During the long, hot summer of 1940, over the wheat fields and orchards of Kent and Sussex, strategic theory encountered logistical and organizational reality. It was not just the emotion-charged images -- of aircraft's vapor trails entangled across a clear blue sky, of St. Paul's Cathedral standing out above the flames, of Churchill visiting the bombed-out houses of Londoners -- that counted. The struggle also consolidated the resolve of the British to soldier on, and had enormous effects upon foreign opinion abroad, especially in neutral America. Strategically, it was also the first time the Nazi juggernaut had been checked.
Paul Kennedy,Engineers of Victory
Related:
Six weeks that saved the world
The forgotten man who saved the world
Field Marshal Dowding's verdict on the Battle of Britain
3 comments:
Can you tell me which of Williamson Murray's books that statement about Dowding's work as "the only clear-cut case of revolutionary innovation in the twentieth century" came from? thanks!
"Military Innovation in the Interwar Period"
Highly recommended.
Thanks!
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