The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

In the end Hitler opted for all three possibilities, and achieved none of them. The air-sea blockade of Britain was already in being, based on a still-active directive first issued from Hitler’s headquarters on 29 November 1939 in which he had ordered extensive aerial mining of British coastal waters and estuaries.³⁵ In early July Hitler finally decided to make an offer to Britain at the next session of the German Parliament, scheduled for 19 July, and asked his Foreign Secretary, Joachim von Ribbentrop, to draft a suitable speech. But at the same time, on 2 July, the armed forces were asked to begin exploratory planning for the possibility of invasion, and five days later were given a formal directive to prepare operational plans for the ‘War against England’. The same day, 7 July, Hitler informed the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, who was visiting Berlin, that he was inclined to unleash ‘a storm of wrath and of steel’ on the recalcitrant British, but had not finally made up his mind. Ciano found Hitler ‘calm and reserved, very reserved for a German who has won’.³⁶ On 16 July Hitler finally ordered the invasion as a priority. Given the codename ‘Operation Sea Lion’ (Seelöwe), the directive explained that a landing on the south-east coast of England between Ramsgate in Kent and the Isle of Wight would be possible only if the English Air Force could be so morally and physically disabled ‘that it no longer showed any worthwhile capacity to attack the German crossing’.³⁷ No definite date was announced until it was certain that Britain would not agree to talks.

In the early evening of 19 July Hitler duly made his offer to Britain in a packed and uncharacteristically sombre session of the German Parliament, now invaded by the reality of war. Laurel wreaths had been laid in the seats of six deputies killed in action during the land campaign; the front rows of the chamber balconies were populated by senior military commanders, smothered in braid, their medals gleaming. Most of the speech was a triumphant review of German conquests. The war itself Hitler blamed on international Jewry; the ‘offer’ amounted to little more than an appeal to Britain to see sense.³⁸ It was brusquely rejected in London as Hitler had suspected it would be. Invasion became by default the next option. Discussions with senior commanders in the days following the offer to Britain showed Hitler just how difficult the operation was going to be. The navy commander-in-chief emphasized the essential role of the air force in providing a protective umbrella over the landing grounds and keeping the Royal Navy at bay, but his lack of confidence was shared by Hitler. A strong case was made by Hitler’s chief of operations, Colonel Alfred Jodl, that Italy should play a full part in the defeat of Britain to make success more likely, by diverting Italian submarines to the Atlantic and Italian aircraft to northern France to take part in the bombing campaign. Although Hitler approved Jodl’s idea in August, the German military chiefs were characteristically unenthusiastic. (Eventually, between October 1940 and January 1941, a handful of Italian fighter and bomber squadrons flew a number of desultory raids from Belgian bases, dropping 54 tonnes of bombs on East Anglian ports.)³⁹ The uncertainty about invasion is one of the explanations for Hitler’s growing concern with the Soviet Union in the summer of 1940. At first Hitler hoped that Britain would abandon the war to free his hands for the more important clash with the Communist enemy and avoid a war on two fronts.⁴⁰ When it became clear that Britain would not consider a cessation of hostilities, he turned the argument round. At a conference with the service commanders-in-chief on 31 July 1940 he suggested that the Soviet Union was Britain’s last hope in Europe and ordered that exploratory preparations begin for a massive blow to be struck against Soviet military power in the summer of 1941. On the same day in a conference with Raeder, Hitler nevertheless insisted on a final timetable for Sea Lion. The operation was to be ready by 15 September, to be launched at some point in the following ten days, but only if air superiority and adequate shipping could be guaranteed.⁴¹