“A winter saved the Russians, an island saved the Brits” -Napoleon

After losing the Battle of France it was not looking good for Great Britain. They were alone facing the continent of Europe. The British Navy undeniably overpowered the Germans, but Hitler had set out with a plan, but to succeed they would need to have hundreds of thousands of soldiers cross the English Channel, where the British had naval superiority. The British Isle was untouchable for hundreds of years thanks to the power of their navy, but there was now the capability to wage war in the skies. The Luftwaffe was to bomb key industries and destroy RAF (Royal Air Force) fighters on a large scale. And so, after harrassing convoys and southern ports, the German air force launched their massive aerial assault on South England. These saw airtime bombing raids where British targets were hit en masse for weeks; a raid happening on a factory every 4-5 days for a month. What the Luftwaffe did not expect was the strength of the Royal Air Force.

The Germans overestimated the power of the Luftwaffe from their air support role in the Battle of Britain, and the transmissions that the British received made them overestimate the Luftwaffe’s strength as well. So as the Germans were placid about their airforce, Britain was precarious with it. There was no room for error and they massively stepped up their aerial production to match with the Luftwaffe. More important, though, was their capability to transmit info. A big issue in combat is that you can only predict where the enemy is and what they are doing. In a three-dimensional space such as the sky the problem is even worse. Many planes that would be sent out wouldn’t even find their targets. The British, encumbered with bombing raids, developed a more efficient system. So while a Luftwaffe pilot could find its target 30% of the time, a RAF pilot could find their target 75% of the time.

So over the next few weeks of raids and assaults, the RAF started to cut down the numbers of the Luftwaffe. The British were engaging bombers before they were reaching their targets and experienced pilots were no longer returning to Germany. So in early September, the attacks stopped and the Blitz began. Massive bombing raids on London intended on doing maximun damage. The RAF would fly sorties against each raid nightly, and the civilian bombing would find it’s end on the 31st of October, when the order was given in the Luftwaffe to stop sorties on non-military targets.

‘there are a good many people who have said to themselves, as I have been saying for several years: “Thank God for the French Army”.’ -Winston Churchill, 23 March, 1933

The Battle of France famously lasted for 6 weeks. It took 6 weeks, under 50 days, for the German army to go from a standstill to victory. No one could have predicted this, certainly not the Allies. The Germans had sent motorized troops, along with divisions of tanks, through the Benelux region and reached the French-Belgium border only 3 days after the operation began. By this time the French hadn’t even dug trenches, so the armored divisions quickly overran arriving troops and left French commanders struggling to stremline a constantly changing battlefield. But why were the French not ready for an amassing army?

The Maginot Line:

The French constructed a massive series of fortifications all along the border with Germany after The Great War. This was meant to give the French time to set up strong defensive positions and supply their troops through a well set up system and to deter German attacks, if any wer eto happen. That’s actually how the war started. Since both sides had constructed numerous forts along the border, neither side would attack, both knowing that the borders would not change. The first 8 months of the war were like this, with real combat only happening in the Polish theater. There was no combat happening on the western front and Hitler used that to mount a swift victory against Poland. Then the Panzer divisions set their sights on the neutral countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg.

Benelux Invasion (Fall Gelb):

Germany’s plan was similar to WW1. If the Allies have made the border impenetrable, then go around. And that’s exactly what happened. The Germans invaded Belgium on the 10th of May, 1940. The Allies sent most of their troops to Flanders, as it was plains and the best place for an armored spearhead into the defensive lines. Germany surprised the Allies when it sent tanks and trucks into the forests of the Ardennes.

Paths through the thick treeline were cemented with tracks as tanks drove through. The treeline gave advantages to the advancing Germans too, as troops were still being sent to Belgium to protect Flanders. The tanks were managing to break defensive lines deeply and quickly, overwhelming support divisions not expecting combat in the rear lines. By the time Allied troops had arrived in Belgium the Germans had already reached France, and were on their way to fully encircling the Allies.

By the 20th of May, 10 days since the assault began, the first Panzer divisions reached the beach. Nearly 500,000 Allied soldiers were completely surrounded in the small area to the northwest of the shaded orange: the area that German forces occupied. In the following days the advance took most of the surrounding territory. The next week was loss after loss for the Allies: 30,000 captured at Calais; 35,000 captured in Lille. The rest retreated to Dunkirk, where a rescue operation was being hatched.

Operation Dynamo (Dunkirk):

The Germans were quickly advancing the front line and with this speed came the question of supply. Infantry troops were not arriving fast enough to reinforce the lines, and the tanks were entering the marshes. At the request of a panzer commander, the assault was paused to give time to the army to consolidate and set out the battleplan in order to prevent the surrounded troops to break out. Instead of preparing a dangerous counteroffensive, the British began plans for an evacuation, and on the 26th, Operation Dynamo had began. Lucky weather and thousands of sorties flown by RAF allowed 338,000 soldiers to be ferried across the English Channel in only 11 days. The final day found a 30-40,000 French rearguard fighting off Germans up until the final transport ship had been cleared. 35,000 of those soldiers were captured by the Germans. The battle of Dunkirk ended the 4th of June, only 25 days after the first German divisions entered Belgium.

Battle of Paris (Fall Rot):

The very next day, the German army began their southward operation into France herself. During the fighting in the low countries the rest of the French military was taking their time with their grand battleplan. The evacuation at Dunkirk allowed 112,000 French soldiers to be transported back to France just in time to get back into the fight. The German offensive was much slower, seeing some trench warfare and defensive tactics meant to delay the enemy and put them in tactically disadvantageous situations. The French held territory west of the Aisne river and used that as a natural obstacle for the enemy to slow them down. It took 3 days for any river crossings to happen and that was the beginning of the end. 2 days later the French declared Paris an open city; 4 days later the Germans entered.  10 days later, only 46 days since the beginning of the assault, the armistice was signed and France capitulated.

Adolf Hitler and military high command expected the victory over France to take a million lives and months to years of attrition warfare. Instead, less than 30,000 German soldiers had been killed and the entire country had surrendered. The victory and complete takeover of mainland Europe led to the Battle of Britain: the battle for the skies of London between the RAF and the Luftwaffe.