fought above the fields of south-east England in a series of dogfights where the average life expectancy of a British pilot was four to five weeks. But the RAF enjoyed certain advantages of flying over home ground: if a British pilot had to bail out, he at least parachuted on to British soil and could return to the fight, unlike his German counterpart who, on landing, was whisked off into captivity. And, unlike the Luftwaffe, the RAF pilot was not subject to anti-aircraft fire; the British, by this stage, were using radar (still a comparatively new invention), and had learnt, through the team at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, to decrypt Germany’s Enigma codes. Bletchley Park knew, for example, of Operation Sea Lion before many of Hitler’s generals did.
German Heinkels during the Battle of Britain, 1940
On 23 August, as they were returning from a sortie over Britain, a Luftwaffe patrol got lost and mistakenly bombed Croydon on the outskirts of London. The RAF bombed Berlin on 25 August. The damage was insignificant but Hitler, enraged, ordered the bombing of London. Between 7 September 1940 and 16 May 1941, the people of London and many other British cities as far north as Glasgow, endured the Blitz, a sustained campaign of bombing.
London during the Blitz, c. 1941
After May 1941, the Luftwaffe was diverted to the Soviet Union. In just one night, 14 November 1940, 440 German bombers dropping over 1,000 tons of explosives destroyed Coventry, killing 568 people and seriously injuring 863. Altogether, during the Blitz, over 40,000 were killed and almost 50,000 injured. But if the aim was to destroy resolve, it failed: the bombings merely strengthened it. For Londoners, the sight of Churchill, and on another occasion, the King and Queen stepping through the devastation and talking to the locals certainly helped boost morale. After Buckingham Palace had been hit, Queen Elizabeth said: ‘I’m glad we’ve been bombed – now I feel we can look the East End in the face.’
A second unintended consequence of Hitler’s decision to target civilians was to give the RAF time to regroup and prepare for the next onslaught. That attack came on 15 September, now known as Battle of Britain Day, when the Luftwaffe, believing that the RAF was on its knees, launched a concentrated attack on south-east England. The RAF doggedly fought them off and the Battle of Britain was effectively over. Two days later, Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion indefinitely. As Churchill stirringly said, ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’
The Mediterranean: ‘One moment on a battlefield is worth a thousand years of peace’
Since coming to power in 1922, Benito Mussolini fancied himself as a modern-day Caesar and Italy his Roman Empire. In his bid to start building an empire worthy of his ancient predecessors, Italy grabbed for itself Ethiopia (then Abyssinia) in 1936 and Albania in 1939. On 16 May 1940, Churchill had pleaded with Mussolini not to declare war: ‘Is it too late to stop a river of blood from flowing between the British and Italian peoples?’ he asked. But just three weeks later, on 10 June, with France only days from capitulating, Mussolini declared war on the Allies, boasting, ‘One moment on a battlefield is worth a thousand years of peace’, and prompting Hitler to comment: ‘First they were too cowardly to take part. Now they are in a hurry so that they can share in the spoils.’ On 28 October, from their bases in Albania, Italy attacked Greece. Mussolini’s dreams of empire soon unravelled in humiliating fashion. With insufficient weapons, lack of winter clothing and supplies, the Italians faltered within fifty miles. The Greeks, with help from the British, pushed the Italian forces into a hasty retreat, carrying the fight into Albania. Having dealt with the Italians, the Greeks now faced the more daunting prospect of a German attack.
From 6 April 1941, the Germans poured into Greece, and by the twenty-third Greece had surrendered, their prime minister having shot himself while the swastika flew over the Acropolis. British forces in Greece withdrew to Crete, which in turn was also crushed by the Nazis, forcing another evacuation for the British. The Greeks were to suffer terribly under the Germans, enduring routine barbarism and murder (only 2 per cent of Greece’s Jewish population survived the war) and large-scale starvation.
Romania’s supply of petrol was vital to the German war machine, and in September 1940, Germany disposed of Romania’s king, and gave its support to a fascist government, who started on an enthusiastic campaign against the Jews. In November 1940, Romania joined the Axis, and in June 1941 they began their campaign against the Soviet Union.
In March 1941, Yugoslavia had signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany, Italy and Japan, but following massive public protest and a coup d’état in which Prince Paul was overthrown, rescinded the following day. Furious, Hitler ordered the destruction of Yugoslavia. Attacking on 6 April, Belgrade was flattened with nearly 4,000 civilians killed by 12 April. It took Axis forces only eleven days to force a surrender. The Germans gave Croatia their independence as a fascist republic and the collaborationist Croatian government hounded their Jews with brutal relish. In the remaining part of Yugoslavia, communist partisans, led by Josip Broz (‘Tito’), and Chetnik rebels fought the Germans and each other with equal intent.
North Africa: ‘A great general’
Mussolini’s adventures in North Africa were to prove as fruitless as in the Mediterranean. On 13 September 1940, from their bases in Libya, Italian forces invaded British-controlled Egypt. British and Commonwealth forces, vastly outnumbered, beat the Italians out of Egypt, back into Libya and, along the way, took a number of Libyan coastal towns, including Tobruk, which was to play a strategic and symbolic part in the North African campaign, changing hands several times between the advancing and retreating armies. The British were within striking distance of Libya’s capital, Tripoli, but with the Greeks now facing the Germans, Churchill diverted most of the advancing troops from Libya to help in Greece.
Mussolini had become a burden, and in February 1941, Hitler sent to North Africa his ablest soldier, Erwin Rommel, of whom Churchill said: ‘We have a very daring and skilful opponent against us, and may I say across the havoc of war, a great general.’ Over the next two years the British and Commonwealth armies and the German and Italian forces fought a see-saw war, the Axis pushing the Allies back east into Egypt, then the Allies pushing the Axis back west into Libya. The further one army reached, the further their supply lines were stretched and the easier it became for the other to fight back. One constant thorn in the German side was the Mediterranean island of Malta, from where British forces continuously disrupted the German flow of supplies from Italy to Tripoli. Despite severe bombing, Hitler’s attempts to smash the island failed. Britain’s King George VI awarded the island, as a collective, the George Cross.
In June 1942, the British had entrenched themselves in the small Egyptian town of El Alamein, sixty miles west of Alexandria. Significantly for the Germans, they were 1,400 miles from Tripoli. The first battle of El Alamein, in July 1942, ended in stalemate. The second battle, with the Allies now led by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, or ‘Monty’, resulted in a Commonwealth triumph. Rommel, his tanks greatly outnumbered and supplies running thin, was, bit by bit, pushed back, the British retaking Tobruk on 13 November.
British infantry advancing during the battle of El Alamein, October 1942
Five days beforehand, fresh British and American forces had landed to the west in North Africa, in Morocco and Algeria, where they met limited resistance from the Vichy French, who, after only three days, surrendered. Hitler viewed their performance as treacherous and responded by occupying the Vichy-controlled part of France. Montgomery’s men eventually captured Tripoli in January 1943, and two months later had chased the Germans further westwards into Tunisia. On 9 March, Rommel was invalided back home, and soon after the Allies breached the fortified Tunisian–Libyan border, pushing the Germans into Tunis. Despite Hitler pouring more troops