OPINION:
OPERATION SEA LION: THE FAILED NAZI INVASION THAT TURNED THE TIDE OF THE WAR
By Leo McKinstry
Overlook Press, $32.50, 392 pages, illustrated
The Nazi invasion of England — code-named “Operation Sea Lion” — so widely anticipated in the wake of the precipitate fall of France in June 1940 is one of the great non-happenings of history. This absorbing, detailed book by British journalist and historian Leo McKinstry shows that it might indeed have happened and explains the various reasons why it did not.
The conventional version of history has told us for many decades that the Luftwaffe’s failure to gain control of the skies of southern England in the Battle of Britain made the German cross-channel invasion impossible. Mr. McKinstry acknowledges that aspect, but shows us that there was a great deal more to why the German armada never sailed. Contra Winston Churchill’s famous tribute to the Royal Air Force in 1940, “Never has so much been owed by so many to so few,” many, many hands, hearts and minds — civilian as well as military — were owed back then. From the civilian volunteers whom Churchill insisted be called “The Home Guard” to countless government planners and active sailors and airmen, there was an infrastructure of obstacles to the German forces if they ever came.
Road signs were changed or removed, beaches heavily mined and festooned with masses of barbed wire. Draconian restrictions were placed on civilian access to much of the southern coast of England. Nothing was too awful for use against the invaders: Large amounts of poison gas (including the dreaded mustard gas that had wrought such hideous damage in World War I), which the Geneva Protocol of 1925 had outlawed, were nonetheless readied. Mr. McKinstry describes Churchill as “a wholehearted advocate,” telling his War Cabinet “that ’We should not hesitate to contaminate our beaches with gas if this would be to our advantage. We have the right to do what we like with our own territory.’” There were also plans to use the plentiful supply of gasoline available as a result of large imports and strict rationing for civilians to set the surface of the sea ablaze with ferocious intensity. Mr. McKinstry quotes Field Marshal Montgomery writing that the invaders would be “threatened by the unknown horrors of the Fourth Element: fire on the cliffs and fire even in the very sea.”
Mr. McKinstry gives due credit to such military operations as cross-channel bombing raids on German vessels and installations that were part of the projected invading force. But he gives even more credit to the indomitable spirit of most Britons when faced with this challenge. Not to say that there weren’t some, even in the highest places (like Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax and World War I Prime Minister Lloyd George) who lacked the lionhearted spirit. But on the whole, the resolve and strong patriotic belief so evident to war correspondents like Edward R. Murrow indicate that if invasion had come, the response would have been very different to France’s.
In the end, though, the person most responsible for saving Britain from Nazi invasion was, paradoxically, Hitler himself. He was all braggadocio: “In England, they’re filled with curiosity and keep asking, ’Why doesn’t he come?’ Be calm, be calm. He is coming! He is coming!” However, the fuhrer was, as Mr. McKinstry demonstrates, deeply ambivalent about invading England for a variety of reasons. As no less an authority than Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering said, “The Fuhrer does not want to invade Britain” and the Luftwaffe head himself “had been deeply impressed by the way the British had responded to the invasion crisis ’We have forgotten that the Englishman fights best when his back is against the wall.” Hitler had enjoyed a stunning series of successes in 1940. Perhaps it was fear of a massive failure that made him shy away from his oft-stated goal.
Reading about this cross-channel invasion that never happened set me thinking anew about the one that did — successfully — on June, 1944. We have read and seen on screen so many accounts of the intricate planning of the operation and the terrible difficulties encountered by those who actually had to storm the beaches and breach the massive defenses and natural barriers like hedgerows. But we tend to forget the audacity of attempting something on a scale that had never before been accomplished and, precisely because it succeeded, take it if not for granted — well, as something that was bound to happen. But Gen. Dwight Eisenhower himself knew it might not have gone well, as we know from the statement he had drafted taking full responsibility for its failure. That our leaders, civilian and military, did not bluster, dither and funk the way Hitler had done in 1940, but acted boldly to do something unprecedented resulted in the Allied victory in Europe less than a year later. Those who dared acted and accomplished, in such fortunate contrast to what we read about the abortive Nazi plan here.
• Martin Rubin is a writer and critic in Pasadena, Calif.
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