217: What Are We Doing Next?

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This episode of History of the Second World War dives into the critical moments of the Battle of Britain, exploring the German plan for invasion—Operation Sealion—and its unrealistic ambitions to cross the English Channel. As the Luftwaffe struggled with unclear strategies and fragmented operations in the summer of 1940, the episode reveals how chaos and uncertainty shaped the conflict. Listeners will uncover the high-stakes clash between Nazi ambitions and Britain’s desperate preparations, offering a gripping look at the turning point that defined the war’s outcome

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Summary

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 217 - The Battle About Britain Pt. 1 - What Are We Doing Next? This week a big thank you goes out to Gareth for supporting the podcast by becoming a member. Members get access to ad-free versions of all of the podcast’s episode plus special member only episodes roughly once a month. Head on over to historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members to find out more. The Battle of Britain was caused by the German plans for an invasion, their goal was to send a force across the English Channel that was strong enough to force a British surrender. It would have been the largest amphibious assault in history up to that time, and in some versions of the plan it would have been larger than the invasion of Normandy. But it would never happen. Operation Sealion was an impossible dream, not a realistic and rational plan and as the weeks ticked by in the autumn of 1940 the Wehrmacht would also prove itself unable to meet even the prerequisites for the operation. Even though it would never occur, understanding the Battle of Britain and the actions of the Luftwaffe which would make up most of the events, has to start with an understanding of what the Germans were trying to achieve and why aerial superiority was seen as so critical to the success of the operation. This episode will examine the early discussions among the German military and political leaders as they began to investigate the idea of dealing with Britain directly there were known requirements for an invasion even if the exact size and structure of the invasion had not been decided, and most of these requirements revolved around the actions of the Luftwaffe.

At the point that the Luftwaffe began to investigate attacking Britain directly it was at the time on a streak of incredible successes dating back to the invasion of Poland. From September 1, 1939 all the way until June 1940 the Luftwaffe had accomplished every major task put in front of it, and in most cases it had dominated the skies over the battlefield. This run of successes was never a bad thing in and of itself, but it did present some issues for the Luftwaffe as they prepared for their next task. The first problem was that many German leaders, from Hitler on down, believed that the Luftwaffe was much more capable than it was. This view was supported by the head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering, who was always willing to suggest that the Luftwaffe could do just about anything. In the defense of the German leaders, the string of successes had not given them a good measuring stick for what was and was not within the capabilities of the Luftwaffe squadrons. Even when they had not perfectly done their jobs, for example with the airborne operations in Norway or over Dunkirk, the staggering successes of other arms of the Wehrmacht had more than obfuscated any problems in the air. The second problem that the Luftwaffe had caused for itself was its reputation among other nations had greatly boosted the rearmament efforts of enemy air forces, and while most of them had not had time to boost their strength to the point where they could resist the German air attacks, the British had been able to call upon more resources than anyone, and they had more time. These issues combined with the fact that the Luftwaffe had been designed for a specific purpose, and in the battles over Britain it was moving away from that specific purpose. Of all of the air forces of Europe the Luftwaffe had, from its very beginnings been the most closely associated to the actions on the ground. It excelled at close air support missions, best exemplified by aircraft like the Stuka, and operational level operations against the logistical network that supported enemy actions, railways, roads, airfields, and similar targets. These operations were always in close association with the German Army, and this meant all it needed to do was to disrupt the enemy for a brief period of time while the army achieved its objectives. But over Britain the situation would be very different. There would be no German ground attacks, and instead the Luftwaffe had to win the battle on its own merits and against a determined enemy that would not be displaced and discouraged by other military defeats. This required a shift to a strategic mindset and leaned upon the strategic bombing capabilities of the German bomber force. It also meant that there would a battle of attrition over Britain . While the Luftwaffe had a tremendous amount of experience after multiple wartime campaigns, they had almost no experience with this type of fighting. During earlier campaigns the timeframes had been compressed, with a few days or a few weeks of operations required, and even then it was always against a greatly overmatched enemy. RAF Fighter Command would be different, for the first time the qualitative and quantitative metrics were far closer to even than they had been before, and the the Luftwaffe planes would be far closer to home. There was another problem that would have to solved, one that was far less obvious, the intelligence organs of the Luftwaffe would also be called upon in more important ways than ever before.

Military intelligence would be a critical part of successfully executing military campaigns during the Second World War. There would be many successes and failures on all sides, but the Battle of Britain would be the first time that the Luftwaffe’s intelligence services would be so critical to overall success of an operation. The Intelligence section of the Luftwaffe was led by Josef ‘Beppo’ Schmid. Schmid was one of the old guard of Nazi supporters, having been with the party since before the Beer Hall Putsch back in 1923. Since that time he had worked closely with Goering and was rewarded with multiple promotions throughout the interwar and then later the war years. This is perhaps the best summary of Schmid’s abilities and contributions which comes from Norman Ridley in the book ‘The Role of Intelligence in the Battle of Britain’. Ridley would say of Schmid that while he was promoted throughout the war: ‘Having said that, there is no record of any historian claiming that he served with distinction in any of these roles.’. Schmid was not some brilliant leader of an intelligence organization, and he had not surrounded himself with brilliant intelligence officers, but there was one thing they truly excelled at.

You see, Schmid excelled at telling the Luftwaffe leadership, and therefore the rest of the Wehrmacht exactly what the Luftwaffe leadership wanted to hear. Throughout the Battle of Britain in particular the 5th Abteilung of the Reich Air Ministry, led by Schmid, mostly just delivered whatever information Goering required to justify whatever decision he wanted to make. As you can imagine, this was not a great way to make the correct decisions. And it was not a problem of a lack of information, because the 3rd Abteilung of the Air Ministry, which was dedicated to gathering radio traffic had a pretty good picture of the state of the RAF. This group was led by Wolfgang Martini, and throughout the early parts of the war they had pieced together a pretty good picture of how Fighter Command had structured its communications and what the British were experimenting with for radar. This picture became far more detailed after the fall of France due to the ability for German radio listening posts to be placed along the French coast, with a total of 24 eventually being placed along the English Channel for the purposes of intercepting as many radio signals of all types as possible. The problem was that Martini reported to Schimd, who ignored most of this very good and pertinent information. While these radio intercepts were one important source of information, there were others avenues to gain information about the current state of British resistance and society. There were many nations that were friendly with Germany, but technically neutral in the war, which maintained teams in London, nations like Spain, Hungary, and Japan. Particularly in the case of Spain and Japan, the reports from their ambassadors in London were frequently just given to the German ambassadors in Madrid and Tokyo. The exact accuracy of these reports varied but most of them were quite accurate, and in other cases there were reports that touched on issues but exaggerated the effects of those issues. Some of these reports would seem to conform with expectations, but caused the Germans to believe they were being far more successful than they actually were. There were a few reports that made it seem like the British were almost out of food, claiming that the population was already suffering from scurvy in some of the larger population centers due to a lack of vitamin C . These reports also claimed that many goods had already disappeared from shelves and even canned goods would be gone soon. The food situation in Britain was a topic of concern, but it never came close to approaching as close to disaster as the reports made it seem. While it is easy to criticize some of these errors, it is also good to remember that gathering this type of economic and societal information during wartime would prove to be very challenging. The Allies would have just as many issues as the Germans would. Getting information about the fighting itself was equally challenging, because all of the fighting after June would occur either over the waters of the North Sea and the English Channel or over unfriendly territory. This meant that, unlike the British, the Germans were totally dependent on information gathered by pilots which were always inaccurate. The largest inaccuracy was caused by pilots overclaiming their kills during combat, which was particularly problematic during some of the larger aerial battles. Multiple pilots might attack the same enemy, particularly one that had already been damaged by another aircraft. Then multiple of them might claim to have been the one to land the decisive blow. This would multiply the reported kills by multiple times, with documented cases of 9 pilots claiming of victories during the Battle of Britain. On both sides the intelligence services would try and sort through these claims to find the most accurate number. But that was often difficult when hopes and expectations came into conflict with the actual facts, and it was always so tempting to be optimistic about the numbers . When small optimistic guesses were compounded over time, the result would be that the German Luftwaffe would claim to have shot down more British aircraft than they thought existed at the start of the campaign.

While gathering and interpreting information was one key aspect of winning a battle, another was putting in place a plan that gave the Luftwaffe, and the invasion, the best chance of success. Planning for operations against Britain had started during the prewar years, with April 1, 1939 being the date when the Luftwaffe Intelligence group, and Schmid, began crafting three different intelligence assessments which would be the basis for any future German operations. Study Blue would be the report that detailed the information that they had on Britain during this time. The assessment would run 94 pages and was created based on a lengthy series of meetings where a committee of German intelligence officers evaluated and discussed all of the information available. During these pre-war months it was generally easier to get information about events in Britain, and the resulting assessment would actually be quite accurate. It would detail many items of importance around Britain’s economic and military preparedness for war . It also was not completely optimistic about the future, for example the report would predict that RAF Fighter Command would probably match the Luftwaffe in terms of fighter numbers as early as 1941. But there was also an opportunity because at least in 1939 and possibly throughout much of 1940 the RAF would be far below the German air strength. There were many voices of caution among Luftwaffe theorists and leaders before the start of the war. For example in one of the many plans for a war against Britain that were done in the years before 1940 was completed by a Staff Officer Hans Geisler argued that, if the Luftwaffe wanted to seriously impact the ability of Britain to wage war then it would be a long and prolonged campaign. He estimated that it would take at least 2 years for such an operation to be successful. That was much longer than the Germans were going to give for operations after the Fall of France.

The start of the Luftwaffe campaign specifically against Britain can be set to June 30, 1940 wen Goring issued the ‘General Directive for the Operation of the Luftwaffe against England’. These orders were provided to three Luftflotten, or Air Fleets, the second and third which were based in occupied France and then Luttflotten 5 in Norway. There were a few problems with this directive, but the one that would in retrospect have the largest impact was that it was not a very focused order. An important decision had to be made about how to focus Luftwaffe air strength, and it depended on whether the Germans felt that they were preparing for an air siege of the British isles or if they were preparing for an invasion. This decision was important because it would play a major role in dictating the types of targets that were selected and then how those targets would be attacked. In the case of a long siege, the best types of targets were those that would cause long term problems for the British defense, population centers, port facilities, and factories would be good examples of these types of targets. On the other hand if the plan really was to prepare for an invasion the key targets were those that would have an immediate impact on the ability of the British to resist an invasion this brought targets like airfields, naval ships, and coastal fortifications far higher on the list of priorities. When preparing for an attack speedy attrition of the enemy numbers could also be more impactful. But the Directive released by Goring did not really focus on this decision and left the door open for both options. Instead it took the far less bold approach of giving the order for small scale attacks to begin on British targets, particularly the RAF, ports, and transportation infrastructure without a really specific overall objective. Instead Luftwaffe strength would be spread out in small scale attacks designed just as much to probe and determine British defenses as they were to actually do real damage. Schmid’s intelligence branch should have been a good source of information on which targets to hit, and which targets would have the greatest impact, but there was also some indecision in their lists as well. Schmid’s team provided a list of 50 targets, but without any clear guidance on their priority. This lack of focus was then compounded by the fact that each of the Luftflotten would be essentially managing their own campaign due to the fact that there was no Luftwaffe General Staff. This meant that all actual operations were planned at the Air Fleet level and below, limiting the overall coordination between the different regions that the Luftflotten were responsible for. The problem of target selection was bad enough at the start of the campaign but it would only deteriorate as the fighting developed. It was difficult enough to get information about what was happening in Britain before trying to evaluate the effectiveness of previous attacks, and that was a constant requirement as the campaign evolved. This resulted in some of the most famous decisions of the entire battle, and have resulted in some of the most popular what-ifs of the campaign. After some initial attacks on the Chain Home radar stations, when it appeared that results were disappointing, the Germans abandoned attacks on them entirely. A greater focus on the early warning systems would have forced the RAF to drastically alter how it was responding to German attacks, and would have hampered their ability to concentrate large enough fighter groups on the incoming raids. The attacks on Fighter Command airfields during the early parts of the campaign would eventually be tapered off in favor of other targets because it was believed that most of the strength of the RAF had already been destroyed. The shift to attacks on industrial targets, including London, would in theory force Fighter Command to commit the last of its reserves. What the Germans did not know was that their airfield attacks were pushing Fighter Command to the brink, and switching targets gave them breathing space. In all cases though, the problem was a lack of focus, driven by both a lack of focus from the heads of the Luftwaffe but also a misunderstanding of the task in front of them.

During the summer of 1940, after the focus had shifted to Britain, there were still arguments happening at Luftwaffe high command about how many operational fighters were in the RAF. Goring believed the most optimistic number possible, which was that they had only around 400 to 500 fighters. Others, like Theo Osterkamp, an ace in both World Wars, believed that they had more than that just in the airfields around London. The actual number was somewhere around 600 . This number was critical because it was the way in which the progress of the campaign had to be judged. The orders from Hitler were to prepare for the invasion, and as a precondition to that invasion RAF Fighter Command had to be if not destroyed, so reduced in strength so that it could not threaten German air superiority over the invasion fleet and invasion beaches. This meant that a certain number of fighters needed to be destroyed every week and month of the campaign, particularly with the date for invasion being in September 1940. That left only a matter of weeks, and the numbers got really tough really fast. Even with relatively optimistic estimates of RAF Fighters the Luftwaffe had to average something like 100 fighters per week to account for new fighters that would surely arrive from British factories. And they had to sustain that rate for around 2 months, which really could only happen if the RAF did the stupidest possible things and just kept sending fighters up to be shot down day after day with no real change in tactics. It did not help that there were far fewer Luftwaffe fighters available than were expected. Due to attrition, maintenance, and other duties all around Germany’s newly conquered territories, the three Luftflotten that would be arranged against Britain would have only around 700 operational fighters. That was roughly in par with the reasonable number of expected British fighters. This meant that not only did the Luftwaffe fighters need to shoot down a huge number of British aircraft, they also had to do so while trading at a very favorable rate. There needed to be fighters to cover the invasion convoys from British bombers, even if every Hurricane and Spitfire was a a burning hulk. The numbers, and the timeframe, meant that there was no real margin for error in the Luftwaffe’s operations, they had to hit fast and they had to hit incredibly hard, and they had to do it day after day week after week for over a month.

Another problem that was layered on top of all of the other problems already discussed was the fact that the Luftwaffe could not just immediately move into attacking Britain after the armistice was signed with France. There was the problem of determining the exact plan, but also the very real logistical problem of getting the Luftwaffe planes into the correct position to launch their attacks. Range was going to be a problem for the German fighters, and the best way to ameliorate this problem was to try and build airfields as close to the coastline as possible. There were some French airfields that could be used, but nowhere close to enough of them, and so more had to be built or expanded. Along with the airfields there was a concerted effort to move up ground crews, and to build out the logistics connections that would allow for a prolonged aerial campaign. While small attacks were being launched in June and July, it was infrastructure month for the Luftwaffe, with one order stating ‘The intensified attacks against the enemy air force can be ordered very soon. Until then, careful preparations, maintenance and improvements of personnel and material readiness for battle should continue.’. Once this was complete, and more specific plans and operations were required Goering would have more meetings with the leaders of the Luftflotten involved . The orders that resulted from these meetings would include orders like ‘As long as the enemy air force is not defeated, the prime requirement for the air war is to attack the enemy air force at every possible opportunity by day or by night, in the air or on the ground, without consideration of other tasks.’. That type of order seems relatively straightforward, but actually introduced more problems and a greater spread of resources. The only way to defeat the RAF was to destroy it, but that would require not just shooting down planes, but preventing their replacement. That was not going to be easy, and in fact the only way that it was even possible was with a prolonged campaign of attrition, and the acceptance of higher losses than the Germans had suffered so far in the war. The only real comparison that we have from the war would be the Allied bombing campaign over Germany in 1943 and 1944, and that was a long and bloody affair. The Germans also simply did not have the aircraft to make such a campaign a reality. The commander of Luftflotte 2, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring would write at this time that ‘although we might gain a temporary ascendancy in the air, permanent air supremacy was impossible without the occupation of the island, for the simple reason that a considerable number of British air bases, aircraft and engine factories were out of range of our bombers.’. The German bomber range was a serious problem, and there was no way to fix that in the short term, and that is what mattered for the campaign in the middle of 1940.

July is when things really started to get messy around the divergent goals of the Luftwaffe over Britain. As I mentioned earlier there were clear priorities for where resources should be focused to prepare for an invasion, aircraft, airfields, immediate defenses, etc.. However, orders began to be given to the Luftflotten commanders to instead shift their focus on armament and industrial targets, which were more important for a long term siege strategy. Both of the Luftflotten based in France had already started attacking British shipping in the English Channel, which was not a bad idea at all, impacting immediate trade while also resulting in a growing number of aerial victories, but even this was mostly just done due to lack of firm direction on what else they should be doing. These types of attacks, which we will discuss in further detail in episode 220 were operations that the Luftwaffe had prepared for, with two different Luftwaffe commands being equipped and trained specifically for a maritime strike role using He-111s. Unfortunately in June many of those aircraft were still in northern Norway, having been based in the region to mount operations against the Allied forces that were evacuated from Narvik in June .

This Channel War was only retroactively approved by Goering after he was informed of the orders that had been given. There were many disagreements in the higher reaches of Luftwaffe command about target selection, but one that would be related to the Channel War would be the priority of ports and related facilities . Sperrle, the commander of Luftflotte 3 believed they should be the primary target while Goring and Kesselring disagreed although both for different reasons. The conversations about the priority of the ports would also tie into the broader attacks on British trade that were being pursued by the German Navy. To summarize this episode, in June and July 1940, the Luftwaffe had a goal of attacking Britain, but in terms of details, strategies, and overall goals there was not enough clarity for concrete and cohesive operations to be planned. This lack of grounded planning would be on full display over Britain as the fighting ramped up over the course of August and September. But next episode will focus on the other side of the equation, on the British government and the RAF, and how they would prepare, at times frantically, for the coming German attacks