Broad Versus Narrow Front
The German Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres, OKH) originally planned an invasion on a vast scale, extending from Dorset to Kent. This was far in excess of what Kriegsmarine could supply, and final plans were more modest, calling for nine divisions to make an amphibious landing with around 67,000 men in the first echelon and an airborne division to support them. The chosen invasion sites ran from Rottingdean in the west to Hythe in the east.
The German Navy wanted a front as short as possible as they regarded this as more defensible. Admiral Raeder wanted a front stretching from Dover to Eastbourne, stressing that shipping between Cherbourg/Le Havre and Dorset would be exposed to attacks from the Navy based in Portsmouth and Plymouth. General Halder rejected this, saying, "From the army's point of view I regard it as complete suicide, I might just as well put the troops that have landed straight through the sausage machine."
The battle plan called for German forces to be launched from Cherbourg to Lyme Regis, Le Havre to Ventnor and Brighton, Boulogne to Eastbourne, Calais to Folkestone, and Dunkirk and Ostend to Ramsgate. Fallschirmjägern (paratroopers) would land near Brighton and Dover. Once the coast was secured, they would push north, taking Gloucester and encircling London. There is reason to believe that the Germans would not attempt to assault the city but besiege and bombard it. German forces would secure England up to the 52nd parallel (approximately as far north as Northampton), anticipating that the rest of the United Kingdom would then surrender.
Read more about this topic: Operation Sea Lion
Famous quotes containing the words broad, narrow and/or front:
“I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society. Most with whom you endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some institution in which they appear to hold stock,—that is, some particular, not universal, way of viewing things. They will continually thrust their own low roof, with its narrow skylight, between you and the sky, when it is the unobstructed heavens you would view.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is the small doubts of timid souls that accomplish their ruin. It is the narrow vision, the fear and trembling hesitation, that constitute defeat.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)
“I am going to send an angel in front of you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 23:20.