WWII history

Exposed: How Close Nazi Germany Came to Invading Britain (And the One Thing That Stopped Them)

Reeling under combined assault from German land and air forces, in late May and early June 1940 the British Army evacuated France. As many as 338,000 British and allied troops got off the beach at Dunkirk.

But they left behind 2,300 artillery pieces, 500 anti-tank guns, 600 tanks and 64,000 other vehicles — around half of the British Army’s entire inventory of heavy weaponry.

For the next year, the army was all but powerless to defend the British Isles. At least that’s what Adolf Hitler and the rest of the German high command believed as they promptly laid plans to invade. They called the operation Unternehmen Seeloewe. Operation Sealion.