Many Not the Few: The Stolen History of the Battle of Britain

by Richard North

  Strangely then, in late August and early September when this new crisis was supposed to be at its height, Dowding was silent. So was Air Vice-Marshal Park even though his Group was most at risk. He had a particularly good opportunity to raise the alarm when on 30 August Churchill visited his headquarters. Yet, when the Prime Minister reported on that visit to the War Cabinet on 1 September, he had returned bubbling with confidence. “We had every right to be satisfied. Our own Air Force was stronger than ever and there was every reason to be optimistic about the 1940 Air Battle of Britain”, the Cabinet minutes recorded him saying.

  As to the pilot shortage which was said to afflict Fighter Command, there were undoubtedly problems in keeping the front-line squadrons fully manned. But neither the Prime Minster, who seems to have micro-managed every aspect of the war, nor the War Cabinet was troubled by any talk of a manning crisis. The Cabinet had been asked to consider pilot training on 30 August, the same day that Churchill had visited Park’s headquarters, but this was only in relation to moving training operations overseas. Fighter pilots were not specifically mentioned.

  Then, with Churchill having already conveyed optimism about the air war, on 2 September there was his message to Bomber Command, published in the Daily Express. If this had just been a morale booster, it could have remained confidential. It seems inconceivable that it would have been released if Fighter Command had been on the brink of collapse.

  This was then followed by Churchill’s statement to parliament on 5 September – delivered with the approval of the War Cabinet. On the public record, he said that “firm confidence” was felt by all the responsible officers of the RAF in our ability to withstand the increased scale of attack. The RAF was “more numerous and better equipped than it was at the outbreak of the war”. This was mirrored in a parallel statement in the House of Lords, where Lord Halifax told their Lordships that “[m]any of our Air Force stations have been the subject of heavy attack, but sound organisation and skilful precautions have enabled them to continue to operate with scarcely a pause”.14

  A day later, both the King and Queen visited Dowding’s headquarters at Bentley Priory. Had the situation been so very desperate, surely the visit would have been cancelled? Instead, a newsreel shows a relaxed, smiling Dowding acting as a guide to the royal couple. Looking from the top downwards, with a “hands on” Prime Minister, who combined his premiership with the role of Defence Minister, had there been an existential crisis, it really is inconceivable that he would not have been aware of it, and then written about it. Generally, crises of this magnitude, especially if they require more and urgent allocation of resources, are referred to the very top.

  But nothing percolated to the rarefied heights. In terms of the written record, Churchill, on 25 August, complained about the number of “communication squadrons” being maintained at Hendon. The airfield could provide at least two good squadrons of fighter or bomber aircraft, he thought. Then he was worrying about delayed action bombs, about street lighting and the blackout, about the delays in filling craters in bombed airfields and repairing hangars, about developing gliders for troop transports and diverse other matters. Nothing was said at the time, and there is no record of any representations being made to Churchill, or the War Cabinet for that matter, that might even have hinted of serious problems. Thus, by mid–late August and early September, any idea of a Fighter Command manning crisis was invisible to the upper echelons of government, and was to remain so.

  On the eve of that 7 September attack on London, therefore, the situation was that two air forces faced each other, neither of which had been defeated. In the 1941 Air Ministry pamphlet, it was suggested that the Germans may have believed that they had achieved success and it only remained for them to bomb a defenceless London until it surrendered. However, as do most military histories, this ignores the political dimension. And here, Göring was playing an independent hand. By early September, his strategic aim had already shifted. As Klee indicated, quite unrelated to Sealion, the Luftwaffe was setting out to bring about a decision through strategic air warfare alone. The same point is made persuasively and at length by Walter Ansel. Having assessed the overall contribution towards the success of the invasion made by the air effort, he concludes that “the score works out very close to zero”.15

  Both writers make it very clear that the objective had been the destruction of British morale, thereby to secure a political settlement – an objective of which the British were very well aware. The aim was not physical but moral domination, alongside which Hitler’s and Göring’s representatives were active in pushing for peace negotiations as part of a tried and tested strategy. The “one-two” dimension of aggressive diplomacy coordinated with the military action is one of the neglected and poorly understood aspects of the battle, but one in which Hitler and the Nazis excelled.

  To that, then is added the invasion threat, which turns out to be just another dimension in Hitler’s overall strategy. The key here to understanding what was going on were the events of 13–14 September 1940 – shortly before the invasion either had to be launched, postponed or cancelled. Good evidence indicated that, by the 13th, he had already decided that the operation would not go ahead in its originally intended form. But Hitler was also mindful of the total psychological effect of a decision. Cancellation of Sealion would have relieved some of the psychological pressure, for which reason he was not disposed yet to issue the cancellation order and disperse the invasion fleet.16

  That he then “postponed” the invasion on 17 September had nothing to do with the limited tactical success of the RAF on 15 September – the details of which Hitler could hardly have been aware. It was simply a reflection of the realities. The invasion fleet could not be held at constant readiness, without physical deterioration. It had to be used or stood down. Since Hitler had no intention of using it, he had to choose the latter option.

  Another of those points which is rarely made in this context is that Göring was indeed an independent player, and unlike the Navy and Army chiefs, not subordinated to OKW. As Reichsmarschall, not only was he the top-ranking officer in the military, he was also Air Minister, and responsible for the economic plan. As such, he was responsible to Hitler alone and after him the most prominent man in the Nazi regime. As his close confidant and a man who had played a central part in his rise to power, Göring could more or less do as he pleased. He would tell Hitler what he thought he needed to know.17

  Furthermore, he had been actively involved in peace negotiations in August 1939, and had sought to avoid war – not least because it conflicted with his role as plenipotentiary for the five-year economic plan.18 Good evidence suggests that he initiated two different strands of peace feelers in July 1940, one via Dahlerus, and the other – more clearly documented – through Albert Plesman. It was then open to Göring to adjust the tempo of the air operations, to improve the chances of pursuing negotiations. It would have been illogical to intensify air operations while he was actively seeking peace and, incidentally, trying to rescue his economic plan, for which he was responsible.

  For all that Göring acquired the reputation as a dilettante, he headed a professional air force. It benefited from skilled fighters and strategists – not least its chief of staff, the “unusually intelligent and energetic” Generaloberst Hans Jeschonnek, and Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring.19 They had persuaded Göring to shift to night bombing, principally to reduce losses from RAF fighters. This is often presented as a strategic defeat, but night bombing was also a tactic adopted by RAF Bomber Command for exactly the same reason. To those who suggest that the Luftwaffe’s move represented a defeat, would they also agree that Bomber Command had been defeated? Was the fact that its thousand bomber raids were carried out at night evidence of defeat?

  In effect, what happened was sound military strategy. Faced with an obstruction, the military simply sought another way round. This had been precisely the strategy adopted to deal with the Maginot line, where the tanks had circumve
nted the fortifications by driving through the Ardennes. Faced with Dowding’s well-organized and powerful day-fighter force, the Luftwaffe switched to night bombing, and was able to operate with impunity. The Spitfires and Hurricanes of Fighter Command had become Britain’s own Maginot line.

  As for targeting London, it was the one major port city that had so far escaped serious bombing and was overdue a major raid. Given the strategic importance of the capital, and the need to secure a decision, it made absolute sense to switch the weight of the attack and put the effort behind the Blitz, as well as stepping up the blockade. Bombing London served both those objectives.

  The battering the Luftwaffe then took on 15 September arose through a combination of hubris and faulty intelligence. Its leaders, underestimating the strength of Fighter Command, had unwisely mounted a major daylight raid and expected the same treatment as its surprise raid of 7 September. But the fleets also suffered a strong headwind, which gave the defenders more time than usual to prepare.

  Despite that, the RAF shot down fewer aircraft than on 18 August. The day was a success, but not a great victory, nor even a turning point. The Luftwaffe did not strike its tents and steal away – the scenario posited by the 1969 “Battle of Britain” film. As the “Maginot line” of the daylight fighter force had proved to be too tough a nut to crack, it simply accelerated changes in tactics that were already under way, The strategic objective of defeating Britain remained – but the schwerpunkt changed. It became the people of Britain, the immediate task being to crack their morale by means of the application of strategic airpower.

  This explains why, in their study of the immediate events that led to the postponement of Sealion on 17 September, Ansel and others do not specifically mention the air fighting of the 15th. It was not a factor. Even had the Germans judged the air battle as successful on that day, the invasion still would not have gone ahead.

  Unsurprisingly, two Luftwaffe pilots, Julius Meimberg and Gerhard Baeker, also reject the “take” of Churchill and other post-war revisionists. “It’s all exaggerated”, Meimberg said sixty years after the event. “Churchill succeeded in creating this myth that so few did so much for so many”. Baeker had been twenty-five when he had flown his first bombing missions over England. He too regarded the British preoccupation with the Battle of Britain as disproportionate. August and September 1940 were just one incident in a long war. “For me, the battle lasted from August 1940 until July 1941. What they call the Battle of Britain in England was just August and September”.20

  The cold statistics confirm this view. In August, when the assault on the RAF was at its highest, the Luftwaffe flew 4,779 sorties. It dropped 4,636 tons of bombs and incendiaries. In September, the figure was 7,260 sorties and 7,044 tons of ordnance dropped – yet the assault on the airfields wound down on 6 September. In addition, 669 mines were laid in coastal waters and estuaries. In October, with the “great day” of 15 September long gone, the Luftwaffe flew 9,911 sorties, dropped 9,113 tons of ordnance and laid 610 mines. Most of the ordnance was dropped at night.

  The main effect of Fighter Command, therefore, was to force the Luftwaffe to adopt the “Maginot strategy”, whence the German Air Force converted from a largely day bombing force, into a strategic night bombing force, shifting the focus of attack from airfields and the aircraft industry to the people. But the objective never varied: the purpose of the air activity was to bring the UK to the negotiating table. The support for that thesis is overwhelming. Thus, after the supposed Fighter Command victory, far from diminishing, air operations actually intensified, peaking in October. Even in November, when weather conditions were extremely difficult for the primitive aircraft of the day, 6,510 tons of ordnance were dropped – 40 per cent more than in August. Minelaying doubled, with 1,215 mines laid.

  As winter closed in, December saw 3,844 sorties and 4,323 tons of ordnance, and January 2,465 sorties and 2,424 tons. Even in the brutal month of February, in near-Arctic conditions, the Luftwaffe managed 1,401 sorties and dropped 1,127 tons of ordnance. Sortie rate increased during March and April, with 4,364 and 5,448 sorties flown respectively, during which period some of the heaviest raids of the war were mounted against London. On 16–17 April, 681 bombers flew against the city, followed by 712 on the night of 19–20 April. Even the first ten days of May saw renewed activity, with raids against Liverpool and Birkenhead, and Glasgow/Clydesbank, as well as London. By then, of course, the attacks were a feint, to conceal the gradual relocation of forces to the East.21

  For most of this period, the Luftwaffe medium bombers operated at night, with “mosquito” raids of Me 109 formations raiding during the day, flying at high level and giving the RAF huge problems. Through the night, it operated with impunity, so contemptuous of the defence that formations commonly flew with navigation lights on. Any idea that the Luftwaffe had been defeated is fantasy. RAF Fighter Command aircrew cannot stand as “the men who saved England”, as the 1941 pamphlet would have it. The idea is preposterous.

  At best, RAF fighter aircrew were co-defendants, alongside the other RAF Commands, the other Services and their Arms, and they were partners with the people who were also fighting the battle. The real achievement of the RAF, as Park had urged of his Group in August 1940, was indeed that it survived. That was no mean achievement, and nothing can detract from it. But it was not the “close run thing” as has been asserted, and it was a shared achievement. The other Services, the diplomats and most of all the people were buying time, staving off defeat in order to pave the way for victory, all playing their own vital parts in a long and complex battle.

  THE ATTACK ON MORALE (THE BLITZ)

  With a more sanguine appraisal of the battle, we can now begin to see the Blitz in its proper and original context. It was part of the overall Battle of Britain, but the phase where the people became the main protagonists. They were no longer the passive bystanders, their role merely to applaud the heroic “few”. By 7 September, breaking the morale of the people had become the primary means by which the Göring and the Nazi hierarchy sought to defeat Britain. The ultimate victory was to be gained by a political settlement brought about through a collapse in the civil order. Britain would have been rendered ungovernable, with Churchill deposed and a new government in place, ready to negotiate. The vocabulary had not yet been invented, but in effect this was the “shock and awe” adopted by the Americans in the 1991 Gulf War, with exactly the same objective – regime change.

  However, the people in 1940, in contrast to the British Armed Forces, had to do more than just survive and endure. In the unequal battle between man, woman and child, and the bombers with their loads of high explosives and incendiaries, their main defences were effective air-raid shelters. The slated enemy may have been Germany but – as with the ill-equipped fighter pilots confronting survival in the sea – a barrier to survival was their own government, in failing to equip them with the means by which they could protect themselves. Here, the people had to take on the government in order to enhance their own prospects of survival and thus succeed in defying Hitler.

  This remarkable situation occurred largely as a result of deliberate policy, formulated primarily by Sir John Anderson, but stemming from experience in the First World War. The first aerial attack on London had been on 31 May 1915, when there had been no civilian shelters. People had taken to the Underground stations and eighty were soon adapted for constant use. But, when 12,000 people had gathered at Finsbury Park Station after police had displayed “take cover” signs, there had been tremendous concerns about hygiene and spread of disease in such densely occupied areas. Thus, after the war, there were “strenuous efforts made” to ensure that stations would never again be put to such use.22

  Even in the immediate aftermath of the first major Gotha raid, however, there was reluctance to allow the Tube system to be used. On 14 June 1917, the then Home Secretary Sir George Cave had told the House of Commons:

  Supposing we gave warnings by such means as loud-sounding
hooters. I am advised that sudden warnings in this way of impending air raids would have the effect of producing overcrowding in the streets and trams, and people would suddenly crowd into the Tubes and other places, and this of itself might result in a serious loss of life.23

  As the debate progressed, a central figure became Anderson. In January 1924, he had been chairman of the Air Raid Precautions Committee of Imperial Defence. It was he that had ruled out the Tube station shelter option. The excuses had changed, but the thinking had not.

  In the shadow of Munich on 21 December 1938, when challenged in parliament on the air-raid precautions, Anderson still dismissed out of hand any idea of providing these effective bombproof shelters, saying:

  Apart from the difficulties and delays involved in any extensive scheme for deep bomb-proof shelters, I do not think we are prepared to adapt our whole civilisation so as to compel a large proportion of our people to live, and maintain their productive capacity, in a troglodyte existence deep underground.24

  In early 1939, under considerable pressure from parliament, Anderson as Home Secretary was forced to revisit his own decision. After complaining during a debate on 1 March 1939 of the “stir” about deep – i.e., bombproof – shelters, which was “creating something perilously near to a defeatist mentality”, he appointed a conference of experts to look again at the issue. This was headed by Lord Hailey, a fellow Indian governor who had ruled over the Punjab until 1928 and the United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh) until 1934.

  Predictably, the former Indian Government colleague and his experts supported Anderson’s original policy. They worked on the supposition that the bombing would be mostly short-lived raids in the daylight, the masses of bombers giving next to no warning of their arrival – as had been the case in the First World War. They had not for the moment considered the possibility of prolonged night raids, in a campaign lasting months, or even of the development of radar. From their narrow perspective, a network of deep shelters – the only type that would give full protection – would not be feasible. They would be too far apart to allow quick access in the event of the expected surprise raids, and large numbers of people attempting to use stairs at the same time risked a large-scale accident.25