Sunday, 1 September 1940

Interesting snippets Brett.

I'm especially struck by the comment 'our command of the sea.' As you note it was hardly relevant to the bombing effort of either power, but I'd say it was fair enough as statement of reality. Obviously not total command, right up to the enemy's shores with impunity etc. However, the RN continued to exercise broad command of home waters, including the Channel, especially at night; even penetrating and raiding into the French and Belgian ports on occasion. Excepting for its U-boat arm the Kriegsmarine was more or less constrained to cautious coast hugging. (Incidentally, are you really of the view that the writer meant that 'Britain rules the rules?')

This is the bit that puzzles me. To what extent did the writer - or anybody else in the country at the time - actually believe that a German invasion was a possibility? Without German command of the sea it was always an impossibility. Not an improbability, not a hazardous gamble, but an outright impossibility. Anybody who could believe in British command of the sea and the possibility of a German invasion would have been believing in obverse and reverse at the same time. I can broadly understand how the great Battle of Britain myth (that it forestalled inevitable invasion) has grown up since 1940, though in some ways I find it harder and still harder to comprehend its continued survival, but I just wonder - did people actually believe it then? So much of the hindsight has been done by people who have swallowed the myth wholesale that I fear that we cannot understand what people thought at the time, as we superimpose too much of our faith in the myth on them.

As regards the true extent of the invasion fear I hope you're right and it can be unearthed. But at this point letters and other contemporary evidence are clearly valid, memoirs less so. There is also the issue of the 'official invasion scare,' by which I mean the belief that fear of invasion was whipped up by the government as a means of promoting national cohesion. Repairing morale and promoting unity was Churchill's primary task and the one, above all others, that he showed a gift for.

Which leads us to '1940 as a watershed year in British history,' a huge subject in itself.

Turning to the military realities I cannot agree that airpower can be seen to be decisive. Very important certainly, but not decisive in the sense that it could possibly have neutralised the RN's superiority over the Kriegsmarine in any conceivable circumstances. The total obliteration of Fighter Command just doesn't come into it.

Both the Norwegian campaign and Dunkirk provide ample evidence.

Norway was a strategic victory for Germany but a tactical defeat for the Kriegsmarine. It also, as well as pointing up the RN's weaknesses in AA capability (something widely and repeatedly noticed) pointed up the Luftwaffe's weaknesses in anti-shipping capability (something widely and repeatedly ignored). The RN's losses to the Luftwaffe were relatively light, given all the circumstances and the almost total absence of allied air cover. The scale of the initial invasion was small compared with what would have been required to establish a beachead in England, but had the RN been able to intercept it at sea it would have been massacred. In the end, the allies only withdrew from Norway because of their setbacks in France.

At Dunkirk the weather helped the British. Every other circumstance was highly unfavourable. For a navy, it was just about the most hazardous - nay suicidal - conceivable operation. Brilliance of organisation, stalwart leadership, immense courage and determination etc, yes certainly; but ultimately lifting a third of a million men off was down to German failure, including the failure of Luftwaffe.

And as to Dunkirk, I'm put in mind of Holmes's 'curious incident of the dog in the night-time.' What did the Kriegsmarine do to disrupt the evacuation? A flotilla of destroyers, boldly handled and prepared to sell themselves dearly (like Warburton-Lee at the first battle of Narvik) could have smashed the whole operation.

Any invasion fleet, however great the air superiority it enjoyed, would have been trying to carry out an operation that had more in common with Dunkirk than the Norwegian invasion (some of the poor German squaddies were expected to be in their barges for seventy-two hours, even if everything went like clock-work), while being subjected to attacks (in the night as well as the day) which would have been reminiscent of Warburton-Lee's. It just doesn't bear thinking about.

For the invasion to succeed command of the air was essential, but so was command of the sea. And command of the sea would not have been conferred by mere possession of command of the air. Denial of that simple truth is the core of the Battle of Britain myth.

Accepting that there was genuine fear of invasion in 1940, I suspect the role of mass psychology. Obviously most people did not fully understand the military realities (as I've tried to outline them above). But while the fall of France was obviously of critical strategic importance, it was also a shattering blow to British morale. At the time it might have been easy to convince oneself that Hitler's master race droolings were actually valid.

Thanks for coming back on this Brett. And thanks for steering me to your earlier debate - I'll read it when I've got time. I agree that, broadly speaking, we are approaching the issues from slightly different angles.

My point about Dunkirk is that given the nature of the operation (stopped or slow, inshore etc) nine destroyers wasn't much of a bag for the Luftwaffe to boast of.

As for the loss of the Glorious, it is simply not true to say that the capital ships were holed up in Scapa. The Home Fleet was ordered to be ready to intervene in the Channel, while at the same time covering the Narvik evacuation. As it was, at least three of its four big ships were at sea, and (in the broadest sense) in the Norwegian theatre when the Glorious was sunk. While fear of air attack did constrain their movements, it was not the reason for the Glorious being left without heavy escort. That was just a botched episode in a largely botched campaign.

The Luftwaffe certainly prevented the full force of British naval superiority from being deployed, but once the Germans were established ashore in Norway dislodging them was always going to take far more resources (land, sea and air) than preventing them landing in the first place would have done. Had opportunity arisen, that could have been done by sea power alone. Air power would scarcely have got a look in.

Am I a little obsessed with doubting the fear of invasion in 1940? Possibly. But to me it is the other side to your perfectly reasonable point: 'to argue that therefore people at the time weren't, or even shouldn't have been, worried about the possibility is to project backwards what we know now.' There has been so much arrant tosh (I certainly exclude present company from this blanket complaint!) written and said about the military significance of the Battle of Britain that it has become a sort of mass brain-washing exercise.

Your last paragraph is something I'd never read before. Very interesting.

Now, if it's arrant tosh you want . . .

This isn't relevant, but it is too good to leave unshared. From The Lost Gardens of Heligan, by Tim Smit (note that from the context of the passage there can be no doubt that the author is referring to WWI):

'At the start of the Great War, the Royal Navy's ageing fleet was mostly of timber construction and the Admiralty appealed for donations of oak.'