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The Battle of Britain and the Blitz: ‘It can only end in annihilation for one of us’

With Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland and France under Nazi control, Britain now faced the German onslaught alone. Operation Sea Lion, Germany’s codename for the invasion of Britain, was quietly announced on 16 July. Hitler decreed that, as a prelude to a full-blown invasion, the German air force, the Luftwaffe, would destroy the RAF’s air superiority over Britain. The following day, Hitler issued Britain a peace offering, his ‘last appeal to reason’: ‘It can only end in annihilation for one of us. Mr Churchill thinks it will be Germany. I know it will be Britain.’ Many in Parliament were tempted; Churchill was not.

The main thrust of Hitler’s air assault, the commencement of the Battle of Britain, began on 13 August, the ‘Day of the Eagle’, when 1,485 German aircraft attacked Britain’s coastal airfields. During the next month, the RAF and the Luftwaffe fought above the fields of south-east England in a series of dogfights where the average life expectancy of a British pilot was four to five weeks. But the RAF enjoyed certain advantages of flying over home ground: if a British pilot had to bail out, he at least parachuted on to British soil and could return to the fight, unlike his German counterpart who, on landing, was whisked off into captivity. And, unlike the Luftwaffe, the RAF pilot was not subject to anti-aircraft fire; the British, by this stage, were using radar (still a comparatively new invention), and had learnt, through the team at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, to decrypt Germany’s Enigma codes. Bletchley Park knew, for example, of Operation Sea Lion before many of Hitler’s generals did.

German Heinkels during the Battle of Britain, 1940

On 23 August, as they were returning from a sortie over Britain, a Luftwaffe patrol got lost and mistakenly bombed Croydon on the outskirts of London. The RAF bombed Berlin on 25 August. The damage was insignificant but Hitler, enraged, ordered the bombing of London. Between 7 September 1940 and 16 May 1941, the people of London and many other British cities as far north as Glasgow, endured the Blitz, a sustained campaign of bombing.

London during the Blitz, c. 1941

After May 1941, the Luftwaffe was diverted to the Soviet Union. In just one night, 14 November 1940, 440 German bombers dropping over 1,000 tons of explosives destroyed Coventry, killing 568 people and seriously injuring 863. Altogether, during the Blitz, over 40,000 were killed and almost 50,000 injured. But if the aim was to destroy resolve, it failed: the bombings merely strengthened it. For Londoners, the sight of Churchill, and on another occasion, the King and Queen stepping through the devastation and talking to the locals certainly helped boost morale. After Buckingham Palace had been hit, Queen Elizabeth said: ‘I’m glad we’ve been bombed – now I feel we can look the East End in the face.’

A second unintended consequence of Hitler’s decision to target civilians was to give the RAF time to regroup and prepare for the next onslaught. That attack came on 15 September, now known as Battle of Britain Day, when the Luftwaffe, believing that the RAF was on its knees, launched a concentrated attack on south-east England. The RAF doggedly fought them off and the Battle of Britain was effectively over. Two days later, Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion indefinitely. As Churchill stirringly said, ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’