Richard Overy: The Battle of Britain

The air battles were necessary to rouse the self-belief and staying power of a people demoralized by the sudden collapse of democratic Europe in the summer of 1940. No one pretends that the Battle of Britain decided the war, or that it papered over all the cracks that appeared in British morale and outlook in 1940. With hindsight it might have been fought more effectively, though British air defences were manifestly better organized than most other areas of Britain’s war effort. The cost of losing the battle would have spelt national disaster. No appeasing peace with Hitler could have masked the reality of defeat. The Battle of Britain was the first point since 1931, when Japan occupied Manchuria, that the forces of violent revision in world affairs were halted. In a radio broadcast in 1942, George Orwell reminded his listeners that Trafalgar Day had just been celebrated. He suggested that Trafalgar played the same part in the Napoleonic wars ‘as the Battle of Britain in 1940 occupied in this one’. In both cases invasion and defeat would have meant a Europe ‘given over to military dictatorship’. After Trafalgar the invasion scare subsided ‘and though it took another ten years to win the war, it was at any rate certain that Britain could not be conquered at one blow’. 29To the British people, then and now, that was sufficient.

The following abbreviations have been used throughout the Notes:

ADAP: Akten zur deutschen ausäwrtigen Politik

AHB: Air Historical Branch, Ministry of Defence, London

BA-MA: Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg

CAS: Chief of Air Staff

COS: Chiefs of Staff

FCNA: Führer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 1939–1945 (London, 1990)

GAF: German Air Force

IWM: Imperial War Museum, London

OKW: Supreme Command of the Armed Forces

PRO: Public Record Office, Kew, London

RAF: Royal Air Force

RDF: Radio Direction Finding

1 PRO AIR 14/381, Plan W1, ‘Appreciation of the Employment of the British Air Striking Force’, April 1938, p. 1.

2 R. Rhodes James (ed.), ‘Chips’: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (London, 1993), p. 215; gas masks in PRO INF 1/264, Home Intelligence, summaries of daily reports, 28 March 1940.

3 K.-H. Völker, Dokumente und Dokumentarfotos zur Geschichte der deutschen Luftwaffe (Stuttgart, 1968), doc. 200, pp. 469–71.

4 PRO AIR 1/5251, report by the Brooke-Popham Committee, 16 July 1940, p. 3.

5 PRO AIR 14/181, Commander, Advanced Air Striking Force to Bomber Command HQ, 5 March 1940; AIR 9/117, Anglo-French staff conversations, ‘The Attack on German Railway Communications’, 26 April 1939.

6 AHB, ‘Battle of Britain: Despatch by Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, 20 August 1941’ (hereafter: AHB, Dowding ‘Despatch’), p. 8.

7 PRO CAB 120/294, Air Ministry report to War Cabinet, 24 June 1940; German losses in N. L. R. Franks, The Air Battle of Dunkirk (London, 1983), p. 194. British losses over Dunkirk totalled 177, including 106 fighters: see R. Jackson, Air War Over France May – June 1940 (London, 1974), p. 121.

8 Lloyd George in G. Eggleston, Roosevelt, Churchill and the World War II Opposition (Old Greenwich, Conn., 1979), p. 130; Churchill speech in M. Gilbert (ed.), The Churchill War Papers, vol. 2 (London, 1994), p. 368.

9 R. A. Callahan, Churchill: Retreat from Empire (Delaware, 1984), p. 79; P. Addison, ‘Lloyd George and Compromise Peace in the Second World War’, in A. J. P. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: Twelve Essays (London, 1971), p. 381.

10 PRO ΡREM 7/2, letter from Foreign Office to Desmond Morton, 28 May 1940.

11 PRO INF 1/264, Home Intelligence daily reports: 28 May 1940, p. 1; 31 May 1940, p. 1.

12 Addison, ‘Lloyd George…’, pp. 365,378; A. Roberts, The ‘Hοly Fox’: A Biography of Lord Halifax (London, 1991), p. 243.

13 PRO INF 1/878, War Cabinet conclusions, 18 May 1940, p. 3.

14 PRO PREM 7/2, note from Morton to Churchill, 30 May 1940, enclosing note by Cadogan dated 25 May 1940.

15 PRO INF 1/264, Home Intelligence daily reports, 17 June 1940.

16 PRO INF 1/264, Home Intelligence daily reports, 17 June, 18 June, 20 July 1940.

17 PRO AIR 9/447: War Ministry, Plans Division, ‘Eire’, 31 May 1940, pp. 1–3; COS meeting on home defence, 7 July 1940.

18 PRO AIR 9/447, Air Ministry minute, 20 June 1940.

19 PRO INF 1/849, Ministry of Information, Policy Committee: meeting of 8 July 1940, p. 2; meeting of 23 July 1940; meeting of 24 July 1940; INF 1/264, Home Intelligence daily reports, 20 July 1940. See too D. Cooper, Old Men Forget: The Autobiography of Duff Cooper (London, 1953), pp. 286–7.

20 V. Cowles, Looking for Trouble (London, 1941), pp. 416–17.

21 W. Boelcke (ed.), The Secret Conferences of Dr Goebbels (London, 1970), p. 60, meeting of 3 June 1940.

22 H.-A. Jacobsen (ed.), Generaloberst Halder: Kriegstagebuch (3 vols, Stuttgart, 1963), vol. 2, pp. 30–31, entry for 22 July 1940.

23 FCNA, pp. 110–11, ‘Conference with the Führer’, 20 June 1940; Jacobsen (ed.), Kriegstagebuch, p. 3, entry for 1 July 1940.

24 ADAP, Serie D, Band X, p. 56, minute of state secretary, 30 June 1940.

25 IWM, EDS collection, OKW Aktennotiz, ‘Chefbesprechung’, 12 June 1940.

26 ADAP, Serie D, Band X: p. 105, Schulenburg to German Foreign Office, 5 July 1940; pp. 202–3, Prince Max von Hohenlohe to German Foreign Office, 18 July 1940; p. 216, Dublin Embassy to German Foreign Office, 22 July 1940.

27 M. Muggeridge (ed.), Ciano’s Diary, 1939 – 1943 (London, 1947), p. 275, entry for 7 July 1940.

28 FCNA, pp. 116–17, Directive 16, ‘Preparations for the Invasion of England’.

29 M. Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932 – 1945 (3 vols, Munich, 1963), vol. 2, pp. 115–18; W. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934 – 1941 (London, 1941), PP. 355–8.

30 Shirer, Berlin Diary, pp. 355–6.

31 On Halifax see Roberts, ‘Holy Fox,’ p. 249; on Berlin see Shirer, Berlin Diary, p. 360.

32 See J. Förster, ‘Hitler Turns East – German War Policy in 1940 and 1941’, in B. Wegner (ed.), From Peace to War: Germany, Soviet Russia and the World, 1939 – 1941 (Oxford, 1997), pp. 117–24; E. M. Robertson, ‘Hitler Turns from the West to Russia, May – December 1940’, in R. Boyce (ed.), Paths to War: New Essays on the Origins of the Second World War (London, 1989), pp. 369–75.

1 PRO AIR 22/72, Air Ministry weekly intelligence summary, report for 18 July 1940, p. 4.

2 FCNA, pp. 124–5, ‘Conference with the Führer’, 31 July 1940.

3 M. Dean, The Royal Air Force and Two World Wars (London, 1979), ΡΡ.100–101.

4 Details in R. Wright, Dowding and the Battle of Britain (London, 1969),PP. 73–6,138–44.

5 PRO PREM 3/29, summarized order of battle, 19 June 1940, 9 August 1940.

6 AHB, ‘The Battle of Britain: A Narrative Prepared in the Air Historical Branch’, n.d., p. 574.

7 PRO AIR 22/293, Cabinet Statistical Branch, ‘Statistics on Aircraft Production, Imports and Exports, Schedule D, Exports of Fighters’.

8 PRO AIR 22/493, Schedule C, weekly imports April–November 1940.

9 PRO AIR 8/372, War Cabinet conclusions, 22 May 1940; minute, Chief of Air Staff, 22 May 1940; Cripps to the War Cabinet, 26 June 1940.

10 PRO AIR 16/365, ‘Fighter Command, Operational Strength of Squadrons and Order of Battle’.