What was the Battle of Britain?
After his triumph in Europe, Hitler planned to invade Britain. First, he had to destroy the Royal Air Force to prevent it from bombing his invasion ships.
The German Luftwaffe, which was considered to be far superior to the RAF, set out to bomb the British airfields and shoot down their aircraft. The Battle of Britain began in July 1940 and continued for nearly four months. The Luftwaffe finally abandoned its attempts to defeat the RAF and the Germans realized that they had not been successful. The German aircraft had been flying too far from home and ran short of fuel, while the RAF fighters destroyed large numbers of the invading bombers. As a result, the invasion of Britain was abandoned and Hitler soon turned his attention to invading Russia.
What was the Blitz?
When the Germans realized that the British defences were too strong for their aircraft, they tried to destroy British industry. They hoped to damage the morale of the British population by night bombing of the cities. This period of bombing followed the Battle of Britain, and large areas in Britain’s industrial cities were devastated.
However, the bombing did not have the expected effect, because many factories had already moved to safer areas. The morale of the British people did not crack. Once the RAF had built up a stock of suitable heavy bombers they bombed cities up and down Germany at night, while the Americans bombed them during the day.
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