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Hitler Thought He’d Won the War. Then Britain Said No.

The Rest Is History

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Our whole series on the Nazis can be found here: The Nazis in Power

Episode 1 in our series on WW2 can be found here: The Nazis at War: Hitler Strikes West

With Adolf Hitler at the apex of his power during the Second World War, how did he move on Britain? How did Winston Churchill respond? And, would Britain’s airforce triumph over Hitler’s Luftwaffe in the legendary Battle of Britain?

Join Dominic and Tom as they reach one of the watershed moments of the Second World War, as the Nazis strive to eliminate Britain from the skies, before severing their crucial alliance with the Soviet Union.

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Video Editor: Jack Meek
Social Producer: Harry Balden
Assistant Producer: Aaliyah Akude
Producer: Tabby Syrett
Senior Producer: Theo Young-Smith
Executive Producer: Dom Johnson

00:00 Intro
00:25 Hive
01:52 Churchill’s “Finest Hour” speech
03:30 Why 1940 is a turning point for the Third Reich
05:09 Hitler’s attitude to Britain
10:59 British opinion after Munich and Dunkirk
12:37 Mers-el-Kébir: sinking the French fleet
14:19 Hitler’s indecision
18:10 Edward VIII, Ribbentrop and the Bahamas kidnap plot
21:25 Operation Sea Lion
28:31 Halifax’s defiant BBC speech and British resolve
29:41 Invasion planning
33:49 Turning east: linking Britain’s survival to an attack on the Soviet Union
35:08 Aura Frames
36:29 Uber
37:09 Hotels.com
38:10 Churchill’s “Few” speech
40:03 We Have Ways, James Holland & how to understand the battle
41:13 RAF vs Luftwaffe
48:25 Changing Luftwaffe tactics
49:09 Battle of Britain Day, 15 September 1940
50:54 Hitler abandons Operation Sea Lion
52:11 How real was the invasion threat?
53:33 From the Battle of Britain to the Blitz
55:05 Why the Blitz failed to break British morale
57:02 Germans realise it’s another long war
1:02:01 Why Hitler chooses Barbarossa as the “solution” to the British problem
1:03:20 Molotov in Berlin
1:05:15 Directive 21 & the naming of Operation Barbarossa
1:07:12 The Rest Is History Club

20 Comments

@patricrappenberg9526 4 months ago

I am German, and that Churchill speech continues to give me chills. What amazes me about history is that sometimes, certain people end up in a position in which noone else but them could have delivered the way they did. Churchill was the right man at the right time, for all his failures and shortcomings. But when the world needed someone exactly like him, he was there and in the end played a huge part in defeating the Nazis, and i am very glad he did.

@bobgiddings0 6 months ago

My dad was working in a synthetic rubber plant in Houston when the war broke out. He and some others were egging each other on to join up. Their boss heard that, gathered them together, and told them if any of the crew quit their job it was the same as sabotaging the war effort. That's how much the army needed tires. The Japanese were taking over all the countries that grew natural rubber. Some of them quit to join up anyway, but Dad spent the war working in the rubber plant. Nothing heroic in that, but there were lots of moving parts to the war effort, and not everyone did the same bit.

@davidcoleman2796 9 months ago

One of my uncles in the Royal Canadian Air Force was shot down in a hurricane and killed. Another uncle died in a RN submarine . My father was a decorated Royal Canadian engineer . Both in ww2 and then in korea . . I remember him taking his medals out of his box on Nov 11 and putting on the one suit he owned . We must never forget these men .

@andrewbird57 9 months ago

My dad was an American who enlisted in the Canadian army in 1940. His regiment was deployed to the South Coast of England as the first-line defense against Sea Lion. He was captured at the Dieppe Raid in 1942. Sgt Andrew Bird of the Essex Scottish.

@ianport2185 9 months ago

My grandparents lived in Islington and the accidental bombs were pretty terrifying. The house was damaged and the cat was blown three or four gardens away.
They all survived, including the cat.
🇬🇧

@nickbarber2080 9 months ago (edited)

My Austrian ex-girlfriend came to live in London with me....one day she went back to her home village in deepest Carinthia and an elderly neighbour,never known to go further than the nearest market town said "Oh...England? I nearly went there once"
"When was that?" she asked incredulously.
"1940....they took us to the coast of France,then they took us home again"

@lincolnlawyer9704 1 month ago

In 1938, detail plans for Hurricane fighters were shipped to Canada secretly. A company in northern Ontario on the shores of Lake Superior that made freight cars for railroads started making the fighters. It was headed by a woman with polio. When she couldn’t get engines for those planes in Britain. She went to U.S. and got Packers Motors engines. Re-engineered the entire planes to fit those engines. They produced 1400 planes during the war. Canada did more than fight!

@keithyork8226 8 months ago

Remember those “retired bank managers” of the Home Guard were mostly veterans who had seen action in WWI and knew all about the bloody reality of warfare.

@cmoran9103 1 hour ago (edited)

Can't wait to listen to more. I've listened to every episode on WW2.

I'd love you to do an episode on Nazi engagement with high culture. Hitler's love of Wagner and cinema, Goebbels theatre background and the jostling over the Deutsches Theater with Goering, Speer's architecture. Not in terms of Nazi propaganda so much as the leadership's actual appreciation of classical art and their attacks on modernism. I think it's an important and disturbing aspect of fascism, which we see recurring today.

@CardinalBiggles01 9 months ago

I met a bunch of pilots back in the early 2000s. They were WW2 pilots in our local pub. A mix of English, American and German who were meeting up after 60 years of fighting each other. All having a drink together

@patrickshannon4854 3 months ago

@9:21 “what kind of treaty accommodation would Hitler have offered to Britain” is a question that must include the caveat, “at that particular moment”, because Hitler broke every treaty that he ever negotiated. Movie quote from Battle of Britain, “Hitler’s guarantees, guarantee nothing.”

@knockshinnoch1950 2 months ago

This is the first assessment of this period of the war that considered the importance of the sinking of the French fleet rather than a footnote in history and mostly overlooked.

@philipbrooks402 9 months ago (edited)

Would Lloyd George have concluded a deal with Germany if Churchill had fallen? Interesting question given his contribution to the Adjournment debate of 7/8 May 1940 when he skewered Chamberlain, along with Leo Amery, in asking Chamberlain to make a sacrifice and give up his seals of office.
Turning to the B of B, it must be remembered that radar was not only a detection device but also acted as a force multiplier in so far as you could minimise the number of airborne patrols needed. During the Battle itself, it wasn’t that long after Adlertag that the Ju 87s, the Stukas, had to be withdrawn from the Battle in total due to the excessive losses they were sustaining. Downed RAF pilots could be ready to fight again the next day if they had successfully baled out, whereas as for Luftwaffe crews, for them ‘the war was over.’ The story of Sergeant James ‘Ginger’ Lacey is illustrative; shot down or forced to land due to combat four times, not to mention a further five times during the Battle of France, he went on to become the second highest scoring fighter ace of Fighter Command during the Battle.

@WEB-FS 9 months ago

The amphibious attack on Norway is still being taught at West Point as the first combined force campaign effort. So there was not only chaos between the different parts.

@davefloyd9443 9 months ago (edited)

There were multiple heavy bombing raids on the Supermarine Factory at Woolston, Southampton in September '40. The raids were so devastating that they prematurely forced complete dispersal of all Spitfire work out of the factory.

There was also a lot of damage to the terraced housing beyond. The Peartree area behind the factory was essentially levelled.

Men from Porton down arrived, sealed off an entire block of rubble and burned out houses and began testing old WW1 stocks of gas to observe how the vapours flowed, dispersed and behaved in an urban warzone.

Churchill was serious about using gas on an invasion force.

@TracyPicabia 9 months ago

@40:00 less Harrison Ford peering into the treasure chest, more Homer Simpson with his reading specs on

@misterborak751 9 months ago

Hitler calling Churchill a “warmonger” is like Putin blaming Britain and Europe for the war he himself unleashed.

@charlescroll9870 1 month ago

My grandfather, who volunteered for the army in both WW1 and WW2, commanded a battalion of pioneer troops in the East End of London during the Blitz. They had the job of rescuing people, pulling out the dead bodies, making buildings safe and keeping proper records.

@bencarroll1122 9 months ago

The lighting in the second half is hilarious. Dominic Sandbrook LEGO Edition

@thehowlingmisogynist9871 4 months ago

47:48 - Britain produced more new fighters than Germany, however, another significant factor was the 'recycling' of damaged fighters. A badly damaged Spitfire or Hurricane could be carted off to a factory, or small repair facility (it wasn't always large factories) and would be airworthy again very quickly.