Winston Churchill wouldn’t budge, so Adolf Hitler ordered an air attack on Britain. Initially, the goal was to defeat the RAF and claim air supremacy over England, as a prelude to invasion.
The Luftwaffe found it was unable to defeat the RAF, so it switched to bombing factories which, given the poor accuracy inherent in dropping bombs from miles in the sky, was effectively attacking civilian homes.
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Fanfare
Opening War Theme
Parsifal
Composed in 1882 by Richard Wagner. Public domain.
Performed by Shelley Katz. Public domain recording. Source.
Closing War Theme
Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.
Stephen Baxter’s _Weaver_ (2008) has a different take on a (partly) successful Nazi invasion of Britain. The Dunkirk evacuation is largely unsuccessful, so Sea Lion is initially successful. However, the Nazis manage to occupy southeastern England only, because Churchill persuades FDR to station US soldiers along the northern edge of the occupation zone–and Hitler still wants to avoid a direct confrontation with the US. The Axis also still ultimately loses, because the Americans do become directly involved, but there are lots of plot twists getting to that point. Baxter has said that he wanted to show what part of Britain might have been like under Nazi occupation like Vichy France.
For those who are interested, the 1969 movie The Battle of Britain is currently availiable on Amazon Prime