So, standing alone and openly defying the Germans, they had to be dealt with before Hitler could turn to the east to find his almost mythical lebensraum. It would have been much simpler to leave them alone because they held no really warlike threat to a Germany fully geared for war in its economy and in the belligerence of its people. But Hitler could not believe that, first, Britain would not sue for peace and, then, they carried the war back to him with naval and air attacks wherever weaknesses could be found. These actions were sometimes no more than pinpricks but sometimes they hurt badly, as in the losses of the Graf Spee and the Bismarck. They got to Hitler who ordered all out naval war against Britain's essential supply lines across the Atlantic; made him order the preparations to invade Britain; and, in order to destroy factories, refineries, and transport networks, to make the island more vulnerable to invasion, directed the Luftwaffe to commence what came to be called the Battle of Britain.
Starting before this, in fact from the first day of the War to the last, was the other battle, the one that gets lost sight of in all the other spectacular battles and incidents, namely the Battle of the Atlantic. Despite what should have been the use of just ordinary common sense, Britain and the Allies had failed to recognize just how revolutionary the control of the skies and the control of underwater were. Not so the Germans who, even before Hitler became dictator, were fully aware of the effect such controls would have. While the democracies argued pros and cons back and forth, in Germany one word from the dictator set in motion the production of planes and submarines in huge numbers.
