The Battle of Britain

by James Holland

  In Surrey, Daidie Penna had also heard the news. Some friends of hers were holidaying in Biarritz and she wondered how they might get back. ‘Now they’ll be wishing they’d gone to Blackpool!’ she noted. Everything seemed rather tense, although the mood in the village was calm if rather depressed. She also wondered what was going to happen to Chamberlain. The day before she had been excited by the prospect of his resignation. Now, however, she supposed he would probably carry on after all.

  It was a thought that had occurred to Chamberlain too. Between endless meetings and briefings the War Cabinet met in emergency session three times that day: at 8 a.m., at 11.30 and then again in the afternoon, at 4.30. In the first of these sessions, the PM insisted that now was not the time for a change of leader and that he should at least stay on to see through the immediate crisis. Only Samuel Hoare rallied to this point of view. Kingsley Wood, a friend and long-time colleague of Chamberlain’s, insisted that the German offensive only made it more imperative that he go; Halifax agreed. Still Chamberlain did not resign, however. There were more pressing military matters to deal with. Not until during the third Cabinet session – and it was the fifth item on the agenda – did Chamberlain reveal the news from Bournemouth. The Labour Party, he announced, had agreed to join the Government but not under the present leader. This, then, sealed the matter at last. Chamberlain announced that he would tender his resignation to the King.

  One last effort was made to persuade Halifax, but he again demurred. At the Palace, the King was appalled and made it clear how grossly unfairly he felt Chamberlain had been treated. But, since this was the situation, he hoped Halifax would take over. Chamberlain explained that Halifax had already refused. That meant only one man could possibly take over. ‘I asked Chamberlain his advice,’ wrote George VI in his diary, ‘& he told me Winston was the man to send for.’

  On this day of days, Britain had a new Prime Minister.

  5

  The First Clash in the Air

  ADOLF HITLER’S PERSONAL TRAIN, Amerika, was impressive with its Pullman coaches, armour plating and accompanying flak wagons, but while the Führer liked to ensure he lived in the kind of style that befitted the leader of the German Reich, he was not a man overly bothered by luxury. The same could not be said of his deputy, the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, Feldmarschall Hermann Göring, who stepped on to his own personal, and decidedly luxurious, train, Asia, that morning, 10 May.

  No other leading Nazi embraced the opportunities for riches and extravagance that the regime presented as wholeheartedly as he. No other Nazi had so many self-designed uniforms; none had so flamboyant and extensive an estate as Göring had built for himself in the forests to the north-east of Berlin. Begun as a hunting lodge, it had greatly increased in size a few years before and had recently been massively extended yet again. It was now a huge pile of grandiose proportions: his study was now the original ‘rustic’ barn – which had been a house in its own right. There was a long, marble-lined ‘Great Hall’; there were games rooms, gun rooms, an art gallery where he housed his ever-growing collection, and a library. The walls were lined with paintings, the furniture was exquisite. Inside and out, vast statues and sculptures lined corridors, entranceways or glades in the forest. And it was called ‘Carinhall’ after his dearly beloved and departed first wife; indeed, Carin’s remains had been brought back from Sweden, where she had died in 1931, and reinterred in an equally extravagant underground tomb in the grounds.

  Göring loved food, he loved wine, he loved collecting art, he loved hunting; he loved cars and he loved sailing too: he even had a luxury motorized yacht built, and called, unsurprisingly, Carin II. He loved luxury. His train, Asia, was also armour-plated, but, inside, the carriages were adorned with velvet upholstery and hand-produced wooden panelling. The walls were lined with tapestries and further works of art, while in the sleeping quarters Göring had a huge personal bathtub that would not have looked out of place in Carinhall. There was a darkroom for his own personal photographer, a hospital with six beds and an operating theatre, and his personal barber shop, which included hand mirrors, compacts, powder puffs, sun lamps, cologne and perfume atomizers. Göring was nothing if not a dandy. As well as the accompanying flak wagons, there were two flat wagons on which he kept an assortment of motor cars, which included American, French and German models, a shooting brake and a luxury Mercedes.

  Although often portrayed as an overweight buffoon in the foreign press, Göring was in fact an extremely clever, wily and Machiavellian individual with a very high IQ and a canny ability to get his way through a combination of charm, guile and utter ruthlessness. Born in Bavaria in January 1893, the son of an upper-middle-class colonial official, he had been privately educated – even being sent to Rutland in England to study Greek – before entering military college and joining the Prussian army in 1912. After a stint in the trenches during the first year of the Great War, Göring transferred to the air force, first by becoming an unofficial observer for his lifelong friend Bruno Loerzer, but then, after being found out, obtaining a formal transfer. He went on to become a fighter pilot, to score twenty-two victories, to win the Blue Max and finally to lead the Richthofen Squadron, Jagdgeschwader 1, formerly led by the most famous pilot of them all, Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron.

  After the war, he continued flying – barnstorming at air shows and then for the Swedish airline, Svenska Lufttrafik. As a highly decorated fighter ace with pale eyes and lean, dashing good looks, Göring soon made something of a splash in Swedish society. Clients included the wealthy Swedish explorer Eric von Rosen. It was through von Rosen that Göring met his future wife, Carin, Countess von Fock.

  It was also at von Rosen’s country estate at Rockelstad that Göring spotted the swastika symbol embellishing various places at the castle – von Rosen had found the emblem on various Nordic runes and had incorporated them into Rockelstad. It was supposedly Rockelstad that encouraged Göring to suggest to Hitler the adoption of the symbol by the National Socialists.

  At this time, Göring already had political ambitions, and although he might easily have stayed in Sweden for ever, his affair with the married Carin and the gossip that surrounded them in Stockholm led him to return to Germany, where he met and befriended Adolf Hitler. Captivated by Hitler and his ideals, he became his new friend’s right-hand man in the National Socialist Party, and head of the paramilitary Nazi organization, the Sturmabteilung, or SA.

  Göring was badly wounded in the groin during the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923, and it was during his long period of recovery in Italy and Austria that he first became addicted to morphine, administered initially as an antidote to his extreme pain. This addiction had plagued him ever since; battles against the drug were won then lost but many of his more outlandish characteristics were most likely a direct result of regular morphine taking. A narcotic and highly addictive, morphine, besides relieving pain, also relieves fear and anxiety and produces euphoria. It plays havoc with a person’s glands and hormones, and prompts outbursts of increased energy and vanity, as well as delusions. Extreme vitality is often followed by periods of languor and inactivity. All these symptoms were displayed by Göring.

  In many ways, he was a contradictory character. A family man, he adored his first wife, Carin, but was equally devoted to his second wife, Emmy, and his young daughter with her, Edda. He loved art and nature, could be kind, generous and loyal, yet was also unscrupulous, demonic, vain and power-hungry. How much of this Jekyll and Hyde persona was a part of his natural make-up and how much was due to his drug addiction, it is impossible to know.

  Certainly, however, in his moments of energy – and he was a highly driven, ambitious and determined individual before he had ever succumbed to morphine – Göring was to prove one of Hitler’s most loyal and capable lieutenants. It was Göring who created the Schutzstaffel, or SS, set up initially as Hitler’s personal bodyguard; and it was Göring who created the Sicherheitsdienst, the SD, of which the Gest
apo, the Nazi secret police, was part. He was responsible for establishing the concentration camps. He became Speaker of the German Parliament, President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia, President of the Prussian State Council, Reich Master of Forestry and Game (his hunting laws still exist), and creator of the new German air force, which, under his command, in 1935 became the Luftwaffe.

  By this time, his position and standing within the Reich had never been higher. Hitler, the visionary, was no economist, but Göring was proving himself an adept businessman. In 1935, Hitler gave him control of Germany’s oil and synthetic-rubber production effort, no small responsibility for a country so short of oil itself. The following year, in October 1936, he was given the post of Special Commissioner of the Four-Year Plan, over and above the Economic Minister, Hjalmar Schacht. His task was to completely reorganize the German economy: to continue rearmament and get ready for war, to build up resources, particularly of fuel, rubber and metal, to reduce unemployment, improve agricultural production, develop public works (including the building of autobahns), and stimulate coal and other industrial production.

  By surrounding himself with top-level German industrialists and bankers and by using his considerable powers of charm and diplomacy, he concluded numerous bilateral deals in Yugoslavia, Romania, Spain, Turkey and Finland, enabling Germany to stockpile the kind of minerals – such as tungsten, oil, nickel and iron ore – that would enable the country to continue growing militarily. The Four-Year Plan revolutionized Germany’s economy, run by Göring through his private cabinet of economic advisers and specialists brought into his Prussian Ministry.

  Through bribes, favours and secret deals, he also created a vast industrial empire. Recognizing that iron ore and steel production was under-performing within Germany, he also set up his own iron and steel works, absorbing many of the independent iron works in the Ruhr Valley and in Austria – it was one of the reasons he was so in favour of the Anschluss – and so monopolizing the iron and steel industry in the expanding Reich until he had become one of the biggest industrialists in Europe, if not the world. His Hermann Göring Works, or HGW, became all-powerful. Furthermore, rather than ever becoming state-owned, HGW remained his own private concern. It was no wonder he could lavish such vast sums on Carinhall. Moreover, as the economic master of the Reich, he controlled Germany’s entire foreign exchange reserves, while no corporation could purchase any imports without his say-so. Incredibly, he also established his own private intelligence service, the Forschungsamt, which similarly – and with Hitler’s knowledge – remained in his own private control. Göring might have been willing to hand over the SS and SD to Himmler, but not the Forschungsamt, a listening service that bugged and tapped not only foreign leaders and businessmen but also almost every single leading Nazi. Thus in the political power struggles that were such a feature of the Nazi regime, Göring was always able to use political, military and industrial espionage to keep one step ahead.

  Whilst building his industrial and economic empire, he was also developing the Luftwaffe, which, by May 1940, contained the majority of Germany’s anti-aircraft forces as well as the Fallschirmjäger units – the airborne forces. Thus in addition to his economic and political interests, he also had a considerable number of air and land forces under his command. No other Nazi combined political and military power to such a degree.

  Ironically, however, despite his military background, Göring was not particularly militarily minded – strategically or operationally so at any rate. His enormously forceful personality, and popularity in the early days of the Third Reich, had enabled him to attract the best men from both army and civil life into his fledgling air force. As the most powerful economic figure in Germany, he had also ensured that the Luftwaffe did not want for money. Indeed, its exponential expansion in just a few short years was an astonishing achievement. Persuasive, and infectiously optimistic, he truly believed that almost anything could be achieved. Yet his optimism often led him to ignore unpalatable truths, while his divide and rule policy for keeping his Luftwaffe General Staff in line – a feature of the Nazi regime – frequently proved itself to be counter-productive.

  It is unlikely, for example, that as Göring boarded Asia on the morning of 10 May to meet his Luftwaffe commanders, he would have wanted to know the real state of the Luftwaffe’s forces as the western offensive began. Dressed this morning in one of his specially designed summer white uniforms, his fingers bedecked with rings, he set out for the Air Staff’s Permanent Headquarters at Kurfürst just outside the capital in a confident yet anxious mood. On paper, his Luftwaffe had an effective strength of some 5,446 aircraft. But strength on paper is not the same as actual strength, and actual strength is not the same as operational strength. For example, the third wing of the bomber group KG 4, in which Oberleutnant Hajo Herrmann commanded a Staffel, had an actual strength of thirty-five Junkers 88 bombers, but eight of those were not fit or ready for action. This was nothing unusual. Barely a single Luftwaffe unit could fly all the aircraft lined up at their respective airfields along the German borders that morning. Furthermore, out of the actual strength available to the Luftwaffe, a number were held back for home defence or were on service in Norway. What this meant was that, as the attack began, Göring had two Luftflotten available and a little over 1,500 twin- or single-engine bombers and just above 1,000 single- or twin-engine fighters. In other words, less than half what he thought.

  ‘Among the high command,’ wrote General Speidel, Chief of Staff of Luftflotte 2, ‘above all in the case of the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe himself, he was only interested in the kind of strength figures he wanted to hear and he wanted to believe.’

  Of course, there was one very quick way of reducing aircraft losses, and that was to destroy as many of the enemy’s aircraft as soon as possible. Luftwaffe intelligence reckoned that in January 1940, the French Armée de l’Air had around 320 bombers and 630 fighters, while the RAF had 1,122 and 918 of each. Recognizing that Britain was hardly likely to throw all its available aircraft into France, the Luftwaffe planners were confident they could roll over the French air force easily enough and then the RAF in detail, by luring them a bit at a time into the fray. The Dutch and Belgian air forces were so small that it was reckoned a short, sharp strike should see them off.

  German intelligence, however, was some way off mark. In fact, by 10 May, the French had over 5,000 aircraft of which 3,500 were combat machines, that is, bombers and fighters. It was true that there were only 879 French operational combat aircraft along the front lines, but there were also another 1,700 or so out of the line but combat ready and which, theoretically, could be put into action quite quickly. That they were not at the front on 10 May had been a deliberate policy to avoid them being destroyed on the ground should the Luftwaffe launch surprise air attacks. As such, it was quite a sensible idea.

  German appreciation of the RAF’s strength was closer to the mark, however. The RAF and Royal Navy had been the principal targets for Britain’s rearmament programme, but even so there was a growing feeling in Britain that it was all too little and too late. This was one of the main reasons why when the ‘German hordes’, as Churchill referred to them, launched their attack with their apparently mighty forces, so many leading political and military figures were plunged into such despair. Privy to the endless arguments and prevarications over rearmament that had taken place over the past few years, they were keenly aware of Britain’s military deficiencies. Hence their lack of confidence on 10 May.

  However, because of its greater share of the rearmament cake, the RAF had nonetheless been obliged to make proportionally more of a contribution in the air than on the ground in France. The organization of the RAF forces in France was horribly complicated. Unlike the Luftwaffe, which was divided rather like ground forces, but into Air Fleets and Air Corps consisting of a mixture of aircraft, the RAF was divided into three home-based commands: Bomber, Fighter and Coastal. The problem was that aircraft for France
had to be drawn from those commands and then placed in a new set-up, known as the British Air Forces in France. This was in turn then split in two. The BEF Air Component consisted of thirteen squadrons of Lysanders and Blenheims for reconnaissance, and Hurricanes for protection, and was to directly support the army, and so came under the control of General Gort. The Advanced Air Striking Force (AASF), on the other hand, was independent of both Gort and the French and was commanded by Air Vice-Marshal Playfair, answerable to Bomber Command HQ back in England. Should Gort want stronger bomber support than could be provided by the Air Component, he had to apply to the War Office back in London, who would then ask the Air Ministry, who in turn would order Bomber Command. They would then command AVM Playfair. It was hardly a system that encouraged the kind of quick response so often needed in the heat of battle.

  There were around 500 front-line British aircraft on the morning of 10 May, although, as with the Armée de l’Air, there were more waiting in the wings – not least four more fighter squadrons that had been promised from the UK the moment an offensive started, and a bomber group from Bomber Command operating from England that had been put under command of the AASF.

  Like everyone on the Allied side, the air forces had been expecting the offensive to begin sooner rather than later. At Senon airfield north-west of Verdun, however, the two squadrons at the airfield, 87 Fighter Squadron and 2 Squadron of Lysander reconnaissance planes, had been given something of a warning on the night of 9 May, when the Headquarters of the French air force’s Operations Zone (North) received intelligence that Luftwaffe attacks were expected at dawn. Given the task of covering the northern part of the Maginot Line, these two squadrons had been temporarily severed from the rest of the RAF units in France and placed in a French area of operations. In fact orders were sent recalling them back to north-west France on the night of the 9th, but were then cancelled.