Battle of Britain Day - September 15th, 1940!

 “I believe that, if an adequate fighter force is kept in this country, if the fleet remains in being, and if Home Forces are suitably organised to resist invasion, we should be able to carry on the war for some time, if not indefinitely”.

 Air Chief Marshal, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Sir Hugh Dowding. May 15^th, 1940

Weather: Heavy overnight cloud and rain clearing. Fine with patchy cloud in the morning giving way to strata-cumulus clouds at 5,000 feet providing 8/10ths cover.

September 15^th, 1940:

0900 hours: Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives at HQ Royal Air Force 11 Group, Fighter Command at Uxbridge and is greeted by Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, Air Officer Commanding.

1030 hours: Radar (radio direction finding or RDF) stations of Chain Home at Beachy Head, Dover, Dunkirk (Kent), Pevensey, St Lawrence, Ventnor, and Westcliffe situated along the Kent coast and on the Isle of Wight, the personnel of which were mainly women of the Woman’s Royal Air Force (WRAF), detect two formations of 150 plus Luftwaffe aircraft forming up between Boulogne and Calais. 11 Group RAF fighter squadrons are placed on standby.

1100 hours: 200 plus Heinkel 111 and Dornier Do-17 and Do-215 bombers from 111/Kampfgruppe76 and KG73, escorted by Me-Bf109 and Me-110 fighters, are tracked flying NNW towards the English coast at Dungeness at heights of between 15,000 and 26,000 feet (‘Angels’ 15 and 26 in the parlance of the RAF ground controllers of the day).

1105-1120 hours: 144 RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires of (in sequence) 72, 92, 229, 303, 253, 501, 17, 73, 504, 257, 603 and 609 Squadrons ‘scramble’ and are ‘vectored’ by their Sector Controllers to meet the incoming Luftwaffe attack.

1130-1145 hours:  RAF commanders confirm the target is London. AVM Park calls upon 12 Group (AVM Trafford Leigh Mallory) based to the north of London to cover the capital. These include the so-called ‘Duxford Wing’ of massed Hurricanes and Spitfires.  12 Group scrambles some 100 fighters of (in sequence) 41, 242, 302, 310, 19, 611, 249, 46, 1(RCAF), 605 and 66 Squadrons.

1200 hours: The first massed RAF attack of the day begins.  The slow progress of the Luftwaffe bomber formation enables 12 Group fighters to join 11 Group and intercept the enemy with 11 squadrons above Maidstone and Ashford. The RAF’s strength comes as a shock to Luftwaffe aircrew and, whilst the Spitfire squadrons engage the fighter escort, the Hurricanes attack the bomber formation which begins to break up.  Stragglers are attacked and several are shot down.

1215 hours: The Spitfires succeed in separating the Bf109 fighters from the bombers. The longer-range, twin-engined Me-110s are no match for the British fighters and are effectively forced out of much of the battle, in spite of courageous efforts by many of their crews to protect the bombers.  Under intense RAF pressure the bomber force begins to drop its bombs randomly, whilst many turn prematurely short of London and seek to make their escape. Many of those that have survived are damaged, whilst those German pilots who bravely press on towards London are then confronted by 12 Group’s Spitfires and Hurricanes which ambush the bombers from a height of between 25,000 and 26,000 feet, some 3000 feet above the upper most layer of the bomber force. The weight of the attack is decisive and the Luftwaffe force is quickly broken up. There is no respite for the hard-pressed Luftwaffe crews.  The RAF maintains the pressure on the enemy by continuously and repeatedly attacking the bomber force from all sides as it makes its now disorganised way back towards the English coast. Many of the survivors head first west of London before turning for home over Weybridge, whilst some 80 bombers take a more direct route, first down the Thames Estuary and then over Kent, harassed all the way by the RAF.

1230 hours: The first massed battle of what would eventually prove to be the decisive day of the Battle of Britain is over. The RAF has gained a vital victory. What was meant to be the Luftwaffe’s final destruction of Fighter Command is decisively defeated. However, September 15^th, 1940 is far from over. As RAF squadrons land, re-fuel and re-arm the Luftwaffe prepares to launch the second major attack of the day.

1300 hours: Radar stations along the Kent coast again begin to detect another massed Luftwaffe force forming west of the Boulogne-Calais area, many of the aircraft involved have taken off from airfields in the Antwerp and Brussels region. AVM Park confirms the available strength of 11 Group’s fighters, but orders no action to be taken…yet.

1330 hours: Radar confirms the massing German force is larger than the morning attack and as yet the Luftwaffe’s targets are not clear to the RAF. 11 Group and 12 Group fighters are placed at ‘readiness’, together with squadrons from 10 Group (AVM Quintin Brand) which covers the West of England.

1400 hours: The Luftwaffe force approaches the Kent coast ((KG2, KG53, KG76 plus some elements of KG1, KG4 and KG26). This time the Luftwaffe gains a tactical edge by reducing the time it takes to mass the attacking formation. Moreover, the sheer intensity of the morning’s action has disrupted Fighter Command’s battle rhythm. Some RAF squadrons are still refuelling and re-arming whilst many of the pilots who had survived being shot down in the morning are not yet back with their squadrons.

1410 hours: RAF Sector Controllers place all 11 Group squadrons on standby and request ‘maximum assistance’ from 10 and 12 Groups. Five squadrons of the Duxford Wing (49 aircraft) from 16, 242, 302, 310 and 611 squadrons are scrambled. Crucially, AVM Park adjusts his tactics from the morning. He orders the bulk of the squadrons to hold back and patrol east, south and west of London. However, he also orders his forward deployed squadrons at Hawkinge, Lympne, Manston and Tangmere and Manston to engage the Luftwaffe fighter escort early in an attempt to force the Bf-109s to ‘dogfight’ and use up much of their limited reserves of fuel. This renders the bomber fleet exceptionally vulnerable to massed RAF attack.

1415 hours: The first bomber formations cross the Kent coast. Two other formations follow at 1430 and 1445 hours. The bomber fleet is again made up of He111, Do-17 and D-215 aircraft.  The British estimate the strength to be between 150 and 200 bombers plus some 400 Bf109s and Me-110s as escorts. In fact, the strength is 170 bombers and some 300 plus fighters.

1415 hours: The first engagement takes place south of Canterbury. Other formations are attacked south of Maidstone and west of Dartford as RAF squadrons begin to harass the attacking force. The closer the Luftwaffe gets to London the more Spitfires and Hurricanes attack them.  Bereft of an effective fighter escort the bomber force is quickly and badly mauled by 11 Group as (in sequence) 73, 66, 72, 249, 504, 253, 213 and 607 Squadrons repeatedly attack.

1450 hours: AVM Park’s decision to hold squadrons back, most notably the Duxford Wing, now proves decisive, even if many of the RAF fighters had been scrambled too slowly. 150 RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires attack the bomber fleet over the south and south-west of London. As in the morning the Spitfires attack the Bf109s and Me-110 fighters, whilst the Hurricanes attack the bomber force. Critically, the Bf109s are now at the limits of their range.

1500 hours: 303 (Polish) Squadron returns to its base at Northholt. In just over an hour of action they destroy 3 Do-17s, 2 Me-110’s and 1 Bf109 for a cost of 2 Hurricanes lost and 1 pilot killed. By the time Luftwaffe bombers reach London they are out-numbered by defending Hurricanes and Spitfires. They break off the attack and turn for the Channel and escape.

1600 hours: The last of the Luftwaffe bomber force is attacked as it makes its way across the English coast. Another small incoming raid of 10 He-111s is detected heading towards Portland for an attack on the Supermarine Spitfire factory at Woolston. It is engaged by 10 Group’s 152 (Spitfires), 607 (Hurricanes) and 609 (Spitfires) Squadrons. Several aircraft of the attacking force are destroyed and not one bomb is dropped on the factory.

 September 15^th, 1940, Battle of Britain Day, is over.

 Analysis

September 15^th, 1940 was a turning point not just of the Battle of Britain, but of World War Two and the fight against Nazism. The RAF had won a decisive victory over the Luftwaffe and whilst they did not know it at the time, the victory effectively ended any chance Britain could be invaded. Without complete control of the air Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of Britain, was effectively dead in the water. At least it would have been. Any attempt to cross the Channel with two Army Groups comprised of the best Wehrmacht units would have been suicide in the face of constant attacks by the RAF and the Royal Navy, which in 1940 was still the world’s largest.  Britain would fight on and the RAF would begin the long and slow shift from the defensive to the offensive and the regular 1000 heavy bomber attacks on German cities.  These attacks were hugely popular with a British people determined to ‘give it back to em’, but came at an appalling cost to RAF aircrew, German and other civilians.

To some extent ‘The Day’ has become shrouded in myth. The RAF claimed to have shot down some 185 Luftwaffe aircraft on September 15th. In fact, the number was 61, with twenty aircraft badly-damaged, whilst the RAF lost 32 fighters. By the standards of contemporary warfare the casualties were relatively light. The RAF lost 16 pilots killed in action and 14 wounded, whilst the Luftwaffe lost 81 aircrew killed with 31 wounded, although 63 aircrew were also captured by the British.  Many were experienced men. Moreover, by September 1940 Britain was out-producing Germany in the construction of advanced fighters. Therefore, whilst the Luftwaffe was by no means a spent force on the evening of September 15^th, 1940, the defeat came at the end of what had been a gruelling summer for the Luftwaffe.  However, perhaps the greatest impact of the RAF’s decisive victory was psychological.  For the first time in World War Two the Luftwaffe had faced a force equipped with advanced technology, excellent air defence fighters and very capable pilots and had been badly beaten. 

The Battle of Britain had effectively begun on June 18^th, 1940 when Churchill said to the House of Commons, “What General Weygand called the Battle of France is now over, I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin”.  The RAF’s total strength at the outset of the Battle of Britain was 1,963 aircraft whilst the Luftwaffe had some 2,550 aircraft. Not all British aircraft, of course, were front-line fighters. However, by the end of the campaign the RAF had lost 1,744 aircraft destroyed to the Luftwaffe’s 1,977 aircraft destroyed. Crucially, the Luftwaffe’s head of intelligence, Oberst Joseph Beppo Schmidt, repeatedly over-estimated Luftwaffe strength whilst chronically under-estimating both the fighting power of the RAF and the remarkable capability of the world’s first advanced air defence system. Indeed, Luftwaffe aircrew, who were repeatedly briefed that the RAF were down to their last few fighters, shared a grim standing joke each time they saw British fighters moving to attack: “Here come those last 50 British fighters…again”. 

On the morning of September 15^th Air Chief Marshal Dowding had 726 fighters at readiness, whilst the Luftwaffe had 620 fighters and 500 light-to-medium bombers, the bomb capacity of which was simply too ‘light’ given the strategic objectives. By comparison, in June 1942 RAF Bomber Command attacked Cologne with 1000 far heavier bombers, such as the Stirling, Halifax, Lancaster and Wellington types. The Germans also had no organised espionage network in Britain so they could not accurately know what damage they were doing, the state of either the RAF or the morale of the British people. They thought they had but most German spies were quickly captured by the British and forced to work for British Intelligence. 

 Luftwaffe High Command’s over-confidence also led them to make catastrophic mistakes. On August 15^th, 1940, dubbed “Black Thursday” (Schwarzer Donnerstag) by Luftwaffe aircrew, Luftflotte V based in Norway was ordered to attack the north of England. The assumption was that all the RAF’s reserves had been moved south to cover Kent and London. They had not.  Chain Home picked up a force of some 200 attacking aircraft early in its mission which was then badly-mauled by Spitfires from 13 Group (AVM Richard Maul) which covered the north of England. It was forced to turn and flee over the sea losing 23 aircraft for no downed RAF fighters.  The escorting Me-110s even abandoned the bombers and formed so-called ‘wagon wheels’ for self-protection. The so-called Dowding System had prevailed again.

The Dowding System was critical to Britain’s victory.  It used the ‘eyes’ of radar to rapidly inform a robust command chain of the strength, speed, direction and height of an attacking force. This enabled HQ Fighter Command based at Bentley Priory to quickly assess the size and likely targets of the force before giving each Group the information they needed to deploy its squadrons efficiently and effectively. Group HQ then passed on the information to Sector Controllers who scrambled the various squadrons. Crucially, the entire system was ‘hardened’ when it was built in 1937 to ensure it was both resilient and enjoyed redundancy of communications and was thus very hard to knock-out. That the system existed at all was due to decisions taken in the 1930s by the oft-berated Baldwin and Chamberlain governments. Such was its success that the Dowding System was to form the basis of many of the world’s ground-controlled air defence systems up until, and in some case even beyond, the year 2000.

 The Luftwaffe was defeated because it failed to secure either of its primary strategic aims: to force the British to the negotiating table on German terms; or secure uncontested air superiority over the English Channel as a prelude to invasion. It also suffered a massive materiel loss over the three month course of the battle from which it never fully recovered, undermining its future effectiveness in Russia. The fault lay not with the mainly young Luftwaffe aircrews who showed great bravery, but with their commanders, most notably Luftwaffe Chief Reichmarschall Hermann Goering.  He failed to understand the importance of radar to the British and also failed to exploit the RAF’s greatest vulnerability – 11 Group’s vital front-line air bases. They were often attacked but then allowed to recover because the Luftwaffe never fully understood the battle rhythm of the RAF and thus failed to exploit its vulnerabilities.  Luftwaffe high command also failed to understand that the true test for the RAF was not the number of fighters it could shoot down, Britain was replacing them at a faster rate, but the attrition rate of the pilots who flew them. Dowding’s main concern was the rate of loss of his 2,353 British pilots. Thankfully, Britain had a golden reserve in some 574 foreign pilots from Poland (141 pilots), New Zealand (135), Canada (112), Czechoslovakia (88). Australia (36), South Africa (25), Free French (14) US (11), Ireland 10, and some 10 pilots from what is today Zimbabwe, the Caribbean and Israel. 

One of the most important consequences of the RAF’s victory was the damage it did to both the prestige of Goering and the trust Adolf Hitler had in him. The first seeds of doubt that Nazism would prevail were sown in the mind of Hitler and his Nazi cronies by the RAF’s brave pilots. As dawn broke on September 15^th, 1940 Goering and his Luftwaffe commanders had confidently expected they would, indeed, inflict the final, fatal blow on what they really believed to be the RAF’s few remaining Spitfires and Hurricanes.  The sight of massed RAF air power waiting to ambush the attacks rapidly disabused already cynical Luftwaffe aircrews of their commanders’ folly. As Hans Zonderlind, an air gunner on a Luftwaffe Do-17 said of September 15^th, “We saw the Hurricanes coming towards us and it seemed the whole of the RAF was there. We had never seen so many British fighters coming at us at once”.

Much of this complacency was driven by Nazi ideology and the German superiority it espoused. During the Polish campaign of September 1939, and the attacks on the Low Countries and France in May and June 1940, such arrogance was reinforced by success. The RAF punctured this arrogance. Much of it was down to one aircraft, R.J. Mitchell’s superb Mark V Spitfire and its Rolls Royce Merlin engine. There is no question the Spitfire got into the heads of Luftwaffe aircrew. The aerial scourge, and in many ways signature sound of the Wehrmacht’s Blitzkrieg campaigns had been the ‘flying artillery’ that was the Juncker Ju-87 ‘Stuka’ dive bomber. However, between August 15^th (Adler Tag) and August 18^th the Stuka’s suffered such heavy losses to both Spitfires and Hurricanes that they had to be withdrawn from the fight.  As battle fatigue set in Luftwaffe aircrew constantly reported being attacked by ‘Spitfires’, when in fact the RAF had more Hurricanes. 

It is still a matter of conjecture whether or not Luftwaffe ace Adolf Galland asked Goering for a squadron (staffeln) of Spitfires. In some respects, the Me Bf-109 was a superior fighter. It could climb faster and due to its fuel-injected engine also climb higher than a Spitfire. The mix of cannon and machine guns also gave it more devastating firepower than the eight Browning 303 calibre machines guns with which both Hurricanes and Spitfires were equipped. However, the Spitfire enjoyed two critical advantages in air combat both of which were due to its two elliptical wings which could bear far more weight than the Me Bf-109. This enabled the Spitfire to dive and turn faster, as well as turn very tightly at lower speeds.  And, of course, both Hurricanes and Spitfires were operating close to their own bases, whereas the Me Bf-109 was not, which negated many of its advantages as a hunter.  Interestingly, by the time the last Spitfire was built in 1948 some 22,000 had been manufactured in 22 variants, including a navalised version, the Seafire. 12,129 of them were produced at the enormous Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory near Birmingham which began production in May 1940, albeit mired in very British managerial and industrial relations challenges. Critically, preparations had been made to massively increase British military aircraft production in the event of war with the 1935 Shadow Factory Plan.

The lessons for today? First, whilst the building of modern free Europe did not begin that day, it took a great stride forward. Democracy fought back and won. Second, even if distracted by as deep an economic crisis as faced by the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments during the 1930s a democracy must never abandon a sound defence or properly prepare to mount it. Third, that equivalency of military materiel and personnel is vital. Preparedness, readiness and robustness.

In tribute to the RAF pilots of many nations who defended Britain and a free Europe on a fateful day, and the many young women who made that defence work. In respectful memory of ALL the brave young men who lost their lives on September 15^th, 1940, Battle of Britain Day. As Churchill famously said on August 20^th, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”.

 Requiesce in Pace.  Per Ardua ad Astra!

 (With thanks to the Battle of Britain Historical Society)

 Julian Lindley-French, September 15^th, 2025

Re-Decoupling: Russia’s Next Aggression Strategy

 “The Russian foreign ministry’s statement on the withdrawal on the deployment of medium and short-range missiles is the result of NATO countries anti-Russian policy. This is a new reality all our opponents will have to reckon with. Expect further steps”.

Dmitri Medvedev, August 2025

The Ides of August

August 19^th. The second Alaska Purchase is a deal in the making. Last Friday, and behind closed doors, Trump and Putin almost certainly agreed that Russia can have Ukraine’s entire Donbas region as reward for its aggression, in addition to Crimea. What will doubtless come to be known as the ‘Secret Protocol’ will once again demonstrate that democracies all too often abandon the long-term for the short-term. In Washington the European allies blustered and postured but my bet is the deal is done.  It is now a question of how to sell it.

It is hardly surprising. The ides of August is traditionally the period when the mad, bad and dangerous do dangerous things to the sad, weak and absent on holiday. As the French say. “Les absents sont toujours torts”. In August 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II invaded Belgium and started World War 1.  In August 1939, in another infamous ‘secret protocol’ to the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact Hitler and Stalin agreed the division of Poland and thus paved the way for World War 2.  Now, the ground is set for Putin’s ‘victory’ in Ukraine due to an unwilling America and an incapable Europe.  What’s next in Putin’s mind for Ukraine and Europe? 

Re-Decoupling! 

Back in the 1970s and early 1980s there was one word that haunted Western European chancelleries - decoupling. Decoupling was a gambit by the Soviet Union to separate the US nuclear arsenal from NATO and the defence of Europe. They did this by presenting the Americans with a dilemma. In 1977, Moscow deployed the triple nuclear warheaded SS20 into Eastern Europe.  The SS20 had a range that could strike Western Europe, but not continental North America.  The dilemma the SS20 posed by the Soviets to the Americans was a simple one: ‘would you, Mr President, commit nuclear suicide to defend Europe from the Red Army?’ 

The Soviets had observed growing political tensions within the Alliance and believed the time was apposite for such a gambit. It was precisely for just such a moment the British and French had their own nuclear deterrents. But what if the Red Army had only seized the Federal Republic of Germany and stopped?  Would the British and French also been willing to commit nuclear suicide for the Germans? Putin believes both the American defence of Europe and the Western European defence of Eastern Europe are now weaker than at any time since the Cold War. It is Moscow’s sense of Western division and weakness that is fuelling the Kremlin’s ambitions in Eastern Europe. Ambition that was neatly if unsubtly captured in Alaska by Foreign Minister Lavrov wearing a shirt with ‘CCCP’ emblazoned across it.

The struggle over Ukraine is a systemic and historic struggle between two completely opposing views of power and its purpose: Europeans believe in self-determination, whilst Russians believe in spheres of influence.   Lavrov’s less than subtle message was clear: Russia wants to re-establish a new sphere of influence over Eastern Europe using coercion, intimidation and if needs be occupation.  This is why what happens to Ukraine is so important to Europe and why Putin has of late been cultivating the cult of Stalin.

Paper Tigers

Therefore, the real test of ‘peace’ in Ukraine and thus future deterrence would be the credibility of the “Article 5 style security guarantees” Trump is reportedly offering to Ukraine. They would need to be more credible than the Anglo-Polish Military Alliance of August 1939 or the 1994 Budapest Memorandum?  Moreover, Article 5 of the Washington Treaty is not an automatic armed assistance commitment, it is just assumed to be. At the very least, the Americans would need to engage in formal treaty assurances to preserve the territorial integrity of what will inevitably be called ‘rump Ukraine’, as will the European members of any coalition of the willing.  They would also need to be willing to put American and European boots on the ground in Ukraine, something that only this week the Russian Foreign Ministry again ruled out.   Above all, there would need to be an explicit nuclear guarantee which is at the very heart of Article 5. However, in Alaska, like the good KGB officer he is, Putin tested Trump’s willingness to use the US nuclear arsenal to deter Russia in Europe. Trump’s flexibility over land for peace convinced Putin that the US nuclear guarantee to Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, is dead. Ukraine?

Back in the 1980s, and at European request, the Americans countered the SS20 threat by eventually deploying Cruise and Pershing missiles to Europe. However, to prevent the deployment Moscow activated its many sleeper cells and useful idiots in Europe to create civil unrest. It what hybrid warfare against Western European governments and came close to succeeding. Time was pressing. In the early 1980s, the Group of Soviet Forces Germany (GFSG) sat on the inner-German border, whilst Solidarnosc and other liberation movements were threatening Soviet control in Poland and across Central and Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union began its descent into the abyss. By 1987, the West had seen off the threat not least because in March 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev had become the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.  In December 1987, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed which led to the removal of SS20s, Cruise and Pershing missiles from Europe. That was then, this is now. In 2019, the first Trump administration abrogated the treaty amidst claims of Russian cheating. Now, the Russians are moving to a new cycle of aggression by implying that such weapons will once again be deployed forward to threaten Western Europeans with a new form of nuclear blackmail.

Der Tag 

‘Der Tag’ is a German expression meaning ‘when the inevitable battle comes’.  Today, Russian forces are far to the east of Germany.  However, should ‘Der Tag’ come will weak and divided Britain, France and Germany, let alone the US, really care enough about Ukraine to fulfil their obligations?  What about the Arctic, the re-Finlandization of Finland, the Black Sea Region, but above all Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania?  To blunt Russian ambitions the West would not only threaten war with Russia, but mean it. They will need to. Medvedev’s statement suggests the Russians believe not and whilst they might accept a temporary tactical peace the strategic ambition to force free states into Moscow’s orb remains.

That is why should there be a ‘peace’ in Ukraine the West must not only demonstrate resolve in the face of Putin’s games, but also military and security capacity and capability across the full spectrum of hybrid, cyber and hyperwar so that the Kremlin never thinks crossing the Rubicon is again worth the risk. That is the essence of the new deterrence posture NATO will need to forge with the EU and which will demand a much more offensive European posture than hitherto and a real re-commitment by the Americans to the defence of Europe.  

Tragic paradox of Ukraine is that this terrible deal is probably the most Ukraine can expect today.  The simple truth is that eastern Ukraine matters far less to Western Europeans and North Americans than it does to Putin and they have clearly gone as far as they are willing to go. What matters now is they rebuild their own deterrence and defence.  Rather, Western leaders will hope, a la Chamberlain and Daladier in 1938, that by making Zelensky a latter-day Edvard Benes, Putin’s expansionist impulse will be sated.  That will only be the case if Western deterrence demonstrates both the capability and intent to defend the Baltic States and everywhere else Putin deems to be part of his ‘New CCCP’.  As Otto von Bismarck once said, “Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided…but by iron and blood”.   

Europe is thus at the start of a new Twenty Year Crisis because any peace in Ukraine will not hold. Moreover, when Der Tag comes, it will come in August…and with Putin and the ultra-nationalists in power it will come. This is because Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was never about territory; it was about the subjugation of Ukraine and the balance of power in Europe.  

Julian Lindley-French 

Why is China Dangerous?

 “Because other people are fools, must you be so too?”

Emperor Marcus Aurelius

What does China want?

April 17^th.  What does Xi’s China want?  1. To create the conditions for the ‘safe’ military subjugation of Taiwan. 2. To coerce states in the Eastern Pacific and South and East China Seas spheres of Chinese influence to accept Beijing’s de facto control because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are control freaks, and its leadership fears any system – domestic or foreign – that might challenge its control. 3. To use the global geoeconomic system to fund its geopolitical ambitions by fair means and foul. 4. To use Russia and Iran to fix US forces in theatres away from the Eastern Pacific and ensure the Americans cannot intervene in force. 5. In the longer run to curb US power in the Pacific to the point where the Americans are effectively excluded from the Pacific east of Pearl Harbor.   

Dead historians tended to divide the history of the Roman Empire into three eras: the Republicanate, Principate and Dominate.  The Republicanate (which I just invented) is seen by some as a glorious era during which Rome functioned like some latter day Western European democracy but in fact did not.  This glorious era made all sorts of allusions to ancient Greece but was destroyed in the First Century BC by over-mighty citizens such as Sulla, Pompey and Caesar who seized power from the Senate and squabbled mightily amongst themselves but still ruled under the pretence that they were merely primus inter pares and were in fact defending the Republic.  This was the Principate. Then there was the final phase of Rome’s glory which also marked its decline, division and eventual collapse – the Dominate.  During the Dominate the emperors abandoned all and any attempt to pretend some residual constitutional propriety existed and ruled by naked mainly military power.  

The cause of the Dominate was Rome’s so-called Third Century Crisis.  This was caused by the end of imperial expansion, the growing costs of maintaining imperial power across the known world, growing incursions into said Empire from emerging competitors, the breakdown of trade, inflation due to the printing of money by emperors with no understanding of economics, and the myriad political divisions that decline is father to and the growing influence of the military in politics.

How is the West complicit?

Take China today. For thirty years China has been content to get rich and powerful by helping Western leaders maintain the Potemkinesque façade of material prosperity. Under this arrangement, known by the rather misleading term globalisation when it was really Chinaisation the West was made to feel materially comfortable in return for paying China to accelerate its own development and construct an enormous military machine.

As long as the West was content to consume huge amounts of Chinese goods and Western leaders were happy to turn a blind eye to Beijing’s coercion, spying, stealing and all-around collective bullying China was happy to get richer and more powerful.  Some states, such as the strategically illiterate British, even sold their industrial crown jewels and much else to China, such as British Steel, which should have been renamed Chinese Steel. 

There was a problem.  The Chinese Communist Party which controls China with an iron fist, particularly since it crushed (literally) a bunch of students in 1989 who had the temerity to challenge the absolute power of the CCP, needed globalisation. This is because so-called post-Tiananmen deal between the CCP and the burgeoning Chinese middle class involved the latter never questioning the power of the former in return for making the latter ever more materially more comfortable.

The Chinese Dominate

During this period of the Chinese Principate CCP leaders continued to pretend they were ‘of’ the people. Hua Goufeng, Jiang Xemin, Hu Jintao and others all claimed they were children of the proletariat.  Then came Xi Jinping, China’s wannabe Caesar, who in 2018 became “President for Life”.  Xi, a princeling of the Party, crossed the Chinese Rubicon in two ways.  First, he replaced any legitimacy conferred on him by the ‘Party’ by establishing his power on the People’s Liberation Army and showering the armed forces with glittering new weapons. Second, he abandoned any pretence to be the Chinese heir of Karl Marx and replaced Communism with old-fashioned Han nationalism reinforced with a strong dose of Xenophobia.

The reasons for this became apparent during the COVID catastrophe.  Xi realised that one day the West would wake up and finally understand that it had been feeding a dragon that could one day consume it.  When that happened the West’s growing transfer of supply chains to China would stop.  Starved of Western money China would face a problem transferring export generated income into domestic development unless Xi could find alternatives.  The route Xi took was effectively force smaller and poorer powers into China’s orbit through debt.  The problem was that most of the West woke up too early (except the British whose leaders continue to try and sell themselves to China) and Russia, China’s useful idiot, screwed up.

Now, China is faced with a situation not unlike Rome during the Third Century Crisis. It has built an enormous military which is very impressive, but which will soon decline because it will need to be constantly re-capitalised.  However, unless the CCP can maintain at least 6% per annum growth the only way to do that would be to shift money away from social development. When that happens XI will face growing discontent in both the Party and the country and will doubtless seek to suppress dissent.  He will also be tempted to embark on military adventurism to burnish his Han nationalist credentials, with Taiwan clearly in the crosshairs of Chinese gunsights, and maybe others.

Action This Day!

1. Prevent China from creating the conditions for the ‘safe’ military subjugation of Taiwan by US Allies helping to keep America strong where she needs to be strong. In Europe, that means European Allies must deliver two thirds (67%) of NATO’s combined operational capacity for collective defence by 2035 at the very latest, as measured in rapidly usable forces, enablers, and other capabilities to execute advance plans across SACEUR’s Area of Responsibility. America’s European allies must also collectively provide at least 50% of all NATO Defense Planning Process (NDPP) designated capabilities by 2030.

 2. Prevent China from coercing states in the Eastern Pacific and South and East China Seas spheres of Chinese influence to accept Beijing’s de facto control.  This can only be achieved by a new concept of Global Democratic Alliance built around the US and with strong democratic allies in Europe and the Pacific.

 3. Turn the global geoeconomic system back in the West’s favour and thus legitimate Western geopolitical ambitions by providing both carrots and sticks to China. The Trump administration is using tariffs and reshoring of industries as a blunt tool to create such a shift but as yet there is no apparent geopolitical end such policy aspires.

 4. Blunt the ability of Russia and Iran to fix US forces in theatres away from the Pacific. For example, the NATO European allies must aspire to the creation of an Allied Mobile Heavy Force by 2030 that could deter, defend and defeat the Russians irrespective of US force commitments.

 5. Strengthen US power in the Pacific to the point where the ends, ways and means of Chinese policy and strategy are impossible to realise because the cost of doing so would threaten the hold of the CCP over the Chinese people.   

The curse of empires

China is not intrinsically bad. It is simply behaving like all ultra-nationalists behave when they have the power to impose their will on others. What is bad is the inability of democratic leaders to face uncomfortable truths. This is something I saw last week when I chaired a meeting last week at NATO HQ in Brussels. Ultimately, the Middle Kingdom sees itself as precisely that – the centre of the world, an empire. 

Empires are of course dangerous when they expand, but they are particularly dangerous when they begin to decline, and the settled order of power therein is challenged.  That is exactly what happened in the Third Century to Rome and may well happen to China now as those in power seek to re-establish ‘order’.  Therefore, we are just entering peak danger as far as China is concerned but with strength there is still a good chance Beijing can be persuaded that mutual coexistence is better than mutually assured destruction. Face it, leaders!

Julian Lindley-French 

Trump, Tariffs, Geoeconomics and Geopolitics

What does Trump want? Power is back, red in tooth and claw. When US presidents meet with President-for-Life Xi Jinping there is something telling in the respective body languages of the leaders. Unlike in the past it is the American who wants something. They both see themselves as Masters of the Universe, President Trump because he cannot help himself, President Xi because he is, at least the Chinese universe. The more President Trump tries to emulate President Xi, by governing through Executive Order and ignoring both Congress and the Supreme Court, he simply cannot.  President Xi, the unelected victor of a thousand Party power struggles, is self-promotingly, self-assured precisely because he is not bound by such constraints.

 

Why the tariffs? What is self-evident is that the world is back in the old-new age of bipolar competition, but what kind of competition?  This past week has seen geopolitics and geoeconomics merge.  Geoeconomics has been the essence of the tariff wars Trump has unleashed on the world, but geoeconomics is merely the harbinger of geopolitics and the struggle for supremacy across the broad canvas of power both soft and hard. The epicentre of this struggle will be the Pacific but it will also affect the world.

 

The facts speak for themselves. Deluded Western fans of globalisation (often economists) have overseen the greatest transfer of wealth and power from the US and the wider West to China since a similar transfer from Britain to the US in the first part of the twentieth century. Today, the US, the Apex Market and once THE creditor nation has a national debt of some $36.8 trillion or around 122% of GDP and a budget deficit of $2 trillion.  China also has a national debt of $9.9 trillion, which is some 110% of GDP, and a budget deficit of some $570 billion. Beijing is trying to cut its budget deficit caused partly by bailing out major companies caught up in a disastrous property asset bubble.

 

Whilst the figures may seem roughly comparable the key figure of comparison is the annual budget deficit. By holding large amounts of US dollars in the Chinese Central Bank and continually breaking World Trade Organisation rules on tariffs and by imposing tariffs which effectively prevent access to China’s internal market Beijing has gained an unfair advantage.  It also explains why China’s budget deficit is only 25% of that of the US. The most obvious beneficiary of this highly successful Chinese strategy to exploit Western consumerism is the growth in Beijing’s military capability which the West has effectively paid for. In 2025 alone, Beijing increased the defence budget by 7.2%. This means China now has effective and comparable defence budget of $411 billion compared with the US defence budget in 2025 of 883.7 billion.  

 

Moreover, whilst the US economy remains significantly bigger than China’s nominally with a 2024 GDP of around $28.8 trillion compared to $18.5 trillion, if power purchasing parity is used as a yardstick the figures change markedly. ‘PPP’ compares productivity and standard of living. According to the IMF in 2025 China has a economy worth $39.44 trillion compared with a US economy worth some $30.34 trillion.  The figures do not mean China is richer per capita than the US because its population is 4 times greater, but it does demonstrate the rate of growth in relative Chinese state wealth and power. For example, in 2000 the nominal GDP of the US was $10.2 trillion whilst that of China was $1.2. Even using PPP China’s economy was only some 30% that of the US.       

 

Beijing clearly understands the relationship between geoeconomic and geopolitics. In March 2025, China warned the US on X that it was ready to “fight any type of war” with the US. Under instructions from Beijing the Chinese Embassy in the US even went as far as saying, "If war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we're ready to fight till the end."   This was before Trump’s April 2025 decision to slap 67% tariffs of Chinese imports to the US, and China’s response.  China’s point was clear: the battlefield in this phoney war may be tariffs but as far as Beijing is concerned it is already at war with the US not just over Taiwan but Beijing’s determination to impose its ‘rules’ about power and wealth on the world and Trump’s determination to prevent it. In other words, the struggle is systemic and dangerous.

 

As J.K. Galbraith once said, “Power is as power does”.

 

Julian Lindley-French  

Operation Varsity Plunder

 

“The situation in the West has entered an extraordinarily critical, ostensibly almost deadly, phase”.

Joseph Goebbels, March 24th, 1945

March 23rd, 2025. Eighty years ago today, on March 23rd, 1945, not far from where I write these words, Operation Varsity Plunder got underway.  Operation Varsity, the airborne component, involved 16,000 British, American and Canadian airborne forces and some 2000 aircraft, the largest single airborne operation ever conducted and twice the size of the D-Day ‘drop’, as well as significantly bigger than Operation Market Garden

The main ground and riverine effort was led by the British 21st Army Group, supported by American and Canadian forces and commanded by much maligned Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery.  The mission was to cross the Rhine in strength and then break into Northern Germany and encircle the Ruhr industrial area.

Operation Varsity involved two divisions of the US XVIII Airborne Corps tasked with disrupting German defences.  The British 6th Airborne Division, including the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, had the critical task of opening the way for the riverine and ground assault by capturing vital villages and bridges over the River Ijssel. Despite significant losses all the objectives were seized, not least because many lessons had been learnt from the failed Operation Market Garden in September 1944.

On March 23rd, Montgomery had some 30 divisions under his command facing 10 German divisions the strength of which were depleted due to losses suffered elsewhere. German defences were centred around the still powerful 1st Parachute Army.  British Intelligence also estimated that on the eve of battle Wehrmacht forces fielded 114 heavy and 712 light anti-aircraft guns. To counter this threat RAF Bomber Command, RAF 2nd Tactical Air Force, and the US Army Air Force undertook a week of attacks prior to the crossing, structured so as not to reveal the exact location of the planned crossing of the Rhine.  

Operation Plunder began at 2100 hours on March 23rd, and by 0300 on the morning of March 24th British and American forces had established several bridgeheads on the eastern bank of the Rhine.  The three spearhead Allied formations were British XII Corps, British XXX Corps and US XVI Corps, whilst the famed British 79th Armoured Division deployed specially adapted amphibious tanks (Hobart’s Funnies) to reinforce the crossings.

XXX Corps led the assault landing between Rees and Wesel with the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division, the Black Watch, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and 1st Commando Brigade, Royal Marines, together with the 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division.  In many ways, Plunder was a Scottish feat of arms because several English divisions (43rd Wessex Division, Guards Armoured Division, 50th Northumbrian Division, the East Yorks, Green Howards etc, and the Polish Division) had defeated Bittrich’s 2nd Panzer Division during the hard-fought Battle of the Nijmegen Salient and Operation Pheasant in the wake of Operation Market Garden.

By March 27th, Allied forces had secured all the main objectives and Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz took the decision to retreat beyond the Dortmund-Ems Canal to the Teutoberg Forest.  On March 25th, Winston Churchill accompanied by Montgomery, Field Marshal Alan Brooke and US General William H. Simpson, strode onto the eastern bank of the Rhine from a landing craft.  For the British this was the high point of the campaign in North-West Europe with the way to Hamburg, Kiel and the Ruhrgebeit effectively open. The next day Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight D, Eisenhower, held a lunch for Churchill. It was Eisenhower who had given Montgomery the task of crossing the Rhine in strength, against the wishes of many senior American officers, most notably Patton.

The victory did not come without cost. Operation Varsity cost the Allies 2700 killed with 72 aircraft lost, whilst the number of Germans killed during Varsity Plunder are unknown but included many civilians.  Some 3500 German troops were captured during Varsity.   Operation Plunder saw some 4000 British and Canadians killed, and some 2800 Americans killed but by D plus 7 30,000 German troops had been captured.

This afternoon I will drive to the old railway bridge over the Rhine at Wesel which was blown up by the Wehrmacht in March 1945 to pay my respects. As the wheel of European history turns again, I will reflect on those who fought and died for freedom and those now again charged with defending it – Britons, Canadians, Germans, Poles and Americans alike.

Operation Varsity Plunder. Lest we forget, Leaders!

Julian Lindley-French