If Britain Had Fallen (11 page)

Authors: Norman Longmate

Tags: #History, #Military, #World War II

BOOK: If Britain Had Fallen

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It was therefore vital to decide - ‘appreciate’ in military jargon - where the main German attack would fall, and the British realised early on that the real choice lay between East Anglia and the south-eastern corner of England. Like the Germans, they at first favoured East Anglia, the large, flat area of England between the Wash and the Thames. Throughout June, July and much of August, Prime Minister, Commander-in-Chief, the Admiralty, and the special Combined Intelligence Committee set up by all three services to weigh the evidence, all believed that it was the East Coast which was threatened, probably by a force crossing from Holland and Germany itself. The concentrations of barges at Dunkirk, Ostend and further south, collected in full view of British aerial reconnaissance, were, they believed, meant to deceive the defenders into planning for a direct cross-Channel assault which, if it ever came at all, would be a mere diversion. The planners, if they reflected that both major successful invasions of England, by the Romans and the Normans, had come via the south-east, dismissed the thought, being more influenced by the fictional accounts of an imaginary German invasion with which authors of an earlier generation had made their contemporaries’ flesh creep. From the classic
Riddle of the Sands
by Erskine Childers, first published in 1903, to Saki’s
When William Came,
in 1913, a depressing tale which ended with Britain still in German occupation, every author had described a sudden
swoop across the North Sea on to the flat beaches and fields of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, none of them having foreseen a situation in which Germany would control the whole Continental coastline and thus be able to attack where she wished. The British experts recognised that the enemy-would probably need to capture a port to mount a major invasion - the Germans in fact had their eyes on the nearest of all, Dover - but even this was uncertain. It seemed possible that ‘the Germans with their renowned thoroughness and foresight’ had ‘secretly prepared a vast armada of special landing-craft, which needed no harbours or quays, but could land tanks, cannon and motor vehicles anywhere on the beaches’.

At last, however, the British High Command began to realise where the real danger lay. By early August General Brooke was warning of the danger to Kent and Sussex, and although on the 13th the Chiefs of Staff decided that they were ‘slightly over-insured along the south coast’, by early September the meaning of the build-up of forces and shipping across the Channel was unmistakable. While the Germans made the final preparations to pour not 100,000 men, as the British anticipated, but half a million into Britain, the defences along the south coast dramatically increased. Instead of eight divisions there were now, including reserves, sixteen, three of them armoured, a total of some 300,000 men, while the forces posted north of the Thames were cut from seven divisions to four, plus an armoured brigade, or about 90,000 men altogether, but with many more men still under training or in supporting units, a reserve denied to the Germans until they had gained control of the Channel. So long as the RAF controlled the skies above the British Isles, the British commanders could, Churchill believed, ‘move with certainty another four or five divisions to reinforce the southern defence if it were necessary on the fourth, fifth and sixth days after the enemy’s full effort had been exposed’.

And so as day after day the Luftwaffe and RAF met in bitter combat in the skies above Britain, the fate of the invasion was already being settled. Without mastery of the air, Hitler had said, there could be no invasion; without mastery of the air, Churchill had agreed, the invasion could not succeed. At his headquarters in the pleasant French town of Fontainebleau, General von Brauchitsch completed his plans, studied the signals from his subordinate commanders as they reported that one formation after another was fit for action, heard from the naval liaison officers that the growing fleet of barges was ready to put to sea and awaited from the Luftwaffe the news of victory in the air which would mean that his waiting armada could be launched across the Channel.

¹General Brooke received his knighthood on 11 June, shortly after his return from France.

The events described up to this point all actually happened. The story recounted in the next three chapters is wholly fictional although the places, military units and some of the people mentioned are real.

Chapter 5: Assault

The Army Group will force a landing on the English coast between Folkestone and Worthing and … take possession of a beachhead where the landing of further forces … can be ensured.

Instructions of the Commander-in-Chief Army, to Army Group A, 30 August 1940

When, at 9 am on the morning of Thursday 5 September 1940 the three German Commanders-in-Chief assembled under Hitler’s chairmanship, as they had done seven weeks before, they found Air Marshal Goring in an unusually restrained mood. The attack on Fighter Command airfields had not, he admitted, proved decisive, although enormous numbers of British aircraft had been shot down or destroyed on the ground. Had the time not come to switch the attack to the cities, thus throwing the defences off balance, weakening the enemy’s will to fight, and exacting revenge for recent British air raids on Berlin?

The Navy and Army representatives must have found it hard not to smile at Göring’s confession of failure but they had no chance to speak, for Hitler was already launched on one of his tirades. He did not believe in the ‘invincible’ English Air Force, he shouted, any more than he had believed in the unconquerable French Army or the impregnable Maginot Line. The British
could
be beaten; they were isolated, outnumbered, already badly mauled. If the RAF were still able to intercept the Germans through gaining prior warning of their approach, then destroy their warning system! A lion, summed up Hitler, was no longer a danger when blinded. The attacks on the airfields were to go on; and once the RAF was beaten the British would be attacked without fear of opposition, which ought, he added, sarcastically, to appeal to the Luftwaffe who seemed so sadly lacking in the will to fight.

And this, though more tactfully, was how a few hours later Goring, still much chastened but now recovering some of his usual bombast, persuaded his reluctant air commanders to continue the costly attacks of the last few weeks. One more effort, he assured them, and the RAF would really be swept from the skies and the Luftwaffe could fly at will over Southern England as it had once roamed over Spain and Poland. The Luftwaffe generals were not convinced but they were well disciplined. The staff officers laboured all day over their maps and intelligence appreciations and that night the orders went out: knock out the radar stations, then the forward airfields, then the main fighter stations and sector and
group headquarters. Every bomb and every bullet was to be aimed at an Air Force target.

The renewed attack on the radar chain took Fighter Command by surprise and soon ominous gaps were appearing on the plotting boards at II Group Headquarters at Uxbridge and at Fighter Command at Bentley Priory, Stanmore, as the flow of information dried up, as the masts and control buildings of the radar stations lay in ruins or were rendered impotent by bombs severing the power supply. Day after day, guided now only by reports from the Observer Corps or their commander’s intuition, the defending fighters reached the required height or area only to find that the birds had already flown, leaving behind them another airfield knocked out. Reinforcements flown in from the squadrons in reserve in the north found themselves pounced upon by the waiting Messerschmitts or, even more tragically, had to watch from a slit trench their newly-arrived Spitfires and Hurricanes being blown to pieces on the runways. And, final proof that the RAF was losing the battle, the Stuka dive-bombers again flew far inland and got safely home.

The high-ranking officers who assembled at 0900 hours on Saturday 14 September at Hitler’s advanced headquarters were in a very different mood from that which had prevailed nine days before. A radiant Göring reported that the RAF was now visibly crumbling, while Admiral Raeder, though more reluctantly, admitted that the collection and conversion for invasion purposes of transports, barges and, the worst bottleneck, tugs had gone better than he dared hope. Given good weather and no interference by the British fleet, he now believed the Navy could safely carry the Army across the Channel. Göring told him promptly that he need have no fears about the enemy Navy. Once the RAF was finally knocked out the bomber squadrons could turn their attention to attacking enemy ports and warships and soon not a motor-torpedo boat, let alone a battleship, would dare to stir in daylight.

It was now Field Marshal von Brauchitsch’s turn. The Army, he confirmed, was ready, as it always had been. The actual assault would be made by Army Group A under Field Marshal von Rundstedt, whose armoured divisions had so successfully crossed the Meuse and broken through at Sedan, while for follow-up operations, such as the occupation of Devon and Cornwall, Army Group B, which had so speedily defeated Holland and Belgium, was trained and waiting. He planned to get 50,000 men ashore within the first two hours, building up within three days, two days before the British counter-attack was expected, to 125,000 and within two weeks to at least 220,000, rising if necessary to nearly half a million within six weeks. Most would be infantry, but the second wave, due to go in as soon as there was room to unload their equipment, would include four Panzer divisions and two motorised divisions, while a parachute division, 10,000 strong, was to capture Folkestone and later Dover and to protect the landing area during the early stages of the attack.