Thereupon Hitler summoned the Reichstag to meet in the Kroll Opera House at 7 P.M. on July 19. In a speech of several hours he answered Churchill and the British government:
It almost causes me pain to think that I should have been selected by Fate to deal the final blow to the structure which these men have already set tottering. It never has been my intention to wage wars, but rather to build up a state with a new social order and the finest possible standard of culture. Every year that this war drags on is keeping me away from this work, and the causes of this are nothing but ridiculous nonentities, as it were “Nature’s political misfits….” Only a few days ago Mr. Churchill reiterated his declaration that he wants war…. Mr. Churchill ought, perhaps, for once, to believe me when I prophesy that a great Empire will be destroyed—an Empire which it was never my intention to destroy or even to harm. I do, however, realize that this struggle, if it continues, can end only with the complete annihilation of one or the other of the two adversaries. Mr. Churchill may believe that this will be Germany. I know that it will be England.19
Contrary to general expectations, Hitler’s speech did not contain his grand offer of peace but merely a highly general “appeal to reason.” This change was a first manifestation of his loss of hope, in the face of Churchill’s intransigence, of ever making peace with England. In order not to betray any sign of weakness, Hitler combined his appearance with a display of military power by appointing Göring Reichsmarshal and twelve generals field marshals. He also announced a large number of other promotions. But the principal indication of his real state of mind was the order he had already given three days before his address to the Reichstag: “Directive Number 16 on the preparation of a landing operation in England.” The code name Sea Lion was selected for this project.
Significantly, up to this point he had developed no ideas on the continuation of the war against England because this war did not fit into his design, and the changed situation had not prompted him to revise his strategy. Spoiled by luck and by the weakness of his enemies hitherto, he trusted in his genius, in fortune, in those fleeting opportunities he had learned to utilize so instantaneously. Directive Number 16 was rather evidence of chagrin than of definite operational intentions. The introductory sentence pointed clearly to that: “Since England, in spite of her militarily hopeless situation, as yet shows no signs of readiness for a rapprochement, I have decided to prepare a landing operation against England, and if necessary to carry it out.”
It remains a possibility, therefore, that Hitler never seriously considered the landing in England but employed the project merely as a weapon in the war qf nerves. From the autumn of 1939 on, the military authorities, especially the commander in chief of the navy, Admiral Raeder, had repeatedly but vainly tried to interest him in the problems of a landing operation. And, in fact, as soon as Hitler assented to the plan he began introducing reservations and mentioning difficulties of the sort he had never previously recognized. Only five days after he had launched Sea Lion he spoke of the difficulties of the operation in extremely pessimistic terms. He demanded forty army divisions, a solution of the supply problem, complete mastery of the air, the establishment of an extensive system of heavy artillery along the Channel, and a large-scale mining operation; all this was to be accomplished in no more than six weeks. “If it is not certain that preparations can be completed by the beginning of September, other plans must be considered.”
Hitler’s qualms were not connected solely with his complexes about England. Rather, he well understood the type of resistance Churchill had alluded to. A world power with remote overseas bases had all sorts of ways of holding out. Invasion or conquest of the motherland was not necessarily defeat. For example, England could go on fighting from Canada, could draw him deeper and deeper into the conflict in the wrong area, and finally involve him in the dreaded war with the United States. Even if he succeeded in destroying the British Empire, Germany would not gain from that, as he commented in a conference on July 13, 1940, but “only Japan, America and others.” Consequently, with every step he took to intensify the war against England he was undermining his own position. Not only sentimental but also political reasons argued for his seeking England’s assistance rather than her defeat.
Out of such considerations Hitler, though with signs of embarrassment, developed his strategy of the following months: gradually to force England, by political maneuvering and by restricted military action, to make peace. Then he would after all be able, with his rear position secured, to undertake his march to the East. It was the old dream on which he was still fixated, the ideal constellation that he had pursued for so long by political means and which he now, undeterred, sought in open conflict.
The military means of applying pressure included the “siege” of the British Isles by the German submarine fleet and, above all, the air war against England. The paradoxes of his design emerged in the curiously halfhearted manner with which Hitler waged the struggle. Disregarding all the arguments of his military advisers, he refused to go over to the concept of “total” air or naval warfare. The Battle of Britain, the by now legendary air battle over England that began on August 13, 1940 (“Eagle Day”), with the first major raids on airfields and radar stations in the south of England, had to be broken off on September 16 after heavy losses because of bad weather conditions. The Luftwaffe had failed to achieve any one of its goals. British industrial potential had not been struck a really heavy blow, nor had the populace been psychologically crushed, nor had the Luftwaffe won air superiority. And although Admiral Raeder had reported a few days before that the navy was ready for the landing operation, Hitler postponed the project “for the present.” A directive from the High Command of the armed forces dated October 12 specified “that the preparations for the landing in England are from now until spring to be maintained solely as a means of political and military pressure upon England.”20 Operation Sea Lion had been abandoned.
The military actions were accompanied by an attempt to force England by political means to yield—by forming a “continental bloc” embracing all of Europe. This project seemed easily realizable. Part of Europe was already Fascist, another part allied to the Reich by sympathy or treaties, still another part conquered or vanquished; and the defeats had for the most part brought to the fore an imitative Fascism which so far had scarcely any following but still held power and the lure that went with power. His military triumphs had magnified the hypnotic aura emanating from Hitler and his regime. He was not only the awe-inspiring dictator of the Continent; he also seemed to embody power itself, the current of history and the wave of the future. The defeat of France, on the other hand, was felt to be proof of the impotence and approaching end of the democratic system. Petain expressed the prevailing disenchantment with democracy after the collapse of France by saying that his country “had been morally corrupted by politics.”21
The great continental coalition was to embrace all of Europe, including the Soviet Union, Spain, Portugal, and the remnant of unoccupied France that was ruled from Vichy. Alongside this project there were plans for attacking Great Britain on the periphery: taking up the conflict in the Mediterranean by conquering the two gateways to that area: Gibraltar and the Suez Canal. In this way England’s imperial position in North Africa and the Near East would be cracked open. There were other contingency plans hinging upon the occupation of Portugal’s Cape Verde and the Canary Islands, also the Azores and Madeira. Contacts were made with the government in Dublin; the Irish might well be interested in an alliance, and air bases there would be highly useful for the attack on England.