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

1940, the Luftwaffe had lost 3,701 aircraft irredeemably destroyed, yet it
had begun the summer with 3,578. In other words, it had losses of more
than 100 per cent. Certainly, it had had replacements, but because
production was not keeping up with losses, its combat strength by the end
of October 1940 was somewhere in the region of 75 per cent less than it had
been before the western campaign. By then, almost every Gruppe was
operating with a fraction of its supposed establishment and many of the
men were utterly exhausted, showing clear signs of combat fatigue, and
struggling to maintain morale. That would constitute defeat by most
people’s standards.
This is not really the point, however. In the summer of 1940, Germany
faced Britain and France, and had to defeat both. That was the gamble
Hitler took. He beat France, but he did not beat Britain, and at the end of the
summer Germany was significantly worse off than she had been in May,
and facing a long, attritional war on two fronts, which was precisely what
the Führer had so desperately wished to avoid. It has been fashionable in
recent years to play down the importance of the Battle of Britain, but to do
so is wrong. It was a key – if not the key – turning point in the war because
it meant that instead of the conflict being a European war which one day
would escalate into a clash between Germany and Russia, it became a
global conflict in which the Third Reich was unlikely to ever realistically
emerge victorious. Britain’s defiance did save the world from Nazism.
When Göring heard Britain had declared war on 3 September 1939, he
had telephoned von Ribbentrop. ‘Now you’ve got your ******* war!’ he
shouted down the phone. ‘You alone are to blame!’ Like so many leading
Nazis, Göring did not want war in 1939, not because he thought war was
wrong but because he knew Germany was not ready and that it would lead
to unmitigated disaster – and he had been right. He had not wanted to attack
Britain in the summer of 1940, either, recognizing that while Britain’s army
might not be up to much, she still had a powerful navy, a half-decent air
force, and in America and the Dominions both powerful and very useful
friends.
First and foremost, Germany lost the battle against Britain because she
really was not ready for war. Her economy could just about cope with a few
short, sharp conflicts such as Poland, and Norway, and as the western
campaign had proved to be, but nothing more. However over-mighty a
formation of Junkers, Dorniers and Heinkels might appear to those