FOR HERMANN GÖRING, THE LOSSES in Sunday’s air battle were shocking and humiliating. His commanders knew soon afterward the true extent of their losses, by the number of aircraft that failed to return. Even though far short of the 183 victories claimed by the RAF, the number of downed German planes was hard to fathom: 60 aircraft, 34 of which were bombers. The loss was even more grave than this, however, for the tally did not reflect the fact that another 20 bombers had been badly damaged, and that many members of the returning crews had been pulled from their planes dead, maimed, or otherwise wounded. The RAF, by final count, had lost only 26 fighters.
Up to this point, Göring had promoted the idea that his bomber crews were more courageous than their British counterparts because they attacked in broad daylight as well as at night, unlike the cowardly British, who conducted their raids against Germany only under cover of darkness. But now he halted all major daylight attacks (though later that week there would be one more large, and, for the Luftwaffe, extremely costly daytime raid against London).
“We lost our nerve,” said Field Marshal Erhard Milch, in a later interrogation. Milch, described by British intelligence in August 1940 as “a vulgar little man” who revered medieval gods and ceremonies, had been instrumental in helping Göring build the Luftwaffe. The losses were unnecessary, Milch said. He cited two main causes: “a) the bombers flew in a frightful formation, b) the fighter escort was never where it should have been. It wasn’t disciplined flying.” The fighters, he said, “didn’t stick to fighter escort work; they were more for freelance fighter activity, as they wanted to shoot aircraft down.”
That the Luftwaffe had failed was clear to all, especially to Göring’s patron and master, Adolf Hitler.
PROPAGANDA CHIEF GOEBBELS, MEANWHILE, wrestled with yet another propaganda challenge: how to cool the outcry caused by the Luftwaffe’s bombing of Buckingham Palace the preceding Friday, which was proving to be a public relations debacle.
In war, inhumane things happened every day, but to the world at large, the attack seemed mean-spirited and gratuitous. What would help blunt the outrage, Goebbels knew, would be a revelation that the palace had itself become a storage depot for munitions or that a significant warehouse or power station or other target was located near enough to make it seem plausible that the palace had been hit by stray bombs—even though the nature of the attack, with a bomber diving through rain and clouds and flying along Whitehall toward one of the largest, most recognizable landmarks in London, made this defense seem singularly feeble.
At his Sunday propaganda meeting, Goebbels turned to Major Rudolf Wodarg, the Luftwaffe’s liaison to his ministry, and directed him “to ascertain whether there are any military targets in the vicinity of Buckingham Palace.”
If not, Goebbels said, German propaganda must make them up, specifically by asserting “that secret military stores are concealed in its immediate neighborhood.”