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Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II
In the grand scheme of things the aerial Battle of Britain was an early large scale attrition war, which ended up with similar results (apart for the thousands of civilian casualties on the British side) for both sides. No matter how hard you try to think of it, you can't really think of it as a victory.
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It is a victory, it's not as obvious because there was no mass surrender, or no symbolic flag raising, or no territory gained. However it was a victory. If one side achieves thier goal and the other dosn't, it's not a draw. It was a battle for air supremacy ,'to destroy Fighter Command, in the air and on the ground', not part of the invasion, the invasion was dependant on the outcome of the air battle.
It was also a big confidence boost, Britain had 'stood firm', the first country in Europe to do so. I can, and do, think of it as a victory, quite small in the scheme of things, numbers wise, but vital. It was also a battle that favoured the defenders, for all sorts of reasons, not least The Channel, but we've had that for centuries, the Island Mentality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II
In hindsight, considering what happened afterwards and how the war ended, you can say that it was a contributing factor to the ultimate victory, but nothing suggests that, had Hitler decided so, the Luftwaffe couldn't have carried on operations against Great Britain for longer.
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You cannot ignore the complete failure of German high command, they are after all part of the battle. The ifs and maybes can never be known. All we do know is that Hitler and his generals never returned to try and finish off Fighter Command.
I know we've got previous and I'd like to keep this civil, if it wasn't a draw, and the LW didn't achive their objective how can you say that it was'nt a victory, if not for Britain, then at the very least for Fighter Command. They did their job. The LW couldn't.