Quote:
Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II
I suppose it's not the specific case of the Battle of Britain, it's more a case of assigning improper definitions to events and giving special meanings to events that were important only in hindsight for the sake of national pride.
Was BoB a necessary battle? No.
Did it bring any change to the conditions at the beginning of the conflict? No.
Was it a victory for the British? It surely was for morale and propaganda.
Was it a military victory? No.
It's an important debate for many historians, and it's getting harder to deal with when thinking of recent conflicts (from the 80s onwards).
|
I really don't agree with this.
BOB was necessary for Hitler because he absolutely didn't want a war on two fronts. He knew he had to take the UK out of the equation because it would be a nasty thorn in his side as he turned east as proved to be the case especially when the bombing of Germany started but also because the UK and Empire had a large economy and would support Russian with materials and would continue to have a very powerful naval force which made bringing in materials from around the world much harder. Had he defeated Britain he could have had access to the oil in the Middle East as a starter.
The conditions at the beginning of the BOB were that Germany was an unbeaten force and had almost mythical attributes assigned to it. The out come of the BOB was enough to bring in massive amounts American credit. This saw the USA producing huge amounts of arms and Churchill cunningly believed that this would make it much more possible for the USA to be drawn into the war.
At the beginning of the BOB Britain stood alone, it looked like defeat was likely to the rest of the world and there was a great chance that the USA might twist Britain's arm in to negotiating (a bit like Suez) or become a political outcast. Churchill feared that Britain would become the most hated country on the planet because he refused to negotiate!
The victory was more than propaganda or moral and I agree it wasn't really a military victory (it was stalemate in military terms) BUT it was a political victory