Re: Anglo-French war plans in 1940?

"David Thornley" <thornley@xxxxxxxx> wrote

(snip agreed or not-responded-to stuff)

Hitler had no good plan for taking out Britain. He seems to have
thought that either the British would fall into line, or that he
could improvise a way to take them out.

Well, to do Hitler justice, he never thought pre-May 1940 that he would have
to think about "taking out Britain" in the near future, because the best he
and anyone else ever expected from the May offensive was to occupy Belgium,
Holland and northern France, perhaps as far as Paris, then settle down to a
long war of attrition, WW1-style. Both Goering and Raeder had given some
thought to defeating Britain in the long-term; not very good thought, but
probably as much as was justified by the expectations of early 1940.

Once France fell, he made no serious attempt to get the Brits out
of the war by diplomatic means. Some people mention his Reichstag
speech, in which he announced some terms. The British didn't
recognize that as a peace feeler, but rather as terms Hitler would
impose on Britain if he managed to defeat the Brits.

I quite agree. Bewildered by victory is a good term for not just Hitler but
the whole German military command in June-July 1940. But is that so
unexpected?

And the recovery from bewilderment was reasonably good. Hitler certainly
never made a serious peace offer to Britain, but he didn't want to and
didn't see any need for one, so he's not open to too much criticism for
that.

The subsequent plan was hasty but good on the strategic level for the
circumstances of late 1940: in the short-term mount a major air offensive to
keep up the pressure on Britain and test the waters for a walk-over invasion
in 1940, in the medium term bring in Spain as an ally and help the Italians
to knock out the British presence in the Med and in Egypt, and in the
longer-term rely on naval warfare, especially U-boat, to force a crippling
and possibly fatal blockade.

After some major rebuffs to that strategy - Franco's clever powerplay,
Wavell humiliating the Italians, the defeat in the BoB - and perhaps most
significantly the ever-increasing signs of US-British alliance, Hitler was
sensible enough to adapt his strategic thinking. His decision to invade the
USSR was not wholly foolish in the circumstances. Hitler correctly
calculated that Britain with American assistance, possibly co-belligerency
in the future, would almost certainly never fall through naval and
peripheral pressure, and history - of which he was a keen if erratic
student - suggested that fighting long wars with Britain was not a good bet.
So he moved to put German in a position to fight a long war of attrition
with an Anglo-US superpower by seizing Soviet resources.

Of course, on the level of Grand Strategy, Hitler ought to have anticipated
this situation and not started the war in the first place. Germany had never
and could never win European dominance through military action; he would
have been better off accepting that fact, just as subsequent German leaders
have done. But, once that gigantic error of judgement is accepted, Hitler's
subsequent strategy was generally logical and reasonable, although marked by
huge flaws at the operational level - eg the likely resistance of the Red
Army in 1941-42.

.

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