19 APRIL 1957, Page 20

Fancy Dress Days

WE are all to some extent the victims of our own previous interests and experiences. It is no sur- prise, therefore, that we enjoy refighting old battles—it is also perhaps the reason why soldiers are apt to prepare for the last war but one. The charm of Peter Fleming's book is that it recalls five months in our national history, when we all lived as never before, and many of us as never again. Everyone over the age of twenty-five will have his particular memories of this fantastic period. This book recaptures them exactly, at any rate for me. Peter Fleming describes the period at the end of May as one of carefree improvisa- tion so far as conditions in this country were con- cerned. It was as though, he says, the whole country had been invited. to a fancy-dress ball and everybody was asking everybody else : `What are you going as?' It is fun to be told now what one's disguise finally looked like.

The book is a remarkable' blend of Strix-like fancy and serious historical writing. The deter- mination to be accurate and to treat seriously the main issues involved in the launching of Opera- tion `Sea Lion' has happily not interfered with the author's style or sense of the ridiculous; we get our full share of cracks at the pompous and the absurd. `It was; for example, widely believed that the best way to make petrol useless to the invader's vehicles was to put sugar in it. 'But in a village or a street where there was a filling station, who was responsible for' ordefing this to be done, and who for doing it? Who, on whose recommendation, would authorise the issue of a "supplementary" sugar ration for this purpose? And who would ensure that extra sugar so authorised was not used for normal gastronomic purposes? The defence of Britain bristled with similar dilemmas.'

The more serious sides of the story are equally well told. There is a detailed' and valuable com- parison of the cross-Channel intelligence available to the opposing commanders. On the British side it was unbelievably thin and unreliable. In mid-

August only five diviSions with a further three available from GHQ Reserve held the South Coast from Dover to CertiWall, while fifteen and a half divisions with' two more in reserve were allotted to the East Coast from Dover to Cromarty. No deployment could have been more wrong, for the `Sea Lion' plan visualised a first wave of nine divisions landing betWeen Folke- stone and Brighton. 'Yet,' 'pondered the Chiefs of

Staff on August l 3, 'we may seem, at presen1 to be slightly over-insured along the South Coast.' Only in early September did barge concentrations in the Channel ports make it clear that the South Coast was the front to be attacked, and force the Chiefs of Staff to alter their diagnosis.

If the information available to the British was meagre, that supplied by the Abweltr to OKW was equally erratic. The German commanders in the bridgeheads would have been surprised to meet in Kent a division they believed to be in Wales; in fact only one of the divisions in XII Corps, holding the south-eastern tip of England, was correctly identified and then it was located in the wrong place. More serious still : the Germans completely underestimated the speed with which the defenders might be expected to counter-attack any bridgehead they established. They based their• planning on the belief that it would take the British four days and nights to bring their reserves into action—slow going for even the heaviest of infantry, and evidence of strangely unrealistic and complacent thinking.

Did the Germans really mean it? After the war It became the fashion for German ex-generals to dismiss Operation 'Sea Lion' as a form of academic Kriegspiel. 'I was convinced at the time,' said Kesselring, then commander of Luliflotte 2, 'that the invasion would never be started.' Peter Fleming argues effectively to the contrary. He shows clearly that in July OKW regarded 'Sea Lion' as a capital plan; Brauchitsch and Raider for the army were keenly looking forward tO a 'war of movement on the island.' Only the realistic Raeder was playing for a draw, doing his best to convince Hitler and the soldiers that invasion was out of the question with the avail- able naval and shipping resources. But even he did not dare to be positive. He ended by recom- mending, Micawber-like, that 'the best time for the operation, all things considered, would be May, 1941.'

If, then, the Germans meant it seriously, had their plan any chance of success? It seems that their only chance was immediately after Dunkirk; Our Army existed at that time only in the form of a tired, shattered and temporarily incoherent BEF. A few half-trained and worse-equipped divisions could have moved by train to meet the invaders, but neither they nor the nation as a whole was yet psychologically ready to take on determined and professional opponents. Fortu- nately for us the chance was missed—Case Yellow had never visualised a cross-Channel follow-up. Not for the last time Hitler was the victim of his own ignorance and lack of forethought. By the time 'Sea Lion' was ready, the conditions for its successful launching no longer existed. Operation `Barbarossa' and the bunker in the Chancellery garden followed inevitably; the mills of a mis- taken strategy grind slowly but exceeding sure.

A. J. WILSON