Battle of Britain Quotes
Each day the German Airforce was sending air assaults over England. The English defenders were shooting down 2 Germans for every English plane lost. The British however were running out of pilots. Both sides were terribly weakened. However it was the Germans who cracked and called off the air assault prelude to the planned invasion of England.
He was announcing the fall of France, and the start of the Battle of Britain. And that was their finest hour.
Things were looking bleak for the British & they were dependent on material help from the U.S. to give them a chance. The British navy was one of the largest and most powerful in the world & this cable was a veiled threat that if U.S. military aid did not come, England could not defend the country in the air, Churchill might be kicked out of office & his successors surrender to Germany turning over the British fleet to Hitler giving Germany control of the seas & with their ally Japan a naval force stronger than America’s. Anglophiles would not describe it as a threat, but merely a statement of the reality of the time. Roosevelt’s Ambassador to Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy, a Nazi sympathizer & some American military officers were opposed to aid to Britain seeing it as a lost cause. Roosevelt, however, acting on his own marvelous instinct, his advice from Harry Hopkins, and his back-channel contacts in England, decided that if armed Britain could hold out. He turned out to be right.
De Gaulle was a very difficult ally. He was ashamed that so many of his countrymen collaborated with the German invaders including fighting against the allies and the collapse of the French Army which, although it was larger than the German invader, had exhibited much cowardice. His way of dealing with this shame was to exaggerate the positive role that the loyal French and the serious Free French Fighters and to deny the extent of the negative behavior. He was always demanding that the small Free French Army be included in all military operations, and when successful, they be given equal credit along with the British, Americans, and Russians even though the French only contributed a tiny proportion of the effort. De Gaull’s ego, personal and national was enormous and Churchill had just as great a national ego. Hence for De Gaulle, Churchill was a kind of enemy. The “Channel” referred to the English Channel.
