Battle of Britain map – public domain image (Wikipedia – “Battle of Britain”)
(4) ANGLO-GERMAN WAR
(1 SEPTEMBER 1939 – 8 MAY 1945)
This is the big one – the war everyone thinks or talks about for the Second World War, mostly because of the predominance of Anglophone history and popular culture
The war that started with the German invasion of Poland and Britain’s declaration of war on Germany to honor its guarantee to Poland, with a familiar narrative after that – Dunkirk and the fall of France, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, the war in the Mediterranean and Battle of El Alamein, and ultimately landings in north Africa, Italy, and France.
And yes – the Anglo-German war between Britain and Germany became what would more accurately be described as an Anglo-American war with Germany.
Even for the latter, however, the term Anglo-German war is apt as the Anglo prefix is as applicable to the United States as to Britain, whether in Anglophonic or Anglospheric terms (or both). Indeed, Hitler saw Germany’s ultimate contest for world power against the United States and its economic predominance – which he sought to offset by a Europe united under Germany and particularly by a German empire over the resources of the Soviet Union, with Russia in a similar role to Germany as India in the British Empire (at least as argued by historians such as Adam Tooze).
For that matter, that Anglo prefix is as applicable to the Dominions that were major combatants within the British Commonwealth – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and even South Africa.
However, one should not overlook that for a year of the Second World War, from June 1940 to June 1941, the Second World War was almost entirely an Anglo-German war, with Britain as the only major combatant opposed to Germany, albeit with its Dominions and the Commonwealth.
That was a war very different from what might be characterized as the Franco-German war in the First World War – where France held the line on the Western Front and consequently remained the primary or supreme Allied combatant on land. Of course, Britain and France had the same hope for the Second World War, but the Franco-German component of the war effectively ended with the fall of France, with the primary contest no longer between French and German armies as in the First World War.
Instead, Britain found itself engaged in a war in which it relied predominantly on sea power and airpower against a German army which had won predominance in continental Europe. Of course, Britain had traditionally relied on sea power, as it did in both world wars – adding airpower in the Second World War – and sought to rely on allies with larger forces on land to bring to bear against its opponents.
On the one hand, Germany lacked the sea power and airpower to be able to defeat Britain. It might be observed that all of its major opponents in the Second World War, Germany was only able to defeat France – Britain had too much sea power and airpower, the Soviet Union was too big, and the United States combined the worst of both those worlds along with oceanic distance.
On the other hand, Britain could not defeat or even challenge German predominance on land, even with those allies briefly conjured up on the continent, Greece and Yugoslavia.
As H.P. Willmott noted in The Great Crusade:
“At no point could she challenge Germany’s control of western Europe. Never in British history, not even at the height of British naval supremacy, had British sea power been able to challenge, let alone defeat, a great continental power, and by 1940 the superiority of overland communication meant that German military forces could be moved in greater numbers and more quickly that any British force that attempted to establish itself on the mainland. In addition, the reality of the situation was that British naval power in 1940 was barely able to ensure Britain against defeat by the strangulation of her trade”.
In a sense, this was the war that both Britain and Germany had anticipated in the contest between them, both politically before the war and in the war itself – in which Britain stood as the guardian of the world order and of its world empire or power, secured by victory in the First World War, which Germany sought to challenge.
In The Winds of War, American author Herman Wouk has his German military analyst von Roon evocatively label the war as the War of British Succession – Germany’s bid for world empire to succeed Britain’s falling one – although even von Roon ruefully notes that all it (and the Soviet war effort) achieved was to see one Anglo-Saxon world empire replaced by another.
In that, it was arguably already too late – with the contest between Britain and Germany just shadowboxing over an illusion of world power that had already been eclipsed by the two true world powers, and which would only endure until those two powers ended their isolationism (or had it ended for them) to step into the conflict.
Britain’s strategic hope ultimately relied on the substitution of another power for France as ally with large forces on land to bring to bear against Germany. That hope was understandably focused on the United States but ultimately Britain saw not only one but two powers in that role, eclipsing Britain itself in the war and in the world – firstly the Soviet Union on the eastern front and secondly the United States on the western front.
However, even then it took some time for the United States to eclipse Britain in its army and air force in the European theater – the former in terms of American divisions engaged in combat shortly after the Normandy landings – although the British navy remained predominant in the Atlantic.
Speaking of scale, while even the Anglo-American war against Germany remained secondary to the Nazi-Soviet by a substantial margin, at least on land, it was still of an impressive magnitude – with the invasion of Normandy remaining as the largest seaborne invasion in history.
And speaking of the Normandy invasion, the Anglo-American landings throughout the war remain impressive, not least as that superiority of overland communications for Germany remained a factor to be overcome throughout the war. It is impressive that the Anglo-American alliance pulled off successful major landings not just once but three times – not counting the various minor landings on or about the same time – in north Africa in 1942, in Italy in 1943 (both Sicily and the mainland), and most of all in France in 1944, with the Normandy landings a military feat unequalled then or since.
Once again, while not so much a war in its own right as the previous entries – at least after 1941 given it overlapped with (and relied) on the Nazi-Soviet war to engage the majority of the German army – it is a war that can be a subject all of itself, or indeed many subjects, including that or those of its own top ten list or lists.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)