The Battle of Britain

by James Holland

  The other prime intelligence source came from General Martini’s 3rd Abteilung, which handled all signals intelligence. Any updates on Study Blue were largely thanks to Martini’s team, rather than Schmid’s, as the British press was less useful as a source of information once war began and because thereafter signals intelligence was the prime means of gathering information. There were, admittedly, also Abwehr spies sent to Britain by Canaris – the real Fifth Columnists – but these had so far proved abjectly bad at their task. Most had been caught almost as soon as they had arrived. The 3rd Abteilung did pass on daily intelligence summaries to Schmid’s team, but when a new intelligence appreciation was asked for by Göring and the Luftwaffe General Staff, it was Schmid, a colonel, rather than Martini, a general, who was given the task.

  His subsequent report, presented on 16 July, was riddled with misconceptions and wrong diagnoses. Although his estimation of operational fighter strength – 675 – was not far off the mark, he considerably underestimated how many new aircraft were being produced a month and claimed that British output would decrease because of damage by German air attacks. Time would tell on that score, but during July 385 Spitfires and Hurricanes had been built and that did not include the number that had been repaired – certainly, Schmid had not the first idea about the Civilian Repair Organization. He reckoned that a shortage of planes rather than pilots was the RAF’s biggest headache, when in fact the opposite was the case. He also made no mention whatsoever of radar, or any other aspect of Dowding’s defensive system. As far as aircraft were concerned, he pronounced that both the Spitfire and the Hurricane were inferior to the Me 109 – that was true, although the tone suggested there was a massive gulf, which was not the case with regard to the Spitfire. He also said that the Me 110 was superior to the Hurricane but inferior to skilfully handled Spitfires. The Me 110 was one of Göring’s pet projects, so clearly it would not pay to belittle it. However, while the 110 was fast and had impressive firepower, it was nothing like as manoeuvrable as a Spitfire or Hurricane; a twin-engine aircraft could not possibly be.

  Interestingly, there is no suggestion that Schmid knew that the RAF was split into different commands. However, perhaps his biggest misjudgement was his verdict on Fighter Command’s structure and organization, which he claimed was rigid and inflexible, when that was precisely what it was not. In fact, it was ironic how much Schmid had perceived Fighter Command’s weaknesses as strengths and its strengths as weaknesses. ‘The Luftwaffe is clearly superior to the RAF,’ he concluded, ‘as regards strength, equipment, training, command and location of bases.’

  So the Luftwaffe, then, should have no great trouble overwhelming Fighter Command. Neither Göring, nor Milch, nor Jeschonnek saw any reason to doubt Beppo Schmid’s report, and it was on this appreciation and armed with Study Blue that the plans for the all-out assault on Britain were to be made. What was striking about both sides’ intelligence, however, was that while Tommy Elmhirst and his team at the Air Ministry had somewhat overestimated Luftwaffe strength, Beppo Schmid had underestimated that of Fighter Command; indeed, he did not even know of Fighter Command’s existence. Both were therefore wrong in their appreciations. The difference was that while one of those incorrect assessments would ultimately prove to have been an advantage, the other most categorically would not.

  Hitler’s speech, when it was finally delivered, was not what was expected. It went on for two and a quarter hours, the Führer speaking less dramatically than was usual; there was no ranting and raving, or as much gesticulating and spittle flying as usual. Sitting in the front rows were his commanders and senior Nazis, many of whom had been promoted. William Shirer, who was watching, had never seen so many gold-braided generals massed under one roof. There were twelve new field marshals announced, of whom Milch, Kesselring and Sperrle were three. Watching from the dais beside Hitler was Göring, elevated to Reichsmarschall, a six-star general. There was now no higher-ranking officer in the world. Thrilled with this latest promotion, he had had a new uniform designed specifically, one that would show he was a commander of all three services rather than just the Luftwaffe. A soft light grey was the colour of choice. When his valet suggested it was a woman’s fabric, Göring replied, ‘If I wear it, then it’s for men.’

  The Reichsmarschall beamed as Hitler saluted him then handed him the title deeds in a specially designed box encrusted with diamonds and emeralds. ‘His boyish pride and satisfaction was almost touching,’ observed William Shirer. He wondered why Göring should remain so popular, and concluded that it was because on occasions such as this he seemed so human, ‘so completely the big, good natured boy’.

  Finally, having extolled their great victories and spoken of Germany’s new strength, and having announced the string of promotions, the Führer turned to Britain. Churchill was the object of his scorn, the man he blamed for continuing the war and for starting the bombing offensive. He then made one of his most prescient comments. ‘I only know clearly,’ he predicted, ‘that the continuation of this struggle can end only with the entire destruction of one of the two opponents.’

  He went on to add that it would be England. ‘I feel obliged, in this hour, by my conscience, to direct one more appeal of reason to England,’ he continued. ‘I believe I can do this not as someone who has been defeated, but as a victor … I see no compelling reason for the continuation of this war.’ Despite the usual euphoric Sieg Heils that followed the end of the speech, there was a sense of disappointment amongst Hitler’s inner circle and commanders. There had been no firm offer, no outline of terms, merely an appeal to ‘reason’. Göring sensed that they would now have to fight it out after all. All those weeks he had been thinking Britain would sue for peace. Suddenly, with the Führer’s vague offer, those hopes seemed likely to have been dashed. As he commented later, Hitler’s speech had thrown the ‘fat into the fire’.

  In London, at the Ministry of Information, Duff Cooper, along with Harold Nicolson and two others, sat around the wireless in the minister’s office listening to Hitler’s crackling voice and taking notes. They were all rather surprised that when it was finally over there had still not been any definite peace offer. ‘Considering everything,’ noted Harold, ‘Hitler is really rather modest and temperate and he only starts screaming when he thinks of Winston Churchill.’

  The object of Hitler’s scorn was also receiving translated sections of the speech as it clattered over the teletyper. He made no comment that night. ‘I do not propose to say anything in reply to Herr Hitler’s speech,’ he told Jock Colville, ‘not being on speaking terms with him.’ However, at Cabinet the next day it was decided some kind of response was needed. Churchill believed Halifax was the man to make it. After all, he was the Foreign Secretary. More than that, however, Berlin was quite aware that Halifax, above all, was the biggest British dove. A rejection from him would have greater impact than one from Churchill. Furthermore, Halifax had been due to make a routine broadcast on the evening of Monday, 22 July. This would be the perfect opportunity to make Britain’s position clear once and for all.

  Meanwhile, the day after his speech, Hitler met his commanders at the Reich Chancellery and reminded them once again that Britain’s position was hopeless and that a political solution was still on the cards, although he would not wait for much longer. If Britain still refused to come to terms, then she would be destroyed by a combination of air and submarine warfare by mid-September at the latest, at which point the invasion would be launched. After telling them this, he left Berlin once again, not for the Berghof, but for Bayreuth, where the Wagner Festival was underway. Hitler had long since found that there were few things more calming than a Wagner opera. He needed it, for there was much on his mind.

  *

  Before Halifax broadcast his reply, Jock Colville heard of a dramatic new rumour coming from Washington. The British Ambassador, Lord Lothian, had been contacted by the German chargé d’affaires, Hans Thomsen, via an American third party. Thomsen told Lothian the
y could outline precise peace terms for Britain that Germany would find acceptable. General Halder also heard of this. ‘British ambassador to Washington is quoted: Britain has lost the war. Should pay, but do nothing derogatory to her honour.’ Of course, Lothian had said nothing of the kind and the offer had come from Thomsen and Berlin, rather than the other way round. Churchill told Lothian not to respond. The same day, a Dutch businessman, at Göring’s behest, also offered to mediate between Berlin and London. There was also another attempt by the Pope.

  Then, on Monday evening, Halifax made his broadcast as planned. ‘Hitler may plant the Swastika where he will,’ he announced in a line that was pure Churchill, ‘but unless he can sap the strength of Britain, the foundations of his empire are based on sand.’ The speech put an end to any further German hopes. ‘England has chosen war,’ ran the headline of Goebbels’s paper, the Völkischer Beobachter. Goebbels had been monitoring public opinion in Germany carefully. Goaded by the Propaganda Ministry, which had urged editors to attack Britain with ‘all possible might’, the papers had referred to Britain’s rejection as a war crime. ‘German public opinion is boiling hot,’ noted Goebbels with relish. ‘The war against England will be a relief. That is what the German people want. The nation is aflame.’

  William Shirer noticed a different mood. He thought Berliners seemed depressed rather than angry, although most seemed to be pinning hopes on a quick victory which would be won by autumn, and thus save them from another long, cold winter of war. At any rate, the peace with Britain that had been so assured would not happen just yet. As William wrote in his diary, ‘The die seems cast.’

  33

  The Besieged

  CECIL BEATON HAD LEFT New York on the Cunard liner Britannic, on 2 July. As the ship sailed out, a German pleasure steamer, on a tour of the New York sights, crossed their bows. ‘And as it passed close by,’ noted Cecil, ‘its crew grinned with macabre grimaces as it jabbed its thumbs down at us.’ Despite this taunt, and regardless of however terrible the prospect might be, Cecil was impatient to get back home.

  A few days later, after an eventless return trip in which no U-boats had been spotted, he was back at his home in south Wiltshire. Immediately, he found his spirits soaring once more. ‘Any day now an invasion by the Germans could be expected,’ he noted, ‘the future might well be gruesome, but, somehow, to be in the midst of this maelstrom was far less painful than to hear of it from afar.’

  Fear of invasion had never gone away. A report by the Chiefs of Staff on 4 July had accepted that an invasion might take place any moment. A few days later came another appreciation, this time on the ‘Estimated Scale of Air Attack upon the United Kingdom’, produced by Tommy Elmhirst and his team. ‘I think that Hitler will probably invade us within the next few days,’ jotted Harold Nicolson the day after hearing the Führer’s speech. ‘He has 6,000 aeroplanes ready for the job.’ In Tadworth in Surrey, Daidie Penna could hardly keep up with the invasion rumours. It sometimes seemed that every day Hitler was about to attack them over the Channel. ‘Today is one,’ she noted early in July, ‘but I haven’t seen him yet.’ A few weeks later, it appeared to be quieter on the war front, despite the aeroplanes that were flying over. ‘Though it is reported,’ she added, ‘that Hitler is putting the last touches to his invasion plans.’

  There might have been a continued expectation of invasion, but after the dramatic events of the Dunkirk evacuation and the French capitulation, the war seemed quieter again. Daidie was not alone in finding it hard to continually work herself up to a fever pitch of expectation only for nothing to then happen. It had led to a gradual acceptance of the threat of German bombers and invasion, and the hardships and inconveniences brought by war. Somehow, almost overnight, these things had become normal. When tea was rationed on 9 July, Daidie barely batted an eyelid; rather, she wondered whether people would come to appreciate their new abstemious habits before the war was over. The same day, she had some concrete blocks delivered, which were to form a blast wall at the front of the house. With the man who delivered the blocks, she discussed whether the Germans would continue bombing once autumn arrived; already she was thinking of a future beyond the next few days. They both thought English fog would help them. ‘Still, whatever does come,’ thought Daidie, ‘I think people will be well prepared for it.’

  Confidence was definitely mounting. At the end of June, Olivia Cockett was convinced that they could not possibly win. Three weeks later, her level of morale, she felt, was still much the same but she no longer felt the end of life as they knew it was nigh; she was still spending time doing things for the future both in the house and in her garden. ‘I still feel that WE are bound to win the war,’ she jotted, having forgotten her earlier pessimism, ‘but I don’t know why.’

  It was Harold Nicolson’s task, as a member of the Committee for Home Morale, to keep a close watch on the spirits of the people. Daily reports would reach him, taken from observers and pollsters around the country. Yet another invasion date had been predicted for 19 July, the date of Hitler’s speech. ‘People cheerful and optimistic at weekend when Hitler failed to invade Britain on Friday as threatened,’ ran a report of 22 July. ‘General feeling now that war will last a long time as invasion cannot succeed and we shall then settle down to hammering away at Germany by RAF.’

  What was bothering ‘all classes’ was the new Government decision to prosecute people for defeatist talk or for spreading rumours under what was called the ‘Silent Column Campaign’. Olivia Cockett and her colleagues at the Pay Office at New Scotland Yard were appalled. She felt that people liked a good moan. ‘Opinion unanimous that it was much better to let people talk as they thought, instead of bottling up worries and grievances,’ she noted, ‘and that anyway, surely one of the things we’re fighting to restore to Europe is FREE SPEECH.’ The campaign had been a Ministry of Information initiative and had been launched with posters and advertisements. In the press there were even accusations that the Ministry had begun spying on the people. ‘There is no doubt,’ noted Harold Nicolson, ‘that our anti-rumour campaign has been a ghastly failure. All together the M. of I. is in disgrace again.’

  Although the Silent Column Campaign had clearly been misjudged, the criticism undoubtedly reflected the changing, more confident, mood of the nation. The Ministry, despite the criticism, had done good work, ensuring the public were well-informed, sending out clear messages, efficiently surveying morale and using well-known cartoonists and designers for a number of successful campaigns, such as ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’. Yet when it came to boosting the morale of the people it was not the Ministry but two particular individuals who seemed to have the magic touch. The first was Max Beaverbrook, the diminutive press baron turned king of aircraft production, who hit on the brilliant idea of asking the nation to donate pots and pans to make aeroplanes. On 10 July, Lady Reading, head of the Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS), broadcast an appeal to Britain’s women on Beaverbrook’s behalf. ‘Very few of us can be heroines on the battle-front,’ she said, ‘but we can still have the tiny thrill of thinking as we hear the news of an epic battle in the air, “Perhaps it was my saucepan that made part of that Hurricane.”’ The response was phenomenal and tapped brilliantly into the feeling that most British people had that they were besieged and all in it together. This was the people’s war, and everyone could help. Equally successful was the Spitfire Fund, which had begun in Jamaica, where the people of Kingston began raising money for new planes to fight against the Luftwaffe. Other Dominions caught on to the idea and, recognizing a golden opportunity, Beaverbrook announced that £5,000 would buy a Spitfire (in reality it was nearer £12,000) and launched a more formal appeal. Again, the response was swift and enthusiastic. Soon there was not a town in Britain that did not have its own Spitfire Fund. It became a kind of national craze. Boy Scouts would do jobs to raise money; collections were made in church, in the pub, at work; town mayors launched campaigns, so too did newspapers. The Durham Miners, for ex
ample, raised £10,000 – that was two Spitfires! And Beaverbrook also correctly judged that it was the Spitfire, not the Hurricane, with its beauty, modernity and mean power, that best represented Britain’s defiance in the air.

  Beaverbrook may have had a nose for a good PR coup, but it was Churchill himself, more than anyone, who led the Government’s propaganda effort. Since his hoedown with Halifax and the successful evacuation of the BEF, his position had been greatly strengthened. Although his energy and far-sightedness had been impressive, it was his resolve and spirit, conveyed so brilliantly in his oratory, which helped unite the country. He never shirked from revealing the harsh realities, yet he was also relentlessly positive; there were no limits as to what might be achieved. However formidable Hitler’s Germany might seem, no matter how dire Britain’s situation, these challenges were surmountable. Such ardent self-belief was infectious.

  Nearly 60 per cent of the population had listened to his ‘finest hour’ speech; his next, on 14 July, had been heard by nearly 65 per cent. This was an incredibly high proportion of the population, especially when considering that seventy years down the line the most popular television programmes would only reach around 12 per cent of the population. This broadcast, to the English-speaking world as much as to Britain, had been another inspirational piece of oratory. ‘But all depends now,’ he told his listeners, ‘upon the whole life-strength of the British race in every part of the world and of all our associated peoples and of all our well-wishers in every land, doing their utmost night and day, giving all, daring all, enduring all – to the utmost – to the end. This is no war of chieftains or of princes, of dynasties or national ambition; it is a war of peoples and of causes.’ As his low, rumbling, distinctive voice came through the wireless sets of countless offices and households in Britain and around the world, he finished with another memorable flourish. ‘This is a war of the unknown warriors,’ he announced, ‘but let all strive without failing in faith or in duty, and the dark curse of Hitler will be lifted from our age.’ No wonder people felt inspired.