Second World War, The

by Corrigan, Gordon

  The naval staff had anticipated the requirement and, while on 27 May they lifted but 7,669 men from Dunkirk and the adjacent beaches, the daily total thereafter was 17,804, 47,310, 58,823 and, on 31 May, 68,014. On that day, Churchill was in Paris and announced that the evacuation was going satisfactorily. When questioned by the French as to how many of their men had been taken off, Churchill had to admit that it was only 15,000,* and thereafter the Royal Navy was told to take equal numbers of French and British troops. On 1 June, 64,429 were landed in England, on 2 June 26,256, on 3 June 26,746 and in the last lift, on 4 June, 26,175 French troops were taken off.26 Managing two maritime operations at once – Dunkirk and Norway – the Royal Navy performed its traditional role impeccably, although at great cost. A total of 693 ships took part in the Dunkirk evacuation. Of them six destroyers, eight troop transporters, one sloop, five minesweepers, seventeen trawlers, one hospital ship and 188 smaller vessels were sunk, and about the same number damaged in some way. A total of 338,226 men were safely brought to England, 110,000 of them French. Only a nation with a powerful navy could have done it, and only an air force on which some interwar money had been spent could have kept the Luftwaffe away from the beaches for long enough to allow the navy to do it.

  The British Army was helped in getting back to the beaches and defending the bridgehead by an order halting the advance of the German armour on 24 May. This had nothing to do with Hitler’s not wanting the British to be humiliated, which might make them less willing to negotiate, but a perfectly sensible military requirement to replenish and repair armoured vehicles that had clocked up a huge amount of track mileage since the Battle of France began, and to prepare them for Phase Two, the advance south. The British were also helped by the willingness of the French to take on more and more of the defence of the embarkation areas, but, despite the ability of the British collective memory to turn failure into heroic myth, the much vaunted ‘Miracle of Dunkirk’ was a disaster for the British Army. Nearly all its heavy equipment – tanks, artillery pieces, vehicles – had to be left behind, the men had been on half-rations since 23 May, and discipline in some units broke down completely.

  On 5 June, Fall Rot, ‘Case Red’, began and 119 German divisions began the conquest of France. On 11 June, after making quite sure that she would be on the winning side and be quite safe from retaliation, Italy declared war on France and Britain. It turned out to be the wrong assessment on both counts, but was probably not unreasonable at the time. As it was, the Italians suffered a seriously bloody nose when they tried, and failed, to break through the Maginot Line in the south. An attempt by Churchill to send a second BEF in through the Normandy port of Cherbourg in a half-baked scheme to hold Brittany against the Germans was called off after wiser military counsel prevailed. On 14 June, German troops entered Paris, and the Royal Navy launched Operation Ariel, the evacuation of Allied troops from ports in Brittany and Normandy and on the Bay of Biscay. On 16 May the French premier, Reynaud, resigned in favour of Marshal Pétain. The 400,000 troops in the Maginot Line were never conquered, but once the Line was outflanked there was no point in fighting on and, on 18 June, France surrendered.

  Now Britain stood alone. But in reality, of course, she was not alone: the forces of the Empire – India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and large parts of black Africa – were in the war, and, while their ability to contribute might now be small, it would grow, and grow very quickly.

  4

  INTERLUDE

  BRITAIN AT WAR: MAY 1940–JUNE 1941

  It was hardly a joyous homecoming. Most of the troops brought away from the beaches and the port of Dunkirk were landed at night, and in any case the arrival ports were closed to curious spectators. Met by ladies of the Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) and other support organizations and given tea and sandwiches, the men were whisked away in convoys of vehicles or specially chartered trains to whatever barracks were available, often many miles away from their home bases. Many of the men evacuated – perhaps most – thought of themselves as having been defeated, as indeed they had been, and the removal of personal weapons from some units arriving in England compounded the feelings of disgrace and humiliation. None of this could be allowed to leak to the civilian population, and the men were told in no uncertain terms that they were heroes, members of an undefeated army brought home to fight another day, while the newspapers made much of the ‘Miracle of Dunkirk’ and the supposedly heroic role of the ‘little ships’ – the privately owned yachts, motor launches and dinghies that were claimed to have brought back huge numbers of troops from the beaches. While the use of the ‘little ships’ to ferry troops from the beaches to the transport ships was useful, it was only a tiny effort compared with that of the Royal and Merchant Navies and they brought back to England only a tiny proportion of the total troops shifted, but the legend was what mattered – here was the ordinary Englishman mucking in, without being told, to play his part in fighting the beastly Hun.

  On 4 June, Churchill made his now famous‘We shall fight on the beaches’ speech in the House of Commons, making it clear that whatever happened (and this was two weeks before the French surrender) Britain would carry on the war, if necessary alone. It was stirring stuff but the reality was somewhat different. While nearly 340,000 soldiers had been brought safely back from France, most of the 110,000 French soldiers had no desire whatsover to join de Gaulle’s embryo Free French army and after the surrender availed themselves of the right to be repatriated, and in any case an army without weapons is of little use. Of the 2,794 artillery pieces sent to France with the BEF, only 322 had come back, of 68,678 vehicles, only 4,739 and, perhaps worst of all, of the 445 tanks of various sorts only nine real tanks (those with a gun as opposed to a machine-gun) had returned. The only troops fully equipped and up to strength in the United Kingdom were three infantry divisions and parts of a fourth, and two armoured brigades. The question was not whether Britain would continue the war but whether she could.

  As early as 25 May the British Chiefs of Staff, the professional heads of the three services, had drawn up a paper examining the options for continuing the war should the BEF have to be withdrawn from Europe. Churchill had hoped to persuade the French to continue the war from their colonies, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that this was unlikely, and, once British troops began to be evacuated from Europe, inter-Allied rancour increased. The Chiefs of Staff thought that, if the German army could effect a landing in England, and could follow it up, then all would be lost: despite the propaganda about the gallant Local Defence Volunteers, renamed the Home Guard in August, and the more recent claims about the damage that the ‘auxiliaries’ could have caused an invader, there were not the assets to mount a credible defence. On the other hand, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force between them were probably strong enough to prevent a landing, so the main threat, thought the Chiefs, would be from air attacks on British ports, airfields, aircraft factories and radar installations. The effects of submarine warfare (which in the event was far more of a threat than anything from the air) was hardly mentioned. Britain could, therefore, hold out, provided that the RAF could maintain air superiority above the Channel. Within a year or so the Royal Navy’s blockade would leave Germany short of food, while a shortage of raw materials would affect her weapons production. In an outburst of very wishful thinking, the paper opined that hunger, the collapse of the industrial base, revolt in the occupied countries and bombing by the RAF would force Germany’s defeat in due course. One injection of sound realism was the caveat that all depended upon the full economic and financial support of the United States.

  It is part of the received version of Britain’s war that the possibility of peace negotiations with Germany was never even considered. Certainly there is no, or almost no, documentary evidence that the peace proposals in Hitler’s speech of 21 July were examined seriously and Churchill’s private secretary, John Colville, a civil servant on secondment from the Foreign Office, is admant t
hat Churchill refused any reply, even a ‘no’, on the grounds that ‘I am not on speaking terms with that man [Hitler].’27 Not all agreed. There were those in government, including Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, who thought that there would be no harm in at least finding out what the terms might be. At the risk of appearing to peddle conspiracy theories, it is inconceivable that some consideration was not given to what the German proposals were. You lose nothing by finding out what price you might have to pay for something. It may well be a price that you are not prepared to pay, in which case that is the end of the matter. If the British government did enter into any negotiations, any documents relating to them would, of course, have been destroyed, and, for reasons of public morale and British credibility abroad then, and Britain’s perception of herself now, no mention of them could ever be allowed to leak out. Hitler’s speech was deliberately vague as to what the settlement might be, but it would surely have demanded that the UK allow Germany a free hand in Europe and have required some British disarmament, particularly reductions in the Royal Navy. The carrot would presumably have been a promise not to interfere with the British Empire and perhaps a parcelling out between Britain and Germany of the French colonies. Those proposed terms, or anything similar, would have been as unacceptable then as they are in hindsight, and, if any negotiations did take place, they came to nothing. As Churchill observed at the time, by fighting on and being defeated the British would have got no worse terms than those that might then have been on the table.

  German proposals and planning for an invasion of England were halfhearted. The planning staffs went through the motions, but not even the Luftwaffe’s senior commanders, perhaps more politically indoctrinated than their counterparts in the army and navy, really thought it was a starter, barring some extraordinary stroke of luck. The German planners, military and political, had not given much thought to the inconvenience of Britain going to war over Poland and, having gone to war, holding out after defeat on the Continent. There had been virtually no strategic thought given to the possibility of British intransigence: German victory in the Battle of France was supposed to end any threat from the West and allow Germany to embark on her long-term aims, the subjugation of Russia and the acquisition of living room in the East. Hitler was well aware of the practical difficulties of achieving a landing in England and ordered that it should be a last resort. Ideally England should be defeated, or forced to agree to a compromise peace, by indirect methods. Major-General Alfred Jodl,* Chief of Operations in OKW, produced such a plan, which envisaged air attacks to destroy Britain’s war economy, a submarine campign to cut off her imports, encouraging and assisting Spain to seize Gibraltar and Italy the Suez Canal, terror raids on the civilian population and then, as a final push, a landing. Hitler vetoed terror raids, at least for now, as he still thought Britain could be brought to the negotiating table and he hoped to drive a wedge between the British population and its leaders. As much for propaganda purposes within the armed services as for any practical reason, he did, however, order planning for an invasion of England – Case Sea Lion. If such an action was to have any chance of success, there were a number of conditions that had to be met. Firstly, there had to be sufficient shipping to transport a force large enough to not only effect a landing but hold it, expand it and then push on to London – initially estimated by the army to be 100,000 men with tanks, guns and vehicles in the first wave; secondly, the weather had to be favourable, which meant that the invasion would have to take place well before the autumn, after which Channel storms, often difficult to predict, were notorious; and finally, and most important of all, there must be German air superiority over the Channel and Southern England.

  All sorts of problems arose, partly because none of the planning staffs really believed in Sea Lion, and partly because of the inherent difficulties of a non-maritime power trying to mount a seaborne invasion. There were insufficient landing craft – indeed, none worthy of the name – and, while Rhine barges were collected and concentrated in ports along the Channel coast, there were not nearly enough (even if they had been suitable for crossing anything other than a mill pond, which they were not) and attempts to procure suitable vessels took up manufacturing capacity needed for other things. The navy could not meet the Luftwaffe’s requirements for shipping to move the number of anti-aircraft guns they needed; nor could they sweep channels free of mines without the Royal Navy relaying them, and concealment of the men, vehicles and shipping from the RAF was well nigh impossible. A plan for an initial landing of thirteen divisions along 180 miles between Weymouth and Margate eventually became ten divisions along eighty miles between Worthing and Folkestone before being abandoned altogether.* Sea Lion was never, of course, officially cancelled, only postponed until further notice. Internal reasons of morale and infallibility demanded that the invasion plans stayed on the drawing board, but by September troops were beginning to be withdrawn from the proposed launch areas as German eyes turned east and south.

  The one phase of Sea Lion that did happen was the attempt to gain air superiority, combined with attacks on Britain’s industrial capacity and on civilian morale. What to the British are two separate battles – the Battle of Britain and the Blitz – was to the Germans one battle, with a change in emphasis along the way. The Battle of Britain began with a fighter vs fighter struggle when the RAF’s Spitfires and Hurricanes took on the Luftwaffe’s Bf 109s and 110s. To begin with, the Germans had 964 fighters available against the RAF’s 507, but the statistics are deceptive. The twin-engined Bf 110, of which the Germans had 261, was not as manoeuvrable as either British aircraft and, even when flown by a very competent pilot (which it invariably was), would come off worse in a dogfight. The Bf 109 was a match for both the Spitfire and the Hurricane, but it had a limited range and could only spend a relatively short time in British airspace before having to return to base. Furthermore, British aircraft that crash-landed might be repairable, and if their pilots had survived intact they could rejoin the fray; German aircraft that went down were irrecoverable and their pilots either drowned or were captured.

  Luftwaffe intelligence during the battle was often over-optimistic about British losses. It also took the Germans some time to realize that the British were using radar both to give early warning of the enemy’s approach and to vector fighters into the attack, which meant that these aircraft only had to take off at the last minute and could maximize their time in combat. When the aim of luring the RAF into battle and defeating it failed, the Germans then concentrated on bombing airfields and aircraft factories. If they had succeeded in this phase, particularly if they had rendered airfields unusable, then air superiority would have been gained, but, while it was a close-run thing, they did not succeed. Targeting was too dispersed and, rather than going for the same objectives day after day or night after night, thus making it impossible for the British to repair their airfields, assembly lines or whatever, the Luftwaffe went for far too many targets, and, while damage was considerable, it was always repairable.

  There were all sorts of reasons why the Battle of Britain, the attempt to destroy the RAF, turned into the Blitz, the attempt to destroy British morale. It may have happened partly by accident when an RAF raid that had gone off course bombed the suburbs of Stuttgart on 24 August 1940 (result: four German civilians dead), leading to a German attack with 100 bombers on London the following morning. It may have been the result of Hitler’s relenting on his banning of terror raids, as the British claimed, or it may have been an attempt to destroy British industrial production, as the Germans claimed. The real reason for the bombing of civilian homes by the Luftwaffe, and for the subsequent campaign by Bomber Command of the RAF, contrary to the spirit, if not the letter, of the Geneva Convention, was that it was simply not possible with the technology of the time to hit precision targets at night, and increasingly as anti-aircraft defences grew and improved both the Luftwaffe and then the RAF had to do most of their bombing under cover of darkness. If it was not possible
to hit with precision, and by inference military, targets, then to attack the enemy homeland from the air meant going for the cities, where at least you would hit something. At first the Germans claimed that they were aiming at docks, or railway marshalling yards, or factories, as did the RAF when their own campaign began, but this pretence was soon abandoned and London, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle, Bristol, Birmingham and even Belfast soon became regular recipients of German bombs. The destruction of the medieval cathedral by German bombs during a raid on Coventry on 14 November 1940 caused a great hoo-hah at the time and is still quoted as an example of barbarity today. Conspiracy theorists allege that Churchill knew about the raid but let it happen in order to show how beastly the Germans were. The truth is that, if you accept a city as a legitimate target, you cannot exempt listed buildings from your wrath. The Brtish did accept cities as legitimate targets because they did the same to the Germans and it was just good luck that Cologne Cathedral withstood everything that the RAF could throw at that city (and it was raided around 150 times).