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Battlle Of Britain And The Defeat Of Hitler

In the summer of 1940, the German Luftwaffe attempted to win air superiority over southern Britain as well as the English Channel by destroying the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the British aircraft industry. Victory over the Royal Air Force was seen by both Hitler and the Wehrmacht as essential if they were to carry out a successful amphibious assault on the British Isles until the Royal Air Force had been neutralised. Secondary objectives were to destroy aircraft production and ground infrastructure, attack areas of political significance, as well as terrorising the British people with the intent of intimidating them into seeking an armistice or surrender. This battle came to be known as The Battle of Britain.

It was widely believed that had the Germans succeeded in their aim of destroying the Royal Air Force, they would have been able to invade Britain relatively easily. This was after all at a time when Britain was the only European power actively resisting Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union did not enter the war against Germany until June 1941, and the United States of America did not join the Allies in the resistance of the Nazis until December of that year.

Because Britain was the only power actively resisting Nazi Germany, its capture would have meant the destruction of the Allied forces as no other European nations would have intervened. This would mean the growth of Germany and the eventual production of more aircraft, navy, and ground troops from British industry.

The Battle of Britain marked the first time that the Nazis were stopped and that air superiority became clearly seen as the key to the war. Though the battle was small in the number of combatants and casualties, had the Germans triumphed the war would have taken a very different path. The British victory marked the first failure of Hitler's war machine. It also signaled a shift in U.S. opinion at a time when many people from the U.S. believed that the UK could not survive, a view promoted by...