IMPORTANT BATTLES OF WORLD WAR 2.
BY:
CELINE POWER
In 1940, Hitler dominated Europe from the North Cape to the
Pyrenees. Considering the rapid fall of France, Hitler thought the English
would come to some agreement with Germany. In Britain however a new Prime
Minister, Winston Churchill vowed to continue fighting. Churchill told the
British people that " they would never give up that they would fight on
beaches, fields, streets and even on the hills." Whether they could was
the question.
The reason for this uncertainty was that the British army left
most of its weapons on the beaches of Dunkirk. Elsewhere other problems for any
resistance to the Nazis were evident. Stalin was in no mood to challenge
Hitler. The U.S., who were shocked by the rapid fall of France, began peacetime
conscription and increased its military budget, but public opinion, although
sympathetic to Britain, was against getting into the war.
Great Britain was however protected from the German army by the
waters of the English Channel. Hitler didn’t give up hope of an agreement with
Chruchill until the 10 July then the events that led up to the Battle of
Britain began. On July 16, 1940, Hitler gave a directive ordering the
preparation of a plan for the invasion of Great Britain. This would only happen
if Germany could bring enough troops to the French Coast and if the Royal Air
Force was defeated.
In order to invade Britain, the Germans had to have control in
the air over the English Channel, otherwise the RAF and the Royal Navy would
have been able to destroy their invasion force before it reached the shore. In
addition if it has been suggested by many naval experts that due to the type of
flat-bottomed barge built by the Germans, simply running a battle ship at full
speed through their ranks would have caused many to capsize in the wake from
the ships. The troops and their equipment would have suffered heavy
casualities, and the invasion effectively stopped with little or no gunfire.
The Luftwaffe’s command of the air was therefore vital to any
plan for an invasion fleet to successfully cross the Channel, to prevent
British sea forces from interfering with the operation. Interestingly, the
German Navy, Army and Air Force each had their own plans and ideas as to how
and where the invasion should be launched. There seems to have been little
co-operation between the German armed forces, and despite the impressive build
up of barges and other equipment in the Channel ports, the actual detailed
planning for the operation, code-named "Sea Lion", was never really
sorten out. All depended on the success to the Luftwaffe it would appear,
before the invasion was to be taken seriously.
Starting on 10th July 1940, the Luftwaffe attacked
shipping convoys in the Channel and Channel Ports. They also suspected the
importance of the British radar masts and attacked the stations on the South
coast, damaging some of them very badly. One of the aircraft types used in
these raids was the Junkers Ju87 "Stuka" dive-bomber. These were very
accurate, and had been particularly successful earlier in the war when there
was no effective fighter opposition. But when dive-bombing, they were very
vulnerable to attacks against them and the Hurricanes and Spitfires of Fighter
Command found them easy pray. Because of their heavy losses, they were
withdrawn from the battle in mid-August. In this stage of the Battle, the
Luftwaffe was in effect testing the British defenses – looking for weaknesses
before a major assault could be launched to exploit them.
At the beginning of August, with German forces and troops barges
being assembling on the French coast, the raids against the South coast of
England were increased in size and number. Believing that the British early
warning system had been destroyed and the coastal towns sufficiently ‘softened
up’ for an invasion, the Luftwaffe began the next stage of their plan.
On August the 13TH(named Eagle Day by the German
command), huge raids began on the airfields of 11 group. The main aim was to
destroy the RAF, either as an air battle or on the ground, in South East
England. To try and put pressure on the British defenses, the Germans sent high
and low level raids to different targets at the same time. Sometimes the lower
level raids would sneak by the battered but still working radar stations, the
first warning the British fighters pilots got were bombs landing on their
airfield.
This pattern was continued into September and the 11 group
became very desperate. The smaller civilian airfields were used in emergency's,
as many RAF stations were getting destroyed .The Spitfire and the Hurricane
could easily take off from grass fields, but the maintenance and spares supply
situation was becoming dangerously stretched. The ground crews working in the
open were suffering heavy injuries from the raids, and many maintenance
facilities were damaged in the bombing. Despite this, the crews wanted to keep
the fighters as combat ready as possible they won the Battle on the ground as
the pilots were in the air.
Thoughts were being made about the fighters being pulled back
North of the Thames, but it was believed that this would be exactly what the
Germans would want, effectively giving them air superiority over the intended invasion
area. This meant the eleven group squadrons would stay and fight for their
lives.
The Germans began night raids so the defenders couldn't repair
the damage overnight. This kept up the pressure. On one night raid, some
aircraft bombed some civilian areas of London by a mistake; this mistake would
become a crucial turning point in the Battle. Hitler had banned all attacks on
civilian centers, as he was still hoping at this point that the hopelessness of
the situation would make the British sue for a negotiated peace. The German
High Command knew that widespread civilian casualties would only make the
resolve of the nation to fight on stronger. In return to this accidental
attack, the British bombed Berlin. Fear grew as this meant the cities would be
raided more often, so the children in the cities were evacuated in a second
mass exodus to places that were safer in
the country, as they were in the phoney war in 1939.
But just when it seemed eleven Group and the country couldn’t continue for another day, the Germans changed
their plans. On September 17th Hitler
postponed the invasion of Britain ‘until further notice’, telling his naval
adjutant, Lieutenant Karl von Puttkammer: ‘We have conquered France at the cost
of 30,000 men. During one night of crossing the channel we could lose many
times that - and success is not certain.’The Blitz would go on. But Hitler’s
Battle for Britain had to all intents and purposes been lost.The British would
continue to suffer. But they would not succumb. The roar of German panzers, the
screech of German dive-bombers, the march of German soldiers – all of which had
brought the horrors of conquest and the curse of occupation to poland, Denmark,
Norway, Holland, Belguim, Luxembourg and France – would not be heard in
Britain, not be heard in Britain, not at least in 1940.
SHORT QUESTIONS
Q1: BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baldwin.H. Battles lost & Won great campaigns of World
War 2. Robson Books, Great Britain, 2000.
Priestley.C. Battles of
Britain: Harry Woods, England 1939 – 1941, Scholastic Paperback, 2002
Bishop.P. Fighter Boys:
The Battle of Britain, 1940, Viking Books.
Ramsey.G. The Battle
ofBritain Then and Now, Hardcover 1989
Bungay.S. The Most
Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain. Aurum Press
Paperback,2001.
Q2:REVIEW
One of the books I used for this project was
Battles Lost & Won great
campaigns of World War II by
Baldwin,H. This book was published by Robson Books in Great Britain in 2000.
This was a good source of information because
1:-It was written in a clear and easy way
2:-It Contained plenty of pictures and documents and
3:-It had a good biography.
Q3 REVIEW:-(LONG)
The most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain by
Stephen Bungay.
The most Dangerous Enemy is a great book, telling the stories of
front-line airmen on both sides, and the figures in fighter Command, fitting
genuine human interest into the over-all picture of the battle. This makes the
book a very exciting read, and brings the history to life.
Stephen Bungay has done very thorough research for this book,
and there is a great deal of information woven through the individual stories.
I felt this book got exactly the right balance between factual detail of the
battle, and a gripping read about the people who actually fought it.
Q4:SKILLS
Two skills I learnt were:-
1:Computer skills, I learnt how to use Microsoft Word, how to use
the Internet to find information, and how to print out documents.
2:How to write a proper leaving cert essay, a proper history
essay with footnotes and a list of
books at the end (Bibliography).
Q5: WHY THIS TOPIC MERITED STUDY.
This topic merited study because:
1, It is not really covered in detail in the Leaving Cert and
2, the battle was one of the turning points in World War 2.
After it, Hitler was on t
he run.