1940-2020 BATTLE OF BRITAIN
By the summer of 1940, the German war machine appeared invincible. Britain had suffered a humiliating defeat in northern France, and although the evacuation of over 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk in May and June was a massive achievement, a huge amount of equipment had been lost. Germany had yet to suffer a major defeat at this point.
“The Germans had been, to put it mildly, in a good run of form,” says Craig Murray, a curator at the Imperial War Museum’s RAF Duxford site. “They’d quickly destroyed Poland’s obsolete airforce and had managed to beat both France and Britain in a matter of weeks. Even to the German High Command this was probably beyond their wildest dreams. However, now they were left with a quandary. Hitler had wanted to negotiate peace with the British. He’d never seen Britain as a natural enemy, more as an ally and not a substantial threat, and he switched regularly between invasion and negotiation.”
Yet, despite these negotiation attempts, there was an invasion plan in place and ready to be implemented. “This is
