Third Reich Victorious (10 page)

Despite Göring’s predictions, with the shorter range to southern England favoring the RAF, and Fighter Command’s new Supermarine Spitfires coming fully into play, the Luftwaffe took its heaviest daily losses of the campaign. Ordered to stay in France, the Air Component and AASF were shot out of the sky or had their airfields overrun. By the next day, the BEF had secured five miles of coastline together with about half of Dunkirk port. But it was too late to form a coherent British defensive front, there were just too many holes in the line. That afternoon the German 216th Division from the east met the 20th Motorized Division at Bevern, and the BEF was cut in two. Lord Gort died a soldier’s death when his personal headquarters was overrun by infantry of the 6th Panzer Division. There were no survivors, and there seems little doubt that his sacrifice was deliberate.

With only partial use of Dunkirk, which was contested between the 48th South Midland Division under Maj. Gen. Andrew Thorne (aided by the French 68th Infantry Division) and the 2nd Panzer Division, the British escape was always going to be costly, especially as the ships had to come so close to shore. The cruiser HMS
Ceres
was sunk, together with ten destroyers, among them HMS
Kelly
commanded by Capt. Lord Louis Mountbatten, which blew up with all hands lost.

No division of the BEF escaped intact, and fewer than 68,000 disorganized and demoralized men were transported back to Dover. Others continued to escape almost until the capitulation of France on June 22. In particular, the 51st Highland Division, serving on attachment with the French on the Saar, had a heroic fight clear across the country, its last stand taking place at the little port of St. Valery-en-Caux on June 10, from where the Royal Navy rescued 2,000 men.

Over 150,000 British soldiers became prisoners, including Lieutenant General Brooke, together with Martel and five other divisional commanders. Montgomery himself left through Dunkirk on June 1. After a night’s sleep he went to the War Office, demanded to see General Dill, and started lecturing him on what had gone wrong. As famous for his tactlessness as his military skill, Montgomery might have gotten away with this in different circumstances. Instead, Dill dismissed him from command of his division and ordered him from the building.

Göring’s real intention was never to help Manstein make Sea Lion a reality, but to demonstrate that air power by itself could defeat Britain. Nevertheless, with Hitler so committed to Sea Lion, the Luftwaffe had to maintain the pretense. The German view on bombing cities (as shown at Rotterdam) was that it was no different than long range artillery bombardment prior to a ground assault. On that basis, Göring argued, the Luftwaffe should bomb the port of London and towns in southeast England as a preliminary to Sea Lion. Over the objections of both Kesselring and Manstein, Hitler—still furious over the Freiburg incident—gave his authorization as part of Führer Directive 13 of May 24 that “the Luftwaffe is authorized to attack the English homeland in the fullest manner.”
¹⁰

For the British, June was a wasted month in which much more could have been done. Following the Dunkirk disaster, the government was briefly convinced the invasion would happen in the three-day period starting June 4. Fearing a general panic and shaken by the Mason-Macfarlane episode, Halifax, on Chamberlain’s advice, took government control of the BBC, ending transmissions except for emergencies. The result, far from dispelling rumor, led many people to turn to German propaganda radio stations in search of news. Halifax also ordered all weapons to be handed in at police stations, thus ending Eden’s plan for a rudimentary force of “Local Defense Volunteers” (otherwise known briefly as the “Home Guard”).

Major General Thorne, one of the few senior British officers to make it back safely from Dunkirk, was promoted on June 8, to take over XII Corps defending southeast England, with his headquarters at Tunbridge Wells. General Ironside became the new commander-in-chief of the Home Forces. The troops in training almost equaled fifteen divisions (plus a Canadian division, and an Australian division arriving), but arms and equipment existed for the equivalent of just five divisions. On May 25, Ironside told the War Cabinet his plans: wherever the Germans landed they would be met by the forces in place; if they broke out, then the next defensive position was the “GHQ Line” running through Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells to Basingstoke, manned by three incomplete infantry divisions. This was all very well, but four days later Anthony Eden reported that “there is no antitank regiment nor antitank gun in the whole of the [XII] Corps area.”
¹¹
To defend Kent, the 1st London Division under Maj. Gen. C. F. Liardet had only two brigades of infantry, eleven 25-pounder field guns, and a few obsolete howitzers, no tanks or armored cars, and not even any medium machine guns. Coastal defense units were almost ludicrously underequipped. At Bexhill, Gunner Terence “Spike” Milligan (later famous as a civil rights activist in the United States) recorded that his battery’s 9.2-inch howitzers, of First World War vintage, had no ammunition, and that the crews trained by shouting “Bang” in unison.
¹²

Still, Halifax’s greatest concern was that people should not panic. Churchill’s idea for a Ministry of Aircraft Production was opposed by Kingsley Wood as unwarranted interference. Besides, although in early June Fighter Command had barely 320 Spitfires and Hurricanes, the problem was not aircraft but a shortage of some 360 trained pilots, particularly since Dowding refused to use airmen who had escaped from occupied countries. Meanwhile, bizarre episodes multiplied, the product of stress and fear. There were reports of German parachutists everywhere, and in a variety of improbable disguises. Farmers received visits from security officers wanting to know why they had mowed their hay to leave patterns that could be seen from the air. The talented young German-Russian émigré actor and playwright, Peter von Ustinov, serving as a private in the army, was shot dead at a police checkpoint on suspicion of being a spy.

Britain continued to pursue a negotiated peace, with Italy among the intermediaries until Mussolini’s declaration of war on June 10. On Monday, June 17, the Swedish ambassador in London was told that “common sense and not bravado would dictate the British government’s policy.”
¹³
But this was far short of absolute surrender, and Halifax was not politically strong enough to force through an armistice against the opposition of Churchill and Eden. Also, as Halifax well knew, the survival of his beloved British Empire depended largely upon its reputation for strength and stability. Capitulation to Nazi Germany—however disguised or finessed—would be the beginning of the end, especially for British India. On June 23, the day after the French surrender, Halifax, who was not a brilliant public speaker, told the House of Lords that future generations might consider that for the British people “this, on the whole, seems to have been their finest hour.”
¹⁴
On the same day, Churchill, in the House of Commons, gave what was to be the most famous speech of his life. “The British people have not yet spoken,” he proclaimed, “so let this be the day that we say no! No to tyranny! No to slavery! No to the end of freedom for mankind!” On July 1, Chamberlain noted in his private diary, “All reports seem to point to invasion this week or next.”
¹⁵

The Luftwaffe plan to defeat the RAF was code-named “Case Eagle,” formally authorized by Führer Directive 17 of June 4. With an official start on June 16, this was a systematic attack on southern England, by day and night, culminating on July 10 in “Eagle Day.” Bombing London by day, at the limit of German fighter cover, was unattractive, particularly after July 4 (“Black Thursday” to the Luftwaffe), in which a maximum effort of 1,786 sorties cost seventy-five aircraft (exaggerated to 182 by the RAF). For night bombing, the Luftwaffe had the advantage of its Knickebein blind-bombing system of intersecting radio beams to guide bombers to their target. The British had been alerted to this since March, but believed it to be a hoax until late June, by which time Case Eagle was already under way.

The date for Sea Lion was now set for Monday, July 15, and with every day it was becoming apparent that the XXXVIII Army Corps would not be ready. It took time to train the recruits and fit them into the fighting teams, time to identify and prepare the airfields all over Belgium and northern France, time to stockpile supplies and ammunition for the battle, and time to repair the port facilities and canals for the barges. Despite Göring’s boasts, Kesselring’s enthusiasm, and Student’s professional commitment, neither the 7th Air Division nor the Airlanding Assault Regiment was complete, and only 538 Ju 52s were available to lift or tow them. Although the amphibious tanks and even the high-speed hydrofoils had arrived, the 7th Panzer Division was also incomplete. The two infantry divisions were in better shape, and their mountaineering skills would be needed for the famous White Cliffs of Dover. But the men, recruited from southern Bavaria, had mostly never seen the sea in their lives.

The situation regarding landing craft was no better. On June 13, OKM advised that “Rhine ships would be available within fourteen days to three weeks. Ten motor passenger vessels, 200 motor tugs, 85 powered barges, twelve motor tankers, 2,000 barges.”
¹⁶
Allowing for supports and losses to the enemy, this was just about enough for Manstein’s plan. The Kriegsmarine had suppressed the information, from its own Merchant Shipping Division, that none of these barges was considered seaworthy or suitable for military use. Each night, in the “Battle of the Barges,” Bomber Command attacked the French invasion ports, destroying these vessels and disrupting preparations. Yet another of Churchill’s proposals rejected by Halifax was that the Handley Page Hampdens should also drop mustard gas bombs.

Convinced that Manstein’s “Small Solution” could not work, some senior officers pressed for a postponement of Sea Lion in order to mount the full version. On June 22 (the day of the French surrender), 200 officers of the Heer, Luftwaffe, and Kriegsmarine assembled at Roubaix for a planning wargame based on the September landings. Student, by now deeply committed to Manstein’s plan, sent his deputy, Maj. Gen. Ludwig Putzier. The war game degenerated into a shambles, with the Kriesgsmarine refusing to accept either the army’s figures for moving troops across the Channel or the Luftwaffe’s confident pronouncements that the Royal Navy would be blown out of the water. This farcical episode finally convinced OKW that the revised Case Smith was the only chance of making Sea Lion a reality.

The French capitulation also potentially delivered their Mediterranean fleet, based at Oran, into German hands. Churchill made a typical suggestion in the War Cabinet that the British Mediterranean fleet should sink the French at anchor, and Halifax understandably rejected it. Instead, the planned reinforcement for Gibraltar, designated as “Force H” and due to sail on June 27, was almost doubled in strength to two battleships, two battle cruisers, one aircraft carrier, four cruisers, and twenty destroyers. This left the Home Fleet weaker than it had been for years. But, although the Kriegsmarine had avoided serious losses over Norway and even captured some Dutch and Belgian ships, it could still put to sea only two battle cruisers, two heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, and ten destroyers. Against these, the Royal Navy had four battleships, one battle cruiser, one aircraft carrier, nine cruisers, and fifty-seven destroyers within twenty-four hours’ steaming time of the Channel; together with over 700 frigates, corvettes, motor torpedo boats, armed trawlers and smaller craft, and thirty-five modern submarines.

The British intelligence services could not predict the exact day of the German invasion, which meant that the first wave would almost certainly get ashore. But after that the Royal Navy would dominate the Channel seas completely. The big battleships with their deck armor were believed invulnerable to German bombs, although they might not be risked in the Channel (except HMS
Queen Elizabeth
, docked at Portsmouth), but the British had massive superiority in smaller ships. If there was a British numerical weakness, it was in their cruisers, but they were both small enough to operate in the Channel and still big enough to sink anything the Germans had.

German success therefore depended on the Luftwaffe’s ability to dominate the RAF over southern England. Given the wide range of targets, and the diversion of forces to bombing cities at night, an air campaign of barely four weeks was not long enough to cause any serious British shortages in aircraft or aviation fuel. Everything relied on the rate at which the Germans and British shot each other out of the sky.

The final evacuation of Allied forces from Narvik by June 8 also left the German 5th Air Fleet free to conduct long-range bombing raids against the British industrial North and Midlands from Norway. Unable to cover this vulnerable area completely and fight against the main Luftwaffe campaign in the southeast, Dowding pulled back his squadrons from the sector and satellite stations at Manston and Tangmere in Kent. This effectively conceded the planned landing areas for Sea Lion to the Luftwaffe, but allowed Fighter Command to punish severely any German daylight raid that reached London.

As German losses mounted, the Luftwaffe intelligence service, never very efficient, badly overestimated the corresponding damage to RAF Fighter Command. On Eagle Day itself, Wednesday, July 10, instead of a cataclysmic encounter, the assembled German fighters and bombers found that they were flying in virtually clear skies between the Isle of Wight and the Thames Estuary. Göring told Hitler that the RAF had been defeated, preferring to ignore the next day, when raids directed toward London lost 39 aircraft to British fighters. “Here they come,” one German pilot commented morosely to his wing-man, “the last fifty Spitfires.”
¹⁷