The Battle of Britain: The Myth and the Reality

by Richard Overy

Book Overview

June 1940: France has fallen to German forces in a mere six weeks, joining eight other European states in German occupation. British forces have suffered severe losses in the defeat. Hitler is confident of reaching a political settlement that will end hostilities with Britain. There is sentiment for peace with Hitler among the British leadership, but Churchill and his supporters have no intention of surrender. In July Hitler orders his armed forces...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393020088
• ISBN13: 9780393020083
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 177 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Lucid and succinct account of this battle

Richard Overy is a very clear thinkng and well organized writer. This book is easy to read. It explains many of the tensions among british commanders about organizing the defense. Most of the battle took place over south eastern England. All the sector commanders wanted a full complement of fighters and pilots. British aircraft were being built rapidly and reserves were available. The notion that Britain was down to a handful of pilots was untrue. The Nazis ran low on aircraft and pilots. Hitler had other projects in mind and didn't stick with the strategy of destroying the RAF.

Five stars are not enough!

This is the first book by Ricard Overy I read and I was really impressed! If you belong to the kind of people that are looking for small books full of excellent analysis and myth debunking facts, then this is one of the best choices you can make. I have read quite a number of books on the Battle of Britain but I can recall none which has the same clarity of arguments, strong background on knowledge and superb writing style. Many of the facts you think you knew about this episode of World War II will be proved wrong and you will find another proof that History is not black or white but moves among endless shades of grey. Very highly recommended!

The Battle of Britain -- from myth to reality

Anyone interested in the Battle of Britain in the summer and fall of 1940 should start with this book, probably the best concise analysis of an event that ranks high in legend but low in real meaning. It would be nice if all history could be introduced in this short but beautiful manner. Only a master of a subject knows enough about it to be concise and relevant, and Overy has studiously earned his credentials. Without slighting events or participants, he explains how the "Battle" was more of a public relations triumph than a decisive victory. In 1940, the focus was on surviving the "Blitz" which claimed the lives of 40,000 Londoners, not "the few" who fought in the air and lost 443 pilots in combat. Unfortunately, he overlooks two significant factors. First was Dunkirk; the RAF lost heavily but the Luftwaffe was unable to stop the evacuation. The RAF fighters were operating at the limits of its effective range, the same problem that defeated the Luftwaffe over England. Also, the evacuation showed the inherent weakness of the Luftwaffe as a stand-alone weapon. The second factor is the 1941 nvasion of Crete, with the loss of 147 Ju 52 transports and severe damage to 150 others despite minimal RAF opposition. It indicates the likely fate of any attempt to invade England. In brief, if the Battle of Britain is a legend, then the German military in World War II was a giant bluff backed by terror and uncertainty. As Overy points out in his other books, the Germany military was driven to exhaustion after which it used a World War I defense. Victories were less the quality of troops than the panic of enemies; Overy deals well with the incipient panic in Britain in the summer of 1940, plus the growing confidence as the "We can take it" theme turned into "We can dish it out, too." In brief, this is a masterful account of an era still deeply shrouded by the fog of propaganda and the legends of war. To cite one very relevant example; to this day, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is vilified by the legend of appeasement due to the Munich conference of 1938. Instead, Overy credits him for launching the fighter production program that saved Great Britain from defeat in World War II. In conclusion, this is the best introduction yet to a complex but fascinating period of history. It's a perfect start to Overy's other books on World War II.

Short, sweet and to the point.

Richard Overy's "The Battle of Britain: The Myth and the Reality" is a truly outstanding and supremely laconic volume. In a mere 177 pages, Overy examines the image of the Battle of Britain as it has been passed down to us today and compares that image to long-available, but commonly widely-scattered facts.One of Overy's major points centers on the perception of the battle and British public reaction to it. We have been handed down an image of a unified, defiant Britain standing firm before the onslaught. Overy reveals a divided, in some senses baffled and relatively numb British public which gave its Government cause for concern (and not a few flights of irrational fancy).Of Churchill's famous speech about "The Few" Overy points out the reference was a small and offhand portion of a speech largely devoted to other matters which was not regarded as one of Churchill's better oratories at the time.Overy also shows how selection of the parameters of the battle in terms of time and geography distort historical perception to reinforce the myth of Fighter Command being severely outnumbered. He shows the British and German single-engine fighter counts (twin-engine fighters having been rapidly proven outclassed and irrelevant to the air superiority battle) started roughly even and subsequently diverged steadily in favor of the British.Overy illustrates "The Few" were not so few in comparison to their equally few German opponents, and that the numbers of the British "Few" steadily rose through the battle, while those of the Luftwaffe steadily fell.The idea that Fighter Command was nearly knocked about by attacks on its bases, is dispelled by the revelation of just how few British aircraft were destroyed on the ground, how light casualties on the ground were, and how quickly fields were restored to operation. Overy also reveals that the hardest hit bases were actually forward bases to support the Battle of France, not bases integral to Fighter Command's Air Defense of Great Britain.Overy also acknowledges the role of ULTRA in the Battle of Britain alongside that of radar, the Observer Corps and radio listening posts in the background of which it is often lost.As for the role of the battle in preventing an invasion (Operation Sea Lion) Overy raises the important point that even had the Luftwaffe forced Fighter Command back from SE England, it lacked the range to keep pushing it back or to stop the Royal Navy from fatally interfering with any landing attempt. Too many analyses of Sea Lion assume control of the air meant ipso facto control of the sea and forget that control of the air was merely a prelude to contesting control of the sea by air or surface forces. The Luftwaffe's ability to stop a Royal Navy intervention against a German cross-Channel landing attempt was by no means certain, particularly after failing to stop the more-vulnerable Dunkirk exodus.Overy's book is a quick, five-star, one-afternoon primer for serious students of the Battle o

Terrific Exploration of The History of TheBattle Of Britain

One of the most controversial and yet simply disarming facts about the short-lived but furiously fought air battle over the skies of England in the summer and early fall of 1940 , according to famed British historian Richard Overy in this diverting and captivating study of the now-fabled Battle Of Britain is that it was in reality not so much the marvelous and unequivocal victory as it is now regarded much as it was a stalemate. A wondrous, unlikely and fateful stalemate, to be sure, one on which the future of the so-called free world hung in the balance, but in reality it was also much more a war of perceptions and brinksmanship than has been commonly acknowledged or understood. In matter of fact, according to Overy, the air battle over Britain was never likely to have been followed by a Nazi invasion force, for the German forces lacked all the necessary marine transportation and logistics support to prosecute such an attempt to invade Britain. As William Shirer pointed out long ago in "The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich", Hitler never had much stomach for a cross-channel invasion, and the German General Staff never ordered all the necessary shipbuilding needed to mount a serious invasion attempt. In addition, the forces of the British realm were never so badly outnumbered as was previously believed, and the Royal Air Force (RAF) in fact had superior fighters and better logistics support that did their German opponents, not to mention the limited battle time for German pilots who had to ferry themselves back over the channel after doing battle, which provided the RAF with a key tactical advantage.Yet Overy's purpose here is clearly not intended to denigrate or downplay the outright heroism, courage, and sacrifice of the RAF in its service to the English people over the skies of Britain that fateful year, but rather to celebrate the actual, fact-based history of those fateful events. Here in the Battle of Britain we find the first signs that the famed "unstoppable" Nazi juggernaut was not infallible, that it could be met on its own terms and defeated, plane by plane, raid by raid, and campaign by campaign, and denied its aggressive objectives by a determined and resourceful opponent. Also, by denying the Nazis the complete victory over its western European rivals it desired, the British forced Hitler into making a fatal blunder by opening up a two-front war with the invasion of the Soviet Union the next spring, forcing him to leave millions of troops along the western wall he could have otherwise used against the Russians in Operation Barbarossa. Also, as Overy illustrates so convincingly, the British actions in the skies over their homeland convinced many in the American Government to take up Britain's cause, and this too had fateful consequences for the eventual outcome of the war. Finally, he argues that the consequences of turning back the attempts by the Nazis to gain air superiority over the skies of Britain galvanized and energized t