I mind to audio books while I am driving (as tenacious as I am the sole one in the car) and when I am working outside.The scripture I am listening to now, admittedly for the 3rd time, is The Second World War by Winston Churchill.The teller of the serial is a dead ringer from Winston Churchill, so it brings an extra sum of realism to the account.
he share I was listening to a pair of years ago made me think nearly the grandness of collaboration in endeavors when there are multiple organizations involved.In this special case, Churchill was talking about Operation Sea Lion, the planned German invasion of the United Kingdom in fall 1940.
Those of you with still a casual familiarity with WWII history are no doubt saying, "Hold on, Germany never invaded the United Kingdom." And you would be correct.The reasons why the Germans did not invade, at least as Churchill tells it, provides an excellent illustration of how want of collaboration in preparation and preparing for an endeavor, project, or invasion, can contribute to failure.
In this case, Hitler ordered the German high command to make an intrusion of the United Kingdom for September 1940.Invading the United Kingdom was a little more complicated than invading France - there was that small thing called the English Channel that Germany would take to sweep in place to bring troops and supplies on the island.Such an operation would require a coordinated, collaborative effort between the German army, navy, and air force. As Churchill described it, the service chiefs were unable to cooperate with each other because they were too busy vying for Hitler's favor, at the disbursement of their peers.
The weather of success for the invasion were complete mastery of the air above the English Channel and the power of the navy to make a secure corridor in the English Channel between France and the Southern coast of England.The army, assuming that the former two services would be capable to throw up their responsibility, planned to land upwards of a fourth of a million troops on the island in multiple locations.The usn in return indicated that they would be hard pressed to allow a safe corridor for multiple landings and could only protect one landing force, assuming that Germany had perfect master of the air.The air force for its part spent a few weeks trying to demolish the Royal Air Force, and switched to bombing London right when they were on the leaflet of victory.The suspension on the airfields in southern England gave the Royal Air Force a hazard to renew its effectiveness and maintain fragile control of British airspace.
As the prescribed time for the invasion grew closer, the Germany Chiefs of Staff continued their internal bickering and running at cross purposes.The Navy claimed that the army's plans were too ambitious, the army claimed it wasn't getting the right support from the navy, and the air force continued to pursue it's own approach to the war to the hurt of operations that would have been most beneficial to the overall objective.As a consequence of this failure to collaborate, Sea Lion was repeatedly postponed and eventually given up on all together when Hitler decided he would throw the full power of the German Army against the Soviet Union.After all, there was enough of state upon which to get tanks in that direction.Hitler apparently had disregarded the famous maxim "never get mired in a ground war in Asia."
So what can we see from this intrusion that wasn't?A few key ideas occur to mind:
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