Posted on 02/17/2013 4:52:16 AM PST by expat1000
“I’ve read a number of books on the subject and I disagree.”
Unfortunately, your readings have left you inadequately informed and/or misinformed. Hitler changed his attitude towards Britain and plans to make an alliance or conquer Britain as needed to pursue his grand strategies. The same was true to a different degree with Poland. If Poland could be enticed into making a non-aggression treaty with Germany, then Hitler was prepaed to begin his offensive in the West with Britain as the primary target of the offensive, before renouncing treaties with Poland and the Soviet Union to pursue his plans for conquering Lebensraum in the East. If Britain had been willing to enter in the Comintern Pact and secure Hitler’s access to oil and other war supplies, Hitler would have first targeted Poland and the Soviet Union. Every time Britain acted in opposition to Hitler’s aggressions, Hitler further identified Britain and the West as his main target, and Poland was intended to secure his eastern front while he concentrated his forces against the West and Britain in particular. These events are documented in a number of books and papers such as the Hossbach Memorandum, histories of Hitler’s foreign policy, and a variety of other documents.
“Hitler considered the British to be for the most part perfectly good Aryan racial material, unlike the subhuman Slavs who needed to be exterminated eventually.”
Qualifications as an Aryan did not forestall punishment for resistance against Hitler’s aggressions or his plans for aggression, whether in Poland, the Ukraine, Britain, France, or elsewhere.
“Had he succeeded in his conquest of Eurasia, access to the sealanes would have been more or less irrelevant.”
Britain and Germany attempted to blockade and starve each other into submission in World War One. Germany’s U-boats in World War One came perilously close to succeeding in starving Britain, but Britain’s blockade of Germany did bring widespread starvation in Germany before the defeats on the Western Front. Hitler was determined to prevent any such blockade from happening again in the future. Germany’s defeat of Russia/Soviet Union in 1916 gave it access to Eurasian land communications, but Germany was nonetheless subjected to the British blockade and starvation. What Germany needed was oil, and Hitler in 1936 to 1940 still neededd access to import the needed oil subject to British blockades. Therefore Britain either had to join the alliance with Germany or be conquered to secure Germany’s access to foreign trade. Hitler’s views on these matters were discussed with German millitary leaders, the conference which produced the Hossbach memorandum, discussoins with Joachim von Ribbentrop, and more.
“Hitler was so convinced he would be able to cut a deal with Britain that the Germans didn’t really have anything even vaguely resembling a plan for conquest of Britain.”
The planning for Operation Sealion commenced on 16 July 1940 Hitler Directive 16. This was within a few weeks of the fall of France. Planning for the invasion of Britain occurred well after the fall of France because the French surrender occurred far sooner than Hitler had anticipated. Even if hitler had anticipated such an early victory in the Netherlans, belgium, and france; there is no way Germany could have anymore quickly consolidatedd its gains and marshalled the forces needed to attempt the invasion much sooner than it did historically.. While the Army Groups had reached the shores of the English Channel in forcce, their logistical tail lagged far behind. It was going to take some very critical weeks before the logistical nightmares could be rectified sufficiently to sustain a major maphibious campaign into the island nation of Britain. Since Hitler knew full well he was not going to be able to make the leap across the English Channel for some weeks to come, he had nothing to lose by offering yet again an alliance with and promise to spare Britain. If the British fell for the ruse, he could always abrogate the treaty like all the others he abrogated at the time of his choosing. If the British refused, hitler could proceed with his invasion palns sooner rather than later, which was preferable anyway to prevent Britain doing the same to him after he bcame engaged on the Eastern Front conquering the Lebensraum. This was the same approach he had used a year earlier with Poland and Russia. Make a treaty to gain an adavantage and abrogate the treaty when it gave an advantage.
The 16 July 1940 Hitler Directive No. 16 was preceded on 10 July 1940 by a request from Grossadmiral Raeder, commander of the Kriegsmarine, to Hitler for a decision on the earlier proposed amphibious invasion of Britain across the North Sea or across the English Channel from Channel ports to be capured in the upcoming CASE YELLOW war plans. Hitler’s decision was to await the results of CASE YELLOW before proceeding with the planning for an invasion of Britain.
During the month of January 1940, Grossadmiral Raeder explained to Hitler his objections to the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKH) plans for the invasion of Britain. Grossadmiral Raeder agreed with Hitler that the defeat of Britain and occupation should be securedd by an air offensive and naval blockade of Britain to starve and destroy its communities into submission, surrender, and occupation.
The plan study for the invasion of Britain objected to by Grossadmiral Raeder in January 1940 was one of two such plan studies prepared by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKH) and the Oberkommando der Marine (OKM) at the directive of Hitler in November 1939. Many of the war plan objectives and and steps incorporated in the Operation Sealion war plan ordered by Hitler’s 16 July 1940 directive No. 16 were first authored in the OKH and/or OKM war plan studies for the invasion of Britain in November 1939.
Prior to the actual operational planning for the invasion of Britain that began in November 1939, Hitler’s war plans regarding Britain were more strategic than operational in nature. In his conversations with his military leaders between 1936 and 25 August 1939, Hitler commented upon his desires to either engage Britain into an alliance or else conquer Britain and thereby eliminate it as a threat to his other plans for conquest. After Britain refuse to join the 25 November 1936 AntiComintern Pact, Hitler said he was abandoning his hopes to get Britain to join as an ally with Germany against the Soviet Union, and Britain would have to be neutralized in the West before the war plans against the Soviet Union could proceed forward in the East. The 5 November 1937 Hossbach Memorandum recorded Hitler’s plan to make war on the Soviet Union sometime between 1938 and 1943, and the West played a key role in determining the final schedule for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler’s conversations indicated his desire to either secure an alliance, Britain’s neutrality, or Britain’s negotiated surrender by means of a naval and air blockade to starve Britain into negotiations.
Following the 29 September 1938 Munich Agreement, Hitler infuriated by Britain’s obstructions to his war plans inceasingly insisted that Britain’s ability to interfere had to be neutralized by treaty or by a naval and air blockade in the coming war plans.
This all culminated in Hitler’s 25 August 1939 failed attempt to neutralize Britain in a non-aggression treaty with Britain, and Foreign minister joachim von Ribbentropp’s failed prediction that Britain and France would not honor their mutual defense treaty with Poland by a declaration of war against Germany. When britain and France declared war on Germnay on 3 September 1939 as promised intheir treaty with Poalnd, Hitler tried to either negotiate a settlement favorable to Germany or begin the plans for the defeat of the West and the conquest of Britain by naval and air blockade or by invasion. The planning studies for invasion were then ordered by hitler in November 1939. The final operational planning for the invasion of Britain were subsequently ordered by Hitler’s Directive No. 15 on 16 July 1940.
“He was even less prepared to cross the Channel than he was to fight a winter war in Russia. In both cases he assumed the enemy would do what he wanted them to do, and was shocked when they failed to follow his script.”
Regardless of what you think about Hitler’s preparations for the campaigns, he did in fact make long-term plans for war with Britain by 1936 and earlier, and he did order invasion palns as early as November 1939. It was only thre final operational palnning for Operation Sealiion which were repeatedly delayed until after the Fall of France and the 16 July 1940 hitler Directive No. 16. Hitler’s indeciseness can just as easily be attributed to his desire to determine the outcome of CASE YELLOW before making operational invasion plans for the corss channel attack versus the other proposed “North West” invasion paln across the Nortth Sea including bases in Norway.
“The Battle of Britain was to a considerable extent more like a tantrum and an attempt to intimidate the British into making peace than it was an actual prelude to an invasion.”
The air blockade and seige of Britain had been a primary component of hitler’s war planning sicne at least August 1936, when Hitler ordered Goering to prepare the Four Year plan for industry and rearmament. The Luftwaffe was designed and built to ssist in the air bloackade of Britain from the day of its reincarnation.
“Operation Sea Lion required that the Germans have BOTH naval and air superiority for a considerable period, and they never came close to getting either, even briefly.”
That oft repeated and very erroneous claim is of course hard to disprove, but a psotwar event provides better insight to the possibilities than all of the baseless speculations. Shortly after the war was over, Britain used its veteran wartime troops to stage war games to see whether or not Operation Sealion could or could not have succeeded. The British used the assistance of the German officers responsible for planning and commanding the German invasion operations. In the war games, it was determined that the German forces in Operation Sealion invasion had succeeded. While such wargames cannot be a substitute for reality, there is no better substitute available for evaluating the chances of success. It is not only possible, but is very likely Operatoin Sealion probably would have succeeded if it has been attempted in the Fall of 1940, albeit with excessive losses in aircraft, warships, and personnel. In any event, Hitler’s operational planning for the invasion began in November 1940, and his strategic planning for a war with Britain began no later than 1936.
Flatly untrue.
"After the game's conclusion, the umpires unanimously concluded that the invasion was a devastating defeat for the German invasion force."
"Of the 90,000 German troops who landed only 15,400 returned to France. 33,000 were taken prisoner, 26,000 were killed in the fighting and 15,000 drowned in the English Channel. All six umpires deemed the invasion a resounding failure."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion_(wargame)
The biggest factors were the inability of the Luftwaffe to successfully engage smallish, fast-moving surfaces vessels such as destroyers and MTBs, even with air superiority. Against such forces, even with perfect weather, the Germans had no chance of adequately supplying any troops they might have landed in Britain.
It is more than a little silly to claim, based on staff operational plans, what Hitler was "planning to do."
General Staffs make plans. That's what they do. The US General Staff has plans in the drawer for invading every country on earth, including Canada. Or at least I hope they do. That's their job. Doesn't mean such plans are intended to be implemented.
In the final analysis, Hitler's plans for dealing with UK depended on the assumption that the British would give in or strike a deal so a full-blown invasion would not have to be launched, just as I said. He was shocked when they refused to follow the script. It had worked with every other European country (except Yugo, and the Germans had been able to squash resistance there in short order).
While the Army Groups had reached the shores of the English Channel in force, their logistical tail lagged far behind. It was going to take some very critical weeks before the logistical nightmares could be rectified sufficiently to sustain a major maphibious campaign into the island nation of Britain.
An amphibious invasion of Great Britain would not have been like Iwo or even Okinawa. It would have been more like Operation Olympic, the invasion of the Japanese home islands that thankfully never took place.
The larger the size of the resisting force, the larger must be the invading force to destroy it. Which requires proportionally larger fleets and logistics lift. The US Navy and Merchant Marine, after four years of the most aggressive buildup in history, would have been strained to the max to support Olympic.
Hilariously, Sea Lion was dependent on keeping the RN busy in the Med and Atlantic so the Germans could slip across the strait without RN resistance. As if the RN would not have defense of the Channel as A1 priority no matter what! If apparently wouldn't occur to them that defending the home islands might be important.
Could the Germans have taken Britain? Sure. But only after several years of using the resources of conquered Europe to build a fleet and merchant marine capable of doing so. Amphibious invasion of a large territory defended by a powerful and undefeated fleet and air force, and by land forces that are not insignificant is not something that can be improvised in a couple of weeks. It requires several years at minimum.
Had the Germans put their minds to it they could have potentially had nukes to use on UK, or they could have built a much larger U-boat force and starved them out. (Something that again would have taken years to build).
But nukes were largely out of their reach for the simple reason that the Nazis drove out or in some cases killed most of the people who could have built them, who instead built them for us, and U-boats as such were doomed by radar, to a considerable extent built by those same refugees from Europe.
So IMO the German war against Britain was doomed from the start, as far as invasion and conquest of the British Isles goes. Since any such notion was quickly abandoned by the Germans, it seems they agreed. Rather than putting resources into developing the ships they needed for an invasion of UK, they abandoned the idea completely and switched to a continental strategy of obtaining the oil and other resources they needed from USSR and the Middle East by land invasion.
Almost worked, too.
It would have worked if the Nazis treated the conquered Russians with some decency, in the beginning they were welcomed as liberators by many....of course the Nazis weren’t interested in making friends in Russia.
I quite agree.
A couple of million men subtracted from the Red Army and added to the Wehrmacht could have made all the difference.
As with atomic power and radar, the Nazi racial ideologies were self-defeating in this regard.
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