Why Did Britain and France Continue to Give in to German Demands

No surrender

When France fell with such rapid speed in June 1940 ten months after the outbreak of World War Two and six weeks after German invasion, Germany believed it had achieved an unprecedented triumph in the most extraordinary conditions.

To a large degree, of course, it had. Traditional enemies and apparently strong opponents had fallen with ease and dramatic speed - not only France, but Poland, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Luxembourg had been over run and Britain's army had been outflanked and ejected in late May from Europe with the loss of most of its heavy weapons and equipment.

But to Germany's surprise, Britain, although apparently defeated and certainly painfully exposed and isolated, did not surrender. It did not even seek to come to terms with Germany.

I have decided to begin to prepare for, and if necessary to carry out, an invasion of England...

This was a puzzling state of affairs for the Germans who now had two options: to lay siege to Britain and to wear it down physically and psychologically through limited military action and through political and propaganda warfare, which would include the threat or bluff of invasion; or to actually invade.

Both these options demanded that preparations for invasion be launched, whether a real or bluff invasion only time would tell.

So, on 16 July 1940 Adolf Hitler issued Directive Number 16. It read, 'As England, in spite of the hopelessness of her military position, has so far shown herself unwilling to come to any compromise, I have decided to begin to prepare for, and if necessary to carry out, an invasion of England... and if necessary the island will be occupied.'

The Germans, surprised by the speed of their military success in Europe, had no detailed plans for an invasion of Britain with the man made responsible for the venture, General Franz Halder, now having to start from scratch.

But this absence of a plan did not prevent Hitler from announcing on 16 July that an invasion force would be ready to sail by 15 August. The operation was given the codeword Sealion.

Operation Sealion

The political rather than the military nature of the invasion plan at this time is suggested by the extraordinary timing that Hitler imposed. Planning an invasion and assembling a fleet and appropriate forces in a month was clearly a practical impossibility but timing was an essential part of the game of bluff that Hitler was playing. When the British realised what was coming their way their will to resist would crumble.

From mid July the Luftwaffe stepped up the military pressure by attacking the channel ports and shipping to establish command of the Straits of Dover, while German heavy guns were installed around Calais to bombard the Dover area where the first shells started to fall during the second week of August.

By the end of July the Royal Navy had to pull all its larger warships out of the channel because of the threat from German aircraft. All seemed to be going to plan; perhaps this mounting military pressure and the prospect of invasion would break British spirits and make Operation Sealion unnecessary?

...the Royal Navy had to pull all its larger warships out of the channel because of the threat from German aircraft.

But by the end of July neither the threat of imminent invasion nor offers by Germany of 'honourable' peace had done the trick. It appeared that Germany would actually have to execute one of the most difficult military operations imaginable: an invasion, launched across at least 20 miles of water, culminating in a landing on a fortified and desperately defended coast line.

It was immediately clear that this could not even be attempted until the Royal Navy - still one of the most formidable fighting forces in the world - had been either destroyed or diverted and after the Royal Air Force had been eliminated.

The first reaction of Hitler and the German high command, when it appeared that a real rather than a bluff invasion would have to be organised, was to change the schedule. On the last day of July Hitler held a meeting at the Berghof.

He was told of the difficulty in obtaining barges suitable to carry invasion troops and about the problems of massing troops and equipment while the German navy argued for the invasion front to be reduced from the proposed 200 miles (from Lyme Regis in the west to Ramsgate in the east) and for a postponement of the invasion until May 1941.

Hitler rejected these requests that, if granted, would have undermined the invasion as a political threat, but the start date was postponed to September the 16th. There is evidence that, during this meeting, Hitler decided that the invasion of England was effectively a bluff operation and that resources should be diverted to the east in preparation for the invasion of the Soviet Union.

But, for the bluff to work, the build-up for invasion had to continue and Britain had to be kept under military pressure. So, after the 31 July meeting it was decided that the Luftwaffe should tighten the screw by attempting to clear the channel of British warships and the skies over southeast England of British aircraft.

Hermann Goering saw no problems. The attack was due to start immediately, but bad weather delayed the German air offensive against Britain until 12 August.

Ironside

Two members of the Home Guard  © Meanwhile in Britain anti-invasion defences of all types had been planned and executed with incredible speed since late May. At the same time a new force had been organised to help defend the country.

The Local Defence Volunteers (LDV) had been raised on 14 May 1940 and comprised men too old or too infirm to join the regular army or in protected trades and thus exempt from conscription. On 23 July, the force became known as the Home Guard, after Churchill coined the phrase during a BBC broadcast.

By the end of July one and a half million men had volunteered, a huge figure which reveals the seriousness with which ordinary people took the threat of invasion in the summer of 1940.

Ironside's only option was to set up a static system of defence which, he hoped, could delay German invasion forces after landing...

On 27 May Churchill had put General Sir Edmund Ironside, Commander-in-Chief Home Forces, in charge of organising Britain's defence. Ironside acted quickly. He had a large force at his disposal, but one that was poorly armed and equipped and generally poorly trained.

In the circumstances, Ironside's only option was to set up a static system of defence which, he hoped, could delay German invasion forces after landing and so give Britain time to bring its small mobile reserves into play.

If the Germans could be delayed on the beaches and then delayed as they pushed inland their timetable could be thrown off balance, they could lose impetus, direction and initiative and the British army might be able to counter attack effectively.

The key to Ironside's pragmatic plan was defence in depth. Southeast England was to offer a series of barriers or stop-lines formed by concrete pillboxes, gun emplacements, anti-tank obstacles, trench systems, minefields and barbed wire entanglements and utilising natural and man-made features such as rivers, canals and railway embankments. They were to ensnare and delay the German forces.

The Germans, of course, had their own script for the battle and their detailed air reconnaissance of Britain in early 1940 meant that the stop-lines would have held few surprises for the attackers.

But, whatever happened, Ironside was determined that this would be a battle of attrition. At the very least the Germans would be made to bleed before they achieved their objectives.

By 25 June, Ironside's anti-invasion plan was complete and presented to the War Cabinet as Home Forces Operations Instruction Number 3. This Instruction gave detail to Ironside's defence theory.

There was to be a coastal 'crust' that was to consist of a thin screen of infantry deployed along the beaches. This crust was to disrupt enemy landings long enough to allow the arrival of local reinforcements.

Behind the coastal crust a network of stop-lines of various strengths and significance were constructed to slow down and contain or channel any German advance. The final and main position of resistance was the General Headquarters Anti-tank Line (the GHQ stop-line). This was the backbone of Ironside's coordinated defence plan.

The line was planned to stretch from around Bristol in the west then east to Maidstone and running south around London passing just south of Guildford and Aldershot, then northeast to the Thames Estuary.

Then beyond that, through Cambridge and the fens and up the length of England, running inland parallel with the east coast but able to defend the major industrial centres of the midlands and the north, and up to central Scotland. An auxiliary GHQ line was also to be established around Plymouth.

A revised invasion plan

The production of component parts for Spitfire aircraft.  © During August, as the stop-lines were nearing completion, the Luftwaffe's battle for the control of the air over England and the channel continued. But the assault on the RAF started to go awry as Goering changed the emphasis of attack from radar stations and airfield to aircraft factories and more peripheral targets - thus giving RAF front line squadrons a much needed breathing space.

While what became known as the Battle of Britain started to reach its crescendo, the debate about Operation Sealion also continued to rage during August between the German navy and the army. A meeting on 7 August revealed irreconcilable differences: 'I utterly reject the Navy's proposals [for landing on a narrow front],' exclaimed General Halder. 'I might just as well put the troops through a sausage machine.'

Eventually a compromise was reached. On 13 August, Hitler agreed that the invasion front should to be narrowed, with the most westerly landing area being around Worthing. This meant that the only one German Army Group - Army Group A - would carry out the invasion. The revised invasion plan was issued by the German High Command on 30 August.

...Hitler agreed that the invasion front should to be narrowed, with the most westerly landing area being around Worthing.

The attack group of the 9th Army (Part of Army Group A) was to leave from Le Havre and land in the Brighton-Worthing area of Sussex. The first assault wave was to secure the beachhead.

The second wave packed the real punch for it was made up of two Panzer Divisions - each composed of tanks, artillery, mobile troops and Panzer grenadier assault infantry - and one motorised division. The role of the panzers was to break out of the beachhead and then sweep west towards Portsmouth.

The attack group of the 16th Army (also part of Army Group A) was to leave from the Calais-Ostend-Antwerp area and land in the Folkstone-Dungeness area around Rye and at Bexhill-Eastbourne.

The first wave here was to consist of two infantry divisions, while the second wave was to include two Panzer Divisions that were to break out of the beachhead and advance north - to destroy the main reserves of the British army and establish crossings over the River Medway.

These landings were to be supported by parachute troops, who were to drop on the Downs above Brighton, to assist in the securing of the beach head for the Brighton-Worthing assault group, and north west of Folkestone in Kent to seize the Royal Military Canal of Napoleonic war vintage.

The Germans saw this canal, which had been built to stop French invaders storming across Romney Marsh on their way to London, as a significant anti-tank obstacle that could, if not bridged, stall the advance of their panzers.

The ultimate target

The initial objective for both assault groups was to establish a front from the Thames Estuary to Portsmouth. Then the build-up would begin with additional supplies and troops being brought in. When the build-up was complete the panzers of the Brighton-Worthing assault group would attack towards Basingstoke, Newbury and Oxford to secure crossing points over the Thames and to encircle and isolate London and the southeast in a great pincer movement. The remaining German forces, located around the Medway and on the Thames estuary, would then thrust towards London - the ultimate target of the invasion force.

The remaining German forces, located around the Medway and on the Thames estuary, would then thrust towards London...

General von Runstedt was in command of Army Group A, which was to be the main tool of invasion. As it happened, Von Runstedt had little faith in Halder's Sealion plan. He observed that Napoleon had failed to invade and the difficulties that confounded him did not appear to have been solved by the Sealion planners.

Probably von Runstedt observed that one of the plan's main weaknesses was the small scale of the initial assault and the slow build-up. The first wave assault was to be carried out not by nine complete divisions but only their leading echelons numbering in each case around 6,700 men.

So only the equivalent of three divisions - around 60,000 men - would have been involved in the first wave assault. About 250 tanks and very little artillery would have supported them.

An added factor worrying von Runstedt would no doubt have been the amateur and ad-hoc nature of the sea transport. The consequence would be troops landed at the wrong place or at the right place at the wrong time - or not landed at all if British sea and air power had not been completely destroyed.

And these same problems of transport would apply to and slow down the build-up of reinforcements unless a number of major ports were captured quickly and intact - which was highly unlikely.

German defeat

RAF pilots  © Hitler appeared to agree with von Runstedt when, on 14 August - the day after he had agreed a narrower invasion front - Hitler told his generals that he would not attempt to invade Britain if the task seemed too dangerous. There were, said Hitler, other ways of defeating Britain.

As Hitler started to back away from invasion the battle for dominance of the skies over England and the English Channel - a battle that now, perhaps, had little strategic value - reached a new peak of fury.

On 3 September, with the RAF still far from destroyed, Field Marshal Keitel, head of the Armed Forces High Command, delayed Sealion until 21 September, and then again until 27 September, the last time the tides would be right before the end of the year.

The day after this last postponement was announced, Goering launched his final major offensive to destroy RAF Fighter Command in daylight action. It was a dismal failure, with the Luftwaffe losing twice as many aircraft as its potential victim.

On 17 September - two days after Goering's defeat - Operation Sealion was postponed indefinitely. The plan was never to be revived. Hitler's attention was drawn increasingly to the east, and in June 1941 he invaded the Soviet Union.

In 1944 Britain's defences against sea-borne attack were scaled down.

In 1944 Britain's defences against sea-borne attack were scaled down. By that date it was finally certain that the German army - fatally mauled in Russia - was in no position to invade Britain. But Britain's coastal defences were not dismantled.

As the war ended, there were those who believed that the Soviet Union would be the next enemy and in anticipation of this NATO was formed in 1947 for the defence of western Europe and north America.

But even if the Soviets were the new enemy it gradually became clear during the early 1950s that a Soviet invasion - if it came - would not be launched against the coast of Britain, and from 1956 coastal defences around the British Isles were gradually decommissioned.

Find out more

Books

Twentieth Century Defences in Britain: An Introductory Guide by I Brown et al (Council for British Archaeology, 1995)

The Defenders: A History of the British Volunteers by G Cousins (Muller, 1968)

Invasion: From the Armada to Hitler, 1588-1945 by F McLynn (Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1987)

The Air War, 1939-1945 by RJ Overy (Europa Publications, 1980)

Channel Defences by A Saunders (Batsford/English Heritage, 1997)

Resisting the Nazi Invader by A Ward (Constable, 1997)

Pillboxes: A Study of UK Defences, 1940 by H Wills (Leo Cooper, with Secker and Warburg, 1985)

Links

The Fortress Study Group. This is the only international society concerned with the study of all aspects of military architecture and fortifications and their armaments, especially works constructed to mount and resist artillery.

Places to visit

Duxford Aviation Museum. Telephone: 01223 835 000. Duxford is home to 180 historic aircraft, including biplanes, Spitfires, Concorde and fighter jets.

RAF Air Defence Radar Museum. Royal Air Force, Neatishead, Norwich, Norfolk, NR12 8YB. Tel: 01692 633309. The museum holds original Unit and Station badges, a model aircraft collection and a large quantity of photographs, documents and videos relating to Air Defence equipment.

About the author

Dan Cruickshank is one of the country's leading architectural and historic building experts and a regular presenter on the BBC. He is an active member of the Georgian Group and the Architectural Panel of the National Trust and director of the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust. Dan is a frequent contributor to The Architects' Journal and The Architectural Review and is author of Life in The Georgian City and The Guide to the Georgian Buildings of Britain and Ireland.

kennedydelonost1959.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/invasion_ww2_01.shtml

Share this post