Alan
John Percivale Taylor was born in Lancashire in 1906. After studying
at Oriel College, Oxford,
he became a lecturer in modern history at Manchester University. In
1953 he returned to Oxford University as a lecturer in international
history.
As
well as a successful career as a broadcaster, Taylor published a large
number of books on history including The
Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848-1918 (1954), The
Trouble Makers (1957), The Origins
of the Second World War (1961) and English
History 1914-1945 (1965).
Taylor's
autobiography, A Personal History,
was published in 1983. Alan
John Percivale Taylor
died
in 1990.
(1)
A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914-1945 (1965)
Operation Dynamo succeeded beyond all expectations. The forces of
fighter command were thrown in without reserve and tempered the weight
of German bombing on the beaches. Destroyers, which brought off most
of the men were aided by every sort of vessel - pleasure boats, river
ferries, fishing smacks. Altogether 860 ships took part. As a further
advantage, the weather was uniformly benign. On 31 May Gort, as his
force shrank, handed over to General Alexander, the senior divisional
commander, in accordance with orders. On 3 June the last men were
moved. In all, 338,236 men were brought to England from Dunkirk, of
whom 139,097 were French. Dunkirk was a great deliverance and a great
disaster. Almost the entire B.E.F. was saved. It had lost virtually
all its guns, tanks, and other heavy equipment. Many of the men had
abandoned their rifles. Six destroyers had been sunk and nineteen
damaged. The R.A.F. had lost 474 aeroplanes.
(2)
A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914-1945 (1965)
The Germans struck their most dramatic, though not their most dangerous,
blow with night bombing, soon to be known in popular English parlance
as 'the Blitz'. This grew by accident out of Hitler's earlier attempt
to secure immediate surrender and went on in retaliation for British
bombing as much as for any other reason. It was an improvised affair.
The Germans had no aeroplanes specifically designed for independent
long-range bombing, no pilots trained for it (particularly at night),
and no clear picture of what they were attempting to do. At first
they concentrated on London which was bombed every night from 7 September
to 2 November. Then they switched mainly to industrial centres in
the provinces and finally to the western ports. 16 May 1941 saw the
last heavy German attack on Birmingham.
Thereafter the Luftwaffe was busy preparing
to cooperate with the army against Soviet Russia, and in
England precautions against air raids became more of a
burden than the air raids themselves.
At the outset the British
were as ill-equipped for defence as the Germans were for attack. Their
fighters were almost useless at night, and the anti-aircraft guns,
too few in any case, nearly as ineffective. Techniques were gradually
improved as the winter wore on. Physicists, sustained by Professor
Lindemann, Churchill's personal adviser, invented radar assistance
both for the fighters and the guns. When the Germans began to navigate
by radio beams instead of by the stars, the British were already prepared
to divert the beams, and many German bombs fell harmlessly in the
open country. The Germans erred by failing to repeat their attacks
on a chosen target, such as Coventry. They could not bomb with any
precision and thus failed, for instance, to destroy vital railway
junctions. Most of all, their attack lacked weight. A major raid meant
100 tons of bombs. Three years later the British were dropping 1,600
tons a night on Germany - and even then not with decisive effect.
Fifty-seven raids brought 13,561 tons of bombs on London. Later the
British often exceeded this total in a single week.
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