Hitler, initially seemed somewhat hesitant about the whole "let's invade Britain" plan.
His Navy, the Kriegsmarine, was pretty beat up after the Norway campaign and wasn't really in ship-shape (pun intended!) to take on the Royal Navy, which was a formidable beast.
The Luftwaffe (the German Air Force), led by Hermann Göring, assured Hitler they could pummel Britain into submission from the air. The plan was for the Luftwaffe to gain air superiority, which was seen as a prelude to a full-scale invasion, codenamed Operation Sea Lion.
So, what went wrong? Or right, depending on which side of the Channel you were on!
The Battle of Britain kicks off, and it's essentially a massive air battle—Royal Air Force (RAF) vs. Luftwaffe.
Despite being outnumbered, the RAF put up a ferocious fight. This period also saw the famous "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few" speech by Winston Churchill, bigging up the brave RAF pilots.
The Luftwaffe was tasked with knocking out the RAF and clearing the skies for a potential invasion.
But there’s a turn around, British resilience, radar technology (then a super cutting-edge secret), and some critical errors by the Luftwaffe meant that the skies over Britain never did become a German freeway.
By September 1940, it was clear the Luftwaffe wasn’t going to clinch air superiority anytime soon. Hitler, not one to dawdle, shifted focus to planning an invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa) and postponed Operation Sea Lion indefinitely.
As it turned out, Sea Lion was never revisited.
Another lesser known tidbit is that even the German Army (Wehrmacht) wasn’t all gung-ho about invading Britain.
They had serious doubts about whether it was even feasible, given the naval and logistical challenges.
Here read, the 10 craziest facts about the middle ages
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