All troops would be loaded onto their barges from French or Belgian ports on S minus two or S minus one. As modified, the Type A1 barge could accommodate three medium tanks while the Type A2 could carry four. Battle of Britain | History, Importance, & Facts | Britannica The idea that invasion could be a surprise "river crossing" was dismissed by Raeder, and the navy could not complete its preparations by mid August. Adolf Hitler released a directive 80 years ago on July 16, 1940, declaring his plan to cross the English Channel for a full-scale invasion of Britain. The German Threat to Britain in World War Two - BBC The result was Germany losing its entire invasion force. It was hoped that a defeated Britain would fulfill a similar role, being excluded from continental affairs, but maintaining its Empire and becoming an allied seafaring partner of the Germans. They could not entirely protect the western approaches, but a large area of those invasion zones would still be within effective range. But Ukrainians have remained resilient during the war as the country defends itself against Moscow's invasion - and some stories of hope have even emerged from the anguish. This article is about the planned German invasion of Britain. Both the RAF and the Luftwaffe lost nearly a quarter of their available forces on the first day, after which it finally became apparent to the German command that British airpower was not, after all, on the point of collapse. [22][19], Grand Admiral Raeder sent a memorandum to OKW on 19 July, complaining about the onus placed on the navy in relation to the army and air force, and stating that the navy would be unable to achieve its objectives. Seven of these weapons, six 28cm K5 pieces and a single 21cm (8.3in) K12 gun with a range of 115km (71mi), could only be used against land targets. "[120] Grand Admiral Erich Raeder thought it would be impossible for Germany to attempt an invasion until the spring of 1941;[121] he instead called for Malta and the Suez Canal to be overrun so German forces could link up with Japanese forces in the Indian Ocean to bring about the collapse of the British Empire in the Far East, and prevent the Americans from being able to use British bases if the United States entered the war. One of its prime headaches would have been transporting thousands of horses across the Channel. On 4 July, after asking General Erich Marcks to begin planning an attack on Russia, Halder heard from the Luftwaffe that they planned to eliminate the RAF, destroying its aircraft manufacturing and supply systems, with damage to naval forces as a secondary aim. All the troops intended to land at beach 'E', the westernmost of the four beaches, would cross the channel in larger transport vessels the barges being towed loaded with equipment but empty of troops and would then be transferred onto their barges a short distance from the beach. This directive remained in force in the first phase of the Battle of Britain. They bombed off-target and hit many homes, killing civilians, so Winston Churchill responded immediately with a bombing raid on Berlin the very next night. For the landings on the other three beaches, the first echelon of the invasion forces (and their equipment) would be loaded onto their barges in French or Belgian ports, while the second echelon force crossed the channel in associated transport vessels. The RSHA also felt that Harold Nicolson might prove useful in this role. [68], During the planning stages of Sea Lion, it was deemed desirable to provide the advanced infantry detachments (making the initial landings) with greater protection from small-arms and light artillery fire by lining the sides of a powered Type A barge with concrete. [153], Other evidence suggests that in the case of a successful invasion of Great Britain the occupiers treatment of the British population may not have been as sympathetic. "M M Evans, Invasion! What If Germany Had Invaded England? - HistoryNet [147][148] Britain's situation was likened to the historical situation of the Austrian Empire after its defeat by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1866, after which Austria was formally excluded from German affairs but would prove to become a loyal ally of the German Empire in the pre-World War I power alignments in Europe. Landings would have to be on a narrow front, and would be better in spring 1941. [119] Grand Admiral Karl Dnitz believed air superiority was not enough and admitted, "We possessed neither control of the air or the sea; nor were we in any position to gain it. [168] The RSHA planned to take over the Ministry of Information, to close the major news agencies and to take control of all of the newspapers. "[56], The Kriegsmarine invested considerable energy in planning and assembling the forces for an elaborate deception plan called Operation Herbstreise or "Autumn Journey". The Germans hoped the air action would force the British to negotiate, and make invasion unnecessary. Ways People Think WWII Could Have Ended Differently With One - Grunge [138], From 19 to 26 September 1940, sea and wind conditions on and over the Channel where the invasion was to take place were good overall, and a crossing, even using converted river barges, was feasible provided the sea state remained at less than 4, which for the most part it did. He believed that the Luftwaffe could meet its essential objectives, but if the Kriegsmarine could not meet the operational requirements of the Army for an attack on a broad front with two divisions landed within four days, followed promptly by three further divisions irrespective of weather, "then I consider the landing to be an act of desperation, which would have to be risked in a desperate situation, but which we have no reason whatsoever to undertake at this moment. If all the landings were to be made at high water across a broad front, they would have to be made at different times along different parts of the coast, with the landings in Dover being made six hours after any landings in Dorset and thus losing the element of surprise. As the first tank rolled forward onto the ramp, its weight would tilt the forward end of the ramp into the water and push it down onto the seabed. The plan was that three days before the actual invasion, the troopships would load the men and equipment of four divisions in major Norwegian and German ports and put to sea, before unloading them again on the same day in quieter locations. [95], To strengthen German control of the Channel narrows, the Army planned to quickly establish mobile artillery batteries along the English shoreline once a beachhead had been firmly established. World War II - Normandy Invasion, 1944 | Britannica No decision had been reached on the choice between immediate decisive action and a siege. Blitzkrieg: Definition, London & World War II - HISTORY Anti-German newspapers were to be closed down.[169]. [103] Furthermore, on Churchill's urging, on 5 August the War Cabinet approved Operation Menace, in which a substantial proportion of the Home Fleet two battleships, an aircraft carrier, five cruisers, and twelve destroyers, together with five out of six battalions of Royal Marines, were dispatched to Dakar on 30 August in an attempt to neutralise the battleship Richelieu and detach French West Africa from Vichy France to the control of the Free French. Most likely not given that it took Britain and the USA years of preparation and planning (plus complete air and naval superiority) to successfully execute an amphibious assault across the English Channel. About one third of them were to be deployed on English soil by the end of Sea Lion's first week. There is a large corpus of works set in an alternate history where the Nazi invasion of Great Britain is attempted or successfully carried out. [47], The record of the Luftwaffe against naval combat vessels up to that point in the war was poor. It was supposed to take place in September 1940 and, had it been successful, would have completed Adolf Hitler 's domination of western Europe. Three of them were assigned to Tank Detachment 100 as part of the invasion; it was intended to use them for pulling ashore unpowered assault barges and towing vehicles across the beaches. For an invasion to work the Germans had to take out the RAF in order to have total air superiority over the channel to defend any invasion force from the fleet. Some historians argue the change in strategy lost the Luftwaffe the opportunity of winning the air battle or air superiority. [79] Krupp's design won out, as it only required one day to install, as opposed to twenty-eight days for the Dortmunder Union bridge. [167] Six would also have been responsible for handling the large population of British Jews, over 300,000 at that time. The coastal zone between occupied France and England must be dominated by heavy artillery. [44] Others argue the Luftwaffe achieved little in the air battle and the RAF was not on the verge of collapse, as often claimed. [164][165] Many senior German officials believed the Duke of Windsor to be highly sympathetic to the Nazi government, a feeling that was reinforced by his and Wallis Simpson's 1937 visit to Germany. For the 1974 wargame based on this plan, see, Other equipment to be used for the first time, sfn error: no target: CITEREFBishop2010 (, Messerschmitt Bf 110 Bombsights Over England: Erprobungsgruppe 210 in the Battle of Britain by John Vasco. But then the accumulation of invasion barges in French ports from late August 1940 rather indicated a landing on the South coast. Reichsmarschall Hermann Gring, head of the Luftwaffe, responded with a single-page letter in which he stated, "[A] combined operation having the objective of landing in England must be rejected. [138], The successful capture of Dover and its harbour facilities might have been expected to add another 800 tons per day, raising to 40% the amount of supplies brought in through ports. Inside Operation Sea Lion: The Nazis' Aborted Plan To Invade Britain World War II had begun. [157] His immediate mission would have been to hunt down and arrest the 2,820 people on the Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. There is also a suggestion that he toyed with the idea of moving Nelson's Column to Berlin. German Invasion of Western Europe, May 1940. The idea was first mooted by Generaladmiral Rolf Carls on 1 August proposing a feint expedition into the North Sea resembling a troop convoy heading for Scotland, with the aim of drawing the British Home Fleet away from the intended invasion routes. [104], The Germans were confident enough to film a simulation of the intended invasion in advance. The German military plan called for an advance up to a hypothetical line running from the port of Archangel in northern Russia to the port of Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea - the so-called 'A-A line'. [133] British intelligence calculated that the first wave of 10 divisions (including the airborne division) would require a daily average of 3,300 tons of supplies. The Navy High Command increased its initial order for 60 of these vessels to 70 in order to compensate for expected losses. View history Operation Sea Lion was a major wargame conducted at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1974. One complication was the tidal flow in the English Channel, where high water moves from west to east, with high water at Lyme Regis occurring around six hours before it reaches Dover. [66], The Luftwaffe had formed its own special command (Sonderkommando) under Major Fritz Siebel to investigate the production of landing craft for Sea Lion. The first wave of the landing would have consisted of thirteen infantry and mountain divisions, the second wave of eight panzer and motorised infantry divisions and finally, the third wave was formed of six further infantry divisions. On 9 October, Hitler's "Directive No. The Kriegsmarine was highly sceptical of this venture, but the Heer (Army) high command enthusiastically embraced the concept and Siebel proceeded with the conversions. Without the second and third echelons, the forces ashore were cut off from reserves of artillery, vehicles, fuel and ammunition supplies; and blocked from further reinforcements. Once the barge anchored, the crew would extend the internally stowed ramp using block and tackle sets until it was resting on the water's surface. Since loading of the tanks, vehicles and stores of the second wave onto the returned barges and transport ships would take at least a week, the second wave could not be expected to land much less than ten days after the first wave, and more likely longer still. Fleming states it is doubtful whether history offers any better example of a victor so nearly offering his vanquished foe an opportunity of inflicting on him a resounding defeat. For simplicity's sake, the Germans designated any barge up to the size of a standard peniche as Type A1 and anything larger as Type A2.[65]. Any water seeping into the tank's hull could be expelled by an internal bilge pump. What If? The OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht or "High Command of the Armed Forces") considered the options and Hitler's 29 November "Directive No. [40], Each of the first wave landing forces was divided into three echelons. [46] Others have said that it was unlikely the Luftwaffe would ever have been able to destroy RAF Fighter Command. [114], Reichsmarschall Hermann Gring, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, believed the invasion could not succeed and doubted whether the German air force would be able to win unchallenged control of the skies; nevertheless, he hoped that an early victory in the Battle of Britain would force the UK government to negotiate, without any need for an invasion. Listed in rough chronological order. In August 1940 Germany's Luftwaffe undertook a mission to bomb numerous RAF airfields. [166], Had Operation Sea Lion succeeded, Franz Six was intended to become the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) Commander in the country, with his headquarters to be located in London, and with regional task forces in Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, and Edinburgh. The Navy intended that all four invasion fleets would return across the Channel on the night of S plus two, having been moored for three full days off the South coast of England. We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us. The remainder, thirteen 28cm and five 24cm (9.4in) pieces, plus additional motorised batteries comprising twelve 24cm guns and ten 21cm weapons, could be fired at shipping but were of limited effectiveness due to their slow traverse speed, long loading time and ammunition types. Returning to sea, the convoys would head west towards Scotland before turning around at about 21:00 on the following day. [111], While the bombing of Britain intensified during the Blitz, Hitler issued his Directive No. In addition, the only heavy warships available to the Kriegsmarine, the heavy cruisers Admiral Scheer and Admiral Hipper, would attack the British armed merchant cruisers of the Northern Patrol and convoys inbound from Canada; however, the Scheer's repairs overran and if the invasion had taken place in September, would have left the Hipper to operate alone. After the war, Admiral Karl Dnitz said he believed air superiority was "not enough". The French government collapsed on June 16 and was replaced by a regime that immediately sued for peace. [144] The controllers of the game assumed that the Luftwaffe had not diverted its daytime operations into bombing London on 7 September 1940, but had continued its assault against RAF airbases in the South East. As completed, the Type AF had a speed of six knots (11km/h), and a range of 60 nautical miles (110 kilometres) unless auxiliary fuel tanks were fitted. At a meeting with the army, the navy proposed delay until May 1941, when the new battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz would be ready. The plan revised on 14 September 1940 by Admiral Gnther Ltjens called for three groups of five U-boats, all seven destroyers, and seventeen torpedo boats to operate to the west of the mine barrier in the Channel, while two groups of three U-boats and all the available E-boats to operate north of it. Only five were sunk while evacuating Dunkirk, despite large periods of German air superiority, thousands of sorties flown, and hundreds of tons of bombs dropped. For the successful German invasion of Norway, German naval forces (assisted in places by thick fog) had simply forced an entry into key Norwegian harbours with motor launches and E-boats against stiff resistance from the outgunned Norwegian army and navy, and then unloaded troops from destroyers and troop transports directly onto the dockfronts at Bergen, Egersund, Trondheim, Kristiansand, Arendal and Horten. A Luftwaffe report presented to the OKW at a meeting on 11 July said that it would take 14 to 28 days to achieve air superiority. by David T. Pyne Editor's Note: This is the fourth in a series of five articles providing critical analysis as to how Germany Might Have Won World War Two. Prussia's shattering defeat of France in 1870 did not mean the end of invasion fear in Britain. Of these, only about 800 were powered albeit insufficiently to cross the Channel under their own power. Within seven days, maximum capacity was expected to rise to 600 tons per day, once German shore parties had made repairs to the quays and cleared the harbour of any blockships and other obstacles.

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