The Battle of Britain as a turning point in the Second World War.In the summer of 1940, the Luftwaffe (German air force)
The Battle of Britain as a turning point in the Second World War.In the summer of 1940, the Luftwaffe (German air force) tried to gainair superiority over southern Britain by destroying the RAF and theBritish aircraft industry. This attempt came to be known as the Battleof Britain. If Germany wanted to invade Britain then they needed tohave complete control of the skies. The Germans had already taken overBelgium, the Netherlands and Northern France, using a tactic known asBlitzkrieg or 'Lightning War'. This was successful sue to wellcoordinated air and ground troops. However the Luftwaffe could notattack Britain as easily due to it being an island. The ME 109E onlyhad a range of 700 km so it had only 15 minutes' fuel over Kent andwas at the limit of its range over London.The Battle of Britain began on 30 June 1940. Reichsmarschall HermannGöering, head of the Luftwaffe, ordered his force to draw the RAF intobattle by attacking coastal convoys and bombing radar stations alongthe south coast, installations of the British aircraft industry, andRAF airfields. In two weeks of air fighting, one quarter of Britishpilots were killed or badly injured. For 53 nights they came everynight. On 7th September 1940 the Luftwaffe started the blitz witch wasthe bombing of all the major towns and cities in Britain. Then on the15th September 1940 the German planes started attacking during the dayas well as at night. The whole point was to make way for “OperationSea lion” witch was a sea invasion of the southern coast of Britain.Operation Sea lion was a plan to transport 300,00 German troops ontothe South East shores of Briton. The Germans did not have properlanding crafts though so they had to use 1000 pleasure cruisers and400 fishing boats that had been modified to carry the troops and heavyequipment. The ships that they used were no suitable and they couldnot go out in Gail force six. They would not stand a chance againstthe British’s 80 destroyers, 5 Major Battle ships and 11 cruisers.Germany at that time only had 10 destroyers and 5 cruisers. So withnavy 20 times smaller then the British it was never really going tohappen even if they had control of the air. And it looked like Hitlernoticed this as well. Hitler told his generals that he would notattempt to invade Britain if the task seemed too dangerous.Hitler started to back away from invasion the battle for dominance ofthe skies over England and the English Channel as it now had verylittle strategical importance.On 3 September Field Marshal Keitel delayed Sea lion until 21September, and then again until 27 September and that was the lasttime that the tides would be right for that year. The day after thisthe final major mission to destroy RAF Fighter Command took placeduring the day. It was a dismal failure, with the Luftwaffe losingtwice as many aircraft as it the RAF. On 17 September Operation Sealion was postponed indefinitely. Hitler was reported to have said atthis time “I do not intend to carry on with Operation Sea Lion. Thereare no Bridges over the sea. On land I am a hero, on sea I am acoward”. The plan was never to be revived. In 1944 Britain's defencesagainst sea-borne attack were scaled down. By that date it was finallycertain that the German army, which had been slaughtered in Russia,could not actually invade Britain any more.Destroying the RAF would have been the first difficult step to aGerman victory, but it was not the only factor. The Germans would alsofind out that the Britons would have plenty of tricks up theirsleeves. Because the German planes could not go very far over Britonthen the RAF could have just moved their planes out of the Germansreach. Or if Briton started losing the battle for the skies then theycould have just pulled their planes into reserve in case the Germansdid invade so that they could try to repel them. Another mistake thatGermany made was to underestimate the strength of the British airforce and the British aviation industry's production capacity. Germanyactually believed that they could destroy the RAF Fighter Command infour days and the aviation industry in four weeks. However the Britishhad over-estimated the strength and competence of the German airforce. This was worrying, but was not something to damage theirchances of winning the Battle. Britain they also had radar to helpdirect the fighters
to intercept attacking German aircraft. The factthat the Germans had no other way of destroying the RAF than to attackthe island itself was a bad point for the Germans. Usually in the‘Lighting Strike’ attacks Germany normally did on other countries thatthey wee bordered with if one o their planes were shot down the pilotstood a chance of getting back behind his own lines or the countrywould be invaded so quickly he could be picked up. This could nothappen with the attack on Briton though. A downed German pilot overBriton was lost to Germany as there was the channel to cross ...
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to intercept attacking German aircraft. The factthat the Germans had no other way of destroying the RAF than to attackthe island itself was a bad point for the Germans. Usually in the‘Lighting Strike’ attacks Germany normally did on other countries thatthey wee bordered with if one o their planes were shot down the pilotstood a chance of getting back behind his own lines or the countrywould be invaded so quickly he could be picked up. This could nothappen with the attack on Briton though. A downed German pilot overBriton was lost to Germany as there was the channel to cross and theinvasion would not be as swift. There was also the fact that a damagedaircraft was likely to ditch in the sea - whereas damaged RAF aircraftcould limp home, or land somewhere friendly, and downed RAF pilotsparachuted onto English fields. They were returned to their unitsalmost immediately. So again it is bad planning on the Germans behalfthat led to their losing the Battle of Briton. A piece of bad planningby the German was one of the reasons that they lost the Battle ofBriton. Goering decided to stop the attacks of the RAF and the Britishaviation industry's just as they were struggling to continue. If hedecided to continue with them instead of starting the Blitz, which wasthe bombing of the big towns and cities in Britain, he could havegained superiority of the air. This in itself was an important turningpoint in the war.There are two views on the battle of Britain and if it was a turningpoint in the war. The traditional view is that if Britain had lost theBattle of Britain survival to the end of the war would have beenimpossible. Therefore because we won the Battle of Britain it meantthat we survived longer and so it was the most important turning pointin the war. This view is generally dating from the 1940’s.The RAF saw of the German threat to the UK. German plans to invadeBritain from bases in occupied France and had to be postponed becausethe Luftwaffe had to have air superiority other wise there landingcraft would not survive the channel crossing in “Operation Sea lion”.It was seen by the rest of the world that the Germans could bedefeated because it was the first major defeat for Germany in the war.It was also important because it showed that the Britons could fightalone with no allies and that they were also strong enough to winagainst all odds.The second interpretation is that whilst no one can deny the braveryand sacrifice of the RAF in 1940 and the hope that the victory gave toBriton, it was not the most important turning point of the war even ifit was an important one. Historians that have studied the all thepoints in World War Two mainly see this as the correct view.There were a lot more important turning points in the war. One ofthese was the Evacuation of over 330,00 British and French troops fromDunkirk. No one expected the rapid defeat of the Allies in France in1940. The German army had managed forced the British troops out ofBelgium and in doing so most of the solders, between May 29th and June4th, had no where to go except the beaches of Dunkirk. Sadly theBritish Navy had no ships that they could use at that time to rescuethe stranded solders. The Government the asked anyone who had a vesselcapable of sailing across the channel to help Britain in her ‘hour ofneed’ There was a massive response made up of mainly fishing ships andthis tiny volunteer rescue force was called the “Skylark Navy”. Ittook exactly one week to evacuate all of the solders but because theoperation had to be done with immense speed, guns and heavyfortifications had to be left behind. Because of this by the end ofJune the only fully equip division in British Isles was Canadian. Thatshows how much stuff was left behind. However the heavy items thatwere left behind could be remade for a price and it meant that Britainstill had an army left to defend herself with and it takes more timeto train new solders then make new armaments. The soldiers that hadbeen rescued from Dunkirk were bitter towards the Nazis and thisproved useful during the D-Day landings.There was another Battle that I believe was more important than theBattle of Britain. That was the Battle of the Atlantic. Britain relieson supplies from abroad because it is an island. Hitler just had tostop the supplies getting to Britain so that they would have no choiceexcept to surrender or starve. He could almost do this as he had takencontrol of most of the main supplying countries. He just had to stopAmerica. He used a type of submarine called a U-boat. These werefairly heavily armed and could easily sink ships. These U-boats wouldsink hundreds of merchant ships before the British and Americans cameup with the convoy system. The American merchant ships would travelclose together in convoys so that the American and British destroyerscould surround these convoys. This made it incredibly hard for theU-boats to successfully destroy all of the merchant ships withoutbeing destroyed of heavily damaged in the process. This however didnot sop the U-boat’s, as the attacks were still mainly successful. Infact in 1941, 1299 allied ships were sunk and only 87 of the GermanU-boats were sunk. The British and American navies had to find someway of beating the U-boats. Their saviour was a new radar system,which was fitted to destroyers so that depth charges could be deployedin the correct area of sea. The RAF also had the new radar installedso that they could also destroy the U-boats. However it was thecapture of one of the enigma machines by the HMS Griffin in May 1940.Thanks to this, the newly formed, ’convoy’ system of travel and thecode-breakers of Bletchley park, the German U-boats were no longer asgood a weapon as they were at the start of the war. This won us theBattle of the Atlantic and gave us superiority of the seas. The reasonthat I believe this was a greater turning point than the Battle ofBriton was because apart from us not being able to be placed undersiege, the German’s plans were considerably poorer than in otherinvasions. This is because even if Hitler had had managed to fulfilthe first part of the invasion plan by destroying the RAF, the Germanswould still have to of actually of got all of their troops across thechannel. So as Britain had superiority of the sea the destroyers,along with the rest of Britons huge Navy would have had no problemdestroying the German troop ships before they reached Britain.Here was one turning point in the war that is not a big battle and didnot cost lives. It would not seem like a big deal now but then it wasa revolution. It was when the industries started employing women dueto the fact that men between the ages of 18 and 45 were called up formilitary service and so all the men that were doing the jobs that wereimportant o the war effort were having to leave. However in 1941 therewere large numbers of unemployed women in Briton. A lot of theindustries did not waste a lot of time in employing the women to helpin the war effort. Many went into the ‘women’s services’, these were,the Auxiliary Territorial Service or A.T.S. Women’s Auxiliary AirForce known as the W.A.A.F.s, and the Women’s Royal Navy Service, orW.R.N.s. Other women went into the munitions factories or land army(Farming). The women that went into the munitions factories were thenfamously know and referred to as Canaries due to Sulphur turning theirskin yellow. This is a turning point in the war because without theemployment of women, Britain would not have managed to sustain it’swar effort and would not have had the manpower necessary to mount alarge counterattack to the German army. Other ways that the people ofBriton were asked to contribute to the war effort was to donate scrapmetal like pots and pans and even things like the railings outside theRoyal Grammar School were donated. Thousands of tonnes of metal weredonated. This along with the women workers helped to re-arm Briton andby September 1940 16 Divisions were based in the South East of Britainshowing the rate that the re-armament took place. And since he RAFhad lost half of its strength in the Battle of France in May-June 1940they needed all the help they could get. At the peak of there-armament phase around 100 Spitfires and Hurricanes were beingproduced a week. Sadly it took longer to train a pilot then to make aplane. Moral and determination was also kept up in Briton through the“Home Guard”. Over 1 million men joined the Home Guard and so thatshows the seriousness and determination of the British people thatthey would not let the Germans invade them easily. I agree that thesewere not as important as the big battles but they did help Britonthrough 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 ofWorld War Two and it is famously remembered as D-Day. In total 6,500vessels worked together to land over 130,000 men on five of theBeaches in Normandy. These were Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.Having air superiority meant that we could have 12,000 aircraft assupport. These were used to bomb the German defences and providedcover for the ground forces. On Utah beach 23,000 troops were landedat a cost of 197 casualties, which is a major victory. Sadly Omahabeach was significantly harder to land on and secure as they were metwith fierce German resistance and so sadly there were 4,649 Americancasualties. We had managed to use the German tactics of a ‘LightningStrike’ against them and it happened with such speed that the Germanarmy were un-able to counter-attack with the necessary speed andstrength. This is a major turning point in the war because it meantthat once the Americans had successfully destroyed the German defencesthen they were free to ship over new troops, supplies and machinesover the channel and into Normandy. At the end of June, Eisenhower had850,000 men and 150,000 vehicles ashore in Normandy. A huge pipelinewas built running through the Atlantic to stop the problems of fuelreaching the allied troops and this was a great success mainly becauseit was so difficult to destroy. So because of the success of theNormandy landings weeks later in August Paris was liberated. Thoughyou have to wonder if Normandy would have been a success if we had notwon the Battle of Britain ensuring that we could have those 12,000aircraft for support. The fact that we had control of the seas was themain importance in this operation though, as if we had not our troopswould have stood as much chance, if not less, as the German troopswould have had trying to cross the channel after the Battle of theAtlantic.Gunfire and explosion would wake up the U.S. troops at 7:55 AM on oneof the days that would prove to be one of the vital turning points inthe war. On December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. Thereason that Japan became angry with America was because they weresending China supplies to help in their war against Japan who at thattime were focusing most of there attacks towards china. At first theytried to sort it peacefully and organised a peace trip that happenedin November of 1941. Isoroku Yamamoto was the man in charge of theJapanese warships in that area and knew most of the troops at PearlHarbour would be asleep. 350 bombers were used in the attack and ittook six aircraft carriers to carry them all. They chose to usebombers because their primary objective was to destroy as many shipsas possible. They did have one squadron of fighter planes in eachwave, however for protection if the Americans managed to launch someplanes. There was on wave of planes to destroy as many of the biggestships as possible. Another wave of planes was order to simply destroywhatever the first wave of planes had failed to destroy and most ofthose were carrier ships and submarines that were surfaced.During this attack exactly ten major American command ships weredestroyed. The results of the attack on Pearl Harbour were the actualturning points of the war but Pearl Harbour kicked them all of. One ofthe major results that certainly changed the war was that Americajoined the war on our side. America was one of the richest countriesin the world and had a huge supply of men and munitions. This meantthat Hitler made one of the biggest mistakes ever in declaring war onAmerica to please the Japanese because as soon as he did he ended anychance of Germany winning the war. America joining the war led toD-Day. Another major result was that it led to the dropping of theAtom Bomb at Hiroshima in Japan. F. D. Roosevelt died shortly beforethat happened so it was up to Harry S. Truman drop the bomb on Japan.After the bombing American soldiers use the phrase "Remember PearlHarbour" to raise their spirits during the remainder of the war. SoPearl Harbour was the start of some of the big turning points in thewar.After Hitler had cancelled Operation Sea lion Hitler was focusing onRussia. On 22 June 1941 he caused the greatest turning point of thewar. He attacked the USSR. He launched the greatest land-air campaignin the history of war and he called it “Operation Barbarossa”. The endof the Battle of Britain allowed the Luftwaffe a little bit of time torebuilt some of its strength again and make good some of its lossesbefore the invasion of Russia. However the planes could be replaced ittook a lot longer to train new pilots to replace the ones that hadbeen captured, killed or too wounded to fly again. Hitler had alreadymade one bad mistake, when he'd switched his tactic to focus on thebombing of British cities, just at the time when he was winning theair battle over England. Invading Russia was an even worse blunder.Hitler wanted mainly to destroy Bolshevism and annex vast areas of theUSSR to the Third Reich. With the advantage of surprise of one of the‘Lightning attacks’ the Wehrmacht inflicted massive losses on the RedArmy. They quickly penetrated deep into Soviet territory. Manyhistorians do not generally believe the accusation by Solzhenitsyn andothers that Stalin trusted Hitler to keep to the terms of theNazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939. Neither is the theory advanced byrevisionist German historians, and most controversially by the Russianémigré Victor Suvorov, that Operation Barbarossa was a pre-emptivestrike to forestall a planned Soviet offensive in summer 1941. It madeno sense for Germany to fight on two fronts; so the USSR believed thatthey still had time to prepare for war. Hitler had already ordered anexpansion of the army to 180 divisions and the movement of half of thewestern forces to the east ready for the invasion of the USSR by July1941 at the latest. Stalin did very little while this was happening.The invasion of the USSR went badly for Germany from late 1942onwards. It meant that millions of German troops are absorbed in a warof attrition. 75% of all the German casualties in the whole war wereon the eastern front. Hitler never had any great intent to invade andconquer Briton. He believed that he could get round Briton with sometype of alliance or an understanding with Briton. This meant that noserious plans to invade the English coast before the defeat of Francein the summer of 1940. This just proves that Hitler’s ideologicalenemy was Bolshevism and not Great Briton.It was Russia that won the military victory with Briton winning themoral victory. Though if Hitler had spent more time building up hisarmy and not having it split over two fronts I believe that the couldhave done a lot better than he did. He should have just concentratedon defeating Briton or not have bother with Briton at that time at didone big strike on the USSR. Because it was the USSR who defeatedGermany I do not believe that it would have made a big difference ifhe had invaded Briton before trying to invade the USSR as it justmeans that his troops would be even more spread out.The Battle of Britain was indeed an important turning point in theSecond World War two however I do not believe that it was the mostimportant turning point in the war. The Battle of Britain meant thatwe had air superiority, which meant that at D-Day we could afford tosend the 12,000 planes in support. With out this the invasion of thebeaches at Normandy could have gone a lot differently. However theBattle of the Atlantic meant that we had superiority of the sea. Thiswas crucial as even if we lost the Battle of Britain and lost controlof the skies we could still have defended the channel against theinvasion forces of Operation Sea Lion, as they were transported bycruisers and fishing ships. Again even if we lost the Battle ofBritain then we would still have had help from the Americans afterPearl Harbour. The fact that Hitler never seriously intended to invadeEngland meant that the chance of being invaded after we lost the RAFwas small, because instead he wanted to fulfil his ideological war ofannihilation and gain Lebensraum through a successful invasion of theUSSR. The evacuation of 330,00 troops at Dunkirk was more importantthan the Battle of Britain in my opinion as it meant that we still hadan army to defend Britain even if we did not have an air force. Thismeant that even in the improbable invasion of Briton we would stillhave had a significant force to try and repel the Germans especiallyafter the 16 new division that were based on the south coast and as alast resort the 1 million plus Home Guard. The Biggest turning pointin the war was Germany attacking the USSR which ended with 75% ofGermany’s total loses in the whole war being destroyed there andgiving Britain the chance to re-arm and build itself up in caseGermany came back again, which they did not. The defeat of Germanythen of course led to the defeat of Japan afterwards and the end ofthe war.