“All things considered,” he said, “the best time for the operation would be May 1941.”
But Hitler did not want to wait that long. He conceded that “naturally” there was nothing they could do about the weather. But they had to consider the consequences of losing time. The German Navy would not be any stronger vis-à-vis the British Navy by spring. The British Army at the moment was in poor shape. But give it another eight to ten months and it would have from thirty to thirty-five divisions, which was a considerable force in the restricted area of the proposed invasion. Therefore his decision (according to the confidential notes made by both Raeder and Halder)13 was as follows:
Diversions in Africa should be studied. But the decisive result can be achieved only by an attack on England. An attempt must therefore be made to prepare the operation for September 15, 1940 … The decision as to whether the operation is to take place in September or is to be delayed until May 1941, will be made after the Air Force has made concentrated attacks on southern England for one week. If the effect of the air attacks is such that the enemy air force, harbors and naval forces, etc. are heavily damaged. Operation Sea Lion will be carried out in 1940. Otherwise it is to be postponed until May 1941.
All now depended on the Luftwaffe.
The next day, August 1, Hitler issued as a consequence two directives from OKW, one signed by himself, the other by Keitel.
Fuehrer’s Headquarters
August 1, 1940
TOP SECRET
Directive No. 17 for the Conduct of Air and Naval Warfare against England
In order to establish the conditions necessary for the final conquest of England, I intend to continue the air and naval war against the English homeland more intensively than heretofore.
To this end I issue the following orders:
1. The German Air Force is to overcome the British Air Force with all means at its disposal and as soon as possible …
2. After gaining temporary or local air superiority the air war is to be carried out against harbors, especially against establishments connected with food supply … Attacks on the harbors of the south coast are to be undertaken on the smallest scale possible, in view of our intended operations….
4. The Luftwaffe is to stand by in force for Operation Sea Lion.
5. I reserve for myself the decision on terror attacks as a means of reprisal.
6. The intensified air war may commence on or after August 6 … The Navy is authorized to begin the projected intensified naval warfare at the same time.
ADOLF HITLER14
The directive signed by Keitel on behalf of Hitler the same day read in part:
TOP SECRET
Operation Sea Lion
The C. in C., Navy, having reported on July 31 that the necessary preparations for Sea Lion could not be completed before September 15, the Fuehrer has ordered:
Preparations for Sea Lion are to be continued and completed by the Army and Air Force by September 15.
Eight to fourteen days after the launching of the air offensive against Britain, scheduled to begin about August 5, the Fuehrer will decide whether the invasion will take place this year or not; his decision will depend largely on the outcome of the air offensive …
In spite of the Navy’s warning that it can guarantee only the defense of a narrow strip of coast (as far west as Eastbourne), preparations are to be continued for the attack on a broad basis, as originally planned …15
The last paragraph only served to inflame the feud between the Army and Navy over the question of a long or a short invasion front. A fortnight before, the Naval War Staff had estimated that to fulfill the demands of the Army for landing 100,000 men with equipment and supplies in the first wave, along a 200-mile front from Ramsgate to Lyme Bay, would necessitate rounding up 1,722 barges, 1,161 motorboats, 471 tugs and 155 transports. Even if it were possible to assemble such a vast amount of shipping, Raeder told Hitler on July 25, it would wreck the German economy, since taking away so many barges and tugs would destroy the whole inland-waterway transportation system, on which the economic life of the country largely depended.16 At any rate, Raeder made it clear, the protection of such an armada trying to supply such a broad front against the certain attacks of the British Navy and Air Force was beyond the powers of the German naval forces. At one point the Naval War Staff warned the Army that if it insisted on the broad front, the Navy might lose all of its ships.
But the Army persisted. Overestimating British strength as it did, it argued that to land on a narrow front would confront the attackers with a “superior” British land force. On August 7 there was a showdown between the two services when Halder met his opposite number in the Navy, Admiral Schniewind, the Chief of the Naval War Staff. There was a sharp and dramatic clash.
“I utterly reject the Navy’s proposal,” the Army General Staff Chief, usually a very calm man, fumed. “From the point of view of the Army I regard it as complete suicide. I might just as well put the troops that have landed straight through a sausage machine!”
According to the Naval War Staff’s record of the meeting* Schniewind replied that it would be “equally suicidal” to attempt to transport the troops for such a broad front as the Army desired, “in view of British naval supremacy.”
It was a cruel dilemma. If a broad front with the large number of troops to man it was attempted, the whole German expedition might be sunk at sea by the British Navy. If a short front, with correspondingly fewer troops, was adopted, the invaders might be hurled back into the sea by the British Army. On August 10 Brauchitsch, the Commander in Chief of the Army, informed OKW that he “could not accept” a landing between Folkestone and Eastbourne. However, he was willing, albeit “very reluctantly,” to abandon the landing at Lyme Bay in order to shorten the front and meet the Navy halfway.
This was not enough for the hardheaded admirals, and their caution and stubbornness were beginning to have an effect at OKW. On August 13 Jodl drafted an “appreciation” of the situation, laying down five conditions for the success of Sea Lion that seemingly would have struck the generals and admirals as almost ludicrous had their dilemma not been so serious. First, he said, the British Navy would have to be eliminated from the south coast, and second, the R.A.F. would have to be eliminated from the British skies. The other conditions concerned the landing of troops in a strength and with a rapidity that were obviously far beyond the Navy’s powers. If these conditions were not fulfilled, he considered the landing “an act of desperation which would have to be carried out in a desperate situation, but which we have no cause to carry out now.”17
If the Navy’s fears were spreading to Jodl, the OKW Operations Chief’s hesitations were having their effect on Hitler. All through the war the Fuehrer leaned much more heavily on Jodl than on the Chief of OKW, the spineless, dull-minded Keitel. It is not surprising, then, that on August 13, when Raeder saw the Supreme Commander in Berlin and requested a decision on the broad versus the narrow front, Hitler was inclined to agree with the Navy on the smaller operation. He promised to make a definite ruling the next day after he had seen the Commander in Chief of the Army.18 After hearing Brauchitsch’s views on the fourteenth, Hitler finally made up his mind, and on the sixteenth an OKW directive signed by Keitel declared that the Fuehrer had decided to abandon the landing in Lyme Bay, which Reichenau’s Sixth Army was to have made. Preparations for landings on the narrower front on September 15 were to be continued, but now, for the first time, the Fuehrer’s own doubts crept into a secret directive. “Final orders,” it added, “will not be given until the situation is clear.” The new order, however, was somewhat of a compromise. For a further directive that day enlarged the narrower front.
Main crossing to be on narrow front. Simultaneous landing of four to five thousand troops at Brighton by motorboats and the same number of airborne troops at Deal-Ramsgate. In addition, on D-minus-1 Day the Luftwaffe is to make a strong attack on London, which would cause the population to flee from the city
and block the roads.19
Although Halder on August 23 was scribbling a shorthand note in his diary that “on this basis, an attack has no chance of success this year,” a directive on August 27 over Keitel’s signature laid down final plans for landings in four main areas on the south coast between Folkestone and Selsey Bill, just east of Portsmouth, with the first objective, as before, a line running between Portsmouth and the Thames, east of London at Gravesend, to be reached as soon as the beachheads had been connected and organized and the troops could strike north. At the same time orders were given to get ready to carry out certain deception maneuvers, of which the principal one was “Autumn Journey” (Herbstreise). This called for a large-scale feint against Britain’s east coast, where, as has been noted, Churchill and his military advisers were still expecting the main invasion blow to fall. For this purpose four large liners, including Germany’s largest, Europa and Bremen, and ten additional transports, escorted by four cruisers, were to put out from the southern Norwegian ports and the Heligoland Bight on D-minus-2 Day and head for the English coast between Aberdeen and Newcastle. The transports would be empty and the whole expedition would turn back as darkness fell, repeating the maneuver the next day.20
On August 30 Brauchitsch gave out a lengthy order of instructions for the landings, but the generals who received it must have wondered how much heart their Army chief now had in the undertaking. He entitled it “Instruction for the Preparation of Operation Sea Lion”—rather late in the game to be ordering preparations for an operation that he commanded must be carried out from September 15. “The order for execution,” he added, “depends on the political situation”—a condition that must have puzzled the unpolitical generals.21
On September 1 the movement of shipping from Germany’s North Sea ports toward the embarkation harbors on the Channel began, and two days later, on September 3, came a further directive from OKW.
The earliest day for the sailing of the invasion fleet has been fixed as September 20, and that of the landing for September 21.
Orders for the launching of the attack will be given D-minus-10 Day, presumably therefore on September 11.
Final commands will be given at the latest on D-minus-3 Day, at midday.
All preparations must remain liable to cancellation 24 hours before zero hour.
KEITEL22
This sounded like business. But the sound was deceptive. On September 6 Raeder had another long session with Hitler. “The Fuehrer’s decision to land in England,” the Admiral recorded in the Naval Staff War Diary that night, “is still by no means settled, as he is firmly convinced that Britain’s defeat will be achieved even without the ‘landing.’” Actually, as Raeder’s long recording of the talk shows, the Fuehrer discoursed at length about almost everything except Sea Lion: about Norway, Gibraltar, Suez, “the problem of the U.S.A.,” the treatment of the French colonies and his fantastic views about the establishment of a “North Germanic Union.”23
If Churchill and his military chiefs had only got wind of this remarkable conference the code word “Cromwell” might not have been sent out in England on the evening of the next day, September 7, signifying “Invasion imminent” and causing no end of confusion, the endless ringing of church bells by the Home Guard, the blowing of several bridges by Royal Engineers and the needless casualties suffered by those stumbling over hastily laid mines.*
But on the late afternoon of Saturday, September 7, the Germans had begun their first massive bombing of London, carried out by 625 bombers protected by 648 fighters. It was the most devastating attack from the air ever delivered up to that day on a city—the bombings of Warsaw and Rotterdam were pinpricks beside it—and by early evening the whole dock-side area of the great city was a mass of flames and every railway line to the south, so vital to the defense against invasion, was blocked. In the circumstances, many in London believed that this murderous bombing was the prelude to immediate German landings, and it was because of this more than anything else that the alert, “Invasion imminent,” was sent out. As will shortly be seen, this savage bombing of London on September 7, though setting off a premature warning and causing much damage, marked a decisive turning point in the Battle of Britain, the first great decisive struggle in the air the earth had ever experienced, which was now rapidly approaching its climax.
The time for Hitler to make his fatal decision to launch the invasion or not to launch it was also drawing near. It was to be made, as the September 3 directive stipulated, on September 11, giving the armed services ten days to carry out the preliminaries. But on the tenth Hitler decided to postpone his decision until the fourteenth. There seem to have been at least two reasons for the delay. One was the belief at OKW that the bombing of London was causing so much destruction, both to property and to British morale, that an invasion might not be necessary.†
The other reason arose from the difficulties the German Navy was beginning to experience in assembling its shipping. Besides the weather, which the naval authorities reported on September 10 as being “completely abnormal and unstable,” the R.A.F., which Goering had promised to destroy, and the British Navy were increasingly interfering with the concentration of the invasion fleet. That same day the Naval War Staff warned of the “danger” of British air and naval attacks on German transport movements, which it said had “undoubtedly been successful.” Two days later, on September 12, H.Q. of Naval Group West sent an ominous message to Berlin:
Interruptions caused by the enemy’s air forces, long-range artillery and light naval forces have, for the first time, assumed major significance. The harbors at Ostend, Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne cannot be used as night anchorages for shipping because of the danger of English bombings and shelling. Units of the British Fleet are now able to operate almost unmolested in the Channel. Owing to these difficulties further delays are expected in the assembly of the invasion fleet.
The next day matters grew worse. British light naval forces bombarded the chief Channel invasion ports, Ostend, Calais, Boulogne and Cherbourg, while the R.A.F. sank eighty barges in Ostend Harbor. In Berlin that day Hitler conferred with his service chiefs at lunch. He thought the air war was going very well and declared that he had no intention of running the risk of invasion.24 In fact, Jodl got the impression from the Fuehrer’s remarks that he had “apparently decided to abandon Sea Lion completely,” an impression which was accurate for that day, as Hitler confirmed the following day—when, however, he again changed his mind.
Both Raeder and Halder have left confidential notes of the meeting of the Fuehrer with his commanders in chief in Berlin on September 14.25 The Admiral managed to slip Hitler a memorandum before the session opened, setting forth the Navy’s opinion that
the present air situation does not provide conditions for carrying out the operation [Sea Lion], as the risk is still too great.
At the beginning of the conference, the Nazi warlord displayed a somewhat negative mood and his thoughts were marred by contradictions. He would not give the order to launch the invasion, but neither would he call it off as, Raeder noted in the Naval War Diary, “he apparently had planned to do on September 13.”
What were the reasons for his latest change of mind? Halder recorded them in some detail.
A successful landing [the Fuehrer argued] followed by an occupation would end the war in a short time. England would starve. A landing need not necessarily be carried out within a specified time … But a long war is not desirable. We have already achieved everything that we need.
British hopes in Russia and America, Hitler said, had not materialized. Russia was not going to bleed for Britain. America’s rearmament would not be fully effective until 1945. As for the moment, the “quickest solution would be a landing in England. The Navy has achieved the necessary conditions. The operations of the Luftwaffe are above all praise. Four or five days of decent weather would bring the decisive results … We have a good chance of bringing England to her knees.”
What was
wrong, then? Why hesitate any longer in launching the invasion?
The trouble was, Hitler conceded:
The enemy recovers again and again … Enemy fighters have not yet been completely eliminated. Our own reports of successes do not give a completely reliable picture, although the enemy has been severely damaged.
On the whole, then, Hitler declared, “in spite of all of our successes the prerequisite conditions for Operation Sea Lion have not yet been realized.” (The emphasis is Halder’s.)
Hitler summed up his reflections.
1. Successful landing means victory, but for this we must obtain complete air superiority.
2. Bad weather has so far prevented our attaining complete air superiority.
3. All other factors are in order.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Page 122