Hitler never planned to invade – it was all a myth
The newspapers naturally found it as irresistible to publish pictures of swastikas draped in front of a ruined Buckingham Palace as did the BBC to concoct its “What if?” mini-series, on what life in Britain might have been like if the Nazis had successfully invaded in 1940.
Such speculations about how different the world might look if only some historical event had gone another way have long been popular, not least back in 1930 when an American magazine commissioned well-known writers of the day to produce essays (later published in a book,
on what a different course history might have taken if, for instance, the Dutch had held on to what became New York, or Napoleon had escaped to America, instead of being captured after Waterloo.
The best-known of these contributors was Winston Churchill, ever eager in those days to earn a hefty fee for dashing off a piece of journalism. “Perhaps it might amuse an idle hour,” he wrote, “at this moment in the 20th century, so rich in assurance and prosperity, so calm and buoyant”, to meditate on what might have happened if General Lee had won the battle of Gettysburg and the South had won the American Civil War.
It is certainly entertaining to see Churchill describing the world in 1930 as “prosperous, calm and buoyant”, just as America was plunging into the Great Depression and only three years before the rise to power of Hitler.
But years ago I recall noting, when I first read of Churchill’s essay, that “all ‘What if?’ questions about history are posed by the devil”. In other words, rather than speculating imagines Buckingham Palace in ruins and the Mall swathed in swastikas. But Hitler was merely hoping to cow Britain into accepting peace, while he headed for Russia about things which didn’t happen, it is far more interesting to peel away the myths and false “narratives” which constantly befog history and try to uncover what really did happen.
This is particularly relevant to the long-standing myth of Hitler’s supposed plan to invade Britain in 1940. It is true that many at the time imagined this might be imminent. My father, who was a special constable in 1940, used to recall how a favourite topic of speculation in Honiton police station was how many of the town’s councillors, if the Germans did invade, would have been ready to collaborate. The general conclusion was “all but one”.
But the really interesting truth, as my friend Richard North comprehensively showed in his admirable book on the Battle of Britain, was that Hitler never had any intention of invading Britain. His purpose all along, as he told his High Command in July 1940, when the aerial battle was approaching its height, was simply to cow Britain into suing for peace, thus allowing him to concentrate on his real agenda, an invasion of Russia.
His prime purpose that summer was to use his bombers, first to destroy Britain’s economic lifelines, airforce and military production, and then, by blitzing London, to demoralise the British people into no longer wishing to resist. That handful of supposed invasion barges in ports across the Channel were just part of the show. Hitler’s generals were fully aware that they simply didn’t have the resources to mount an invasion of Britain.
Meanwhile, no fewer than five times between July and October, he put out peace feelers, in the hope the British would bow out of the war on generous terms, even being allowed to retain much of their empire.
Fortunately the prime minister was not Halifax but Churchill. So the Blitz continued relentlessly until, on May 10 1940, it suddenly stopped – because Hitler had sent his bomber fleets east to prepare for the invasion of Russia weeks later.
Of the many myths still surrounding the Battle of Britain which North’s book dispels, this one deserves to be as firmly buried as any. And to explain this would have made a much more grown-up use of the BBC’s airtime than that miserable little bit of self-indulgent play-acting that its baffled viewers have been straining their ears to follow.