p In many histories that appeared postwar in Britain, France, and the United States, the war is broken down into “battles”. There is the Battle for Poland, the Battle for 56 France and then the Battle for Britain. Yet luckily for her people, there was no ground fighting in British territory. Then, is the term, Battle for Britain, legitimate? To answer the question, turn to the facts.

p The German High Command had been preparing to invade the British Isles since September 1939, having begun planning the operation soon after Poland’s defeat. Its operational plan bore the code name Sea Lion. On July 16, 1940, the Wehrmacht received Directive 16 on preparing landing operations against Britain. The directive read: "This operation is dictated by the necessity of eliminating Great Britain ... and if necessary the island will be occupied."  [56•1 

p On September 9, 1940, the OKW (High Command Armed Forces of Germany) drew up the Orders Concerning the Organisation and Functioning of Military Government in England, which left no doubt as to the fate the nazis prepared for the population of the British Isles. They intended to wipe out all known progressives, all political leaders and intellectuals. Able-bodied men were to be shipped out of Britain.  [56•2  Sentence of death was to be passed for every form of resistance. The German monopolists, meanwhile, had a detailed plan ready of how they would strip and plunder England’s economy. Those were -the aims for which the Military Government was to be set up.

p Walther Darre”, Hitler’s "expert on racial problems”, declared: "As soon as we beat England we shall make an end of Englishmen once and for all. Able-bodied men will be exported as slaves to the continent. The old and weak will be exterminated."  [56•3 

p The hour after France’s surrender was a critical one for Britain. She now stood face to face with Germany, without an ally and, certainly, was unable to go it alone, especially after most of her armaments had been lost in Dunkirk. Churchill was quite explicit on this score after the war: "Our armies at home were known to be almost unarmed."  [56•4 

p Britain’s plight was the result of her prewar policy, but also of the phoney war. Harold L. Ickes, the US statesman, commented: "Britain kept hoping against hope that she could 57 embroil Russia and Germany with each other and thus escape scot-free herself. She got caught in her own toils and in so doing has lost the respect and the sympathy of the world generally."  [57•1  The Germans were brazenly obvious with their preparations to invade the British Isles. A month after France’s defeat 168 transports, 1,910 barges, 419 lighters and i,600 motorboats were concentrated along Europe’s northern shores—the southern shore of the Channel; it seemed the invasion would begin any day.  [57•2 .

p But, in fact, the nazi government and generals had no intention of putting the invasion scheme into practice. They hoped to conquer Britain, to occupy her, without large-scale armed action. That was the upshot of the German “peace” proposals, made in quick succession after Hitler’s speech in the Reichstag on June 19, 1940 on the occasion of the victory over France. Elucidating the proposals, Admiral Erich Raeder told his staff that Hitler "is firmly convinced that England’s defeat will be achieved .even without the landing."  [57•3 

p However, the German “peace” offers were in vain. London did not bite at the bait, although on the British Isles too, there were men of Petain’s ilk. De Gaulle says in his memoirs that in Britain in those days "the initiated bandied the names of politicians, bishops, writers and businessmen, who if opportunity presented, would come to terms with the Germans in order to assume government under their control."  [57•4 

p But the dominant sentiment was to reject German hegemony, tantamount to suicide for Britain as a great power. Despite pro-fascist tendencies, Britain’s ruling class was opposed to surrender, and inclined to defy the nazi claim to world supremacy. The scales were tilted by the determination of the people to fight fascism and defend independence. In the existing political situation going against their will was for the rulers a risky proposition. They might have lost their class ascendancy.

p Besides, they had everything to gain from the people’s hatred of fascism, from open battle under the banner of British democracy against their bitterest imperialist rival.

p Expecting Britain to surrender without an invasion, Berlin gave priority to an entirely different course, finalised when the German success in France became a foregone conclusion: to strike next against the Soviet Union, the main barrier on the way to German supremacy. The German imperialists were afraid that the Soviet Union would grow stronger with the passage of time. Not only were they impatient to attack in the East. They had made up their minds to conserve the maximum possible strength for war against the Soviet state. That is why, with vessels concentrating along the Channel coast to. scare Britain with the prospect of invasion, German ground forces were being rail-borne in the opposite direction.

p The Soviet Union saved England from invasion by just existing and strengthening its forces. Long before the Great Patriotic War, the USSR sluiced off considerable nazi strength from the West, delivering European peoples from fresh Wehrmacht incursions and facilitating the genesis of Resistance.

p Abandoning the idea of invading the British Isles, the German chiefs decided on terrorist measures to bring the English to their knees. They rained bombs on British cities and blockaded Britain from the sea. In Directive No. 17, dated August i, 1940, Hitler described this as the overture to Britain’s collapse.

p The regular air-raids began early in August. At first, they came day and night, and in force. In the first raid on the British capital, the London docks were the main target, their huge warehouses filled with food and depots with materiel. Incendiary bombs caused a colossal fire. Eyewitnesses relate that flames leaped sky-high as artillery shells and cases of TNT exploded. Fire in a warehouse where pepper was stored filled the air with pungent particles. Flowing rum formed a flaming stream, merging with the “lava” of burning sugar. Flames of all colours leaped about the docks, while burning rubber emitted clouds of choking black smoke. Tea burned brightly, producing a peculiar sweetish, nauseating smell. Smoke from the burning grain overcast the skies. From September 7, 1940, London lived through 65 nights of unintermittent bombing. On November 14, five hundred nazi bombers demolished Coventry, the heart of Britain’s aviation industry.  [58•1 

p In the aggregate, however, the air assault yielded but a meagre success. British anti-aircraft defences stiffened. In the tensest months of the air war, from August to October 1940, the Luftwaffe lost nearly twice as many planes as the RAF.  [59•1  Though exposed to air attacks, the British aviation industry stepped up production.

p The sea-blockade, consisting of piratic air, submarine and surface attacks on merchant vessels carrying freight to Britain, was a peril that had to be eliminated at all costs, for Britain’s sea losses were near disastrous, exceeding the maximum capacity of her shipyards at least threefold. Marine communications were largely disrupted. And it was not until after July 194-1 that Britain’s plight was visibly relieved thanks to stubborn Soviet resistance.

p In sum, the main armed forces of Germany and Britain did not come to grips at all. Seen from that angle, no Battle for Britain ever occurred. That battle was fought in an entirely different area-chiefly the moral-political. The ordeal to which the British nation was subjected in those months was terrible. The war was visited on the Englishman’s home in the full sense. People in the towns fought the fires and quickly repaired the havoc wrought by the air raids. The Home Guard was on the alert, ready to fight in the event of an enemy landing. Workers did not leave their benches even when enemy planes roared overhead. The merchant seamen took their ships out to the sea fearlessly, defying nazi submarines and learning the art of concealment from lurking periscopes.

Far from breaking their will, the trials of those days steeled the British nation. Their determination to fight on to the end was never stronger. For the British Government no policy was conceivable other than to survive, to win time. The phoney war and the political hide-and-seek with German fascism, on which Hitler had banked, were buried beneath the hail of German bombs.