The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain

"I think so. Stephen Bungay was originally a scholar of German literature, so he’s got very good German. He then became a management consultant and currently runs the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre in North London. So he’s not a professional historian. Bungay wrote a book on Alamein , which is very good, but I happen to prefer this book, on the Battle of Britain. What makes it stand out is that it’s very well researched. It’s very good on the German sources. But it has a central dramatic idea which helps us to understand World War II. “It’s very hard to convince many people that the British were actually very good at fighting.” Bungay argues that if you look at the RAF and the Luftwaffe, they actually behave in diametrically opposed ways to what racial stereotypes would make you think. If you take the RAF in 1940, they had a culture of insubordination. It was all about hopscotch to your aircraft, take your dog up in your Spit, do barrel rolls over the CO’s mess. They really are an undisciplined bunch—on the ground and off duty. But, Bungay says, when they take off they have fantastic flight discipline. When they’re in the air, it’s all about hierarchy, obeying orders, doing the right thing. In other words, they are a highly professional air fighting force. On the other side, when you look at the Germans on the ground, it’s all about discipline. It’s about parades, it’s swearing fealty to the Führer and Goering and their commanders, it’s all about how wonderful they are because they have true, Teutonic discipline. But as soon as they take off, they’re an absolute nightmare because they’re a bunch of prima donnas. In particular, they want to be aces. And so, they’re always cutting each other up in the air, not obeying orders, goofing off because they think they’ve got a chance of a high-profile kill rather than doing their job—which is protecting bombers. So, the Luftwaffe comes over Britain in the Battle of Britain and the first thing that happens is that the fighters peel off because they want to be in air-to-air combat, they want to be knights of the air. Whereas the RAF are desperately trying not to fight the fighters, they’re trying to get at the bombers. They have a clear vision about how to win. That’s why he calls it The Most Dangerous Enemy —because it’s about how the Germans were taken in by British amateurism. They looked amateur but the Germans didn’t realise until it was too late that they were utterly professional. Yes. Essentially, the Germans put their heads in the lion’s mouth. They thought they were going to roll over these degenerate, democratic powers. And they do roll over France, the Low Countries and the Nordic countries. But there’s something different about the British. Bungay locates it in a number of places—in the British economy, in British institutions and also in hidden bits of the British character. “The Battle of Britain is an amazing story of villainy, heroism, high tech, beautiful women, handsome men, silk scarves and beautiful summer weather.” In a way, it’s the start of a series of counterblasts to what is still going on today—and that Young was part of the beginning of—this idea of the German superman in World War II. They lose in the end, but their generals are so much better, their aircraft are so much better, their tanks are so much better. If you read any popular military history, you’ll still get that—how awesome the Germans were. Well, they weren’t. Bungay is writing popular military history and showing, essentially, what a bunch of dolts they were and how they got their rich deserts. It’s an uphill battle because many, including myself, try to say this but you’re pushing against the weight of popular culture that admires the Germans. It is so strong that it’s very hard to convince many people that the British were actually very good at fighting. Of course, there were massive setbacks and, as a democracy, it took a while to get going because they weren’t very well prepared. World War II has created many things, but one of the most notable is an unending stream of cliché. You can make your career just trying—in a labours of Sisyphus sort of way—to push back against the clichés. So it’s always fantastic when you see someone who is not an academic doing it—writing it so beautifully and getting it. It’s a cracking story, as well. The Battle of Britain is an amazing story of villainy, heroism, high tech, beautiful women, handsome men, silk scarves and beautiful summer weather. What more do you want? They didn’t start off with that but they switched to that later in the campaign, for various reasons. They started off with attacks on airfields. Essentially, they were trying to clear the way for an invasion. They want to prevent the Royal Navy and the RAF being in shape to prevent an invasion, so they’re initially going after the fighting forces. The European countries really do go over like a pack of cards. The Netherlands holds out for less than a week. But let’s be absolutely clear: it is the British who really bring the idea of destroying cities into the world of practicality. They are utterly ruthless. Bungay doesn’t need to go into this, because he is writing about 1940-1, but it’s something one should never forget—that it’s the RAF which, later in the war, laid waste to German cities very successfully. It’s a very brutal but, as it happens, very effective way of fighting a war. There’s no doubt that Churchill was an exceptional leader but that doesn’t mean he was always right. Nobody is always right. Churchill comes out of El Alamein spectacularly well because he gets in first: first speaking and then writing the version he wants. Essentially, the British Armed Forces are dolts, Churchill is a genius, and finally he cracks it and he gets the people he needs who can win the war. The other thing to note is that although Churchill himself comes out of it very well, Alamein doesn’t, because, almost immediately after it’s fought, Churchill deliberately downplays it. The reason he does that is that, for political reasons, he wants to concentrate on Operation Torch—which is the Anglo-American invasion of Northwest Africa. That happens four days after the victory at Alamein is sealed. He also wants to concentrate on what’s going on on the Eastern front and to big up the Russians. So he wants to big up the Russians and Americans in order to make the coalition, which is fighting the Axis, work better. And, therefore, he is willing to sacrifice the reputation of the great British victory in order to do that. And he does it pretty ruthlessly. He gives two great so-called ‘victory’ speeches on El Alamein, one at the Mansion House, on 10 November, and one to the House of Commons, on 11 November. In virtually any hostile popular history, these will be the starting point of Britain overplaying the importance of Alamein and how great a victory it was. The speeches are topped and tailed with nice sentiments. But, if you actually read them, they are pretty dismissive. He says, ‘It’s a consolatory win; we should have won long ago but now we’ve won. Alamein will help the much greater Anglo-American endeavour in Northwest Africa. We must recognise that the bulk of the land fighting is going on on the Eastern front.’ These are the things that Churchill actually says. But when people start off with Churchill speaking, they always start off with him saying ‘this is the greatest victory ever.’ They quote, ‘this is the end of the beginning,’ which is his opening gambit. But that’s not really what he’s saying and it’s not really what he’s trying to get across to the audience. He’s trying to get across how great he is—not how great the generals who had just won at El Alamein are. Although there’s a lot of revisionism about El Alamein, there’s not actually any orthodoxy. The revisionists tend to be trying to revise something which isn’t based on the reality of what people said. That’s the space of the professional historian, because the professional historian cares about the detail: what people actually said and how it’s put together. We have the drafts of Churchill’s speeches, we can see how he actually put the story together and built it in the days after Alamein. You can unpick this and understand what he’s doing, rather than falling into the World War II production-of-clichés factory."