Europe in an Age of Total War: World War II,1939–45 583nearly half of the RAF, but they shot down German
planes at a higher rate and denied them control of the
skies. Hitler dared not risk sending an invasion armada
to sea. As the new prime minister of Britain, Winston
Churchill, put it, “Never... was so much owed by so
many to so few.”
The battle of Britain entered a horrifying second
phase in September 1940. Hitler decided to break
British morale by obliterating London in terrorizing
bomber raids called the Blitz.Twenty-three consecutive
days of bombing rained nearly twenty thousand tons
of bombs down on the city, destroying more than
450,000 private homes and killing thirty thousand civil-
ians but failing to break the British will. Nothing sym-
bolized British resistance better than the leadership of
Churchill, one of the greatest wartime leaders in Euro-
pean history. Churchill was the descendant of an
eighteenth-century military hero and the son of a
prominent Conservative M.P. and a wealthy American
mother. He worked exceptionally hard, but he had an
infuriating personality, few friends, and a record of po-
litical failure. But Winston Churchill possessed a rare
eloquence that summoned up resistance to the Nazis.
In his maiden speech as prime minister, he had told the
nation he had nothing to offer “but blood, toil, tears,
and sweat.” But, he soon added, if the nation paid that
price, “should the British Empire last for a thousand
years, people would say ‘ This was their finest hour.’ ”
The battle of Britain drew the United States closer
to the war. President Roosevelt was sympathetic, and he
inched America toward intervening against the steady
opposition of isolationists. In the aftermath of the
Dunkirk evacuation Roosevelt sent $43 million worth of
surplus arms (such as 600,000 rifles) to Britain. In August
he struck a “destroyers for bases deal” to protect Atlantic
shipping by sending fifty-one aging American destroy-
ers to Britain. The conservative U.S. Congress limited
arms sales by a strict “cash-and-carry” policy, but Roo-
sevelt fought this short-sighted policy and called upon
Congress to aid threatened democracies. The fruit of
Roosevelt’s efforts was the Lend-Lease Act of March
1941, which empowered the president to send arms to
any nation deemed “vital to the defense of the United
States.” Congress initially authorized an appropriation
of $7 billion for Lend-Lease arms (which grew to $50
billion during the war) and supplies began to flow from
“the arsenal of democracy” to the enemies of Hitler.
Then, in August 1941, FDR and Churchill met on a war-
ship off Newfoundland and agreed upon the Atlantic
Charter, a statement of war aims and postwar plans
comparable to the Fourteen Points of World War I.
They renounced territorial gain, called for “the destruc-
tion of Nazi tyranny,” and spoke of human rights.
Despite victory in the battle of Britain, 1941–42
was a dark time for opponents of the Axis. An Italian
invasion of Egypt (from their colony in Libya) threat-
ened the Suez Canal and Middle Eastern oil supplies;
both targets were so important that when British de-
fenders drove the Italians from Egypt, Hitler reinforced
the Axis effort with an elite German Panzerarmy known
as the Afrika Korps, commanded by an exceptional
tank commander, General Erwin Rommel, who forcedIllustration 29.1
The Battle of Britain.The first de-
feat that Nazi Germany suffered, and
the first turning point in the course of
the war in Europe, came in an air war
fought over Britain in the summer of- The German Luftwaffe,with
twenty-eight hundred aircraft, was asked
to win control of the skies in preparation
for an invasion of England, but the
Royal Air Force (RAF), with seven hun-
dred fighters, prevented them from do-
ing so. In this photo, RAF pilots have
just received a radar warning of ap-
proaching bombers and run to their
Hurricane fighters to intercept the Ger-
man planes.