Imagine, you're Adolf Hitler or Hermann Goering, the chief of Luftwaffe. How can you win the battle from Britain? How can you defeat Britain's Royal Air Force or Royal Navy? Britain made 800 Hurricane or Spitfire a month. German made about 200 Bf-109, Bf-110, Stukas, or Heinkel He 111. Britain has a longer rader range than the Germans has. But you're Hitler or Goering, tell us how can you defeat the RAF and Britain?

(I have nothing against Britain. It is just for fun, I hope.)

Stick to the plan, it was working. Hitlers decision to switch to bombing cities instead of continuing to bomb airfield and radar instilations.

Originally Posted by Fox

Imagine, you're Adolf Hitler or Hermann Goering, the chief of Luftwaffe. How can you win the battle from Britain? How can you defeat Britain's Royal Air Force or Royal Navy? Britain made 800 Hurricane or Spitfire a month. German made about 200 Bf-109, Bf-110, Stukas, or Heinkel He 111. Britain has a longer rader range than the Germans has. But you're Hitler or Goering, tell us how can you defeat the RAF and Britain?

(I have nothing against Britain. It is just for fun, I hope.)

Well first off as the man in charge I would have done all I could to boost German fighter production to replace losses and range so they could spend longer over Britain.

Secondly I would have drop kicked who ever was responsible for the decision that British radar was insignificant and concentrated on taking out radar and airfields and shipping in southern England and the channel (ie gain air superiority) where I would have a good chance at recovering any downed air crew as well as denying the return of British downed crew.

Thirdly I would have pushed the navy to do all possible to reduce convoys into England thus slowing up the English ability to replace losses.

I don't think Britain was in as much danger as expected due to the difficulties of an opposed landing and the losses the Kreigsmarine suffered in Norway. Surrounding the BEF in May 1940 combined with a political victory was the best chance.

A long term strategy attacking Britain's ports by air and convoys by sea followed by a landing in 1942 with Japanese technology and Naval matériel may have been successful. Delaying war with the US and the Soviets would have also been important in this case.

If I were Hitler I'd forget the Battle of Britain altogether. I should be aware that my Navy isn't up to the job in its current form as Grand Admiral Raedar has told me this on numerous occasions. So even if I can gain Air Superiority over the skies of Britain I really can't do all that much with it. I can't get my army and supplies across quickly enough and in sufficient numbers to make it practical.

I would concentrate on disrupting British supply lines instead as these are the things that can bring Britain, an island nation, to its knees. I'd use my fighters for defence of naval bombers, to provide air superiority for the Reich and to have bigger reserves available for more important things looming on the horizon. Like Napoleon before me I will discover that there's only one way to turn.

Russia awaits..

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

If I were Hitler I'd forget the Battle of Britain altogether. I should be aware that my Navy isn't up to the job in its current form as Grand Admiral Raedar has told me this on numerous occasions. So even if I can gain Air Superiority over the skies of Britain I really can't do all that much with it. I can't get my army and supplies across quickly enough and in sufficient numbers to make it practical.

I would concentrate on disrupting British supply lines instead as these are the things that can bring Britain, an island nation, to its knees. I'd use my fighters for defence of naval bombers, to provide air superiority for the Reich and to have bigger reserves available for more important things looming on the horizon. Like Napoleon before me I will discover that there's only one way to turn.

Russia awaits..

Russia was never going to be a successful campaign until Britain was out of the war as Hitler was always going to station large numbers of his assets on the western front to prevent british intervention.

When it comes down to it the germans best chance was to have crossed the channel on the heals of the Dunkirk evacuation (if not during the evacuation) and perhaps sacrificed their navy to do so.

I believe given that Britain was still in the war and he still had to deal with the balkans and Greece the germans perhaps should have completed these campaigns and then waited until the following year to attack Russia (although this in itself would have been a problem) that way they could have replaced BoB and balkan losses and not lost the time invested, perhaps then they could have reached beyond Moscow before the first winter and if Stalin was as good as his word he would been lost in the battle of Moscow and I believe the Russians would have sort peace.

As I have said before I believe the failed Italian campaigns cost germany the war.

Originally Posted by perseus

I don't think Britain was in as much danger as expected due to the difficulties of an opposed landing and the losses the Kreigsmarine suffered in Norway. Surrounding the BEF in May 1940 combined with a political victory was the best chance...A long term strategy attacking Britain's ports by air and convoys by sea followed by a landing in 1942 with Japanese technology and Naval matériel may have been successful. Delaying war with the US and the Soviets would have also been important in this case.

I agree. Britain was not in any danger at all. The German military was not constructed with any significant naval operations in mind. The surface fleet was a product of effective lobbying by the ship-builders and conservatives. It hardly existed. The u-boat arm was farcical by any stretch of the imagination. Nor was the Luftwaffe built to conduct either strategic bombing operations or even take on the British fighter arm. Britain had the edge in all of these areas. Britain's navy was far larger, they had more submarines, had already designed and built far better bombers, and were already outproducing Germany in terms of fighters by 1940. Churchill needed a lot of imagination (and booze) to see a German threat during the 1930s. "Sea Lion" was only an academic exercise for the general staff. Perseus is right. Peace was not only Hitler's only hope...it was what he wanted.

Delaying war with the US or USSR was however unthinkable. America first. Roosevelt was supplying Britain with the means to fight a strategic bombing campaign against Germany. Even if Hitler had held back the ground forces against Russia and allowed Japan and the US to fight it out, this air war would have dragged on for a decade and economically ruined both Germany and Britain. It was better to declare war on the US. The German declaration of war (1) permitted full-scale attacks on US shipping, (2) absorbed American industrial potential because the US was forced to mobilize for two fronts, and (3) Hitler believed that the Japanese would represent the main American target.

Russia second. Hitler knew that time worked against German industry. Germany could not fight a war or even survive economically without more resources. The minor war with Britain ate up important resources and constricted German growth. The US was emerging as the global superpower and Hitler (and most everyone else) understood the implications. Some quotes from Hitler's second book suggest that Hitler (1) understood the rise of the US, (2) believed that only Germany could counter this threat to European interests, and (3) that Russia (Slavs) would have to pay the price. Germany needed resources in order to block the US from global hegemony.

1. "The German Folk's prospects are hopeless. Neither the present living space, nor that achieved by a restoration of the borders of 1914, will allow us to lead a life analogous to that of the American Folk. If we want this, either our Folk's territory must be considerably enlarged, or the German economy will again have to embark on paths already known to us since the pre War period. Power is necessary in both cases. Specifically, first of all, in the sense of a restoration of our Folk's inner strength, and then in a military mounting of this strength".

2. "The size and the wealth of her domestic market permits production figures and thereby production equipment which so reduce manufacturing costs that, despite enormous wages, it no longer seems possible to undercut her prices. Here the development of the automobile industry may be considered as a warning example. Not only because we Germans, for instance, despite our laughable wages, are not in a position, even only to a degree, to export successfully against American competition, but we must also look on as American cars spread alarmingly even to our own country. This is possible only because the size of her domestic market, her wealth in purchasing power and also in raw materials, guarantees the American automobile industry domestic sales figures which alone make possible manufacturing methods which in Europe would be impossible in consequence of the lack of these domestic sales potentials. The consequence of this is the enormous export possibilities of the American automobile industry. Thus here it is a question of the general motorising of the world that is a matter of incommensurable importance for the future. For the replacement of human and animal power by motors is only at the beginning of its development, whose end cannot at all be foreseen today. At any rate, for the American Union, the modern automobile industry is on the whole at the forefront of all other industries...Thus in many other areas, our continent will increasingly appear as an economic factor, in an aggressive form, and thereby help to sharpen the struggle for the sales market. From an examination of all factors, especially in view of the limitation of our own raw materials and the ensuing threatening dependence on other countries, Germany's future perforce appears very gloomy and sad".

http://www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/books/zweites/zweites.htm

I think we have gone off track here a bit, while I have no doubt that few if any people believe Germany could ever have won WW2 the question was "How as the leader of Germany or the Luftwaffe" you would have gone about winning the Battle of Britain.

I wouldn't have wasted the resources. It was futile anyway.

Now you quote the number of fighter planes that Britain was building per month, yes fine the problem was training that number of pilots per month to fly them. Also you mentioned about the German output of aircraft but what you failed to mention was the thousands of them that they already had in service and the trained people to fly them. When the BoB stated we only had a few hundred planes to cover the whole of the British Isle yet the Germans could muster them in their thousands to send in from any direction they wanted to. Had Germany concentrated it's efforts on the Airfields and radar in the south east of England from the time they had taken France and then launched an invasion there was strong chance it could have succeeded. Instead they took a few months off while they enjoy the fruits of their victory which gave Britain a chance to organise it's ground defences along with it's air defences, but any one that thinks it was push over was not around at the time.