The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

38
The Biggest Air Battle
THE PREVIOUS SUNDAY, Harold Nicolson had been at home at Sissinghurst in
Kent, and that lovely summer’s afternoon the cottage garden had looked
especially beautiful, a blaze of colour. As a large heron flew steadily away
from the lake, Vita, Harold’s wife, asked him, ‘How can we possibly win?’
It was not an unreasonable question, and one that Harold had been thinking
himself but had dared not ask. Even if Britain did survive the German
assault that was to be hurled at them, what then? For all Churchill’s talk of
setting Europe ablaze, what could Britain really do? She still had many
worries, after all. The week before the Italians had invaded British
Somaliland in East Africa, and looked certain to attack from Libya into
Egypt. In the Far East, the Japanese had been making martial noises and
had recently arrested a number of British subjects on spurious spying
charges. There were still concerns over Spain. As far as Harold was
concerned, it seemed as though Britain would shortly be assailed from all
sides. He began to picture how matters might play out. The Italians would
push on into Kenya and the Sudan and then Egypt and the Suez Canal. The
Japanese would attack in the Far East, taking Singapore, Malaya and then
even drive into India. Soon, German heavy bombers would come over and
the pressure to sue for peace from within Britain and the United States
would be intense. Churchill would come to symbolize a sullen obstinacy
that was imposing tremendous suffering on the whole world – a suffering
that could be eased if only Britain’s leaders would face facts and accept
Hitler and the new European order. ‘We shall become,’ wrote Harold, ‘the
most hated race on earth.’
This was a very real scenario. Really, who knew what toll German
bombing would take? No nation had ever been attacked from the air as
Britain was surely about to be assaulted by the Luftwaffe. What if Douhet,
Baldwin et al. had been right all along? Aerial warfare was still so new; its
potential was still unknown, even in August 1940.
Sir Samuel Hoare’s missives from Madrid, where he was now
Ambassador, were hardly encouraging. Living in a city of shadows and