If Britain Had Fallen (4 page)

Regardless of whether or when we invade England, the constant menace of invasion must be maintained against the English people and armed forces…. The main German operation shall appear to be preparing for landing on the English East coast as well as invading Ireland…. The various services must extend their preparations … to cover the actual intentions by deploying considerable forces in Norway and Denmark (landing on English East coast), Netherlands (landing North of the mouth of the Thames), Brest and area Biscay (landing in Ireland).…_After the completion of preparations the denying of certain areas to civilian traffic may be considered in order to increase the verisimilitude of the preparations…. Those individuals below a specified grade of the High Command who are concerned with the preparations are not to be informed that their tasks are aimed at deception.

One of the problems confronting the German General Staff which had not yet troubled their British opposite numbers was that of maintaining a reputation for infallibility, and the
Summary of the Situation referring to Invasion of the United Kingdom
which General Jodl circulated on 13 August reflected this unwillingness to be associated with failure. ‘The landing operation’, wrote Jodl, ‘must not founder in any circumstances. Failure can have political repercussions far outweighing the military setback’—among them, perhaps, that the Führer might have sought a new Chief of the Wehrmacht Operations Staff. Jodl went on:

As far as it is humanly possible to eliminate failure, I am in agreement with the Army that it is essential that:

(a) landing must be simultaneous from Folkestone to Brighton Bay.

(b) within four days ten divisions should be landed in this sector.

(c) within the succeeding four days at least three divisions with complete equipment should follow across the Straits even if sea conditions do not permit the use of flat-bottomed craft (barges), while the troops landed further to the West will be reinforced by airborne troops….

Should the Navy, however … not be in a position to fulfil conditions (a), (b) and (c) then I consider the landing to be an act of desperation which … we have at this stage no reason whatever to contemplate…. England can be brought to her knees in other ways.

The ‘other ways’ Jodl contemplated were, it seemed, intensifying the U Boat offensive and air war, with the help of the Italians, ‘taking Egypt, if necessary with Italian help, and taking Gibraltar in agreement with the Spanish and Italians’, suggestions made, perhaps, rather on diplomatic grounds than as serious military proposals.

Meanwhile, at lower levels, work on
Operation Sea Lion
was pressed ahead. On the day after Hitler’s
Directive No. 16
the Army General Staff had already begun to earmark troops for the operation and to move these favoured, or unfortunate, formations to the coast. Six divisions, it was proposed, should cross from the Pas de Calais and land between Ramsgate
and Bexhill, four more would embark near Le Havre, destined for the Sussex and Hampshire coast between Brighton and the Isle of Wight, and three more from Cherbourg, to make passage for Lyme Bay, where they were to come ashore between Weymouth and Lyme Regis, the beautiful stretch of coastline, though the Germans did not mention this, hitherto famous chiefly for the unique pebble ridge known as Chesil Beach and the ancient swannery of Abbotsbury. Altogether the Army planned to put ashore 90,000 in the first wave, building up to 260,000 men by the third day, a force roughly equal to the British Expeditionary Force rescued from Dunkirk. The Army Commander-in-Chief, von Brauchitsch, had now become highly enthusiastic about the whole operation. Bridgeheads, he believed, could be secured without difficulty, a total of forty-one divisions could be poured into England as smoothly as they had recently spread out into France, and within a month the British government would, he prophesied, have capitulated.

The Naval Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Raeder, failed totally to share this optimism. On 17 July he warned von Brauchitsch that the risks were so appalling that the whole invading force might be lost, and two days later his staff produced for his use a list of difficulties enough to daunt the stoutest heart. Carrying the numbers proposed the required distance, they insisted, was a task beyond the Navy’s strength, the ships would be threatened by mines, there would not be sufficient landing-craft available, the harbours and canals needed for their assembly had been damaged and could not handle the numbers needed and—a factor that mere landsmen were always liable to overlook—the tides, current and weather might all conspire to upset the plans prepared ashore. Worst of all, it was only too likely, after the first wave had successfully got ashore, that the Royal Navy would prevent reinforcements arriving, leaving the troops in the beachhead, cut off from their base, to be picked off by the enemy at leisure.

Hitler’s confidence in his own powers had never extended to the sea, which he personally disliked, his favourite retreat being deep in the mountains. He had never crossed the Channel, even as a day-tripper, much less made an ocean voyage, and he was, he said in private, prepared to leave England her traditional command of the sea provided she would recognise Germany’s supremacy on land. The Navy’s anxieties about
Sea Lion
made a deep impression on him and, wiser than his generals, he did not accept their description of the operation as merely an opposed river-crossing on a large scale, at which they were past-masters. This is not just a river crossing, but the crossing of a sea which is dominated by the enemy,’ he reminded von Brauchitsch and General Jeschonnek, Chief of the Luftwaffe General Staff, on 21 July.
Sea Lion
was an ‘exceptionally
daring undertaking’ and ‘the most difficult part will be the continued reinforcement of equipment and stores’.

Ten days later, on 31 July, a long procession of powerful staff cars carried Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, Admiral Raeder and other senior officers through the ugly little town of Berchtesgaden and up the steep and winding road leading to Hitler’s magnificently sited mountain retreat, the Berghof, for a major conference on the coming invasion. Britain, Hitler told his commanders, seemed determined to fight on and bombing and U Boat operations might take as long as two years to win the war unaided, so that a ‘positively decisive result can only be achieved by an attack on England’. The first step was the air offensive, which should begin at once, and if this failed preparations for the invasion would have to be abandoned. ‘But if we gain the impression that the English are being crushed … then we shall attack.’

Soldiers and sailors now confronted each other, under the Führer’s chairmanship, and Raeder made the most of his opportunity. The Navy was, he reported, pressing on energetically with preparations for
Sea Lion
and assembling shipping and converting landing-craft, but even granted favourable weather and air superiority the Navy could not hope to be ready before 15 September, and the earliest period when all the requirements for the landing would be met would be between 19 and 26 September. Raeder pleaded, too, for the invasion area to be narrowed still further, and for landings to be confined to the Straits of Dover.

Although Hitler replied that 15 September should remain the target date, subsequent events showed that Raeder’s arguments had, as in the past, made a deep impression and on 7 August Raeder’s Chief of Staff, Admiral Schniewind, and his opposite number, Colonel-General Halder, Chief of Staff to von Brauchitsch, continued the argument without the Führer. Halder indignantly rejected the Navy’s demand for the landing to be on a narrow front, declaring that ‘I might just as well put the troops through a sausage machine’, and a week later Schniewind riposted with a written reminder that the airborne landings behind the beaches, in which the Army placed such faith, could not assist the Navy. ‘The airborne troops’, he pointed out, ‘can influence neither the weather nor the sea; they cannot prevent the destruction … of the few harbours, nor hold off the enemy fleet.’

The Navy won its argument. On 16 August Field Marshal Keitel signalled to the three services that Hitler had decided that ‘preparations for a landing in Lyme Bay will be suspended’, and on 27 August the planners were informed that the assault to be mounted from Le Havre, aimed at the coast between Brighton and Portsmouth, would also be
scaled down. Hitler had decided, reported Keitel, a little superfluously it may be felt, that ‘Army operations will be adapted to fit in with the given facts in relation to the available tonnage and cover for embarkation and crossing’.

On 3 September, one year to the day after the outbreak of war, Keitel issued the timetable for the campaign designed to force Great Britain to surrender. It read:

1. The earliest date for
   

   (a) The departure of the transport fleets will be 20 September 1940.
   

   (b) S day (Invasion day) will be 21 September 1940.
   

2. The order for the start of the operation will be given on S—10 days, probably on 11 September 1940.
   
3. The final decision on S day and S time (beginning of the first landing) will follow at the latest on S—3 days at noon.
   
4. All measures will be taken so that the operation can still be held in suspense 24 hours before S time.
   

So
Operation Sea Lion
was definitely on. The commanders had taken their decisions, the planners had done their work. Now all rested upon ‘the field-greys’, the ordinary German soldiers, who, with their superbly trained, battle-hardened officers and NCOs, made up the most formidable army in the world.

Chapter 2: Preparations

‘How much do you charge for swimming lessons?’—
British propaganda leaflet
dropped on German invasion troops, August 1940

To land upon a hostile shore is one of the most difficult operations known to military science, and the greater one’s knowledge of the sea the more respect one has for it. When, in July, the Army which had conquered France got down in earnest to training for the coming attack on England, it was the recruits from inland provinces like Bavaria and the Tyrol, many of whom had never before seen the sea, who were most light-hearted about their approaching ordeal. Even they learned fast; a single panic-stricken moment floundering out of their depth when bathing, a single bout of sea-sickness during a disembarkation exercise, was enough. To many orderly-minded Germans the apparently capricious behaviour of the tides also came as a disagreeable surprise. General von Manstein himself, commanding 38 Corps, was disconcerted, after leaving his Mercedes high up the beach to go swimming with his ADC, to find the waves lapping round it on his return, and the commanding officer of a Mountain Division in the same Army Group, whose role on S day would be to scale the Kentish cliffs, suffered an equal shock when he ordered a daily parade on the beach at 0900 hours for a swimming lesson. On the first morning the sea was in the expected place, but on the second it had unaccountably moved much further out. A Naval liaison officer helpfully explained that tides did vary from day to day but the commander firmly refused to revise the divisional training schedule, so that each morning the men faced a longer and longer march across the foreshore before bathing could begin. There was prestige, as well as pleasure, to be gained that summer from being stationed on the coast, as it meant one’s unit was likely to be among the first to land. Training was hard. The troops practised musketry and drill, unarmed combat and patrolling, digging trenches and standing guard, like all soldiers in every army. Time after time they packed their belongings into knapsacks and haversacks, loaded their packs with cartridges and, in progressively more orderly and rapid-moving files, climbed on board barges or steamers and then, the loading exercise completed, climbed back on the jetty again. Sometimes, after a short and often all too rough voyage, the landing-craft were run aground, and the men dashed down the ramps and charged up the beach led by their officers, pistol in hand. It made an impressive sight, but more than one old soldier, recalling
tales of Gallipoli, must have wondered whether it would all go quite as smoothly on the day.

But there was not much training afloat, for there were few vessels to spare. The 8th Division, preparing to cross to Newhaven, complained as late as 23 August that its men had so far been assigned only one steamer for practice purposes, and this had now been sunk. Other troops, scheduled to make the crossing by barge, were not reassured by the sight of the broken-down and battered old river-craft scraped up from somewhere to carry them. The soldiers grumbled, too, about the horses which cluttered up the roads and embarkation areas, for 4000 were due to go in with the first assault and 7000 in the second, to drag guns and supply wagons across the soft sand and loose pebbles of the landing beaches, and then up the steep and narrow roads leading inland. But the horses, too, had little opportunity to become accustomed to life afloat, for as soon as vessels were collected they were hurried into boatyards, to be given concrete floors to carry tanks and guns, and collapsible ramps down which men and vehicles would (in theory at least) charge eagerly to confront the enemy.

Shipping, it was soon clear, was going to be a major problem. Admiral Raeder estimated that even for the much smaller first-wave and follow-up landings which the Army had now accepted more than 1700 barges were required, with nearly 500 tugs, 1200 motor-boats and 155 larger transports. Although, with typical German speed and thoroughness, most of the barges needed were rapidly assembled, mainly from the canals and rivers of Western Europe, a few were self-propelled. The rest would have to be towed, a difficult operation for shallow-draught craft built for use on inland waterways, and some of the largest, with a capacity of 1300 tons—the average was only 500 to 800—would only move when fully loaded if wedged between two minesweepers to half-pull, half-push them across the Channel. The watermen who had operated these craft under sheltered conditions on the Rhine or the Scheldt showed little desire to man them on their cross-Channel journey, and their owners were content for the invasion to be put off indefinitely, due to the unexpectedly generous rate of compensation for each day their vessels were retained.