On June 22, 1940 France surrendered.
Britain was the last man standing.
PM Winston Churchill pledged to the world that Britain would fight alone.
The Battle of Britain then commenced.
How did the Germans saw this battle and viewed the British will to fight on?
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On 10 May 1940 the Germans invaded the Benelux countries and France.
All four nations were defeated by the Germans.
Hitler made a peace offer to Britain which was rejected by the British government.
This had several reasons.
Churchill didn't trust Hitler in signing a treaty.
Hitler had broken his promises too many times now.
British military leadership believed Germany could be brought in a stalemate and wait for
the German economy to collapse just like it had done in WW1.
The British also believed Hitler might expand the war elsehwere and then lose as a result.
British and Polish codebreakers had managed to intercept German massages in which an attack
on the USSR was confirmed.
Also they hoped the US could be brought into the war.
To the German people it seemed like Hitler was out for peace, because it were the British
who refused it.
One German soldier wrote in a letter to his wife.
‘The war can now only be decided with brutal force.
The English want it so.’
[…] ‘No, one doesn’t need to feel sorry for them.
Hitler offered them the hand of peace often enough.’
On 3 July the Royal Navy sunk the French fleet at the Tunisian coast.
Churchill named this 'a sad duty' so that the French collaborating Vichy government
wouldn't get hold on it.
The Germans had also captured documents showing the British plans to bomb Soviet oil fields
in the Middle East.
The German press cultivated the image of Britain wanted to widen the war.
And it were the British who started the war on civilians with the bombing of Freiburg.
First of all, Freiburg wasn't bombed by the British but by the German Luftwaffe by accident.
And second, the Germans had bombed Warsaw and Rotterdam, but claimed that these bombings
were justified since these were military targets.
The Germans had spared Paris since it was an open city.
Looking at the scale of the bombings on Warsaw (not to mention the systematic strafing of
Polish civilians) this claim is not true.
Yet, Britain did step up its bombing campaigns.
“In the weeks following France’s capitulation, the RAF stepped up its night attacks, sending
over hundreds of bombers at a time.
The more significant raids, like that of the night of 23–24 June on Dortmund, left one
dead and six wounded and in Düsseldorf seven people were killed and seven wounded.
RAF targeting was so inaccurate, however, that by July farmhouses and villages were
being hit.
Both the regularity and the aimlessness of the bombing forced German civil defence volunteers
to tighten air raid precautions across the towns and cities of north-western Germany.
[…] The clamour for retaliation grew.”
So Britain, many Germans believed, was the true aggressor.
Now I'm not arguing Britain wasn't aggressive – I mean the British did have a largest
colonial empire in the world – but focusing on Europe at that time the German aggression
surely was bigger in scale.
Hitler wasn't too keen on attacking Britain right away.
He had always admired the British for having such a vast empire and believed its dismemberment
would benefit other powers.
Hitler still hoped the British and the Germans could one day become partners.
Early July he ordered his commanders for a war against England.
On August 1 he ordered the Luftwaffe to attack.
Just before he also ordered his staff to plan for a war on the USSR.
Going East was always Hitlers goal which he had outlined in his book Mein Kampf.
The attack started mid-August (it was delayed because of bad weather).
During the first three weeks the Luftwaffe bombed the airfields of the RAF, British Air
Force.
By 19 August the Germans had shot down 624 British planes and had lost 174 themselves.
Soon the Germans bombings were expanded to the aircraft industry and London suburbs were
targetted also.
Hitler had actually forbidden the bombing of London but because the city was full of
military installatations it did happen anyway.
Near the end of August RAF planes managed to bomb Berlin causing only minor damage.
This was a blow to Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring since he had promised bombers wouldn't
reach the Ruhr.
Else, you could name him Meier.
Well, Meier it was then.
Despite the ridicule, Berliners were shocked the British planes were able to reach their
capital.
Early September Hitler held a speech and promised the German people he would respond in kind.
He pledged to 'erase British cities'.
On 7 September 348 German bombers, protected by 617 fighters, carried out a raid over the
British capital.
Few days later Berlin was bombed again.
From that month the Germans used huge resources for their civil defense.
Large Flak towers were erected.
These towers became symbol of the nation to 'hold out'.
Underground tunnels were used as shelter.
Public bunkers could only accomodate a small portion of the population.
In Berlin only 10% of the population could be sheltered.
Nevertheless it gave the people a sense of security.
Most citizens had to rely on their own basement.
Those who could afford it built private shelters in their gardens.
Where the British evacuated many of their children, the Germans initially didn't make
much efforts to do this.
They were so convinced of their inevitable victory.
This eventually did happen.
The program was called Kinderlandverschickung (sending children of the countryside).
Relying on the fear of parents for the welfare of their children, the Nazi government sent
children to youth camps in the countryside where they were taken care off.
In the meanwhile the Battle for Britain was in full swing.
As a Luftwaffe pilot recalled:
“Beneath us, we saw the red blazing metropolis of England, the centre of plutocrats and slaveholders,
the capital of World-Enemy No. 1.
We saw the fires of destruction.
Clouds of smoke and pillars of fire looked like the flow of lava from a titanic volcano
. . . London is wrapped in flames . . . Unheard by us, without respite, the most dreadful
scenes must be occurring down here, beneath our machines . . .”
The attacks on Britain were seen as justifyed retaliation.
The German public was aware that this was a different kind of campaign.
Where previously the German Army fought to gain enemy terrain, now it was an air war
of attrition and it was lived by the numbers.
The German press couldn't satisfy the public need for information.
Maps of England were printed to show where the Luftwaffe had struck and newsreels in
cinemas showed recorded footage.
It was only a matter of time before the invasion of the British island would begin.
But this never happened.
When was Britain going to surrender?
As time progressed German people became suspicious and rumours started to emerge.
People started to listen to foreign radio broadcasts to find out the truth.
Was Britain really on its last legs?
And was everything said about the British true?
“They [the German public] queried whether the RAF deliberately targeted hospitals and
schools, or had simply missed nearby military targets.
[…] As the weeks dragged on, people listened increasingly to foreign radio.
As one wit put it, ‘They lie and we are lying also'”
German propaganda minister Josef Goebbels was put to the test.
Student volunteers were put to work to collect data to show that despite having formal freedoms
in liberal Britain, Germany had secured the biggest freedom of all: it had overcome the
Great Depression and abolished capitalism, according to the German propaganda machine.
Nevertheless after the German bombings the German SD (Sicherheitsdienst – Security
Service) noticed the Germans admired the English: no people had been able to withstand Luftwaffe
bombings for so long.
The SD reported rumours there would be a revolution in Britain, but at the end neither revolution
nor capitulation was happening across the Channel.
However the airraids would increase in scale in October en November Hitler had already
shelved his plan for invasion of the British mainland on 17 September.
Hitler hoped to bomb Britain out of the war making an invasion unnecessary.
But that wasn't going to happen.
And German doctors found the first true cases of war neuroses with German pilots.
And there was also tiredness among the German public continiously having to move to airraid
shelters.
But all in all this was they way it was now.
As Christmas came around one German believed:
‘in general people are reckoning with a long war, without being particularly worried
or bothered about it.
In its current phase the war is hardly noticeable.'
For now.