The ranting grew louder as Hitler continued. At one point, Himmler was worried; Hitler had always been an opportunist, taking advantage of his opponent’s weaknesses rather than having a master plan of his own, but he had always possessed the ability to judge clearly. His only real error had been in failing to anticipate that the British and the French would actually declare war after his forces invaded Poland; even after that, all of his gambles had come off and he was now the undisputed master of the continent. In all of Europe, there were only a handful of countries with any real independence, and all of them knew that their internal autonomy depended on Hitler’s goodwill, rather than any ability to defend themselves from attack. A man who was perfectly capable of launching two hundred divisions at any target wasn’t a man to irritate.
“It is time to settle the account with Britain, once and for all,” Hitler thundered, and immediately sagged. “I have given orders to prepare for the launch of Operation Sunset at once, to be executed as soon as possible, with the goal of conquering Britain within a month. Once Britain has been defeated, we will be finally secure, ready to make preparations for the inevitable final struggle to determine the fate of the world.”
There was a long pause. Finally, Kesselring nodded to Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, who stood up and picked up a pointer, indicating positions on the map. Manstein was another of the Führer’s favourites, a man whose planning had brought down France, Greece and Russia, as well as one of the most skilled strategists in the Reich. Manstein’s position was unchallengeable, as long as he continued to deliver victories.
Manstein’s voice was both firmer and drier than the Führer’s voice. “The original plan for invading Britain was badly flawed,” he said, without particular irritation. Himmler remembered the days when Hitler had dithered over invading Britain and nodded; the plan had been improvised and almost certain to fail spectacularly. “The Wehrmacht and the other services have been working on a plan to invade Britain since 1943, but it wasn’t until recently that we had the fire-power and transport ability to carry it out with a reasonable chance of success. The plan, codenamed Operation Sunset, was first devised in 1947 and has been updated since then until today.”
His pointer indicated Britain. “The British have three elements to their defence; the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy, and their own Army,” he said. “They have smaller specialised units, like we do, but their military value is questionable. In order to land a major assault force on the British island, we have to get it through the first two enemy forces and then defeat the third on their soil. That is not going to be easy, but it can be done; in particular, we can secure control of the seas for long enough to ship a major army group over to Britain.
“The British Navy, while larger than our own, has many more commitments than we have, including a major deployment into the Mediterranean and a second major deployment into the Far East watching our Japanese friends,” he continued. “That leaves them with their Home Fleet, deployed at Scapa Flow, and various smaller units scattered around the coast. The British battle fleet is composed of mainly older vessels, but if it came down to a direct battleship duel, they would have a serious advantage. We know that their plans call for immediately engaging the invasion convoys, so ours is to hit the Home Fleet first, from the air.”
He grinned. “The British themselves launched an attack on our friends the Italians from the air,” he said. “A handful of elderly aircraft hit the Italian fleet hard enough to make them reluctant to risk combat in the future — not that that’s hard, of course.” There were some chuckles; the Italians had proven themselves such bad fighters that Himmler had wanted to declare them all subhuman, and only Hitler’s fondness for Mussolini had prevented the invasion and subjection of Italy. “The Luftwaffe deploys many more aircraft and has been armed with the latest in anti-ship weapons, providing us with a unique chance to destroy or damage as many of their ships as possible. If necessary, our five carriers will add to the chaos by sending in their own torpedo-bombers, but I hope that we will have crushed most of the enemy fleet in the opening strike.”
“A point,” Generaladmiral Erich Raeder said, his voice darkening. He had birthed the Kriegsmarine and knew full well the odds it would face in a pitched battle. “How can you determine that the British will not detect the attacking bombers on their way?”
“The flight will be flying low for most of the journey,” Manstein said. “We anticipate that they will have some warning, but by our most pessimistic estimate, they will only have enough time to get the antiaircraft defences manned and ready, rather than getting the fleet out of the port and out onto the open sea. Building steam takes time, after all. We will also have deployed a large force of submarines to the area; when the command is given, those submarines will engage every British ship they can find. The bombers will also be heavily escorted, although we anticipate that the RAF will have more pressing concerns.
“At the same time, we will launch major air strikes against every British RAF base and radar station,” Manstein continued. “The British will have to get into the air as quickly as they can, just to drive our aircraft away, while in the meantime we will be hitting their bases as hard as we can. That particular wave of attacks will have a secondary objective; dummy parachutes will be unloaded over the Dover region, ensuring that the British will be wasting their time looking for the parachutists. In the confusion, we will launch the first part of the invasion plan itself.”
He nodded over to Admiral Wilhelm Franz Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, the military intelligence department. Himmler detested Canaris, whose loyalty to Hitler was suspect, but there was no denying the fact that he knew his job very well. Canaris was charged with gathering intelligence from Britain, particularly on British military deployments, but Himmler knew how hard that could be… unless, of course, there was an ace in the hole. His particular ace, something he had even concealed from Hitler, gave him a private, but very advantageous, look into British politics. It was an advantage he had used ruthlessly.
“The British have been preparing for an invasion ever since the first rumours of war,” Canaris said. He’d been in his post for over ten years; Himmler had watched him almost as long. “They spent most of 1940 scrambling to prepare a basic defence, and then they just kept preparing, with the net result that the Dover region is the most heavily defended area in Britain. As the obvious place for us to land, they have fortified the area beyond reason, backed up by ten divisions of their army and heavy armoured units. We were able to get a look at their latest tank during the insurgency in Iraq” — Himmler smiled; the Shah of Iran had supplied that insurgency, with a little push from his German friends — “and while we believe that it’s a good design, they have massed most of them in the Dover region. If we were to attack Dover, the invasion would fail.”
He paused. “So, naturally, we’re not going to attack Dover.”
Manstein nodded. “The British defences there would make an attack far too costly for us to sustain,” he said. “Accordingly, we intend to target the assault on Felixstowe, a British port that has actually been taking some ships from the continent over the last few years. Felixstowe has been built up recently by the British, moving from a small base for motor torpedo boats to housing a small group of destroyers and also some civilian ships. It’s not the largest harbour in the world, or even in Britain, but it’s one that we believe we can take intact. Once we have secured it, the first of the main invasion transports will land and start unloading before we form the units up and advance towards London.”