The German Question, Part One Hundred Forty-One

"Hitler Rules Germany" Part Two/C
"Germany In World War Two" Part Two/C
"Britain Holds Out In Their Finest Hour"

The German victory over France was cause for celebration throughout Germany, especially in Berlin, where a huge victory parade, the highlight of which was Hitler's motorcade, ended with massive crowds cheering Hitler and other Nazi leaders at the Reich's Chancellery. To Germans, the shame of defeat in World War One and the postwar treaty had now been erased. Many Germans, it seems, thought the war would soon be over, once the "English"* saw the hopelessness of their military situation. There was, however, one problem. The "English," now led by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, did not see their situation as hopeless. The British people rallied to the cause and prepared to defend their homeland against an expected German invasion.

Hitler planned an invasion,** but as a preface, he needed the Luftwaffe to rule the skies over the island fortress. In the summer of 1940, masses of German planes began an intensive bombing campaign against British airbases and aircraft production plants, mainly in the southern part of England, the obvious landing area for any German invasion force. British fighter planes rose to meet the German air onslaught, inflicting heavy losses on German aircraft and aircrews. The Germans then began massive bombing attacks on cities, against infrastructure and military targets, but also to some degree against civilian areas.***

The British also managed some of their own bomber attacks on Germany during this period, including on Berlin. The attacks on Berlin so incensed Hitler, he changed course, some historians believe, "fatally," choosing to concentrate German air attacks on London, rather than on British airbases and other military targets. German fighter planes, mainly the famous "Messerschmitt," did not have enough fuel capacity to remain in battle over the skies of London for the duration of bombing raids, leaving the slow moving German bomber force vulnerable to British fighter planes, like the famous "Spitfires." German aircraft losses mounted, but not only that, by flying over British territory, when German pilots parachuted from damaged planes, they were then captured and interned in POW camps. A shortage of adequately trained pilots began to become a problem for the Luftwaffe. By October 1940, Hitler "postponed" the invasion of England until the next year. For the first time, Hitler had been stopped! British morale soared as people began to believe that Hitler could be defeated. Meanwhile, off in the desert of North Africa....

* There is a "tendency" for Germans to use "English" when they mean "British," just as "some" Americans use "British" when they mean "English." One time when I was in Frankfurt, Germany, a German guy called Guinness Stout, "Englishes Bier;" that is, "English beer." Luckily, no Irishman was present, or he would have either fainted or suffered a fatal heart attack; more than likely, the latter.

** Whether Hitler ever truly had the physical means; that is, the transport vessels, to launch an invasion of southern England has been a matter of debate among historians. Further, Hitler saw things so much in "blood" terms; that is, "ethnic" and "racial" terms, that some argue he never really wanted to destroy England, a country founded by "Germanic tribes," the Anglo-Saxons, and he did seem to admire the English quite a lot.

*** The idea was to break the morale of the civilian population and thus force the British government to make peace. Of course, it did NOT work, nor did the Allied attacks against German civilians at that time, or later, when such attacks intensified.

WORD HISTORY:
Set (Sect)-noun-meaning "collection, group" or "collection of items," like "set of dishware" or "set of tools." It is closely related to "sect," a Latin-derived word borrowed by English most likely from French, but with Latin also being a possible candidate. The noun "set" goes back to Indo European "sekw" or "seqw," with the general notion of "to follow." This gave its Latin offspring "sequor," and the derived "sequi," with the same "follow" meaning, extended as "come after, come one after the other." This then produced Latin "secta," which meant "sequence of thoughts or beliefs," which then came to be associated with religious beliefs, as a "group of followers of particular beliefs, a religious faction." This was inherited by Old French, a Latin-based language, as "secte," and derived from that was the Old French "sette," or "group of followers, sequence of items." This was borrowed into English in the 1500s from French as "sette," but it wasn't long before the modern spelling, "set," took hold.