Book Four: War: Early Victories and the Turning Point
- At first, Hitler's top Army, Navy, and Air Force brass weren't entirely convinced that any of the plans for invading Britain—"Operation Sea Lion"—would actually be carried out; some of them even claimed later that they had seen the strategizing just as a kind of game.
- But all the captured German records show that Hitler was deadly serious about it, and planned to invade if there was any possibility of success.
- He decided that the Luftwaffe would be given an opportunity to damage Britain's defenses as much as possible before final plans for the invasion were set.
- The early Luftwaffe bombings of London were some of the most devastating air attacks ever rained down on a city.
- Shirer provides a detailed account of the Nazis' attempts to weaken Britain's defenses, and also explains the countermeasures that the British Army, Navy, and Royal Air Force were taking to weaken Germany's armed forces.
- By the middle of October 1940, Hitler had decided to postpone Operation Sea Lion indefinitely. Two things caused Hitler to abandon the plan: the air component of the Battle of Britain was failing because of the success of the Royal Air Force; and Hitler was turning his sights eastward to Russia.
The Battle of Britain
- The Battle of Britain isn't just the favorite Holosuite program of Starfleet officers Julian Bashir and Miles O'Brien; it's the subject of one of the most rousing sections in Shirer's book.
- In this section, Shirer offers a detailed account of the prolonged air battle between the German Luftwaffe and the British Royal Air Force, and he compares the respective strengths and weaknesses of the two nations' fleets.
- A brand-new technology helped the British in winning the Battle of Britain: radar.
- German pilots were surprised to see British planes appear as soon as they entered British airspace. It was as if they knew they were coming.
If the Invasion Had Succeeded
- In this section, Shirer indulges himself in another one of his speculative moods.
- Drawing on the captured Nazi documents that inform so much of TRFTR, he explains what a Nazi occupation of Britain would have looked like. All the government officials would have been arrested by the Gestapo, and Churchill would have received "special" treatment.
- The British were prepared to go to any lengths to resist Nazi occupation—including using mustard gas if they had to.
Postscript: The Nazi Plot to Kidnap the Duke and Duchess of Windsor
- One of the more ridiculous plans that the Nazis cooked up during their thwarted invasion of Britain was a scheme to kidnap the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
- The Duke of Windsor had recently been King Edward VIII, but he'd abdicated in order to marry an American woman, and been replaced by his brother, King George VI. If you've seen The King's Speech, you'll know the score.
- The Nazis' basic plan was to kidnap the Duke and Duchess and persuade the Duke to work on a peace agreement between Hitler and Great Britain.
- The Duke was suspected to have Nazi sympathies, but it was still a crackpot idea and it didn't work.
- The Duke and his wife sailed to the British colony of the Bahamas, where he'd been appointed Governor.