British political decisionmakers eventually suspected that Germany would not cease its aggression, but could do little more than issue an ultimatum, advising Germany that Poland would receive British assistance if Hitler invaded. Nevertheless, Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 and forced a collapse in less than a month using a method of warfare known as the Blitzkrieg, or lightning war. This new form of warfare entailed new technology and tactics that concentrated tanks coordinated with air support as “flying artillery,” as a key element of a military system, which added to the speed of attack with fast communications. This strategy involved driving along a narrow formation of concentrate offensive forces to break through enemy defensive lines to create a breach to open the way for armoured units to penetrate rapidly to generate shock and disorganisation behind the defences, with further disorganisation inflicted by air attacks and preventing reinforcements being dispatched to reinforce them and seal those breaches. As a gap would widen, infantry troops would pour into the gap to hold the ground against enemy forces, and motorised divisions to form solid flanks defending the exterior boundaries of a breach that would then be reinforced and resupplied to maintain the strength of an advance while widening the current breach area, and making pincer movements at specific defensive points encircling any enemy troops that were unable to retreat to more defensible lines.
Although the Polish army was fifth largest in Europe, it had not been able to fight an enemy with contemporary military technology, in addition to its strategic disadvantage of disposing its military forces in concentrations along the Polish border with Germany and Slovakia, which made the Polish forces vulnerable to flanking and encirclement. The British and French officially gave Hitler two days to withdraw from Poland, but this was ignored. Britain and France then declared war when this deadline expired, regardless of initially being unprepared for a prolonged armed conflict, just as they had been unprepared to wage war over the German occupation of Czechoslovakia and then Poland. This marked the beginning of the most destructive and extensive war in history. Germany and Japan succeeded in overwhelming weaker states until 1941, before later military events led to reversing their advances in 1942, reducing their conquests in 1943, decisively overwhelming their military forces in 1944, and ultimately leading to their unconditional surrender in 1945.
The German High Command’s (OKH) operational orders for the attack on Poland, codenamed “Plan White,” were finalized on 15 June 1939. Although Hitler was confident that Britain and France posed no serious threat, mistakenly believing that their attitude had not changed since Munich and that they would continue to prevaricate and appease, the Wehrmacht was less optimistic. The plan called for a swift campaign so that troops could be withdrawn to make up for the deficiencies of the “West Wall,” a defensive system which had not yet been completed and which was only lightly manned. A rapid campaign would also make it possible to crush the Polish army before it had time to complete its mobilization and before it could be fully deployed to defensible positions.
The Polish army was taken by surprise, since it had started too late to prepare for war while the British and French governments were hoping for a negotiated settlement to Hitler’s demands. Only one-third of the Polish troops were fully prepared for battle when the German invasion began. Moreover, the German general staff had learned from the mistakes of the First World War, and developed a new style of warfare that comprised attacks by aircraft to destroy enemy planes on the ground and to disrupt communications and “pincer” movements by armoured divisions trapping enemy units in “pockets,” as well as using airborne troops to achieve rapid results. Two air fleets struck at thirty-six Polish cities, caught a small air force on the ground, cut all railroads, and crippled the mobilization of reserves, as well as dive bombers breaking up retreats and preventing rescues by reserves.
Being outflanked, hopelessly outnumbered and unable to retreat in order to protect their industrial base and having unfriendly relations with the Russians, the Poles could only hope to sustain a defensive effort for as long as possible in anticipation of an offensive by the French and the British. A defensive military alliance between Poland and France started to be formed in 1939 with the signing of the Kasprzycki–Gamelin Convention on 19 May 939 in Paris, which remained dependent on signing and ratification of a subsequent political convention. It obliged both armies to provide help to each other in case of a war with Germany. Gamelin had promised a “bold relief offensive” against Germany within fifteen days of mobilisation, or within three weeks of a German attack. Although France ratified this treaty on 4 September 1939, it proved to be of little avail to Poland that was in an impossible strategic position and confronted an army that was superior in every respect, including technologically. Its position was further weakened by the hesitations over mobilisation, by placing the bulk of the army infantry too close to the frontier that was spread out over the borders on three sides, rather than concentrated against opposition, by inadequate communications and by an underestimation of the capacity of the Germans for rapid and powerful offensive thrusts supplemented by air attacks and tank assaults by fourteen mechanized divisions, against which the Poles proved to be largely defenceless. The Germans demonstrated a mastery of Blitzkrieg tactics in fighting a series of battles of encirclement with speed and precision that had not been previously envisaged. With a Soviet offensive in the east on 17 September and the reluctance of the British and the French either to honour their obligations or to provide any real assistance, Poland was in a no-win situation and therefore fought a losing battle by the time Warsaw was surrendered on 28 September, and any remaining Polish resistance dissipated in October. This crushing defeat was met with defeatist sentiment in France, where decisionmakers expected the next German offensive to be launched in the west with superior land and air forces, and requested British authorities to not launch air raids on Germany as they feared reprisal German bombing attacks in France, regardless of how there were a hundred and ten western allied divisions in France facing ten in Germany, and also a four to one advantage in artillery, while the bulk of Germany’s troops, along with their mechanised units and air power, were engaged in the Polish campaign.
While the western powers deliberated over future actions and maintained a defensive stance, with the French only staging a small-scale offensive into the Saar, the Soviets clearly intended to annex those areas that they had occupied after Poland was defeated, while Hitler established a policy of ruthless exploitation and repression. A new province of Wartheland was created out of West Prussia, Danzig and Posen. The frontiers in East Prussia and Silesia were extended to include substantial proportions of Polish territory. The remainder of German-occupied Poland formed the “General Government.” Hitler and the SS wanted to destroy any traces of opposition to their policies, which was a direct result of Nazi racial and geopolitical ideology. In early 1940, the SS built a concentration camp at Auschwitz, where Polish prisoners were treated as slave labour and executed at will, while the population was subjected to being dispossessed of their property and being conscripted for labour in Germany. Soviet-occupied Poland was divided up between the Ukrainian and the Belarussian Soviet Republics, and Vilna returned to Lithuania. Landowners’ holdings were seized by the state, industry was nationalized, and one and a half million Poles were deported to the Soviet Union, out of whom only 700,000 survived. An estimated 15,000 Polish officers were taken prisoner, most of whom were murdered by Soviet troops at Katyn to prevent their potential for organising future resistance.
Whereas Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania succumbed to the pressure of allowing Soviet bases to be established in these Baltic States following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Finland resisted Soviet demands for frontier rectifications in order to improve the defences of Leningrad, as Stalin was concerned about a German occupation of Finland would threaten this vital population centre. Negotiations over an exchange of territory between Finland and the Soviet Union to create a buffer zone around Leningrad began in Moscow on 12 October 1939, but it soon became apparent that the Finns were not prepared to cede the Karelian Isthmus and their islands in the Gulf of Finland outside the Rybachy Peninsula that would remain in Soviet control for thirty years in exchange for minor territorial concessions on their northern border, in addition to destroying all of the military fortifications in these areas, and the talks reached a deadlock. The Soviets broke off diplomatic relations with Finland on 29 November, and Soviet troops invaded Finnish territory to seize Karelia and the port of Hango, and bombed Helsinki.
The Soviets expected the Finnish resistance to collapse in the face of their heavy weaponry and vastly greater numbers of troops, and their military leaders expected to induce a capitulation in between ten to fifteen days. However, they were instead confronted with courageous and efficient fighting forces, approximately eighty percent of whom were volunteers, who inflicted heavy losses through taking advantage of the exceptionally harsh winter and sparsely populated broad landscapes that favoured guerrilla tactics using small mobile units and snipers. The Finnish commander, General Karl Gustav Mannerheim, who served in the Imperial Russian Army for thirty years, and led White forces against Soviet supported Finnish communists during the Russian and Finnish civil wars. Mannerheim pressed Finnish defensive military advantages by being familiar with tactics and strategy that could be implemented against a much larger force, and had prepared for a potential war against the Soviet Union by creating a defensive series of trenches in the disputed Karelian isthmus, which became known as the Mannerheim Lines, which slowed the Soviet advance for forty-six days and contained the unrelenting pressure with tenacious resistance, with devastating artillery and machine gun fire, while inexperienced Soviet officers often deployed troops into suicidal mass frontal assaults. Small scale counterattacks from teams of troops also used the local terrain to their advantage to inflict catastrophic losses.
This costly conflict ended with the Treaty of Moscow on 12 March 1940, when Finland could not sustain any further Soviet assaults in a war of attrition, whereas the Soviets lacked the strength to wage a spring offensive. Finland retained its independence at the cost of surrendering a large area of southeastern Finland, including the entire Karelian Isthmus, the city of Viipuri, and leased the peninsula of Hanko to the Soviet Union for 30 years, lead, leading to Finland losing approximately twelve percent of its prewar population, who all rejected accepting Soviet citizenship. As a result of this outbreak of the “Winter War,” Germany lost vital imports of raw materials from Finland, and the Soviets were unable to meet their quotas under the terms of the German-Soviet economic agreement. German support for the Soviet Union was also extremely unpopular in the Scandinavian countries, which improved the political position of Britain and France in the region. The Italians had been sending arms to Finland and were also annoyed by the German stance. Most troublesome of all was the possibility that Britain and France might actively support Finland and cut off supplies of Swedish iron ore, which was rail freighted to the ice-free port at Narvik and then transported to Germany, which prompted Hitler to order preparations for a pre-emptive strike against Norway through Denmark.
In spite of the overwhelming superiority of the Soviet forces in terms of both manpower and materiel, the Finns managed to put up a stubborn resistance against the invaders throughout the winter of 1939-1940. Soviet gains were modest, but they greatly strengthened the defence of Leningrad. The end of this localised war also guaranteed the flow of supplies to Germany he needed for the next phase of the war, and Hitler could move his troops to the west confident of Soviet benevolence. One far-reaching consequence of the Finnish war was not yet apparent. Hitler shared the view, held by military experts throughout the world, that the poor performance of the Soviet troops in the early stages of the war was an indication that the Red Army need not be taken seriously since, in addition to the astonishing resistance of the Finnish army, it had been seriously weakened by Stalin’s purges of the officer corps. This later proved to be a fatal mistake, including since Russia was alarmed by the sudden fall of France left Germany to attack it from the east, which led to converting Russian industry to war production.
The American president Franklin D. Roosevelt extended American neutrality to the utmost during this time. At the outset of hostilities, President Roosevelt was determined to keep the United States out of the war, but at the same time he wanted to do everything possible to help Britain and France without violating the Neutrality Act of 1935 which enforced an arms embargo and the limitation of trade with belligerent countries. Without amendments to the Act, no effective assistance to the Allies was possible, and Roosevelt therefore called for major changes in the Neutrality Act. There was widespread fear both in Congress and among the public that such a step would greatly increase the risk of American involvement in the war. The President had to tread very carefully, making frequent and profuse declarations of his determination to keep the United States out of the war while at the same time pressing for the repeal of embargo provisions forbidding the export of “uncompleted instruments of war” so as to allow the sale of all types of goods on a “cash-and-carry” basis. The Allies agreed to the American suggestion that they should establish a Purchasing Commission in the United States as part of an attempt to circumvent the Neutrality Act, which was not repealed until November 1941. There was a marked increase in the sale of arms by early 1940. However, Public opinion was still strongly against anything that smacked of intervention, and Roosevelt could not afford to do anything that would spoil his chances of re-election. Although public opinion was later in favour of supplying aid to Britain after the fall of France, the military was firmly opposed to sending any supplies which might endanger America’s own defences, and the President agreed that matériel should be sent to Britain only if it could be shown that it would substantially increase British chances of survival. If Britain were to fall, it would all land in Germany’s hands and might eventually be used against the United States. Substantial American aid therefore depended on their assessment of whether or not it would make a decisive difference.
Hitler had told the service chiefs that he intended to attack in the west on 27 September 1939. He announced that Germany could not delay while its enemies grew stronger while the alliance of convenience with the Soviet Union could be short-lived, and pointed out that the Ruhr was Germany’s Achilles’ heel which had to be protected against an Allied attack. Hitler still hoped that Britain and France might be persuaded to accept the German occupation of Poland, but when Chamberlain rejected his peace offer of 6 October, Hitler immediately called for an offensive in the west. In the following months, there were lengthy discussions of various alternative plans for an attack in the west. Erich von Manstein, the Chief of Staff of Army Group A, worked on a plan which developed an idea which Hitler had proposed independently. This plan called for an attack along a line running south of Namur, Arras and Boulogne, from the Ardennes to the Channel, which would divide the Allied forces and encircle those in northeastern France and Belgium. In a second phase, this “sickle” would be reversed and the forces in western France would in turn be encircled. Hence, the German general staff eventually formulated a plan by 24 February 1940 to invade Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, and a sufficient amount of France to inflict a defeat and occupy northern France to be able to strike at Britain thereafter. Army Group B would invade Holland to pin allied intervention in the north, while Army Group A would lead the attack through the Ardennes Forest and cross the Meuse River at Sedan, and then shift northward to Abbeville on the English Channel coastline where the Somme River flows into the sea. Army Group C led by von Leeb would hold the entire German western border with France.
The French general staff maintained their doctrine of strategic defence, and believed that the Germans were unlikely to attack before 1941. Their war plans were based on a methodical battle that was primarily defensive while envisaging trench warfare. One of its elements was the mutually supported albeit not interconnected fortifications of the Maginot Line that would serve as independent fixed positions, with troop movement focusing on the undefended French-Belgian border. The Franco-Belgian Accord of 1920 had allowed for French forces to enter Belgium upon declaration of war, where they could confront a German invasion of Belgium, according to a modification in 1936 by which Belgian neutrality was asserted, on the strength of their battle Plan D deploying its mobile forces in a defensive blocking battle along the Dyle River, with the Breda variant added in early 1940 to combine their forces with those of Britain and the Netherlands. In addition to military and political decisionmakers primarily focusing on defence, France was not prepared for mechanised warfare while lacking heavy weapons and aircraft, and was also further weakened by keeping many of the finest troops in Syria and Africa, and nearly half of their aircraft was on the border with Italy while dispersing tanks and aircraft among the army divisions. At the same time, the Deuxième Bureau, French intelligence, greatly overestimated the strength of the German forces in the west and maintained that their West Wall could not be breached without more planes and heavy artillery. A more significant underlying factor was the allies defensive alignment left a gap that advancing German forces would exploit through the Ardennes Forest, which would circumvent the French defensive strategy of holding a defensive line in northeastern France to create a stalemate, rather than taking offensive action.
The French troops were poorly trained and demoralised by months of inactivity behind the Maginot Line, the heavily fortified positions along the German border from Switzerland to southern Belgium that were complacently believed to be impregnable, along with troops deployed along the Belgian frontier. Not any offensive was launched on a second front to relieve Poland while infantry was massed for defence. Britain meanwhile could do little more than hope that a British and French naval blockade would eventually dissuade the German economy from functioning, and in October sent an 80,000 troops expeditionary force (BEF) to the ports in western France, and gradually established prolonged communication lines to the northeastern frontier. There were some half a million troops in France by May 1940, most of whom were poorly trained and inadequately equipped. Both France and Germany thus dug into a war of passive self defence, as neither nation was mobilized to launch an offensive.
The allies expected that the Germans would attack in northeastern France, but an effective defensive strategy was impossible as the Belgians and Dutch remained neutral, and refused to allow French and British troops to deploy in their territory with the underlying hope of not provoking the Germans, while the forthcoming attack would not come from the anticipated direction, as the French would not consider the possibility of an invasion from through the Ardennes Forest that were considered to be impassable for armoured vehicles. Erich von Manstein, the chief of staff to Gerd von Rundstedt’s Army Group South, proposed an alternative invasion route into France that would flank the Maginot Line defences by crashing through the Ardennes Forest, rather than crossing through Belgium, as the French had anticipated, following the same direction that German forces had done during the First World War. As a result, the French had not planned to counter an attack through the Ardennes.
There remained only the hope that the Belgians would be able to hold up the Germans long enough to allow for Plan D to confront a German offensive, planning for British and French troops to move up to the Antwerp-Dyle-Namur line, which divided Belgium in half from north to South, and thus defend the industrial region of northeastern France. The entire plan was based on the assumption that the Germans would attack by moving rapidly through the flat terrains of Holland and Belgium as the shortest route into France. Although Belgian military authorities suggested that the Germans could attack in this direction, French military authorities believed that the Ardennes forests, which lay between this defensive line and the Maginot Line, were impassable due to the rough nature of this terrain with its limited road network that would make a large invasion force vulnerable to becoming stalled and counterattacked upon exiting this forested region.
Remaining oblivious to this possibility, regardless of the logistical difficulties, was a grave error that placed the allies in an impossible strategic position, as the Germans chose to surprise the French at the weakest point of their fortifications through staging a rapid advance, at the hinge of the Maginot Line in the Ardennes forests along the Meuse River, where the main works ended, and lighter defences ran northwest to the sea between France and Belgium. The spearhead of the German attack, Army Group A, was thus enabled to make a rapid advance through the Ardennes at the weakest point of French fortifications along the Meuse, and then head for the Channel to cut off all the allied forces in northern France, before overcoming the Maginot Line from the rear. Defending against the possibility of a rapid German advance, especially due to the limited road network through the Ardennes, was thus nearly completely neglected, which would prove to be a critical weakness.
Decisionmakers in both Belgium and Holland envisaged that they could remain out of the war on the sole pretext of remaining neutral, although all indications were to the contrary. A German plane had been forced to land in fog at Malines, between Brussels and Antwerp, on 1 January 1940 in which details of the German invasion plans were found. Colonel Oster of the Foreign Intelligence section of the OKW passed on information to the Dutch about Germany’s intentions. However, the Dutch refused to coordinate their strategy with the Belgians and also, like the Poles, imagined that they would be able to hold up a German attack until the allies would rush in with reinforcements, while otherwise maintaining their staunch neutrality and would not allow allied troops to enter their territory prior to a German invasion. The western allies also dismissed these war plans as false information, and therefore did not use this advantage. The allies also had military personnel and material advantages, since their forces were numerically approximately equal to the Germans, and also possessed superiority in artillery, as well as tanks that were superior to the German ones, but were not deployed as effectively into concentrated units.
German forces also held the advantage of having overwhelming superiority in the air. Stuka dive bombers functioned as flying artillery operating in conjunction with tanks on the ground, and the allies had a chronic shortage of anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns. Another advantage was that although Allied tanks were usually superior in weaponry and armour and outnumbered the German tanks by 2,200, the British and French used tanks in the traditional sense of aiding infantry, where they were dispersed across the army so that there was no tank concentration in any one location. On the other hand, the German Blitzkrieg victory of tank concentration led to successful breakthroughs. The French communications system outside the Maginot Line equipment was also greatly deficient. A shortage of radios caused problems once the fighting started when separate armies were unable to communicate with each other and coordinate their movements.
German forces met with continual and brilliant success in Scandinavia. After sinking the Graf Spee on 13 December 1939 in the Battle of the River Plate, the British Royal Navy attacked the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee’s supply ship Altmark in February 1940, which was carrying 299 British merchant sailors on board as prisoners of war who had been picked up from ships sunk by the Admiral Graf Spee while it was in Norwegian territorial waters and therefore violating Norway’s sovereignty. German planning for an invasion of Norway, “Operation Weserbüng,” began in January 1940, and Hitler needed an excuse to act to violate Norway’s neutrality. The OKW was frustrated by the fact that a British landing in Norway seemed less likely after the end of the Finnish war. Hitler decided to take action at the end of March, claiming that British actions against German shipping along the Norwegian coast made it imperative to occupy Norway in order to secure the flow of Swedish iron ore to Germany, since Norwegian coastal waters were vital for the transport of Swedish metal shipments through the ice-free port in Narvik that were of vital importance to the German war industries, whereas the British Ministry of Economic Warfare identified this flow of vital war material as a strategic vulnerability for the German war effort, but Norwegian authorities refused the British troops to land troops in Norway, fearing that such an action would provoke German armed reaction. The Norwegian coastline could also provide an extended maritime front from which Germany could attack Britain with aircraft and provide naval flexibility. It was not until 4 April that the Germans learned that the British were also planning a landing in Narvik in Norway as a possible landing point for an expedition to provide assistance to Finland in the Winter War. Such an expedition could also lead to taking control over the Swedish mines and open up the Baltic for the allies.
Fighting continued with the German takeover of Denmark and Norway in Operation Weserübung, claiming the pretext of protecting their neutrality from the allies during German military occupations. Landings were made at a number of strategic points on 9 April 1940, with ground forces advancing around Copenhagen following amphibious landings, while ME-110s annihilated the Danish air force on the ground in the east, and paratroopers staged the first airborne assault in history in the north to seize control of airfields there. The king, Christian X, ordered the cessation of hostilities in the early morning of the following day to avoid further bloodshed, in addition to expecting the Danish parliament to continue functioning autonomously under German occupation in exchange for not offering considerable resistance. The parliament would hereafter be enabled to block most Nazi policies at the legislative level, while the population would engage in passive resistance through treating German occupation forces with silent contempt and distributing secret press contents, and demobilised troops accessed secret weapon caches for partisan warfare.
An amphibious assault, consisting of naval, air, airborne and ground forces, was also staged on Norway on 8-9 April, with simultaneous amphibious landings in Oslo, Kristiansand, Bergen, Trondheim, and Narvik, and paratroopers taking control of the airfields at Forenebu and Sola. The Germans deployed airborne landings that spanned sea and land, and seaborne landings of troops that were swift, economical and met with little serious resistance while the German forces had the element of surprise, and warships took advantage of the seasonal harsh weather on the North Sea that would hinder enemy ships and reduce visibility. However, the major problem was bringing the escort vessels back to Germany through waters dominated by the Royal Navy, which imposed a naval blockade of Germany immediately upon the outbreak of hostilities, leading to naval clashes off the coast of Narvik on 9 and 13 April.
However, the Royal Air Force (RAF) performed poorly at attacking German shipping, while having few aircraft that could reach targets in Germany, and two daylight raids on naval targets at the Kiel harbour lacked precision and resulted in heavy casualties. Although the RAF remained unprepared for hostilities, the Royal Navy inflicted serious damage on the German naval force at Narvik, including destroying or damaging ten German warships. Several escort vessels, tankers and transport ships were also sunk. British, French and Polish troops who landed between 14 and 17 April fought alongside Norwegian troops in attempts to regain Trondheim and Narvik. They were virtually without air cover and antiaircraft batteries, insufficiently supplied, and poorly led. British troops were unable to resist German troops in Trondheim on 24 April, just as French troops had arrived, without coordinating their movements. This botched allied campaign also led to a lack of confidence in the credibility of the British government under Chamberlain, who was compelled to resign on 10 May.
Allied troops were able to seize Narvik on 28 May, before they were withdrawn on 31 May due to events in France where they were required to be deployed for its defence. British, Polish and Norwegian troops were evacuated between 4 and 6 June in the interest of caution to defend Britain against a potential invasion, in reaction to the invasion of the Low Countries and France. Narvik was left to be occupied by German forces on 8 June, and Norway capitulated on 10 June. The major negative effect of the Scandinavian campaign on Germany was the crippling of its surface fleet, having lost a heavy cruiser and two light cruisers, ten destroyers, six submarines, one torpedo boat, and twenty-one transport vessels and eleven auxiliary ships, composing ten percent of its transport capacity, which would undermine future plans for challenging the British Royal Navy during the contemplated invasion of England, when surface vessels would remain vulnerable to aerial interdiction. Although the allied forces lost the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious, two cruisers, eleven destroyers, eight submarines, sixteen auxiliary ships, along with six cruisers and eight destroyers being damaged, they were able to sustain these naval losses, since the British navy remained the largest in the world, with the home fleet remaining outnumbering the strength of the Germany navy that could not seize control of the English Channel during an invasion of Britain.
Nazi Germany’s losses during the invasion of Norway were also considerable, having lost a hundred aircraft, or ten percent of the total deployed, a heavy cruiser, two out of six light cruisers, ten of its twenty destroyers, and six U-boats. These losses were offset by securing its supply or vital iron ore supplies from Sweden, and later importing nickel from Finland, as well as exploiting Norway’s economic resources, and also allowed for German forces to stage air and sea attacks on Arctic convoys to Murmansk that transported Lend-Lease supplies to the Soviet Union from 1941. Swedish authorities would not entertain any other feasible alternative to dealing with Nazi Germany other than continue commercial transactions while being vulnerable to attack, while the western allies would not be in a position to provide military assistance. Sweden was thus also induced to agree to the Transit Agreement of July 1940 to allow for making their railways available to German troop movements as a direct result of Norway’s capitulation.
Military successes in land warfare continued at this early stage of the war. The invasion of the Low Countries, Case Yellow, began on 10 May, when German paratroopers and glider borne troops seized bridgeheads in Holland and the Belgian fortress of Ében-Émael. The underlying primary focus being overcoming future resistance from Britain by acquiring a length of docks and harbours along the English Channel. This would enable attacking British sea power and acquire staging areas for aerial attacks on Britain, prior to overcoming France by applying a massive concentration of mechanised troops circumventing the Maginot Line defences that were effective at containing advances along the German-French frontier, while the French decisionmakers dogmatically maintained that the Ardennes forests were impassable for large scale military operations, and would therefore only anticipate an offensive through central Belgium. This movement enabled the Germans to push forward towards Rotterdam and encircle the Dutch troops in “Fortress Holland.” The Dutch Commander-in-Chief became avoid any further bombing raids on Dutch cities and convinced that the situation was now hopeless, decided to sign an armistice on 15 May, on the same day that Premier Paul Reynaud of France was prepared to concede defeat following the German successes in fighting rapid encirclement operations led by armoured and mechanised infantry units that sealed the positions held by slower moving allied infantry formations, with further pressure applied from German artillery and aircraft units.
As in Poland, there was considerable success coordinating the close cooperation between the army and the Luftwaffe that was to play an important part in the outcome of the campaign. The army effectively deployed fast moving motorised units, organised in concentrated units to stage mass attacks, to exploit weaknesses in the Allied defences that were outmanouevered as the German forces cut off allied supplies and disrupted reinforcements, while German air force units wreaked havoc on allied logistics, which further allowed for German forces to benefit from efficiently managed logistical supply lines that sustained rapid advances. Meanwhile, the allies abandoned their previously prepared defensive positions and moved slowly into Belgium up to the Dyle line to counter the German advance. French troops positioned near Breda were subjected to heavy aerial bombardment, and retreated towards Antwerp as Holland and Belgium were rapidly overrun. Strategic writings concerning combining armoured and infantry units by Charles de Gaulle during the interwar years had been disregarded by the French general staff, but were studied carefully by German military strategists, which were applied along with the subsequent lesson from the Polish campaign. The western allies were thus taken by surprise, and failed to contain the onrush of German forces, with the next phase of the German offensive concentrated on the Meuse, south of Sedan, where French military authorities believed the nature of the territory would bring an offensive to a halt and vulnerable to counterattack due to natural obstacles in this region.
The German Army Group A under Gerd von Rundstedt had been advancing rapidly through the Ardennes that was underdefended by infantry troops while French tanks were widely dispersed, thus bypassing the Maginot Line, and turned to cut a wedge between the bulk of French army and the British Expeditionary Force while driving toward the English Channel. German troops crossed the Meuse at three points near Dinant on 12 May, and then Sedan on 13 May, which the French had misjudged to be a key element of the German advance that overcame weak defences, and was further rapidly reinforced with armoured units. The then demoralised French military authorities that proved to be unable to resist the German war of movement remained inflexible and were slow to counterattack against the German bridgeheads across the Meuse until the following day, delaying taking immediate offensive action while adhering to their doctrine that staging offensives required careful planning beforehand. Defensive infantry forces were overwhelmed, and dispatching acutely limited numbers of bombers and tank units against those bridgeheads proved to be ineffective, from which German forces unexpectedly turned northwest toward the English Channel, rather than shifting south behind the Maginot Line, as had been anticipated.
General Maurice Gamelin, the French Commander-in-Chief, still believed as late as 13 May that the German attack would be concentrated in the north, and therefore planned to rush forces toward Belgium to counter a German invasion from that direction. By the time German intentions to take the extremely risky to launch an offensive through the Ardennes forest, were apparent, weak defences outside the Ardennes forest to the south were overwhelmed, and then reacted slowly while withdrawing troops from the Maginot Line to attack the southern flank of the German advance. When the British Prime Minister Churchill, who had taken over the government on 10 May, asked General Gamelin where and when he intended to attack the flanks of the bulge, he listed the reasons why he was unable to act – “inferiority of numbers, inferiority of equipment, inferiority of method,” with the rapidity of the German advance being a decisive factor that overwhelmed French defensive efforts by demoralised French troops who believed the British had forced the war onto them, and could not react to the speed and power of the concentrated German armoured units that moved rapidly through the supposed impassable Ardennes Forest, which were coordinated with air power and infantry advances. Although the French possessed material advantages in troop numbers, their tanks were slower than the more modern German ones while being dispersed evenly along the front line, and lacked antitank and antiaircraft guns, as well as faced a shortage of specialised aircraft. The British army tried to halt the German advance between Arras and Valenciennes while the French Seventh Army attacked on the flank, but the Germans were able to overcome this threat with concentrated aerial attacks and established bridgeheads across the Somme. Although France and its allies had possessed greater numbers of troops and material in terms of vehicles, tanks, artillery, France lacked anti-tank weapons, a serious deficiency in anti-aircraft guns, and sufficient numbers of aircraft, albeit reinforced with British units to an insufficient degree, to resist the greater quality and quantity of German air power that significantly contributed to accelerating the swiftness of the German offensive, which overwhelmed those superior allied numbers, in coordination with artillery barrages that prepared an advance by their ground forces, with air attacks coordinated with assaults by land units.
Allied forces were slow attempt to break the encirclement of allied troops to the north following the breakout from the bridgeheads over the Meuse, which allowed for the Germans to carve a thin corridor to the English Channel, regardless of the risks of becoming vulnerable to counterattacks from the northern and southern flanks, and dividing northern France and Belgium and the remainder of France. In addition to aggravating the demoralisation among the French military authorities that hindered taking rapid reactive action, British and French decisionmakers also failed to coordinate their defensive efforts while communications were disrupted by the German advances. Efforts to coordinate counteroffensives on specific areas to achieve any decisive results were therefore further weakened, while they did not take rapid countermeasures. The way was now open for the deployment of German troops to the west of the allies’ strongest defensive position along the Maginot Line, and turned to the English Channel, rather than to the south to behind this defensive line. French forces at Sedan were overwhelmed on 17 May, which allowed German forces to threaten to sweep behind the allies, using their rapidity of movement to which the allies reacted with defensive reactions with retreating units distributed too widely to concentrate an offensive, including with armoured units as the German forces had done. The OKH then strengthened the forces between Dinant and Sedan with armour and motorised infantry taken from Army Group B under General Fedor von Bock that were dealing with Belgian resistance, while the frontal assault toward France bypassed most of Belgium. A rapid advance was then ordered toward Arras and the Channel coast, which would trap the allied troops in Belgium and northern France when German troops reached the English Channel coastline at the mouth of the Somme River on 20 May. Isolated Allied troops to the north were cut off from retreating and regrouping to more defensible positions, and were also unable to coordinate their movements with allied forces to the south.
The Germans greatly overestimated the strength of the allies when they reached the English Channel while having completed the encirclement of allied forces trapped in a pocket between the enclosing German forces that reached the coastline on 22 May. Luftwaffe aircraft were dispatched to attack the allied forces at Dunkirk, while General von Rundstedt commanding Army Group A halted the German ground armoured advance on 24 May to close at Lens-Gravelines to close the “Canal Line,” at a time when logistical supply lines were overextended that left armoured units requiring resupplies of fuel and ammunition, with infantry and artillery units lagging behind them. Hitler endorsed this order on the following day, as Allied forces became divided between French forces who turned directly south to defend Paris, while British and some French and Belgian forces were isolated in a salient outside the Channel ports of Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk. The evacuation of these trapped troops was underway when Boulogne and Calais were cut off on 25 May. Rundstedt therefore ordered a halt of the advance towards Calais and Dunkirk, anticipating additional time was necessary to prepare for an allied counterattack from Dunkirk and allow for the infantry to move up from the Somme in the event of a French counterattack from the south, while von Kleist considered the area around Dunkirk to be unsuitable for armoured movement, and expected the Fourth Army to secure Arras beforehand. Moreover, von Rundstedt, Hitler and the German admiralty believed it was impossible for the BEF to be rapidly evacuated from Dunkirk. Hence, it was determined not to risk deploying valuable tank resources that were to be deployed to the south, while aircraft and artillery could be deployed to destroy the allied forces in the Dunkirk pocket, prior to a Fourth Army advance. Halting this German advance gave the British a critical time to organise dispatching evacuation vessels during this temporary standstill in the fighting in the north. Meanwhile, a weakened allied force was trapped in Belgium and reserves were not available to repel a breakthrough or replace frontline troops, with the Belgian surrender on 25 May aggravating the allied defensive line efforts to fight a rearguard enabling continued evacuations from the coastline.
The German advance then continued southward, rather than advancing to the north toward Dunkirk in spite of Guderian and Erwin Rommel admonishing for eliminating the allied forces trapped therein while Göring claimed to be able to use the Luftwaffe to destroy them. Hitler was unaware that the allies were in such a desperate situation, and prioritised advancing on the exposed southern flank, where German tanks far outpaced the advance of infantry and horse-drawn equipment, which created a gaping corridor between them. Colonel Charles de Gaulle as the commander of one of the newly-established French armoured units staged three successful counterattacks from 17 to 19 May to cut through the German advance near Crecy, but these attempts were undermined by the cumbersome French command structure that led to piecemeal rather than coordinated attacks, such as against overextended German supply lines at Arras on 21 May, which German forces were ultimately able to ward off while inflicting heavy casualties as the advance continued until armoured units were to halt and wait for infantry support to consolidate gains before the allies could press on any temporary advantages. There were also too few tanks to sustain offensive gains, which were overwhelmed with German dive bombers and counterattacking German tanks. The next move was to isolate the British Expeditionary Force and the First French Army in the north from 22 May. The allies held control over the ports of Boulogne until 25 May, and isolated troops at Calais were also forced to surrender on 26 May. As remaining allied troops were retreating toward Dunkirk, Hitler gave the direct order for German armoured units to halt on 26 May, until logistical matters could be rectified as an identifiable weakness of waging a war of movement. There was also concern about a French counterattack on the southern flank of Army Group B, and therefore this cautionary halt was to ensure these troops were available and prepared to face a new threat.
General Heinz Guderian, commanding the Nineteenth Corps that characteristically more aggressive than other units in making rapid advances, reported to his divisional commander, von Kleist, that half his tanks were out of action and troops needed rest and recovery. Whether they would not be able to face a counterattack in force was uncertain. Rundstedt as the Army Group A commander also believed that the final phase of the operation on the English Channel coast should be left to the infantry and the armour spared in preparation for the advance westwards. The OKH therefore ordered Army Group A to halt and gave Army Group B the task of destroying the allies at the port of Dunkirk, where they were preparing to evacuate across the English Channel. Units from Army Group A were sent to strengthen the southern flank, and resumed the advance on 27 May, when British had barred the entrance to Dunkirk. Air Marshall Göring allegedly requested Hitler that his Luftwaffe should have the honour of delivering the coup de grâce, the final blow, to finish the task of destroying the evacuating troops. British troops were thus enabled to establish defensive perimetres in depth from 26 to 28 May to resist the German stranglehold around Dieppe, while all available shipping was dispatched to evacuate allied troops in Operation Dynamo, as British forces began evacuating troops from the shore. Once it became apparent that the British were leaving the continent, Hitler allowed the Army Group A to resume the attack against the British retreating across the Channel from the evening of 28 May, ordering General Paul von Kleist’s armour to move forward, but only far enough so that Dunkirk was within range of the artillery, while forty percent of the tanks were out of action and therefore required refitting, along with allowing for land troops to recover. The allied surrender of Calais on 26 May stranded their troops in the north, cutting them off from allied forces south of the Somme River, and the surrender of Belgium on 28 May exerted further pressure on these isolated allied troops in the Dunkirk region. Army Group B likewise moved westward toward the Dunkirk pocket simultaneously.
The Luftwaffe had only limited success in destroying the evacuation effort. German aircraft required flying over a considerable distance to reach Dunkirk that limited time for attacks, which were further hindered by adverse weather conditions, such as low-hanging fog, and could not operate at night. German aircraft were also subjected to RAF fighters based in southeastern England that seriously disrupted the Luftwaffe’s ground attacks. Most bombers took off from bases in Germany, and thus could not be given support by short range fighters. Radar warnings allowed the RAF to send fighters based in southern England across the Channel, and they were able to inflict considerable damage on the bombers, which were also harassed by concentrated anti-aircraft fire. Moreover, the soft sand had a dampening effect on high explosives dropped on the beaches, and became buried in the sand on the beaches and therefore only had a limited effect on an estimated 665 vessels that took part in this evacuation operation, which included both allied warships and civilian vessels Seven French and six British destroyers along with twenty-four other warships would be sunk by air attacks. The Luftwaffe stopped attacking Dunkirk on 3 June when the final French defenders surrendered as the final evacuation by all types of vessels left the harbour, and concentrated on raids on industrial targets around Paris, among other targets in France. A total of 338,226 British and French troops were evacuated across the Channel from between 27 May to 4 June in the face of the new Blitzkrieg warfare for which they were unprepared, and another roughly 191,000 Allied soldiers were also evacuated from other French ports, largely without German interference, along with about 40,000 civilians, whereas approximately 35,000 troops were left behind, and six British destroyers were lost in the face of air attacks.
The fighting between Germany and France continued to the south, although French forces were in disarray, and the removal of British support aggravated the ongoing demoralisation. There was a French attack on the German Army Group B bridgehead on the English Channel at Abbeville on 27 May, which failed to dislodge them, and would then attack to the southwest toward Paris. Case Red was launched on 5 June for Army Group B to cross the Somme and the Aisne Rivers before the crumbling French army could be reorganised, followed by Army Group A following the attack deeper into France on 9 June. Army Group C remained deployed against the Maginot Line entrenchments, where French reserves remained positioned. The French government evacuated from Paris on 10 June as German forces made rapid advances toward central France. Mussolini recognised that Italy’s industrial, particularly war production, capacity meant it would not be in an economic position to wage war until 1943, and could not join the attacks on Poland, Denmark and Norway, but then declared war on France on 10 June, as he feared that Hitler would otherwise absorb Italy, and therefore it became necessary to take decisive yet relative safe military action. Italy had entered the war against France on 10 June, and attacked in the southeast on 21 June, which was reinforced by German troops from behind the French defensive forces, and seized the outskirts of Menton.
German troops entered Paris on 14 June 1940, while the French army had been mortally injured after forty French divisions had been trapped by the German advance. The French army thus lost forty percent of its effective personnel, and eighty percent of its equipment, after having been launched into a war that it was unprepared to fight in view of the superior German armour and air force tactics that it failed to be able to resist. The defensive orientation of the western allied military strategy proved to be a failure in the face of the newly instituted technique of war of movement confronting what had become an outdated form of waging war, combining air, armoured and infantry units deployed in synchronised actions. The deployment of four French armoured divisions that had attempted to thrust at German armoured unit flanks failed to make an impact as a result of a cumbersome command and control system and poor planning, as they were deployed piecemeal and were thus warded off. Gamelin’s successor appointed on 19 May, General Maxime Weygand, made a separate attempt to coordinate French and British armoured units to attack German armoured units, which were likewise repulsed, and the German advance continued being irrepressible while the western allies lacked the means to stage a successful counterattack to stem this advance. A new French government was established in Bordeaux on 14 June.
France became vulnerable to an invasion for different reasons, leading to any further resistance being overwhelmed. French military planners had failed to defend against an advance from the Ardennes forest, and strategic planning remained stubbornly inflexible, which would not immediately counter the rapidity of the German advances, particularly following the crossing of the Meuse River, which was further aggravated by demoralisation and defeatism. The allied general staffs failing to coordinate decision making further undermined the willingness to sustain resistance to offset Nazi Germany’s offensive plans, which required taking swift action in reaction to the rapidity of the German advances that entailed high degrees of taking risks and maintaining swift movement momentum, in addition to having had laid well-prepared plans for offensive actions that ensued in capitalising on allied defensive weaknesses.
Marshal Philippe Pétain, who had argued for an end to the war, took over as the head of a rump French state seeking a peace with Germany “between soldiers,” and called for an armistice on 17 June. Resistance could no longer be maintained when German forces had control over approximately two-thirds of France. The French government capitulated on 22 June in an armistice, which took effect on 25 June.
Hitler wanted to avoid the high costs of the occupation of the whole of France as a result of maintaining a large conventional army, and feared that if the German terms were exceedingly severe, the French would form a government overseas which would offer at least moral support to the British. A French base in northern Africa might oblige Hitler to disperse his forces at a time when he was beginning to think of his great campaign against Soviet Russia, which was aimed at ending the war in Europe by eliminating this future threat while also eliminating the threat to Japan’s rear flank in the Pacific while threatening America, and convince Britain to reach a peace settlement, before then also threatening America from northern Africa as a staging area with augmented air force and naval production. Acquiring the French Atlantic coastline meanwhile provided the advantage of naval bases that would contribute to the success of U-boat warfare. Above all, he was determined that the French fleet should not fall into British hands. The OKW did not share these political concerns and called for the occupation of all of France, but Hitler was fearful that the French would continue the fight elsewhere if he did not negotiate. Another underlying concern regarding imposing a relatively lenient peace settlement was ensuring stability in the west, prior to the inevitable invasion of the Soviet Union, which was also expected to lead to Britain coming to peace terms with Nazi Germany after anticipating imposing that next defeat.
A new French near-fascist vassal regime was installed with its capital at Vichy, governing forty percent of central and southern France, while the northern and the western would come under direct German occupation. The Vichy regime had its own new constitution and anti-Semitic legislation that functioned as an agency for the Nazi financial exploitation of France, overseeing paying three hundred million francs per day to support the German military occupation, which was later raised to five hundred million after the western allied invasion of northern Africa, which was used to acquire local raw materials, foodstuffs, securities and artworks, paying for the dependents of French workers recruited to work in Germany, while German occupation authorities imposed a system of fixed prices and wages, and an estimated two million French prisoners-of-war were held in Germany as hostages who were engaged in forced labour for construction, mining and agriculture. In addition to administering and policing the region under its control, and thereby allowing for German troops to be stationed elsewhere or deployed for separate military operations, Vichy France would retain control over its African colonial possessions as its protectorates, apart from those that later joined the Free French resistance, which would also allow Nazi Germany to concentrate their available military resources on other fronts. The Vichy administration would also remain control over the modern and powerful French navy, which would not take part in the war effort against Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany would meanwhile exploit the resources of occupied France, where the benchmark for its contributions to the Third Reich was twice the amount of the previous national budget, just as with each country that came under occupation to contribute to fiscal stability in Germany. Britain remained isolated as resistance became more resolute, rather than being shocked into submission as Hitler had anticipated.
Resistance forces who fled to London were led by de Gaulle who organised the Free French army with British economic support. Britain was left isolated with a weakened army, but maintained its will to resist Nazi Germany by continuing to mobilise manpower and resources. With France out of the war, Churchill moved to solidify Britain’s position by ensuring that French warships would not be seized by the Germans and used against the Allies. Transferring French naval vessels to the Axis powers would have eliminated the British fleet advantages gained during the German conquest of Norway during the preceding spring, and would have meant disaster for the already overextended Royal Navy, which was subject to attacks from German submarines, as well as land-based bombers that successfully challenged sea power. The powerful French naval squadron consisting of two battleships and two battle cruisers under the control of the Axis would considerably jeopardise the position of the British fleet in the Mediterranean. The result as a countermeasure was Operation Catapult to neutralise the French navy, which was among the most powerful in the world, by any necessary means. French vessels in British ports were seized, and a message from a Royal Navy task force to the French ships in the Algerian port of Mers-el-Kebir, or Oran, was sent on 3 July demanding they either join them or sail to a neutral port to be interned. This ultimatum was refused, as the French naval commanders refused to join the fight against Germany or surrender. British ships attacked them from 3 to 6 July 1940, destroying one warship and damaging three others. The French squadron at Alexandria, Egypt, agreed to be neutralised, and a French battleship at Dakar was disabled on the West African coast on 8 July.
Nazi Germany launched aerial assaults on Britain in preparation for an invasion of Britain following the fall of France. Hitler still hoped that the British Government would be prepared to negotiate a settlement which would leave him master of Europe but with the British Empire intact. If the British were unwilling to treat with the Germans, then they could be forced to the negotiating table by a bomber offensive and an intensified war at sea which would cut off essential supplies. Only if everything else failed would it be necessary to invade. German troops and equipment were being assembled in France and Belgium for this Operation Sea Lion in July 1940, which only proved to be a theoretical possibility of a potential invasion of Britain that would rely heavily on the superiority of Nazi Germany’s air power over the British Royal Air Force to establish air control over the English Channel.
Hitler was careful to point out to his military planners that an invasion was possible only if the Germans achieved air supremacy over England, and this had to be achieved before the autumn when bad weather would make a cross-Channel landing impossible. The most important immediate task was the destruction of the RAF. This would secure Germany against bombing raids and enable the Luftwaffe to destroy the industrial centres of southern England. If this was coupled with “terror raids,” civilian morale would break and the British government would be forced to sue for peace. An invasion was possible only as a “death blow” to a country tottering on the brink of collapse after a successful air offensive. Although German fighters’ operations only covered a small part of England, composing less than ten percent of Britain, it was hoped to make it possible for the German bomber force to open the way for a land invasion, while British fighter bases were concentrated around London to prepare for bomber attacks, and thereby evaded engaging with German fighters. The RAF was likewise able to build aircraft, train pilots, form new squadrons and build up reserves without interference from German bombers.
The air war between Britain and Germany that would determine the feasibility of a land invasion of Britain, the Battle of Britain, largely fell into four phases. The Luftwaffe sought to secure the Channel through attacking shipping and ground the RAF by destroying its airfields as conventional military targets in the first two phases of the air war in order to prepare the way for a seaborne invasion, while Dowding primarily conserved resources for an impending invasion, for which the British prepared through operating two separate long and short range radar nets tracking aerial movements in conjunctions with observers on the ground as early warning systems, and deploying two and then four separate Fighter Command groups in different regions to face incoming threats. These attacks were followed by the Luftwaffe resorting to an aerial bombardment of London when Göring believed that the RAF Fighter Command was on the verge of being eliminated, with the aim of crippling English transport and the supply, and paralyse the British will to fight on alone. The timing of this shift in strategy thereby afforded the RAF to repair its bases and its command and control systems.
The Luftwaffe seriously underestimated the productivity of the British aircraft industry, while British aircraft production shifted into wartime industrial production, whereas German production had downshifted to peacetime levels. It was assumed that the British could produce only 180 to 200 fighters per month, when in fact they were producing an average of 470 to compensate for the roughly 3:1 German advantage over the British Fighter Command in early August 1940. The strength of Britain’s ground defences was also seriously misjudged. Believing that the task which faced them was relatively simple, the Luftwaffe made insufficient preparations for their offensive, and therefore had vague and incomplete planning. Meanwhile, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding’s key to success lay in the highly effective communications system he had built up, which was based on the swift analysis of information gleaned from the radar stations around England’s south and east coasts. Dowding acknowledged that timing was essential if the German bombers were to be stopped. Fighters had only enough fuel to remain in the air for about an hour, and their ammunition was used up in a matter of seconds. “Scrambling” too early could well prove disastrous, but adequate warning had to be given to allow the fighters to gain sufficient height for a successful attack. Fifty-two radar stations from Pembrokeshire to the Shetlands could pick up incoming planes from a distance of about seventy-five miles, and could make reasonably accurate estimates of their numbers and altitude. As soon as the planes reached the coast, they were followed by the Royal Observer Corps. This information was relayed to the four Fighter Command Groups and to the Fighter Command Headquarters. The English radar and fighter control that provided detailed data, which guided British fighters from the take off to the correct positions for attack on the German formations, thus composed an extraordinary advantage from the very beginning that the Germans could not overcome throughout the war. Additional information from monitored radio traffic between German aircraft was analysed by “Station X” at Bletchley Park. The German “Enigma” machine was set on three rotors that could be set to scramble coded messages that could only be deciphered by another such device with the same settings, which could also be replaced and set differently. Any entered letter could be interpreted in among 150 million ways. British cryptographers at Bletchley Park would ultimately break this code in February 1940, and would provide the RAF with insights into the Luftwaffe’s order of battle and overall strategy that Göring would adapt, and led to the head of the British Fighter Command, Air Vice-Marshal Hugh Dowding to decide to deploy reduced numbers of intercepting aircraft, rather than in large numbers
The Luftwaffe began attacking British shipping in the English Channel on 10 July, and then attacked both air and naval bases, when there were less than seven hundred British fighters facing two thousand and six hundred German fighters and bombers, while the RAF was able to depend on radar technology as a crucial element in countering German air attacks. Göring placed particular emphasis on the need to put the radar stations out of action, albeit at the risk of certain difficulties. German bombers, the Dornier 17 and the more heavily armoured Heinkel 111, were very vulnerable to fighter attack and therefore needed close escorts of Messerschmitt 109s. Since the Me-109s had only thirty minutes of flying time over Britain, the range of the bombers was severely restricted. The Junkers 87B (Stuka), which had proved terrifying in Poland and the western campaign was painfully slow and was thus an easy target for modern fighters and extremely vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire. The Spitfire proved to be the match of the Me-109 in everything but high-altitude flying. Although Fighter Command suffered heavy losses in the air war over the Channel (Kanalkampf), statisticians warned Dowding by 19 July that his fighters would all be destroyed within six weeks if losses continued to climb at the same rate, and German pilots showing they were better trained and their tactics were superior. The RAF, however, was quick to learn from the Luftwaffe and used their methods against them to devastating effect. Although “Ultra” decrypts gave the British ample warning of the German attack, their radar stations along the south coast suffered severe damage during the first full scale German attacks over the English Channel and on the British coast during 8 to 18 August, in an attempt to disrupt the British early warning system. Fighter Command’s ground installations were badly damaged. and a number of aircraft still on the ground were destroyed on the following day. “Ultra” provided precise information of the Luftwaffe’s air offensive intentions on 15 August, codenamed Eagle, aiming at the destruction of the RAF, which led to the Germans suffering severe losses. This included a single attempted to launch an attack on the Midlands from aircraft based in Norway, with the false expectation that RAF fighter squadrons were primarily stationed in the south. The Luftwaffe kept up the attack in the following days, concentrating on Fighter Command’s airfields and causing serious damage, but they were still being outshot by the RAF in an attrition battle in the air from 15 to 18 August, followed by further attacks on the entire Fighter Command structure, consisting of the radar stations, airfields, and control mechanisms.
After having suffered a high rate of attrition during the first phase, Goering launched a second phase from 24 August to 5 September to attack British fighters and their airfields, which rendered many of them at least temporarily unusable, leading to the Luftwaffe on the verge of attaining air superiority over England. Fighter Command had suffered crippling losses of aircraft and severe damage to ground installations. However, the Luftwaffe was also frustrated by its failure to draw British fighters into an attrition battle while they were instructed to concentrate on shooting down bombers before they released their payloads, rather than concentrating on their fighter escorts, in order to protect airfields and the communications network. Meanwhile, the British radar network provided sufficient intelligence about the German build up to allow for other fighters to be held in reserve, and being fully fuelled and ready to take on German bombers.
During a time when both the Germans and British were refraining from intentionally bombing civilian targets, a small formation of Luftwaffe bombers that had gone off course near London where they were to attack nearby RAF installations, and made a fateful mistake on the night of 24 August by bombing London as a result of human navigational error in flight. In spite of the misgivings of the Air Staff and although the damage in London was minimal, the British Bomber Command sent a retaliatory raid of eighty-one bombers to Berlin on the following night, and then two other night time attacks as on Düsseldorf, Essen, and other industrial centres. Hitler then ordered the bombing of major British cities on 4 September, with attacks beginning against London on 7 September until 5 October in thirty-eight daylight raids, while targeting civilian morale, and mistakenly believing that the RAF had been too weakened to stage an effective defence. This diversion of the attacks away from Fighter Command’s bases gave the RAF a welcome respite from pressure on airfields and did not necessitate their withdrawal from southeastern England. London was a more distant target than the air bases in southern England and therefore gave Fighter Command more time to prepare to meet the attackers. It also further reduced the limited flying time of the Me-109s to ten minutes, which left many raids undefended by fighter escorts. This also afforded the British some respite to rebuild their air force.
Göring ordered launching a final decisive offensive on 7 September on London, rather than military targets, in a futile attempt to win the war by demoralising the population, while the British were anticipating an invasion between 8 and 10 September when the tide conditions would be suitable for a Channel crossing. Fighting in the air continued until on 15 September, when two massive waves of German attacks were decisively repulsed by the RAF that had had forewarning about the push from Ultra decrypts and British German-speaking radio operators who monitored all open transmissions, in addition to there being a fully functioning radar network that had been untouched for weeks, and thus expose the organisation of large German formations in full view.
The German defeat that was the most catastrophic day for the Luftwaffe caused Hitler to order postponing preparations for the invasion of Britain two days later, in view of the landing areas had not been prepared for invasion while British fighter strength had not been eliminated. Henceforth, in the face of mounting losses in men, aircraft and the lack of adequate replacements, the Luftwaffe switched from daylight to nighttime bombing in the fourth phase of the air war from 6 to 31 October, in further attempts to demoralise the population and cripple British industry. The bombing of London and other industrial cities continued day and night until 14 November, with dubious results in terms of disabling industry and demoralising the civilian population, until there was a shift to, notoriously inaccurate in view of contemporary technology, night time bombing that marked an admission of defeat of daylight attacks. The Battle of Britain, which averted the invasion of Britain indefinitely, marked the first defeat of Hitler’s military forces when German air power was found to mainly be a tactical auxiliary to the army, and could not substitute for power on land, while British aircraft production remained preparing for a prolonged war effort, while Luftwaffe resources deteriorated. The bombing of Britain continued until the summer of 1941 to undermine industry and fighting strength, when the bulk of the Luftwaffe was shifted to the eastern front.
Send a problem:
1. Pairs in chairs compare and prepare their answers to the problems set forth for this week’s reading, or another problem of their choice.
2. Send the problem to another pair, without looking at the solution, and formulate their own solution.
3. Integrate solutions as a class.
Leave a Reply