colleagues were convinced that Britain should continue the struggle, given the obvious
absence of any plausible theory of victory in the summer of 1940.
The strategic history of the remainder of 1940 is the story of a Western Front that
Hitler could not close down, despite his Continental triumphs. He waited through the
summer for British signals of willingness to cut a deal, but such signals did not appear.
The strategic challenge now was either to apply sufficient coercive pressure to change
British minds in favour of an accommodation or to launch an invasion and settle the
matter definitively. Visible invasion preparations were made, and Göring’s Luftwaffe
began its campaign to defeat the RAF. But the Luftwaffe followed up its failure to
blockade and destroy the BEF at Dunkirk, as Göring had promised Hitler, with an inabil-
ity to beat RAF Fighter Command and its integrated, radar-vectored air-defence system
in August and September. Thanks to German operational errors, too little concentration
of effort, insufficient maintenance of purpose, the technical limitations of Luftwaffe
aircraft, unfriendly British geography, and an RAF Fighter Command that was both well
commanded and larger than German intelligence had estimated, Germany lost the
attritional struggle that came to be known as the Battle of Britain. With good reason,
Hitler was profoundly uneasy at the prospect of hazarding his reputation and his thus
far all-victorious land force on a decidedly risky amphibious venture. As a consequence,
he was not at all displeased to be able to hold the launching of the invasion hostage to
the defeat of the RAF. Since that did not occur, and it was growing too late in the year
for a cross-Channel invasion, the final settlement of accounts with Britain was deferred
to some time in the future, well into 1941 at least. Except, of course, that the Führer had
other, much greater, plans for 1941.
One needs to look across the Atlantic for the principal, albeit longer-term, strategic
consequence of Germany’s failure to conclude its war in the West in 1940. America was
in no way ready to enter the war in Europe in 1940. But by remaining a belligerent, albeit
undeniably a strategically ineffective one, Britain ensured that if and when the United
States did join the war, it would be able to project its power over, and eventually into,
continental Europe. Without Britain, the US armed forces would have been unable to
reach Hitler’s continental fortress. War is waged with logistics; they are the arbiter of
strategic opportunity. British territory was literally essential if Americans were to be able
to apply their mobilizable power. In 1940, Britain’s main strategic contribution to the
course and outcome of the war as a whole simply took the form of remaining lightly active
within it. Britain itself could not create and challenge Germany with a Western Front, but
it could, and did, enable such a front to be forged in due course. It is worth mentioning
that one result of Italy rushing to the aid of the victor on 10 June 1940 was that it
presented the British Army with an enemy it could beat, and it enabled British forces at
least to be active in the Mediterranean, far from Germany’s military centre of gravity.
1941: the real war
The great war within the war of 1939–45 was launched by Germany on 22 June 1941.
The Wehrmacht plunged into the Soviet Union with 3.6 million men in 145 divisions,
comprising 102 infantry, 19 panzer, 14 motorized, 1 cavalry and 9 for line of communi-
cations security. Allies (Romania, Hungary and Finland) provided a further 37 divisions
amounting to 705,000 men. In June 1941 the German Army had a total order of battle of
World War II in Europe, I 131