The Battle of Britain as a turning pointin the Second World War.

There are two views on the battle of Britain and if it was a turning point in the war. The traditional view is that if Britain had lost the Battle of Britain survival to the end of the war would have been impossible. Therefore because we won the Battle of Britain it meant that we survived longer and so it was the most important turning point in the war. This view is generally dating from the 1940's.

The RAF saw of the German threat to the UK. German plans to invade Britain from bases in occupied France and had to be postponed because the Luftwaffe had to have air superiority other wise there landing craft would not survive the channel crossing in "Operation Sea lion". It was seen by the rest of the world that the Germans could be defeated because it was the first major defeat for Germany in the war. It was also important because it showed that the Britons could fight alone with no allies and that they were also strong enough to win against all odds.

The second interpretation is that whilst no one can deny the bravery and sacrifice of the RAF in 1940 and the hope that the victory gave to Briton, it was not the most important turning point of the war even if it was an important one. Historians that have studied the all the points in World War Two mainly see this as the correct view.

There were a lot more important turning points in the war. One of these was the Evacuation of over 330,00 British and French troops from Dunkirk. No one expected the rapid defeat of the Allies in France in 1940. The German army had managed forced the British troops out of Belgium and in doing so most of the solders, between May 29th and June 4th, had no where to go except the beaches of Dunkirk. Sadly the British Navy had no ships that they could use at that time to rescue the stranded solders. The Government the asked anyone who had a vessel capable of sailing across the channel to help Britain in her 'hour of need' There was a massive response made up of mainly fishing ships and this tiny volunteer rescue force was called the "Skylark Navy". It took exactly one week to evacuate all of the solders but because the operation had to be done with immense speed, guns and heavy fortifications had to be left behind. Because of this by the end of June the only fully equip division in British Isles was Canadian. That shows how much stuff was left behind. However the heavy items that were left behind could be remade for a price and it meant that Britain still had an army left to defend herself with and it takes more time to train new solders then make new armaments. The soldiers that had been rescued from Dunkirk were bitter towards the Nazis and this proved useful during the D-Day landings.

There was another Battle that I believe was more important than the Battle of Britain. That was the Battle of the Atlantic. Britain relies on supplies from abroad because it is an island. Hitler just had to stop the supplies getting to Britain so that they would have no choice except to surrender or starve. He could almost do this as he had taken control of most of the main supplying countries. He just had to stop America. He used a type of submarine called a U-boat. These were fairly heavily armed and could easily sink ships. These U-boats would sink hundreds of merchant ships before the British and Americans came up with the convoy system. The American merchant ships would travel close together in convoys so that the American and British destroyers could surround these convoys. This made it incredibly hard for the U-boats to successfully destroy all of the merchant ships without being destroyed of heavily damaged in the process. This however did not sop the U-boat's, as the attacks were still mainly successful. In fact in 1941, 1299 allied ships were sunk and only 87 of the German U-boats were sunk. The British and American navies had to find some way of beating the U-boats. Their saviour was a new radar system, which was fitted to destroyers so that depth charges could be deployed in the correct area of sea. The RAF also had the new radar installed so that they could also destroy the U-boats. However it was the capture of one of the enigma machines by the HMS Griffin in May 1940. Thanks to this, the newly formed, 'convoy' system of travel and the code-breakers of Bletchley park, the German U-boats were no longer as good a weapon as they were at the start of the war. This won us the Battle of the Atlantic and gave us superiority of the seas. The reason that I believe this was a greater turning point than the Battle of Briton was because apart from us not being able to be placed under siege, the German's plans were considerably poorer than in other invasions. This is because even if Hitler had had managed to fulfil the first part of the invasion plan by destroying the RAF, the Germans would still have to of actually of got all of their troops across the channel. So as Britain had superiority of the sea the destroyers, along with the rest of Britons huge Navy would have had no problem destroying the German troop ships before they reached Britain.

Here was one turning point in the war that is not a big battle and did not cost lives. It would not seem like a big deal now but then it was a revolution. It was when the industries started employing women due to the fact that men between the ages of 18 and 45 were called up for military service and so all the men that were doing the jobs that were important o the war effort were having to leave. However in 1941 there were large numbers of unemployed women in Briton. A lot of the industries did not waste a lot of time in employing the women to help in the war effort. Many went into the 'women's services', these were, the Auxiliary Territorial Service or A.T.S. Women's Auxiliary Air Force known as the W.A.A.F.s, and the Women's Royal Navy Service, or W.R.N.s. Other women went into the munitions factories or land army (Farming). The women that went into the munitions factories were then famously know and referred to as Canaries due to Sulphur turning their skin yellow. This is a turning point in the war because without the employment of women, Britain would not have managed to sustain it's war effort and would not have had the manpower necessary to mount a large counterattack to the German army. Other ways that the people of Briton were asked to contribute to the war effort was to donate scrap metal like pots and pans and even things like the railings outside the Royal Grammar School were donated. Thousands of tonnes of metal were donated. This along with the women workers helped to re-arm Briton and by September 1940 16 Divisions were based in the South East of Britain showing the rate that the re-armament took place. And since he RAF had lost half of its strength in the Battle of France in May-June 1940 they needed all the help they could get. At the peak of the re-armament phase around 100 Spitfires and Hurricanes were being produced a week. Sadly it took longer to train a pilot then to make a plane. Moral and determination was also kept up in Briton through the "Home Guard". Over 1 million men joined the Home Guard and so that shows the seriousness and determination of the British people that they would not let the Germans invade them easily. I agree that these were not as important as the big battles but they did help Briton through out the war and so in some ways are equally important.

The 6th of June was the date of another of the great turning points of World War Two and it is famously remembered as D-Day. In total 6,500 vessels worked together to land over 130,000 men on five of the Beaches in Normandy. These were Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. Having air superiority meant that we could have 12,000 aircraft as support. These were used to bomb the German defences and provided cover for the ground forces. On Utah beach 23,000 troops were landed at a cost of 197 casualties, which is a major victory. Sadly Omaha beach was significantly harder to land on and secure as they were met with fierce German resistance and so sadly there were 4,649 American casualties. We had managed to use the German tactics of a 'Lightning Strike' against them and it happened with such speed that the German army were un-able to counter-attack with the necessary speed and strength. This is a major turning point in the war because it meant that once the Americans had successfully destroyed the German defences then they were free to ship over new troops, supplies and machines over the channel and into Normandy. At the end of June, Eisenhower had 850,000 men and 150,000 vehicles ashore in Normandy. A huge pipeline was built running through the Atlantic to stop the problems of fuel reaching the allied troops and this was a great success mainly because it was so difficult to destroy. So because of the success of the Normandy landings weeks later in August Paris was liberated. Though you have to wonder if Normandy would have been a success if we had not won the Battle of Britain ensuring that we could have those 12,000 aircraft for support. The fact that we had control of the seas was the main importance in this operation though, as if we had not our troops would have stood as much chance, if not less, as the German troops would have had trying to cross the channel after the Battle of the Atlantic.

Gunfire and explosion would wake up the U.S. troops at 7:55 AM on one of the days that would prove to be one of the vital turning points in the war. On December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. The reason that Japan became angry with America was because they were sending China supplies to help in their war against Japan who at that time were focusing most of there attacks towards china. At first they tried to sort it peacefully and organised a peace trip that happened in November of 1941. Isoroku Yamamoto was the man in charge of the Japanese warships in that area and knew most of the troops at Pearl Harbour would be asleep. 350 bombers were used in the attack and it took six aircraft carriers to carry them all. They chose to use bombers because their primary objective was to destroy as many ships as possible. They did have one squadron of fighter planes in each wave, however for protection if the Americans managed to launch some planes. There was on wave of planes to destroy as many of the biggest ships as possible. Another wave of planes was order to simply destroy whatever the first wave of planes had failed to destroy and most of those were carrier ships and submarines that were surfaced.

During this attack exactly ten major American command ships were destroyed. The results of the attack on Pearl Harbour were the actual turning points of the war but Pearl Harbour kicked them all of. One of the major results that certainly changed the war was that America joined the war on our side. America was one of the richest countries in the world and had a huge supply of men and munitions. This meant that Hitler made one of the biggest mistakes ever in declaring war on America to please the Japanese because as soon as he did he ended any chance of Germany winning the war. America joining the war led to D-Day. Another major result was that it led to the dropping of the Atom Bomb at Hiroshima in Japan. F. D. Roosevelt died shortly before that happened so it was up to Harry S. Truman drop the bomb on Japan. After the bombing American soldiers use the phrase "Remember Pearl Harbour" to raise their spirits during the remainder of the war. So Pearl Harbour was the start of some of the big turning points in the war.

After Hitler had cancelled Operation Sea lion Hitler was focusing on Russia. On 22 June 1941 he caused the greatest turning point of the war. He attacked the USSR. He launched the greatest land-air campaign in the history of war and he called it "Operation Barbarossa". The end of the Battle of Britain allowed the Luftwaffe a little bit of time to rebuilt some of its strength again and make good some of its losses before the invasion of Russia. However the planes could be replaced it took a lot longer to train new pilots to replace the ones that had been captured, killed or too wounded to fly again. Hitler had already made one bad mistake, when he'd switched his tactic to focus on the bombing of British cities, just at the time when he was winning the air battle over England. Invading Russia was an even worse blunder.

Hitler wanted mainly to destroy Bolshevism and annex vast areas of the USSR to the Third Reich. With the advantage of surprise of one of the 'Lightning attacks' the Wehrmacht inflicted massive losses on the Red Army. They quickly penetrated deep into Soviet territory. Many historians do not generally believe the accusation by Solzhenitsyn and others that Stalin trusted Hitler to keep to the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939. Neither is the theory advanced by revisionist German historians, and most controversially by the Russian émigré Victor Suvorov, that Operation Barbarossa was a pre-emptive strike to forestall a planned Soviet offensive in summer 1941. It made no sense for Germany to fight on two fronts; so the USSR believed that they still had time to prepare for war. Hitler had already ordered an expansion of the army to 180 divisions and the movement of half of the western forces to the east ready for the invasion of the USSR by July 1941 at the latest. Stalin did very little while this was happening. The invasion of the USSR went badly for Germany from late 1942 onwards. It meant that millions of German troops are absorbed in a war of attrition. 75% of all the German casualties in the whole war were on the eastern front. Hitler never had any great intent to invade and conquer Briton. He believed that he could get round Briton with some type of alliance or an understanding with Briton. This meant that no serious plans to invade the English coast before the defeat of France in the summer of 1940. This just proves that Hitler's ideological enemy was Bolshevism and not Great Briton.

It was Russia that won the military victory with Briton winning the moral victory. Though if Hitler had spent more time building up his army and not having it split over two fronts I believe that the could have done a lot better than he did. He should have just concentrated on defeating Briton or not have bother with Briton at that time at did one big strike on the USSR. Because it was the USSR who defeated Germany I do not believe that it would have made a big difference if he had invaded Briton before trying to invade the USSR as it just means that his troops would be even more spread out.

The Battle of Britain was indeed an important turning point in the Second World War two however I do not believe that it was the most important turning point in the war. The Battle of Britain meant that we had air superiority, which meant that at D-Day we could afford to send the 12,000 planes in support. With out this the invasion of the beaches at Normandy could have gone a lot differently. However the Battle of the Atlantic meant that we had superiority of the sea. This was crucial as even if we lost the Battle of Britain and lost control of the skies we could still have defended the channel against the invasion forces of Operation Sea Lion, as they were transported by cruisers and fishing ships. Again even if we lost the Battle of Britain then we would still have had help from the Americans after Pearl Harbour. The fact that Hitler never seriously intended to invade England meant that the chance of being invaded after we lost the RAF was small, because instead he wanted to fulfil his ideological war of annihilation and gain Lebensraum through a successful invasion of the USSR. The evacuation of 330,00 troops at Dunkirk was more important than the Battle of Britain in my opinion as it meant that we still had an army to defend Britain even if we did not have an air force. This meant that even in the improbable invasion of Briton we would still have had a significant force to try and repel the Germans especially after the 16 new division that were based on the south coast and as a last resort the 1 million plus Home Guard. The Biggest turning point in the war was Germany attacking the USSR which ended with 75% of Germany's total loses in the whole war being destroyed there and giving Britain the chance to re-arm and build itself up in case Germany came back again, which they did not. The defeat of Germany then of course led to the defeat of Japan afterwards and the end of the war.

Kyle Sanders 11c

Mr Hallet