Had Operation Sealion actually gone ahead, it would have been an incredibly risky undertaking. What was Operation Sealion, Hitler’s planned invasion of Britain? And why was it cancelled?.Hitler hoped that through blockade, bombing and the threat of an invasion, he could break the British will to fight. The invasion plan was seen very much as a last resort.
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In July 1940, Hitler ordered plans to be put in place for a seaborne invasion of Britain, which was given the code name Seelöwe or ‘Sealion’. What did the Battle of Britain mean for Hitler’s plans? Only then could a large-enough bombing campaign be mounted to force the British to the negotiating table, or an invasion force have any chance of crossing the English Channel in the face of the powerful Royal Navy. But to do this he needed to gain mastery of the skies over Britain, which meant knocking out the Royal Air Force (RAF). Scorning surrender, he demonstrated to the world (and to the US in particular) Britain’s ruthless determination to fight on by attacking the fleet of its former ally, France, to prevent it from falling into German hands.įaced with what he saw as stubborn intransigence on the part of Britain, Hitler planned to force its surrender by bombing, naval blockade or, as a last resort, invasion. Hitler expected the British to come to terms but Winston Churchill – the new British Prime Minister – was having none of it. But France had been knocked out of the war, and the British had been forced to leave most of their equipment behind. Operation Dynamo, the Allied evacuation from those beaches, brought over 300,000 of them back to England.
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Bypassing the heavily fortified Maginot Line, which ran along the Franco-German border, and employing fast-moving Blitzkrieg (‘lightning war’) tactics they swept through the Ardennes before turning for the coast, cutting off hundreds of thousands of French and British soldiers at Dunkirk. In April, the Germans began their conquest of Norway and then, on 10 May, they invaded France and Belgium. 10 key Second World War dates you need to know.As such, the period gained the nickname ‘the Phoney War’.
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With the exception of a brief French incursion into Germany, a few notable naval actions and some small-scale bombing raids, the opening months of the conflict were remarkably quiet. Within a few hours of each other, on 3 September 1939, Britain and France declared war against Nazi Germany following its invasion of Poland. Read more details about each date in Kate Moore’s 5 key dates in the Battle of Britain 15 September 1940: Battle of Britain DayĪir Vice-Marshal Keith Park famously orders all his aircraft into the air to defend the capital, abandoning his own policy of deliberate, smaller attacks by individual squadrons. 7 September 1940: The Blitz beginsĭismayed by the failure to destroy Fighter Command and incensed by a British bombing raid on Berlin, Göring turns his attention to London. 18 August 1940: The Hardest Dayīoth sides suffer their greatest number of losses so far: 69 German aircraft versus Fighter Command’s 29.
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With the outcome of the Kanalkampf phase of the battle inconclusive, Luftwaffe commander-in-cheif Hermann Göring makes plans for an all-out assault against Fighter Command on the British mainland. The battle begins with the Kanalkampf, or Channel Battles phase, when the Germans launched sustained attacks against British shipping to prevent much-needed supplies from reaching the beleaguered British Isles. What happened during the Battle of Britain? Here are 5 key dates… 10 July 1940: Official start of the battle of Britain