The Battle of Britain Was The First Defeat For The German Luftwaffe.

[trashcanman]

Originally Posted by MB_Avro_UK

Hi all,

I have been reading a book entitled:

Best of Enemies. Britain and Germany. Truth and Lies in Two World Wars.

Author is Richard Milton.

Britain and Germany according to Milton were prior to WW1 close allies. They had a shared culture and a shared Royal Family. WW1 was expected to involve Germany and Britain as Allies against the French.

But after the start of WW1, the propaganda machines of both Britain and Germany changed the situation for ever.

Best Regards,
MB_Avro.

Excellent TrollGrenade Avro

1904 Entende Cordiale? Throw this book away, it probably has a chapter on wooden Spitfires

Trig, an excellent reply to the nonsense however you are attempting to change the minds of committed apologists for the Nationalist Socialist Party.

As sad as it is, these people will attempt to equate Belsen and Aushcwitz to Hamburg and Dresden whilst conveniently forgetting Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, Portsmouth, Coventry, Liverpool, Bristol and the many others where they sowed the seeds.

It was not nice however war never is. 150-200,000 civilians have died in Iraq since it was invaded however none of them were processed through industrial killing facilities.

That is the difference.

[Triggaaar]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II

Don't really see it as much of a "defeat" there. Loss of personnel and material is an evaluated risk in warfare.

Your line of arguement means that it doesn't matter how many men/machines you lose, you can just right them all of as evaluated risk. That makes no sense. When drawing up the plans to invade, you would make such evaluation, and you'd find out whether you met your objectives after the event. Given that the objective was not met, the losses were not worth it were they.

Tactical defeat? Hardly, it was more of a tactical stalemate. No changes in the frontline, only war of attrition between air forces and extra damage to civilian targets with thousands of civilian casualties.

Germany's objective was to clear the way for an invasion that year. They failed. Britain's objective was not to gain air superiority over the channel, it was to prevent invasion, and they succeeded.

Operation Sea Lion was never cancelled, only postponed.

Do you think the operation is still live? No, so you realise it failed, and Britain didn't get invaded.

By the end of the big aerial offensive, the RAF was on its knees

No it wasn't, you need to look up some modern data.

Tens of thousands of civilian casualties, whole cities and factories turned into rubble, interruption of primary services. The situation was pretty grim by the end of the bomber offensive, it was obvious that mentioning a "victory in repelling the attacks" was of paramount importance back then.

If the German objective was to kill a lot of British civilians, and the British objective was to prevent the death of any British civilians, then Germany won the BoB. But they weren't the objectives, much as you might like to twist them to your arguement.

[Triggaaar]

Originally Posted by Al Schlageter

(a) The English Air Force must be so reduced morally and physically that it is unable to deliver any significant attack against the German crossing.

Originally Posted by adonys

Hmm.. in this case, you need to re-read the memories of the WWII british fighter pilots, which were brought on (or even over) the very edge of mental and physical collapse at that time..

You think that because some British pilots have said they were on the edge of collapse, that the objective 2a had been met? Of course not, don't be silly.

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II

whatever the plan was, it was suspended for other matters. At the time of the suspension of major aerial operation over the Channel the RAF was at the brink of collapse, the Luftwaffe could have won the war of attrition, had they persevered.

Firstly, you're saying that in different circumstances the Luftwaffe could have won - so what, they didn't, which is all we're arguing about. Secondly, you are very out of date thinking that the RAF was close to collapse (not that it would help your arguement even if it was true).

Let's give you an example: you're playing football with your friends, at some point the other team needs to leave because more urgent matters require their presence, and so far the score is a draw, but you've been struggling and you know that if they didn't have to leave you might have lost that game.

That's some weird comparison right there, but I'll go with it. If it's footy, we're really talking Champions league here, not you and some mates. Can you imagine a situation where Bayern Munich are playing Manchester Utd and half way through the game Bayern say sorry, they want to see the end of Germany's got talent? The suggestion that Germany made up the plans in the morning, started and then decided a few weeks later that they really ought to get back to the important stuff is madness. It was a planned attack, with a planned amount of aircraft and personnel, and a timeframe. They under-estimated Britain's strength and failed their mission. That they continued fighting elsewhere doesn't suddenly make a defeat a draw. Your arguement that Britain did not gain territory is embarrassing.

[Triggaaar]

Originally Posted by 6S.Manu

72 pages arguing about the word "Defeat"?

Wow, not to be an a$$, but you guys really have a lot of free time.

That's a very fair comment

[Triggaaar]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II

I have tried to bring an impartial perspective, but I suppose that I should write an essay on it, and even then you'd still be in denial.

You may be impartial, I don't really know. But regardless, you are wrong. You remind me of Stephen Fry arguing that WWII finished in 1990, because only then was Germany reunified etc.

in fact nobody picked up in an unbiased way on the facts I have exposed

They have, you are just too stubborn to see it. You argue that the RAF was on its knees, so people give you facts and figures on aircraft and pilots. You don't understand that Germany lost more pilots from the fight because they were fighting further from home. You're shown the objectives that Hitler set out, that the Luftwaffe failed to meet, so you ignore the facts of what did happen and start talking about what might have happened had Germany not been a bit busy elsewhere. You are given facts, not personal attacks, but you reply by trying to patronise others and put words into their mouths, suggesting a few of us think that ALL civilian deaths are just fine.

The bottom line though is that there is an unsuspected amount of people that still believe that only the Germans should be blamed for all the evil, bad and deadly things that happened in WW2.

What, like some of the descriptions of the Russian army a few pages back? Is there anyone here at all that thinks that?

This thread was about the BoB being the Luftwaffe's first defeat, a fact which you blindly deny.

[Triggaaar]

Originally Posted by trashcanman

Trig, an excellent reply to the nonsense however you are attempting to change the minds of committed apologists for the Nationalist Socialist Party.

As I reached the end of the thread I see Kendo had already put it more eloquently than I managed.

As sad as it is, these people will attempt to equate Belsen and Aushcwitz to Hamburg and Dresden whilst conveniently forgetting Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, Portsmouth, Coventry, Liverpool, Bristol and the many others where they sowed the seeds.

It was not nice however war never is. 150-200,000 civilians have died in Iraq since it was invaded however none of them were processed through industrial killing facilities.

That is the difference.

Personally I wasn't drawing distinction between Hamburg, Dresden, London, Coventry etc (no bias to which side), it's the killing of people that you already control that I pick out. Let's not even start with Stalin.

PS - I totally own this page

I'll come back in a few days to see what's happening with the patch, and hopefully this thread will have disappered.

[Frequent_Flyer]

Originally Posted by Triggaaar

As I reached the end of the thread I see Kendo had already put it more eloquently than I managed.

Personally I wasn't drawing distinction between Hamburg, Dresden, London, Coventry etc (no bias to which side), it's the killing of people that you already control that I pick out. Let's not even start with Stalin.

PS - I totally own this page

I'll come back in a few days to see what's happening with the patch, and hopefully this thread will have disappered.

My money is on the patch dissappearing.

[adonys]

well, on a philosophical perspective.. it seems that the vast majority of the people, no matter the time or era, are blind and deaf and stupid idiots, who would not see the forest from the trees.

There's no point in trying to debate this, as long as people are throwing in name calling, and view any attempt to look at any other (god forbid to try and do it from the german) point of view than the british/allied one as neo-nazism or worse..

This is the main reason history repeat itself, and it's a very sad thing to see..

[JimmyBlonde]

I'm thinking on starting a pool to bet on whether this thread will hit 100 pages. Any takers?

[Sternjaeger II]

disagreement is kinda given for granted, denial is a different matter altogether.

You guys de-contextualise the air battle of 1940 as an episode per se, not considering it part of a more fluid, multi-layered and complicated warfare.

"THE Battle of Britain" was happening only in England, there was no perception or interest as such in Germany on the matter. Surely, you lived it personally cos you were the ones being attacked and bombed, nobody is questioning that, but it had little or no reach to the Germans.

You put up an efficient but desperate in some points defence system, which fortunately allowed you to put a marginal but effective limit to the offensive.

The RAF and Luftwaffe lost a similar number of pilots (The Luftwaffe lost more aircrew), and the numbers of the 4 months of intense battle show a similar number in losses proportionally. Let's not forget that the RAF sent up mainly two kinds of fighter planes and that's it, while the Luftwaffe invested more in terms of bombers and fighters.

Because of the poor planning and mistakes made by their Air Marshal, the Luftwaffe didn't manage to produce results as they were supposed to: the RAF was effective ONLY because of FAC and Radar, the real target that the Luftwaffe should have neutralised first.

Everything else is history of course, but the decision of concentrating the majority of fighters and logistic efforts over the Russian campaign wasn't an admission of defeat.

It was a clash, no different from the WW1 ones, the difference being that it was fought in the air instead of a trench.

Both factions were suffering heavy losses, stress and fatigue, but the British had the edge because of the defence position, they didn't have to cross the Channel to bring their offensive (they wouldn't have the means anyway).

Many people talked about "David vs Goliath", with the difference that Goliath didn't die, just lost his interest and moved onto something else. You want to call that a victory? Feel free, but objectively the matter is far more complicated than "win or lose".

The victory of the Battle of Britain was a perfect propaganda idea to celebrate a much needed victory after the shambles of the BEF and Dunkirk, this goes without saying, and of course it is understandable to be happy about the loosening of the attacks, but it's not like they stopped altogether or you managed to cripple the Luftwaffe.

Truth is that the Germans didn't perceive it as a "battle", it was part of an operation which was interrupted by the command as it was going on.

There is a lot of arguing among historians on the definition of "battle", and its sometimes lazy or inappropriate use, especially in a WW2 context.

It really feels like there can't be an objective victory celebration without sliding into propaganda, if you know what I mean.

I don't want to deprive anyone of their finest hour, but this whole concept of "winning" makes me think of Charlie Sheen's winning, more than the real victory that was celebrated on V-Day.