Was June 1940 a good time for Hitler to try to invade Britain?

Answer 1

June 1940 was as good a time as any for Hitler to invade Britain, and, as it turned out, probably the best time he ever had to try. Germany was not ready to make a cross-Channel attack. No army in the world was ready to try such a thing in June, 1940. The Germans were taken by surprise by the speed with which they had defeated France, and were unprepared to go on to the next logical step of invading Britain. Germany possessed none of the specialized amphibious attack ships which the US would be using so effectively throughout the Pacific in a couple of years, and also in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy and the Riviera. But in June 1940 the US did not yet possess these special landing craft and ships either, which were just then being thought of and designed. When the French campaign ended with stunning swiftness and the German planners began to turn their attention to attempting an invasion of Britain, they sent out a requisition for every vessel of almost any description that could be found anywhere in Europe. Great reliance was to be placed on river barges, which have no engine of their own, and would have to be towed across the Channel. Trying to disembark from these, either directly onto a beach, or into smaller craft for the ride to shore, was likely to be extremely costly, if the beach being attacked was defended. Germany did not have much of a naval tradition. Though a large navy had been built up under the Kaiser before the First World War, this was the only time in German history such a thing had been done. Through the centuries, Germany was a land power, with little need to worry about controllong the sea, which for Germany did not matter unless and until they first could control central Europe. In 1940 the German General Staff tried to treat a cross-Channel attack as though it were something they were familiar with: a river crossing, except on a huge scale. But this was just a conceit to soothe the worried planners into believing that they had competence in what is actually the most difficult thing to do in warfare: a descent from the sea on a defended coastline. This is a far different thing from a river crossing. Rivers can be spanned by temporary bridges, which can be built even under enemy fire. Many rivers have fords, shallow places where men can wade across, and vehicles can be driven across. Bridging and fording were not going to happen in a cross-Channel attack. In June 1940, if the Germans could have contrived ways of getting across the Channel in strength, they campaign to conquer Britain would probably have ended almost as quickly as had that for France. Isolated pockets might have held out for some time, in remote parts of Wales or the Scottich Highlands. But at that time, the British Army, reeling from Dunkirk, was little more than an armed mob, with little armament beyond the light infantry arsenal. Practically all their trucks, all their artillery (along with the ammunition for it), and hundreds of tanks had been abandoned in France. The 300,000 men resuced from Dunkirk had little with which to fight beyond rifles, machine guns, hand grenades, and mortars. They would be no match for a heavy mechanized force with good artillery. The British Army took up posotions in southeast Eangland and grimly prepared to sell their lives dearly, and the old men of the Home Guard turned out to drill with pitchforks and the occasional shotgun or WWI surplus rifle. If the invasion came they would have stood no chance, no matter how brave. In June 1940 all the Germans needed to do was to establish their supremacy in the air, and then their air force could cover whatever motley invasion fleet they scraped together. They failed to obtain this air supremacy, however, due to the dauntless spirit of the RAF, and the disastrous failure to stay on task of destroying the RAF at its bases, along with the "Chain Home" radar installations which guided the defenders to the attacking Germans planes. The Germans got impatient and quit too soon, when another week or two, or even days, of continued effort against airfields and radar might have done the trick. Instead, they switched to terror bombing of cities, supposedly after and in retaliation for when a British bomber, unable to find its target, and lost, jettisoned its bomb load unknowingly over a blacked-out Berlin. 1940 proved to be the best opportunity for invading Britain the Germans had. But in the end Hitler lost faith in the head of the air force, Goering, who had promised and failed to deliver both at Dunkirk and in the Battle of Britain. Hitler also hoped, against all reason, that the British would at last see the light and join with him to fight the true enemy - the Soviet Union. After all, Churchill had been a vocal enough anti-communist. And once Hitler turned on his partner in crime, Stalin, and invaded the Soviet Union in June, 1941, there would be no more strength to spare for an attempt against Britain.

Answer 2

Hitler never invaded Germany.