Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [52]
Few interventions of his own that summer were more significant than that which he made on August 23, at the height of the perceived peril of German invasion. Britain’s threadbare defences were further denuded by the dispatch to Gen. Sir Archibald Wavell’s Middle East Command of 154 priceless tanks, to resist the anticipated Italian assault on Egypt. This was one of Churchill’s most difficult decisions of the war. Eden and Dill deserve credit for urging it, at first in the face of the prime minister’s doubts. It is impossible that they could have made such a commitment without a profound, almost perverse, belief that Hitler would not risk invasion—and perhaps also a recognition that Britain’s defence rested overwhelmingly on the Royal Navy and RAF rather than the army.
It is not surprising that an ignorant civilian such as “Chips” Channon should have written on September 16 of expecting “almost certain invasion.”179 It is more remarkable that Britain’s military commanders and intelligence chiefs shared this fear, supposing that a massive German descent might take place without warning. Amphibious operations, opposed landings where port facilities are unavailable, do not require mere mechanical transfers of troops from sea to shore. They rank among the most difficult and complex of all operations of war. Two years of planning and preparation were needed in advance of the return to France of Allied armies in June 1944. It is true that, in the summer of 1940, Britain lay almost naked, while four years later Hitler’s Atlantic Wall was formidably fortified and garrisoned. In 1940, Britain lacked the deep penetration of German wireless traffic which was attained later in the war, so that the Chiefs of Staff had only the patchiest picture of the Wehrmacht’s movements on the Continent.
Nonetheless it remains extraordinary that, at every suitable tide until late autumn, Britain’s commanders feared that a German army might arrive on the southern or eastern coast. The navy warned—though the prime minister disbelieved them—that the Germans might achieve a surprise landing of 100,000 men. The most significant enemy preparation for invasion was the assembly of 1,918 barges on the Dutch coast. Hitler’s military planners envisaged putting ashore a first wave of three airborne regiments, nine divisions—and 125,000 horses—between Ramsgate and Lyme Bay, a commitment for which available shipping was wholly inadequate. Another serious problem, never resolved, was that the Wehrmacht’s desired initial dawn landing required an overnight Channel passage. It would be almost impossible to embark troops and concentrate barges without attracting British notice. The defenders would be granted at least six hours of darkness in which to engage German invasion convoys, free from Luftwaffe intervention. The Royal Navy deployed around twenty destroyers at Harwich, and a similar force at Portsmouth, together with powerful cruiser elements. Channel invasion convoys would have suffered shocking, probably fatal losses. Once daylight came, German pilots had shown themselves much more skilful than those of the RAF and Fleet Air Arm in delivering attacks on shipping. The defending warships would have been badly battered. But for a German amphibious armada, the risk of destruction was enormous. It was less the RAF than the Royal Navy, outnumbering the German fleet ten to one, that provided the decisive deterrent against invasion.
The British, however, with the almost sole exception of the prime minister, perceived all the perils on their own side. Dill, the CIGS, seemed “like all the other soldiers180 … very worried and anxious about the invasion, feeling that the troops are not trained and may not be steady.” Brooke, as C-in-C