The Battle of England

In Hitler’s morbid world view not only existed a hierarchy of races but countries too. And probably amongst the great nations of the world, the one he most admired and feared at once was Great Britain. For that reason, after defeating and occupying Poland, Holland, Belgium, and France he tried to sign an armistice with the UK. He considered his dreamed-of continental empire (from France till the very east of Russia) perfectly compatible with the great old overseas British Empire. But Britons, unlike Stalin or the Japanese, didn’t want to come to any agreement with Hitler’s Germany. It was too late. After five years of appeasement policy and several invaded countries there was no choice but war.

Hence Hitler planned the invasion of the isle. The plan was going to be carried out on September 15th (1940) in the southern part of Britain and consisted in landing a great number of troops through the English Channel. But before, all German generals fully agreed they needed unavoidably to reach complete aerial supremacy through subduing the British Royal Air Force (RAF).

In the first stages of the battle, the German air force (Luftwaffe) focused their efforts to attack the shipping traffic in the English Channel in order to make the Britons use all their air force resources to protect the very important supplies from America and the colonies. By the end of July it was clear that it was going to be impossible to do the German invasion of England on time, so they commended Luftwaffe the task of destroying as soon as possible the whole enemy’s air force. A new great offensive started on August 13th and it lasted until September de 17th. During this 35 days the fights in the air were constant. The German planes bombed aerodromes and radar stations, and in several moments they were about to make collapse the attack protection system which was decisive for the Great Britain defence. From July 10th to October 31st the RAF lost about 800 planes in this battle, and the Luftwaffe more than 1300.

We can say the battle of England marked a historical milestone because was the first time that military plans of Hitler went off the rails. The first time that German army had to go back without achieving success. And the first time that Luftwaffe, which had shown great effectiveness supporting land troops in Poland and France, exhibited weaknesses against a modern air force and motivated pilots.
Churchill summarised those weeks saying: ``Never before so many people (British people, but the whole humanity too) had never owed so much (freedom, independence) to so few (the pilots of the RAF)´´
The battle slowly became in a nocturnal bombing of the English big cities, specially London. These attacks lasted till May 1941 and had a bigger impact in civil population, although were not able demoralize them.