The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (153 page)

This sounded like business. But the sound was deceptive. On September 6 Raeder had another long session with Hitler. “The Fuehrer’s decision to land in England,” the Admiral recorded in the Naval Staff War Diary that night, “is still by no means settled, as he is firmly convinced that Britain’s defeat will be achieved even without the ‘landing.’” Actually, as Raeder’s long recording of the talk shows, the Fuehrer discoursed at length about almost everything except Sea Lion: about Norway, Gibraltar, Suez, “the problem of the U.S.A.,” the treatment of the French colonies
and his fantastic views about the establishment of a “
North Germanic Union
.”
²³

If Churchill and his military chiefs had only got wind of this remarkable conference the code word “Cromwell” might not have been sent out in England on the evening of the next day, September 7, signifying “Invasion imminent” and causing no end of confusion, the endless ringing of church bells by the Home Guard, the blowing of several bridges by Royal Engineers and the needless casualties suffered by those stumbling over hastily laid mines.
*

But on the late afternoon of Saturday, September 7, the Germans had begun their first massive bombing of London, carried out by 625 bombers protected by 648 fighters. It was the most devastating attack from the air ever delivered up to that day on a city—the bombings of
Warsaw
and
Rotterdam
were pinpricks beside it—and by early evening the whole dock-side area of the great city was a mass of flames and every railway line to the south, so vital to the defense against invasion, was blocked. In the circumstances, many in London believed that this murderous bombing was the prelude to immediate German landings, and it was because of this more than anything else that the alert, “Invasion imminent,” was sent out. As will shortly be seen, this savage bombing of London on September 7, though setting off a premature warning and causing much damage, marked a decisive turning point in the
Battle of Britain
, the first great decisive struggle in the air the earth had ever experienced, which was now rapidly approaching its climax.

The time for Hitler to make his fatal decision to launch the invasion or not to launch it was also drawing near. It was to be made, as the September 3 directive stipulated, on September 11, giving the armed services ten days to carry out the preliminaries. But on the tenth Hitler decided to postpone his decision until the fourteenth. There seem to have been at least two reasons for the delay. One was the belief at OKW that the bombing of London was causing so much destruction, both to property and to British morale, that an invasion might not be necessary.
†

The other reason arose from the difficulties the German Navy was
beginning to experience in assembling its shipping. Besides the weather, which the naval authorities reported on September 10 as being “completely abnormal and unstable,” the R.A.F., which Goering had promised to destroy, and the
British Navy
were increasingly interfering with the concentration of the invasion fleet. That same day the
Naval War Staff
warned of the “danger” of British air and naval attacks on German transport movements, which it said had “undoubtedly been successful.” Two days later, on September 12, H.Q. of Naval Group West sent an ominous message to Berlin:

The next day matters grew worse. British light naval forces bombarded the chief Channel invasion ports, Ostend, Calais, Boulogne and
Cherbourg
, while the R.A.F. sank eighty barges in Ostend Harbor. In Berlin that day Hitler conferred with his service chiefs at lunch. He thought the air war was going very well and declared that he had no intention of running the risk of invasion.
²⁴
In fact, Jodl got the impression from the Fuehrer’s remarks that he had “apparently decided to abandon Sea Lion completely,” an impression which was accurate for that day, as Hitler confirmed the following day—when, however, he again changed his mind.

Both Raeder and Halder have left confidential notes of the meeting of the Fuehrer with his commanders in chief in Berlin on September 14.
²⁵
The Admiral managed to slip Hitler a memorandum before the session opened, setting forth the Navy’s opinion that

At the beginning of the conference, the Nazi warlord displayed a somewhat negative mood and his thoughts were marred by contradictions. He would not give the order to launch the invasion, but neither would he call it off as, Raeder noted in the Naval War Diary, “he apparently had planned to do on September 13.”

What were the reasons for his latest change of mind? Halder recorded them in some detail.

British hopes in Russia and America, Hitler said, had not materialized. Russia was not going to bleed for Britain. America’s rearmament would not be fully effective until 1945. As for the moment, the “quickest solution would be a landing in England. The Navy has achieved the necessary conditions. The operations of the Luftwaffe are above all praise. Four or five days of decent weather would bring the decisive results … We have a good chance of bringing England to her knees.”

What was wrong, then? Why hesitate any longer in launching the invasion?

The trouble was, Hitler conceded:

On the whole, then, Hitler declared, “in spite of all of our successes
the prerequisite conditions for Operation Sea Lion have not yet been realized.
” (The emphasis is Halder’s.)

Hitler summed up his reflections.

Having come to that negative conclusion, Hitler thereupon gave way to soaring hopes that the Luftwaffe might still bring off the victory that so tantalizingly and so narrowly continued to evade him. “The air attacks up to now,” he said, “have had a tremendous effect, though perhaps chiefly on the nerves. Even if victory in the air is only achieved in ten or twelve days the English may yet be seized by mass hysteria.”

To help bring that about,
Jeschonnek
of the Air Force begged to be allowed to bomb London’s residential districts, since, he said, there was no sign of “mass panic” in London while these areas were being spared. Admiral Raeder enthusiastically supported some terror bombing. Hitler, however, thought concentration on military objectives was more important. “Bombing with the object of causing a mass panic,” he said, “must be left to the last.”

Admiral Raeder’s enthusiasm for terror bombing seems to have been due mainly to his lack of enthusiasm for the landings. He now intervened to stress again the “great risks” involved. The situation in the air, he pointed out, could hardly improve before the projected dates of September
24–27 for the landing; therefore they must be abandoned “until October 8 or 24.”

But this was practically to call off the invasion altogether, as Hitler realized, and he ruled that he would hold up his decision on the landings only until September 17—three days hence—so that they still might take place on September 27. If not feasible then, he would have to think about the October dates. A Supreme Command directive was thereupon issued.

Berlin
September 14, 1940

Thus though Hitler had put off for three days a decision on the invasion he had by no means abandoned it. Give the Luftwaffe another few days to finish off the R.A.F. and demoralize London, and the landing then could take place. It would bring final victory. So once again all depended on Goering’s vaunted Air Force. It would make, in fact, its supreme effort the very next day.

The Navy’s opinion of the Luftwaffe, however, grew hourly worse. On the evening of the crucial conference in Berlin the German
Naval War Staff
reported severe R.A.F. bombings of the invasion ports, from
Antwerp
to
Boulogne
.

The next night was even worse, the Navy reporting “strong enemy air attacks on the entire coastal area between
Le Havre
and Antwerp.” An S.O.S. was sent out by the sailors for more antiaircraft protection of the invasion ports. On September 17 the Naval Staff reported:

That night there was a full moon and the British night bombers made the most of it. The German Naval War Staff reported “very considerable losses” of the shipping which now jammed the invasion ports. At Dunkirk eighty-four barges were sunk or damaged, and from
Cherbourg
to Den Helder the Navy reported, among other depressing items, a 500-ton ammunition store blown up, a rations depot burned out, various steamers and torpedo boats sunk and many casualties to personnel suffered. This severe bombing plus bombardment from heavy guns across the Channel made it necessary, the Navy Staff reported, to disperse the naval and transport vessels already concentrated on the Channel and to stop further movement of shipping to the invasion ports.

It had already become so.

In the German Naval War Diary there is a laconic entry for September 17.

The emphasis is the Navy’s.

   Adolf Hitler, after so many years of dazzling successes, had at last met failure. For nearly a month thereafter the pretense was kept up that the invasion might still take place that autumn, but it was a case of whistling in the dark. On September 19 the Fuehrer formally ordered the further assembling of the invasion fleet to be stopped and the shipping already in the ports to be dispersed “so that the loss of shipping space caused by enemy air attacks may be reduced to a minimum.”

But it was impossible to maintain even a dispersed armada and all the troops and guns and tanks and supplies that had been assembled to cross over the Channel for an invasion that had been postponed indefinitely. “This state of affairs,” Halder exclaimed in his diary September 28, “dragging
out the continued existence of Sea Lion, is unbearable.” When
Ciano
and Mussolini met the Fuehrer on the Brenner on October 4, the Italian Foreign Minister observed in his diary that “there is no longer any talk about a landing in the British Isles.” Hitler’s setback put his partner, Mussolini, in the best mood he had been in for ages. “Rarely have I seen the Duce in such good humor … as at the
Brenner Pass
today,” Ciano noted.
³⁰

Already both the Navy and the Army were pressing the Fuehrer for a decision to call off Sea Lion altogether. The
Army General Staff
pointed out to him that the holding of the troops on the Channel “under constant British air attacks led to continual casualties.”

Finally on October 12, the Nazi warlord formally admitted failure and called off the invasion until spring, if then. A formal directive was issued.

Fuehrer’s Headquarters
October 12, 1940