Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

In Washington, on the other hand, De Gaulle obtained almost no support. The United States continued to recognize the Vichy regime, with Roosevelt sending Admiral Leahy as his personal representative to Pétain and Robert Murphy as his special agent in North Africa. In general the United States encouraged France, offered certain economic concessions, especially in North Africa, and sought little more than steadfast adherence to the armistice terms and continued withholding of the fleet and empire from Nazi hands. Both the United States and Britain made numerous secret and special agreements with various representatives of the Vichy government but achieved very little. An agreement of February 26, 1941, between Robert Murphy and General Weygand did allow the United States, in return for certain commercial promises, to maintain consular “observers” in North Africa. These observers obtained large amounts of valuable military and economic information for the United States and Britain during the months preceding the Allied invasion of North Africa on November 8, 1942.

The Battle of Britain, July-October 1940

The collapse of France was one of the most astonishing events in European history. For weeks, or even months, millions of persons in all parts of the world were stunned, walking about in a painful fog. Equally important, although not recognized at the time, was the determination of Britain to go on fighting. Hitler, who had won a victory surpassing his expectations, could not end the war, and was left without plans for continuing it. He began to improvise such plans without adequate information to make them good and without adequate preparation for carrying them out. If Germany had concentrated on building submarines, the newly acquired U-boat bases in Norway, in the Low Countries, and in France might have made it possible to blockade Britain into surrender, but Hitler rejected this plan. Instead he ordered an invasion of Britain (Operation Sealion), a project in which no German, not even Hitler himself, had much confidence.

At the same time, Britain’s refusal to make peace revealed to the full the inadequacies of the French armistice. Hitler sought to remedy these by a project to capture Gibraltar (Operation Felix). Sealion and Felix required Hitler’s active attention from July to November 1940. In the first half of December, Hitler put Sealion and Felix aside and replaced them with two new projects. The new projects sought to conquer all the Balkans (Operation Marita) and to attack the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa). These went into operation in April-June 1941.

Hitler’s change of plans in December 1940 was a consequence of four influences: (1) it was, by that time, clear that Sealion could not be carried out; (2) Franco’s refusal to cooperate had made Felix impractical; (3) Mussolini’s foolish attempts to conquer Egypt and Greece had opened a hornets’ nest in the eastern Mediterranean; and (4) there was growing tension, much of it in Hitler’s own mind, between Germany and the Soviet Union.

Operation Sealion was beyond Germany’s strength, but no one saw this at the time. It required, as a first necessity, air supremacy for the Luftwaffe over southern England. Following this, the invasion would require a large flotilla of invasion craft to carry men and supplies across a lengthy stretch of water and to assemble these forces in combat formation in England. The German Navy was in no position to defend such a flotilla against the British Navy with minefields and to preserve both the invasion flotilla and the minefields by German air superiority.

Britain had adequate manpower, including the men evacuated from France and thousands of anti-Nazi refugees from overrun countries, but had little heavy equipment and certainly had only a fraction of the thirty-nine divisions the Germans estimated to be the size of the defensive forces. These forces were hurriedly prepared; barbed wire and mines were placed on all the landing beaches; watchers were stationed everywhere; all road signs which might guide the invaders were removed; and all able-bodied men, many armed only with fowling guns, were drilled for defense against parachutists. Fortunately, none of these defensive measures ever had to be tested, because Germany was unable to win air superiority over England.

Although air superiority had not yet been achieved by Germany, orders for the invasion were issued at the middle of July, the date was finally fixed at September 21st, but it was postponed, temporarily on September 17th and indefinitely on October 12th. The attacks of the Luftwaffe were directed successively, from July 10th to the end of October, at coastal defenses, at R.A.F. installations, and at London itself. Very heavy damage was inflicted on England, but the losses to the German Air Force were more significant, reaching 1,733 planes with their pilots in three and a half months. In the same period, the British dead reached 375 pilots and over 14,000 civilians. The greatest loss for the Germans in one day was 76 planes on August 15th, but the turning point of the battle came on September 15th when 56 invading planes were shot down.

The counterattack of the R.A.F. on German bases was also very successful; hundreds of invasion craft, in some cases loaded with German soldiers under training, were destroyed. As the Battle of Britain drew to its close in October 1940, the Germans shifted to night bombing of British cities. This practice continued, night after night, with fearful destruction and great loss of life, until Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. During that time, millions of city dwellers, deprived of their sleep, night after night, or crowded into ill-ventilated underground shelters, emerged each morning into scenes of conflagration and ruin to resume their daily work at the war effort.

The calm courage and methodical devotion to duty of the average Englishman ended Hitler’s sequence of diplomatic and military victories, and inflicted on Nazi Germany its first and decisive defeat. The successful defense of Britain, forcing Hitler to give up the project for invading England, was the turning point of the European war. Coming as the first year of war was ending, a year in which Hitler had achieved unprecedented conquests, it ended any possibility of a short war, and forced the Germans into a long struggle for which they had neither plans nor resources.

The defenders were victorious in the Battle of Britain for six chief reasons: (1) the indomitable spirit of the English people put surrender out of the question; (2) British planes were equal in numbers and superior in quality to the German planes; (3) British pilots were of better quality and with better fighting spirit; (4) the British operational organization was far superior; (5) fighting over their own land, British pilots could usually be saved by parachuting; and (6) British scientific inventions were far ahead of those of Germany. This sixth point is of vital significance.

Radar was used in scientific experiments in Britain as early as 1924. Adapted for defense against air attack in 1935, a chain of radar stations had been laid out in 1937 and began continuous operation in April 1939. Before war began in September, these stations could detect most aircraft at distances up to 100 miles. Eventually a very elaborate centralized system could report on all enemy planes over or near Britain. After the fall of France, special night-fighter planes with their own individual radar detectors with a three-mile range were being provided. When they began to shoot down German bombers in total darkness in December 1940, the Luftwaffe did not know what was happening. By March 1940, effective radar-aiming devices were being attached to antiaircraft guns on the ground. These increased the effectiveness of such guns in shooting down enemy bombers by fivefold. These new devices were so helpful that over 100 bombers were shot down by night fighters in the winter of 1940-1941, and an equal number by radar antiaircraft guns.