Germany did not lose the Battle of Britain

[Golf Pro]

French did not lose the Battle of Waterloo.

West Ham United did not lose the 2006 FA Cup final.

These things are self-evident.

[Avimimus]

Originally Posted by Former_Older

You know quite well that we are talking about ONE battle, and my words are in reference to that ONE battle. I did not expand the discussion to include how a tactical failure today can or cannot lead to a strategic victory tomorrow- YOU have just introduced that aspect. I am commenting on the Battle of Britain, not the whole of WWII.

On one hand, it's quite insulting to everyone in the discussion since you decided to paint everyone with all the same brush, and on the other, it's quite a negative comment on me personally in regards to my intellect. Obviously you can see I'm a little aware of myself and what's going on so please consider your comments more carefully when you try to show me how dumb I am in the future, and think twice before you try to put words in my mouth

Far from being a "naive and dangerous" statement of mine, you have taken my words not only out of my intended context, but even out of the context of the discussion. I can't quite see how everyone else here knows exactly what was said but you don't, but I'll try to clarify for you:

I did not say:

Failing to achieve your goals in battle never results in winning a war. Never. [future tense]

I DID say:

Failing to achieve your goals in battle never results in your victory. Never. [present tense]


Is that clear as crystal yet? Are my statements now beyond distortion? I didn't say that once you lose a battle, the war is lost. That is a simplistic and wooden-headed statement you are trying to attribute to me and I'd appreciate it if you would stop putting words in my mouth

"Tactical" and "Strategic" victories and how they effect the course of the war is not the topic. I am not here talking about the outcome of the war as affected by the dynamic influence of a series of campaigns. So my statement stands regardless of how you intend to twist and pervert it. You can't take what I said hours ago, change the topic to what YOU want to talk about, and then tell me how wrong I am. If you want to discuss how losing a battle can result in winning a war I will not disagree with you, but that is not what I and everyone else here are discussing

Please explain to me how the failure of Germany to secure their goals during the Battle of Britain resulted in their Victory in the Battle of Britain

If you can do that, I'll agree with you

My apologies

1. You treat me as being far too clever than I am. I didn't twist the topic around to another one, I really believed we were talking about another one from the very beginning. I take it your goal was simply to dismiss any arguments that the Germans didn't fail to achieve their goals for the Battle of Britain. At the same time I simply assumed that discussing any past campaign (despite having 20/20 hindsight) is essentially similar to discussing a present or future campaign.

In my mind you can't simply demonstrate what happened or why what happened was inevitable. Instead one must consider the full range of decisions that could have been made, their implications in the complex military/civilian environment, the failures of the command staff's understanding and a variety of scenarios (including counter-factual ones). This is a very different goal.

So, I was thinking about all of the long term implications that the battle of Britain could have had on the outcome of the war (as opposed to the the extensive failure to achieve the goals set by the German high command for the operation).

2. The key point is confusion over the term "Victory". I generally equate it with a long-standing sustainable success. It is the outcome of a war or a major part of a war that later has long term positive impacts on civilian policy. This is how I've always used the word and seems to be the main source of confusion.

3. This particular the phrase was also important: "Failing to achieve your goals in battle never results in your victory. Never."
This seemed to be a generalisation to all wars, past, present and future. Doing such would require not viewing a military action in the context of the larger, complex chain of events or civilian goals is indeed dangerous and naive. I suspect that you would agree with this.

No one familiar with military history could possibly maintain the position you seemed to be given the complexities of outcomes of decisions in warfare (no plan surviving contact with the enemy &C). I actually realised that it was very unlikely that you maintained such a position, but I was unable (for unrelated reasons) to return to the computer to reread what you wrote and to correct my post.

So, certainly the following statement is one I would agree with: "Failing to achieve your goals in battle never results in your achievement of your goals in the same battle. Never."

We probably are in agreement on most if not all points and this was simply due to a difference in the use of language and a couple mistakes in how the arguments were made (in particular my use of the word naive).

S!

[Former_Older]

I should say sorry too for being a little too...confrontative. I do think though that you should use my comments in the context for which they were uttered

[Avimimus]

Thank you, but I was the one who made the biggest mistake in the language I used. It serves me right for writing a message at two in the morning. I certainly didn't mean to offend anyone or derail the thread - I just wasn't thinking clearly.

Originally Posted by Roy

Achieving goals and not being victorious is one thing. NOT achieving goals and being victorious is something completely different. Both examples you provided (that are quite the opposite of what Former_Older said) could lead to several pages of discussion about who won/lost depending on the point of view, but that's another topic.

While there may be cases where you can fail certain goals and still be victorius (extreme example: if winning a war implies being victorious and the goal is to have less than X casualties in said war, you can fail that goal and still "win") it is not the case for Former Older's post!

Thanks, to amend my point: "Any action in warfare can have unintended and unforeseen consequences and implications, even to the extent that a victory could look like a defeat and a defeat could look like a victory". That is what I should have written and it is a relatively obvious point.

[Stuntie]

Germany lost the Battle of britain.
I can't see how you can argue otherwise.

Germany slunk away having lost, but was able to largely hide the fact for a number of reasons.

Understanding German indifference to the outcome is different to saying that they won it.



People prefer to discuss and research battles they won, or defeats that are seen as 'heroic' like Stalingrad. BoB was an embaressing defeat - they were expected to win, but didn't. Harder to come to terms with than an defeat by overwhelming odds.

It was 'somewhere else' not a war at home, like the air defense of the Reich.
No impact on the people, so of little concern.

No ground troops were involved so no reports of ground battles lost that would equate to obvious defeat. Defeat of an arial campaign not being really understood by the public at that point.

Events of greater importance soon overshadowed it (Russia and the defense of the reich) making it of less emotive power to the Germans.

So it was an embaressment the Germans wanted to forget, and one that affected few in Germany itself making it easy to gloss over, and given later events marginalise to further push it from their minds.

History may be written by the winners, but the loosers have a habit of glossing over the embarassing bits in their books.


It's big in Britain because we won.
It's big in the scheme of the war because it stopped the Nazi juggernaut.
It may be overshadowed in numbers by later battles, but was still a significant victory.

[*Buzzsaw*]

Salute

People who dismiss the Battle of Britain as being insignificant are suffering from a complete lack of Strategic understanding.

Germany made the same mistake in both World Wars: They fought on two fronts at the same time, forcing them to divide their strength and fatally weakening their tactical options.

In World War I, Germany was able to finally beat one of their opponents, Czarist Russia, but by that time, America had entered the war, and their strength had been weakened too much by the three previous years for them to finish the British and French in the Spring of 1918 before the Americans arrived in strength.

In World War II, Hitler and Ribbentrop had brought off the brilliant coup of taking the Soviet Union out of the equation by signing the Nazi-Soviet Non Aggression Pact, and dividing up Poland. Germany was then faced with the much easier task of fighting a one front war, and of beating the French and British. After France fell, and the majority of the British land forces were destroyed as a fighting force, (Dunkirk only saved the men, not the equipment) the Germans were in a completely dominant Strategic position, facing a British Empire nearly fatally wounded. All they needed to do was get across the 20 miles of the English Channel, and the war against the West would be won. The British Army was in no position to fight back, there was only one division on their OOB, (the 1st Canadian) which was fully equipped and ready to fight. If the Germans could land their Wehrmacht divisions in England, the ground battle would be a forgone conclusion.

Hitler gave Britain a little less than a month to surrender, while he massed his forces on the Channel coast and accumulated supplies and equipment. He then drew up his plans. For a detailed look at those plans, take a look at my previously posted map, and look here:

http://www.kretsen.nu/bytebattler/do...LION%20OOB.pdf

(note the comments about the S.S. 'Special Action Groups', or Einsatzgruppen, who were tasked with arresting and liquidating all members of British society deemed potential opponents, Churchill was slated for immediate execution)

The key to a successful invasion was command of the air over the channel. Without air superiority, the Royal Navy would sortie from the ports further up in the North Sea, and make short work of the invasion fleet. The German Kriegsmarine was nowhere near strong enough on its own to deal with the Royal Navy. During the invasion of Norway, the German Navy was seriously damaged in its clashes with the Royal Navy, and unable to support its troops landed in the north. In the event of an invasion of Britain, the Royal Navy would have isolated the first wave of German troops, which would have been lightly armed and without heavy artillery and tank support, and cut the supplies and reinforcements crucial to a successful consolidation and advance.

Of course, even if the Germans obtained air superiority over the channel, the Royal Navy would have still sortied, but its chances of prevailing would have been much reduced. A Stuka might be a sitting duck when intercepted by a fighter, but when it was operating free from aerial interference, it became a terrifyingly effective anti-shipping weapon.

Everything depended on the battle in the air. With Aerial Superiority, the all powerful Werhmacht stood a very good chance of crossing the channel and landing successfully, without it, its chances were not good.

The failure of the Luftwaffe to defeat the RAF meant the chances of a costly defeat for the invading forces were too great for the Germans to risk. So they called it all off.

At that point, Hitler could have continued his neutrality policy with Soviet Union, but instead, he made his greatest mistake, and opted to begin an invasion, a two front war, with Britain still undefeated.

His original plan was for the invasion to begin on May 15th 1941, but this was delayed by British operations in the Balkans.

First, the Italians were bogged down in their war with Greece. The British compounded this by reinforcing the Greeks with British divisions and RAF units, threatening to throw the Italians out of Albania.

Then, British supported factions in Yugoslavia overthrew the German controlled government there, planting a hostile entity on the German southern flank.

Hitler reacted by posponing the invasion of the Soviet Union, and sending his Panzers south. Even though the Nazis overran Yugoslavia and Greece, and decisively defeated the British, the time lost during these campaigns meant OPERATION BARBAROSSA, the plan to invade Russia, was postponed till June 22nd, much later than the Werhmacht planners had hoped for. If the British were no longer an entity, none of this would have happened.

And even though the invasion initially went well, with much of Western Russia being overrun, the advent of the rainy season in October of 1941 saw the Wehrmacht still far short of achieving its goal of capturing Moscow. For nearly three weeks, till frost set in, the advance slowed to a crawl in the mud, giving the Soviets time to build defences, and most importantly, to bring the battle seasoned troops from its Siberian Army, (fresh from their victories over the Japanese at Khalkin Gol in 1939) into position in front of Moscow. The Germans then had a few good campaigning weeks in the November frosts before the snows came, but it wasn't enough, they fell just short of capturing Moscow. With the snows, came the Soviet Winter counteroffensive, led by the Siberians, and the first substantial defeat of the Wehrmacht. It wasn't till the next summer that the Germans were able to resume their attack, and by then the Soviets had grown in strength and tactical skill, and the attack led only to defeat at Stalingrad.

The events of the Second World War are not isolated instances, each battle affects the next one, and the Battle of Britain was a crucial link in the chain of failures which led to the defeat of Nazi Germany.

[planespotter]

Actually I think many posters didn't read the original article, or that it is poorly written:

http://www.freewebs.com/heinkill/booksfilmssites.htm

He isn't actually saying that Germany didn't lose the battle of britain

He is saying that Brits venerate it, and Germans seem to have forgotten/ignore it (perhaps because from their point of view, because they never felt that they lost it.)

It's a different question than one about whether Germany did or didn't lose the BoB - the question is why does it mean so much to Brits, and so little to Germans.

[Former_Older]

Originally Posted by planespotter

Actually I think many posters didn't read the original article, or that it is poorly written:

http://www.freewebs.com/heinkill/booksfilmssites.htm

He isn't actually saying that Germany didn't lose the battle of britain

He is saying that Brits venerate it, and Germans seem to have forgotten/ignore it (perhaps because from their point of view, because they never felt that they lost it.)

It's a different question than one about whether Germany did or didn't lose the BoB - the question is why does it mean so much to Brits, and so little to Germans.

Hi

Your topic name is "Germany did not lose the Battle of Britain". The reason so many people are discussing that topic and not the topic you linked to, is because you made the topic about Germany not losing the battle of Britain...it is the name of your topic that has turned the discussion away from your intention...how can I know that your intent is to illustrate something else when you appear to be using this linked article to back up your topic, which is "Germany did not lose the Battle of Britain"?

[brando]

I think it was because pretty well no-one in the German forces expected SeeLowe to go ahead for logistical reasons unless Goring's fliers were able to gain mastery of Britain's airspace. This they were unable to do and it cost them pretty dearly.
From the German side it was a fiasco as far as the overall plan to create the conditions for the seaborne invasion was concerned and, when the weather closed down in the Autumn, there had been no lasting destruction of the main targets, i.e. 11 Group's airbases, the Chain Home radar network, and the military bases.
The Luftwaffe had been badly led by Der Eisener and Hitler had turned his sights on the East, so the air assault and the invasion were just allowed to slide.

In hindsight it can be seen that a) properly led the long air battle could have been won, and b) letting Britain off the hook set the stage for what came next.

It's also worth noting that the air assault didn't end when day-bombing was curtailed. Night-bombing remained as another serious threat and continued, but no serious attack on the fighter bases was delivered. Thus I think the German population was lulled into thinking that nothing decisive had occurred - but, for the reasons mentioned, we knew we had driven off the most serious attacks on our shores. And they never recurred, ever. Definitely a cause for celebration in my book!

B

[DKoor]

Germany did not lose the Battle of Britain

Disagree 100%