchess. If the Duke should have other plans, but be prepared to cooperate in the establishment of good relations between Germany and England, we would likewise be prepared to assure him and his wife of a subsistence which would permit him ... to lead a life suitable for a king. [xviii][/quote]

 

The fatuous Nazi Minister, whose experience as German ambassador in London had taught him little about the English, added that he had information that the "British Secret Service" was going to "do away" with the Duke as soon as it got him to the Bahamas.

 

The next day, July 12, the German ambassador in Madrid saw Ramon Serrano Suner, Spanish Minister of the Interior and brother-in-law of Franco, who promised to get the Generalissimo in on the plot and carry out the following plan. The Spanish government would send to Lisbon an old friend of the Duke, Miguel Primo de Rivera, Madrid leader of the Falange and son of a former Spanish dictator. Rivera would invite the Duke to Spain for some hunting and also to confer with the government about Anglo -- Spanish relations. Suner would inform the Duke about the British secret-service plot to bump him off.

 

[quote]The Minister [the German ambassador informed Berlin] will then add an invitation to the Duke and Duchess to accept Spanish hospitality, and possibly financial assistance as well. Possibly also the departure of the Duke could be prevented in some other way. In this whole plan we remain completely in the background.[/quote]

 

Rivera, according to the German papers, returned from Lisbon to Madrid after his first visit with the Windsors on July 16 and brought a message to the Spanish Foreign Minister, who passed it along to the German ambassador, who, in turn, flashed it to Berlin. Churchill, the message said, had designated the Duke as Governor of the Bahamas "in a very cool and categorical letter" and ordered him to proceed to his post at once. Should he fail to do so, "Churchill has threatened Windsor with a court-martial." The Spanish government agreed, the dispatch added, "to warn the Duke most urgently once more against taking up the post."

 

Rivera was back from a second visit to Lisbon on July 22, and the next day the German ambassador in Madrid duly reported on his findings in a "most urgent, top secret" telegram to Ribbentrop.

 

[quote]He had two long conversations with the Duke of Windsor; at the last one the Duchess was present also. The Duke expressed himself very freely ... Politically he was more and more distant from the King and the present British Government. The Duke and Duchess have less fear of the King, who was quite foolish, than of the shrewd Queen, who was intriguing skillfully against the Duke and particularly against the Duchess.[/quote]

 

[quote]The Duke was considering making a public statement ... disavowing present English policy and breaking with his brother ... The Duke and Duchess said they very much desired to return to Spain.[/quote]

 

To facilitate this, the ambassador had arranged with Suner, the telegram added, to send another Spanish emissary to Portugal "to persuade the Duke to leave Lisbon, as if for a long excursion in an automobile, and then to cross the border at a place which has been arranged, where the Spanish secret police will see that there is a safe crossing of the frontier."

 

Two days later the ambassador added further information from Rivera in an "urgent and strictly confidential" telegram to Ribbentrop.

 

[quote]When he gave the Duke the advice not to go to the Bahamas, but to return to Spain, since the Duke was likely to be called upon to play an important role in English policy and possibly to ascend the English throne, both the Duke and Duchess gave evidence of astonishment. Both ... replied that according to the English constitution this would not be possible after the abdication. When the confidential emissary then expressed his expectation that the course of the war might bring about changes even in the English constitution, the Duchess especially became very pensive.[/quote]

 

In this dispatch the German ambassador reminded Ribbentrop that Rivera did not know of "any German interest in the matter." The young Spaniard apparently believed he was acting for his own government.

 

By the last week in July, the Nazi plan to kidnap the Windsors had been drawn up. Walter Schellenberg was assigned personally by Hitler to carry it out. He had flown from Berlin to Madrid, conferred with the German ambassador there, and gone on to Portugal to begin work. On July 26 the ambassador was able to file a long "most urgent and top secret" dispatch to Ribbentrop outlining the plot.

 

[quote]... A firm intention by the Duke and Duchess to return to Spain can be assumed. To strengthen this intention the second confidential emissary was sent off today with a letter to the Duke very skillfully composed; as an enclosure to it was attached the very precisely prepared plan for carrying out the crossing of the frontier.

 

According to this plan the Duke and his wife should set out officially for a summer vacation in the mountains at a place near the Spanish frontier, in order to cross over at a precisely designated place at a particular time in the course of a hunting trip. Since the Duke is without passports, the Portuguese frontier official in charge there will be won over.

 

At the time set according to plan, the first confidential emissary [Primo de Rivera] is to be staying at the frontier with Spanish forces suitably placed in order to guarantee safety.

 

Schellenberg, with his group, is operating out of Lisbon in closest relation to the same purpose.

 

For this purpose, the journey to the place of the summer vacation, as well as the vacation itself, will be shadowed with the help of a trustworthy Portuguese police chief ...

 

At the exact moment of the crossing of the frontier as scheduled the Schellenberg group is to take over the security arrangements on the Portuguese side of the frontier and continue thus into Spain as a direct escort which is to be unobtrusively changed from time to time.

 

For the security of the entire plan, the [Spanish] Minister has selected another confidential agent, a woman, who can make contact if necessary with the second confidential agent and can also, if necessary, get information to the Schellenberg group.

 

In case there should be an emergency as a result of action by the British Intelligence Service preparations are being made whereby the Duke and Duchess can reach Spain by plane. In this case, as in the execution of the first plan, the chief requisite is to obtain willingness to leave by psychologically adroit influence upon the pronounced English mentality of the Duke, without giving the impression of flight, through exploiting anxiety about the British Intelligence Service and the prospect of free political activity from Spanish soil.

 

In addition to the protection in Lisbon, it is being considered in case of necessity to induce willingness to leave by a suitable scare maneuver to be charged to the British Intelligence Service.[/quote]

 

Such was the Nazi plan to kidnap the Windsors. It had a typical German clumsiness, and it was handicapped by the customary German inability to understand "the English mentality of the Duke."

 

The "scare maneuvers" were duly carried out by Schellenberg. One nigh, he arranged for some stone-throwing against the windows of the Windsors' villa and then circulated rumors among the servants that it had been done by the "British Secret Service." He had a bouquet delivered to the Duchess with a card: "Beware of the machinations of the British Secret Service. From a Portuguese friend who has your interests at heart." And in an official report to Berlin he reported that "a firing of shots (harmless breaking of the bedroom window) scheduled for the night of July 30 was omitted, since the psychological effect on the Duchess would only have been to increase her desire to depart."

 

Time was getting short. On July 30 Schellenberg reported the arrival in Lisbon of Sir Walter Monckton, an old friend of the Duke and an important official in the British government. His mission was obviously to get the Windsors speeding toward the Bahamas as soon as possible. On the same day the German ambassador in Madrid was telegraphing Ribbentrop "most urgent, top secret" that a German agent in Lisbon had just informed him that the Duke and Duchess were planning to depart on August 1 -- two days hence. In view of this information he asked Ribbentrop "whether we should not, to some extent, emerge from our reserve." According to German intelligence, the ambassador continued, the Duke had expressed to his host, the Portuguese banker Ricardo do Espirito Santo Silva, "a desire to come in contact with the Fuehrer." Why not arrange for a meeting between Windsor and Hitler?

 

The next day, July 31, the ambassador was again wiring Ribbentrop "most urgent and top secret," telling him that according to the Spanish emissary, who had just returned from seeing the Windsors in Lisbon, the Duke and Duchess, while "strongly impressed by reports of English intrigues against them and the danger of their personal safety," apparently were planning to sail on August I, though Windsor was trying "to conceal the true date." The Spanish Minister of the Interior, the ambassador added, was going to make "a last effort to prevent the Duke and Duchess from leaving."

 

The news that the Windsors might be leaving so soon alarmed Ribbentrop and from his special train at Fuschl he got off a "most urgent, top secret" telegram to the German minister in Lisbon late on the afternoon of the same day, July 31. He asked that the Duke be informed through his Portuguese banker host of the following:

 

[quote]Basically Germany wants peace with the English people. The Churchill clique stands in the way of this peace. Following the rejection of the Fuehrer's last appeal to reason, Germany is now determined to force England to make peace by every means in her power. It would be a good thing if the Duke were to keep himself prepared for further developments. In such case Germany would be willing to co-operate most closely with the Duke and to clear the way for any desire expressed by the Duke and Duchess ... Should the Duke and Duchess have other intentions, but be ready to collaborate in the establishment of a good relationship between Germany and England, Germany is likewise prepared to co-operate with the Duke and to arrange the future of the Ducal couple in accordance with their wishes. The Portuguese confidant, with whom the Duke is living, should make the most earnest effort to prevent his departure tomorrow, since reliable reports are in our possession to the effect that Churchill intends to get the Duke into his power in the Bahamas in order to keep him there permanently, and also because the establishment of contact at an appropriate moment with the Duke on the Bahama Islands would present the greatest difficulty for us ...[/quote]

 

The German Foreign Minister's urgent message reached the legation in Lisbon shortly before midnight. The German minister saw Senhor Espirito Santo Silva during the course of the night and urged him to pass the word on to his distinguished guest. This the banker did on the morning of August I and according to a dispatch of the legation the Duke was deeply impressed.

 

[quote]The Duke paid tribute to the Fuehrer's desire for peace, which was in complete agreement with his own point of view. He was firmly convinced that if he had been King it would never have come to war. To the appeal made to him to co-operate at a suitable time in the establishment of peace he agreed gladly. However, at the present time he must follow the official orders of his Government. Disobedience would disclose his intentions prematurely, bring about a scandal, and deprive him of his prestige in England. He was also convinced that the present moment was too early for him to come forward, since there was as yet no inclination in England for an approach to Germany. However, as soon as this frame of mind changed he would be ready to return immediately ... Either England would yet call upon him, which he considered to be entirely possible, or Germany would express the desire to negotiate with him. In both cases he was prepared for any personal sacrifice and would make himself available without the slightest personal ambition.

 

He would remain in continuing communication with his previous host and had agreed with him upon a code word, upon receiving which he would immediately come back over.[/quote]

 

To the consternation of the Germans, the Duke and Duchess sailed on the evening of August I on the American liner Excalibur. In a final report on the failure of his mission made in a long telegram "to the Foreign Minister [Ribbentrop] personally" on the following day, Schellenberg declared that he had done everything possible right up to the last moment to prevent the departure. A brother of Franco, who was the Spanish ambassador in Lisbon, was prevailed upon to make a last-minute appeal to the Windsors not to go. The automobile carrying the ducal baggage was "sabotaged," Schellenberg claimed, so that the luggage arrived at the ship late. The Germans spread rumors that a time bomb had been planted aboard the ship. Portuguese officials delayed the sailing time until they had searched the liner from top to bottom.

 

Nevertheless, the Windsors departed that evening. The Nazi plot had failed. Schellenberg, in his final report to Ribbentrop, blamed it on the influence of Monckton, on the collapse of "the Spanish plan" and on "the Duke's mentality."

 

There is one last paper on the plot in the captured files of the German Foreign Minister. On August 15 the German minister in Lisbon wired Berlin: "The confidant has just received a telegram from the Duke from Bermuda, asking him to send a communication as soon as action was advisable. Should any answer be made?"

 

No answer has been found in the Wilhelmstrasse papers. By the middle of August, Hitler had decided to conquer Great Britain by armed force. There was no need to find a new King for England. The island, like all the other conquered territory, would be ruled from Berlin. Or so Hitler thought.

 

So much for this curious tale, as told by the secret German documents and added to by Schellenberg, who was the least reliable of men -- though it is difficult to believe that he invented his own role, which he admits was a ridiculous one, out of whole cloth.

 

In a statement made through his London solicitors on August 1, 1957, after the German documents were released for publication, the Duke branded the communications between Ribbentrop and the German ambassadors in Spain and Portugal as "complete fabrications and, in part, gross distortions of the truth." Windsor explained that while in Lisbon in 1940, waiting to sail for the Bahamas, "certain people," whom he discovered to be pro-Nazi sympathizers, made definite efforts to persuade him to return to Spain and not assume his post as governor.

 

"It was even suggested to me that there would be a personal risk to the Duchess and myself if we were to proceed to the Bahamas," he said. "At no time did I ever entertain any thought of complying with such a suggestion, which I treated with the contempt it deserved."

 

The British Foreign Office issued a formal statement declaring that the Duke never wavered in his loyalty to Great Britain during the war. [42]

 

_______________

 

[b]Notes:[/b]

 

i. And to gaze down at the tomb of Napoleon at the Invalides. "That," he told his faithful photographer. Heinrich Hoffmann, "was the greatest and finest moment of my life."

 

ii. The emphasisis Jodl's.

 

iii. Jodl also suggested the possibility of "extending the war to the periphery" -- that is, attacking the British Empire with the help not only of Italy but of Japan, Spain and Russia.

 

iv. Even so astute a military critic as Liddell Hart neglected always to do so, and  this neglect mars his book The German Generals Talk. Talk they did, but not always  with very good memories or even very truthfully.

 

v. German intelligence overestimated British strength on the ground throughout July, August and September by about eight divisions. Early in July the German General Staff estimated British strength at from fifteen to twenty divisions "of fighting value." Actually there were twenty-nine divisions in England at this time but not more than half a dozen of much "fighting value," as they had practically no armor or artillery. But contrary to widespread belief at the time, which has lingered to this day, the British Army by the middle of September would have been a match for the German divisions then allocated for the first wave of invasion. By that time it had ready to meet an attack on the south coast a force of sixteen well-trained divisions, of which three were armored, with four divisions plus an armored brigade covering the east coast from the Thames to the Wash. This represented a remarkable recovery after the debacle at Dunkirk, which had left Britain virtually defenseless on land in June.

 

British intelligence of the German plans was extremely faulty and for the first three months of the invasion threat almost completely wrong. Throughout the summer, Churchill and his military advisers remained convinced that the Germans would make their main landing attempt on the east coast and it was here that the bulk of the British land forces were concentrated until September.

 

vi. In his diary entry that evening Halder did not quote himself as above. He declared,  however, that "the talk led only to the confirmation of an unbridgeable gap." The  Navy, he said, was "afraid of the British High Seas Fleet and maintained that a  defense against this danger by the Luftwaffe was impossible." Obviously by this  time the German Navy, if not the Army, had few illusions about the striking power  of Goering's Air Force.

 

vii. Churchill says that neither he nor the chiefs of staff were "aware" that the decisive code word Cromwell had been given. It was sent out by Headquarters of the Home Forces. (Their Finest Hour, p. 312.) But four days later, on September II, the Prime Minister did broadcast a warning that if the invasion were going to take place it could not "be long delayed. Therefore," he said, "we must regard the next week or so as a very important period in our history. It ranks with the days when the Spanish Armada was approaching the Channel, and Drake was finishing his game of bowls; or when Nelson stood between us and Napoleon's Grand Army at Boulogne."

 

viii. The Germans were greatly impressed by reports from the embassy in Washington, which relayed information received there from London and embroidered on it. The American General Staff was said to believe that Britain couldn't hold out much longer. According to Lieutenant Colonel von Lossberg (Im Wehrmacht Fuehrungsstab, p. 91) Hitler seriously expected a revolution to break out in Britain. Lossberg was an Army representative on OKW.

 

 

ix. On September 16. according to a German authority, R.A.F. bombers surprised a  large invasion training exercise and inflicted heavy losses in men and landing vessels.  This gave rise to many reports in Germany and elsewhere on the Continent  that the Germans had actually attempted a landing and been repulsed by the British. (Georg W. Feuchter, Geschichte des Luftkriegs, p. 176.) I heard such a "report" on the night of September 16 in Geneva, Switzerland, where I was taking a few days off. On September 18 and again on the next day I saw two long ambulance trains unloading wounded soldiers in the suburbs of Berlin. From the bandages, I concluded the wounds were mostly burns. There had been no fighting anywhere for three months on land.

 

On September21, confidential German Navy papers recorded that 21 transports and 214 barges -- some 12 per cent of the total assembled for the invasion -- had been lost or damaged. (Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs. p. 102.)

 

x. The Luftwaffe claimed 134 British craft against a loss of 34. From that date on  both sides grossly overestimated the damage they did the other.

 

xi. In London that evening an official communique reported 182 German planes shot  down and 43 more probably destroyed. This gave a great fillip to British morale in  general and to that of the hard-pressed fighter pilots in particular.

 

xii. Above, p. 769.

 

xiii. At this time night defenses had not yet been perfected and the German losses were negligible.

 

 

xiv. R.S.H.A., the initials of the Reich Central Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt),  which, as has been noted, took over control in 1939 of the Gestapo, the  Criminal Police and the Security Service, or S.D.

 

xv. Dr. Six was sentenced in 1948 at Nuremberg as a war criminal to twenty years in  prison, but was released in 1952.

 

xvi. The famous psychoanalyst had died in London in 1939.

 

xvii. A number of Americans are on the arrest list, including Bernard Baruch, John Gunther, Paul Robeson, Louis Fischer, Daniel de Luce (the A.P. correspondent, who is listed under the D's as "Daniel, de Luce -- U.S.A. correspondent") and M. W. Fodor, the Chicago Daily News correspondent, who was well known for his anti- Nazi writings.

 

 

xviii. Fifty million Swiss francs, deposited in Switzerland, Ribbentrop told Schellenberg.  adding that "the Fuehrer is quite ready to go to a higher figure."

 

 

 

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