What was the popular interpretation and why did it become so quickly established during the early part of the war?

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What was the popular interpretation and why did it become so quickly established during the early part of the war?

After the challenging success of Dunkirk, things were still far from over concerning the Second World War. It was obvious that Britain would be the next victim of blitzkrieg and that the battle would be in the air even before France had surrendered to Hitler.

Even though Britain didn’t have any allies, when Hitler offered a negotiated surrender in 1940, Britain rejected it. The RAF’s task was to prevent the Luftwaffe from destroying them and to gain air superiority over the English Channel so that either the German invasion forces would be destroyed or prevented from crossing the channel.

Hitler set a date for the invasion of Britain, which was to be on September 15th, and he codenamed the operation “sealion”. After Dunkirk, even though the morale of the British people was somewhat doubtful, the British knew that they had to keep going. They prepared German invasion by putting obstacles in roads so German planes could not land and they confused panzer drivers with wrong road signs. The Home Guard- dad’s army was founded, recruiting a quarter of a million men in one day. The public were in high spirits although they were anxious too.

There was also plenty of propaganda to help this as “Lord Beaver Brook”- Churchill’s friend and owner of the daily express (how convenient) appealed for aluminium pots and pans, which people gave up willingly to help make the spitfires. We now know that this was not true and was just used for propaganda although it still made people involved and committed to the war effort.

Britain also had a disadvantage with the air forces as the Luftwaffe had built up its forces for a considerably longer amount of time. However, considering this problem the British still had the quality of the planes- which were much more impressive than the Luftwaffe’s.

Even though the German morale was very high because they had defeated nearly the whole of Western Europe it still seemed unclear about what their strategic plan was. Sometimes the Luftwaffe seemed to be trying to gain superiority over the channel by just invading the south coast. Other times their targets would be more widespread- often missing out crucial targets like the spitfire factory and power links.

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From 24th august to 6th September Britain was almost brought down completely with a German round the clock offensive (which was kept up for nearly two weeks). German nighttime attacks became very successful because of poor British observers.

On the 7th September the Lufftwaffe began its daylight bombing of London. It is still not clear why this happened- wither a tactical decision to draw out more fighters to finish them off, or an attack ordered in Hitler’s anger from the bombing raid on Berlin. This was successful at first and even though the British were running out of fuel and the morale was ...

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