Great Britain Desultory, confused fighting would engage British forces on the periphery of Europe over the next five years It began with an expedition to Norway that quickly became a debacle as it ran into the simultaneous German invasion Failure among the fjords led to a crisis of confidence in the government, which forced Chamberlain to resign on May 10 He was replaced by Winston Churchill just as Panzers rolled into France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and in spite of the fact that Churchill was complicit in the military failure underway in Norway With Operation FALL GELB underway, the Phoney War was truly over and the British nation turned to the man who rang a clarion bell of warning about Hitler and Nazi Germany for the better part of 10 years Meanwhile, on the ground in Belgium and France matters went from bad to appalling The long-planned movement of the BEF and French mechanized forces into Belgium was initiated as German troops violated the Belgian frontier and the expected invitation to move arrived from Brussels Within days the move into Belgium led to catastrophe The Germans had settled on a different Schwerpunkt in the overall Allied position, attacking with the bulk of their armor through the Ardennes and thence across the Meuse, and more importantly, doing so far more swiftly than anyone on either side had anticipated The disaster along the Meuse was only partly salvaged by the bold evacuation of over 300,000 troops from Dunkirk By then the major fight Churchill called the “Battle of France” was already lost, decided well before the French government asked for and signed an armistice with Germany and France exited the war on June 22 What everyone called the Battle of Britain began almost immediately as Luftwaffe and Royal Air Force (RAF) fighters battled over the Channel through June and July The fight in the air was elevated to a new level with a massive German attack against southern England’s airfields in mid-August Still expecting invasion any morning, Britain shipped its gold reserves and foreign securities to Canada That ultimately signaled to the Empire, and to the government of the United States, a drear determination to fight on even if the island of Great Britain fell under the Nazi jackboot Britain avoided Hitler’s planned invasion—Operation SEELÖWE— through aerial victory over southern England and the Channel, and even more importantly because of the strength of the Royal Navy and its ability to intercept any invasion fleet Had the invasion been assayed, it is certain that scenes of spectacular and even suicidal RN defense would have been seen in and over the Channel Instead, Britain endured the Blitz, or bombing of its cities that was conducted by an ill-prepared German air force over the fall and winter of 1940–1941 When aircraft losses became intolerable, Hitler called off the fight and proposed invasion He turned instead to planning a great attack on the Soviet Union by which he hoped to deny Britain its last possible continental ally and force London’s acceptance of German hegemony in Europe For some time after that Hitler harbored a delusion that Britain might agree to a separate peace That thought, along with his overcommitment of limited air resources to war in the east, allowed Britain time to rearm and recover Thereafter, Great Britain served as a thousand-mile long platform for punishing Anglo-American air raids over Germany, and as the main staging ground for multiple breaches and invasions of Hitler’s vaunted but vulnerable Festung Europa 465