Richard Overy: The Battle of Britain 70 Years On
[Richard Overy is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He is the author of more than 20 books on the second world war, the history of air power and the European dictatorships. His most recent include The Morbid Age: Britain between the Wars (2009) and 1939: Countdown to War (2009). He is also the author of The Battle of Britain Experience (2010) sponsored by the RAF. In 2010 he was presented with the James Doolittle Award for his contribution to aviation history.]
...Seventy years after the event, the Battle of Britain is real history for the majority of the British people. The number of veterans who fought in the Battle has shrunk to two dozen, and the number of Spitfires and Hurricanes still flying is little more. The planes can be seen in flight at air shows at Duxford or Biggin Hill, famous fighter stations during the Battle, and almost all that is physically left of the battlefield.
The memorabilia of the Battle have become a feature of museum exhibitions; it has become an event that seems in some ways as distant as the Somme or Waterloo. Yet it is at the same time alive in the public memory in a way that no other event of the second world war has been kept alive.
The Battle of Britain has become mythologised in the image of a defiant Churchill leading a united people against an overwhelming enemy and triumphing against the odds. Over the past 20 years memorials to the 'few' who flew the fighter aircraft during the Battle – a total of 544 of whom died – have been erected long after the event....
Why has the myth of the Battle of Britain remained so strong in British culture? It must partly be explained by the fact that this was an acute moment in Europe’s recent history, when Hitler’s Germany seemed poised to achieve a permanent domination of the continent, with all that represented for the future of the races and political groups that the German conquerors were determined to eradicate.
For many British people it seemed that civilisation itself was in the balance during that dangerous summer. This may now seem a rather theatrical reaction, but at the time the danger seemed immense and Churchill articulated what many felt about the weighty responsibility on Britain to keep alive the prospect of resistance.
It will never be known what might have happened if Britain had decided to seek an armistice in 1940 like the French, but it would certainly have created a situation in which the eventual intervention of the United States would have been made less likely and more difficult, while a Germany free to engage in just a one-front war against Stalin’s Soviet Union might have emerged the victor.
There is in the surviving memory of the Battle a proper sense that something decisive was done by defying Hitler.
A second factor lies in the enduring romance of the David and Goliath view of the Battle of Britain. Preventing German invasion did not win the war. At the end of the Battle Hitler’s armies still dominated much of Europe, and were poised to dominate more.
But the contest between the two air forces can be extracted from the reality of the rest of the war and be presented in its own terms, the 'few' bravely defying the many. Historians have now shown that this is partly illusion. German losses of men and aircraft were not easily replaced and Britain had more fighter aircraft and more fighter pilots than the Germans over most of the Battle....
Over the following 18 months, in Greece, Crete, Singapore, Burma, the North African desert, Britain faced one humiliation after another. It is indeed a fortunate fact that the one thing Britain’s war effort got right in the early years of the war was the air defence of southern Britain.
It resonates today as a beacon in an otherwise undistinguished story.
Read entire article at Channel4
...Seventy years after the event, the Battle of Britain is real history for the majority of the British people. The number of veterans who fought in the Battle has shrunk to two dozen, and the number of Spitfires and Hurricanes still flying is little more. The planes can be seen in flight at air shows at Duxford or Biggin Hill, famous fighter stations during the Battle, and almost all that is physically left of the battlefield.
The memorabilia of the Battle have become a feature of museum exhibitions; it has become an event that seems in some ways as distant as the Somme or Waterloo. Yet it is at the same time alive in the public memory in a way that no other event of the second world war has been kept alive.
The Battle of Britain has become mythologised in the image of a defiant Churchill leading a united people against an overwhelming enemy and triumphing against the odds. Over the past 20 years memorials to the 'few' who flew the fighter aircraft during the Battle – a total of 544 of whom died – have been erected long after the event....
Why has the myth of the Battle of Britain remained so strong in British culture? It must partly be explained by the fact that this was an acute moment in Europe’s recent history, when Hitler’s Germany seemed poised to achieve a permanent domination of the continent, with all that represented for the future of the races and political groups that the German conquerors were determined to eradicate.
For many British people it seemed that civilisation itself was in the balance during that dangerous summer. This may now seem a rather theatrical reaction, but at the time the danger seemed immense and Churchill articulated what many felt about the weighty responsibility on Britain to keep alive the prospect of resistance.
It will never be known what might have happened if Britain had decided to seek an armistice in 1940 like the French, but it would certainly have created a situation in which the eventual intervention of the United States would have been made less likely and more difficult, while a Germany free to engage in just a one-front war against Stalin’s Soviet Union might have emerged the victor.
There is in the surviving memory of the Battle a proper sense that something decisive was done by defying Hitler.
A second factor lies in the enduring romance of the David and Goliath view of the Battle of Britain. Preventing German invasion did not win the war. At the end of the Battle Hitler’s armies still dominated much of Europe, and were poised to dominate more.
But the contest between the two air forces can be extracted from the reality of the rest of the war and be presented in its own terms, the 'few' bravely defying the many. Historians have now shown that this is partly illusion. German losses of men and aircraft were not easily replaced and Britain had more fighter aircraft and more fighter pilots than the Germans over most of the Battle....
Over the following 18 months, in Greece, Crete, Singapore, Burma, the North African desert, Britain faced one humiliation after another. It is indeed a fortunate fact that the one thing Britain’s war effort got right in the early years of the war was the air defence of southern Britain.
It resonates today as a beacon in an otherwise undistinguished story.