Richard Overy: The Battle of Britain

In the heady days following the defeat of France such confidence was understandable. Yet all the indications showed that the war was far from over as far as the British government were concerned. It has often been assumed that Hitler himself took the initiative in finally proposing invasion as a solution, but it was the German Navy commander-in-chief, Admiral Erich Raeder, who first raised the issue in conferences with Hitler on 21 May and again on 20 June. The navy had been preparing contingency plans since November 1939, and though naval leaders doubted the feasibility of invasion, they were keen to give the navy a role in the aftermath of victory over France, in which they had played a lesser part. However, Raeder’s main preference was for a joint air-naval blockade of Britain, which seemed to him to offer prospects for a quick end to the war without an invasion at all. Not wanting to be outbid by the navy, the German army began its own study of the possibility of invasion in late June, in case Hitler should call for plans at short notice. 23

Exactly when, or why, Hitler decided to take up the navy’s suggestion may never be known with certainty, but on 2 July he decided to order the armed forces to undertake exploratory planning, and on 7 July issued a directive to that end for ‘the War against England’ (German leaders almost never talked of Great Britain, or the wider Empire). This was not yet an operational order, not even a plan. The directive authorized the services to complete the necessary investigations and preparations that would make a plan possible, and they proceeded to do so with mixed enthusiasm. Hitler’s decision to explore a military solution probably owed something to the infectious Anglophobia of his Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, a man whose insufferable pomposity repelled even his own colleagues and had made him a laughing stock when he came to London as ambassador in 1936. Ribbentrop was keener than anyone in Hitler’s circle to concentrate every effort on defeating Britain. On 1 July German Foreign Office officials were briefed that Germany had no thoughts of peace, but only ‘preparation for the destruction of England’. 24

This could scarcely have been further from the truth. Hitler hoped for a political settlement first and foremost. At a staff meeting shortly before the French capitulation, Hitler announced that as soon as France was finished it was planned ‘to send an offer to England, whether England is prepared to end hostilities’. 25Diplomatic traffic during June and early July suggested that there was room for a political settlement. The German ambassador in Moscow, Friedrich von der Schulenburg, reported on 5 July a conversation between the Swedish ambassador and Sir Stafford Cripps, recently appointed to the British embassy. Cripps, with a disarming lack of that discretion so much in demand at home, claimed that the democracies ‘were hopelessly behind the authoritarian states, that the attack on the island [Britain] will probably succeed’. A British diplomat in Bern openly discussed the need for peace talks, and dismissed Churchill as a dilettante and a drunk. The heavily staffed German embassy in Dublin engaged in feverish attempts to find out what was happening in London, but could only forward to Berlin the very dubious intelligence that the lower and middle classes wanted peace, while the upper classes wanted war. 26

Hitler was in no rush to settle with Britain. In the absence of any clear signals from London, he decided to seize the initiative by announcing publicly that the door to a peaceful settlement was not closed if the British were prepared to ask for one. Ribbentrop was told on 6 July to draft a speech for Hitler to deliver to the Reichstag on 19 July. The draft was not what he wanted, and Hitler rewrote the speech himself. In the interim his attitude to Britain began to harden. On 7 July, the day he directed the armed forces to explore the possibility of invasion, he told the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, that he was now more inclined ‘to unleash a storm of wrath and steel upon the British’. 27A week later he instructed the armed forces to prepare an invasion to take place at any time after 15 August. On 16 July he finally published War Directive 16 for ‘Operation Sealion’, a surprise landing somewhere on the British coastline between Ramsgate and the Isle of Wight, to take place if other kinds of political and military pressure failed. Invasion was a last resort; it was only possible, the directive warned, if air superiority could be established over southern England and a safe area of sea secured for the crossing. 28

Three days later Hitler delivered his peace offer. Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry made elaborate technical preparations to have the speech broadcast worldwide. The deputies assembled in the Kroll Opera House, home to the German parliament since the fire-raising of the Reichstag building in February 1933. Overhead, German fighter aircraft flew on patrol to prevent a sudden bomb attack. Hitler spoke without the usual wild oratory, and received none of the usual bays of approval and stamping of feet. Above him sat row upon row of bemedalled soldiers. In the chair sat Hermann Goering, commander-in-chief of the German Air Force and Reichstag president, writing out his vote of thanks as Hitler talked. Count Ciano sat with an Italian text of the speech, and jumped up to salute in all the wrong places. The peace offer constituted no more than a fraction of what was in effect a celebration of German victory. Its wording was haughty and condescending. Hitler blamed the war on the Jews, Freemasons and armament kings who kept the Allied peoples in thrall; he had no desire to destroy the British Empire, but would bring it down in ruins if war went on; he appealed to British common sense to end the war, but he appealed ‘as a conqueror’. 29

It was a clever speech. The continuation of the war was placed entirely at the British door; Hitler basked in the unaccustomed role of the magnanimous victor. It was sincerely meant, if only in the sense that German leaders did want Britain to sue for peace on their terms. Hitler made no secret of his disappointment when the British rejected his offer. German officials and soldiers sat listening to the British reaction on the BBC German service later on the evening of 19 July. William Shirer, a young American newsman, sat with them and listened to their howls of disbelief: ‘ “Can you understand those British fools? To turn down peace now? They’re crazy.” ’ 30In London Hitler’s speech caused scarcely a ripple. Lord Halifax gave a formal rejection over the radio on the evening of 22 July, which was widely criticized in Britain not only for the lame delivery, but for the seventeen references to God. When the War Cabinet next assembled, the peace offer was not even discussed. The same day, 23 July, at the daily press conference in Berlin, reporters were told by an angry official: ‘Gentlemen, there will be war.’ 31

The British rejection needs little explanation. The decision to continue the fight against Germany had already been made some weeks before. Though it is sometimes argued that Britain would have lost less by reaching a compromise in 1940, rejection was, under the circumstances, an entirely rational decision. Nothing in Hitler’s record could give any serious grounds for the British to expect Hitler to honour any pledges entered into. The treatment of the other conquered peoples was evident to the whole world; even unconquered, Britain was expected by the German side to make very substantial concessions and to pay extensive reparation. Only days after the rejection of Hitler’s offer, harsh terms were finally revealed for the territorial dismemberment of defeated France. At the same time a ‘New Order’ for the European economy was announced, with a privileged Germany at its core. British interests were, under such circumstances, fundamentally incompatible with German hegemony across Europe.