The panel I attended included presentations on Fall of Constantinople in 1453, Soviet army officers during the 1930s and Frederick the Great’s role in the Seven Years War.  Although, I found the content of the other two presentations to be more interesting, the presentation on corrupt in the Soviet army officers was the superior presentation.  Although, the girl who presented this jumped straight into her topic without a significant introduction, the presentation was organized and very well put together.  She clearly presented her thesis, her hypothesis, main points of argument, background infomation and her primary sources.  I particualarly enjoyed her conclusion of the selfishess of the army officers reflected capitalism more then the communist ideals that the Soviet Union is sopposed to live by.  A member of the audience argued that selfishness of the army officers was due to self preservation rather then personal greed.  Although, I believe he had a point because of the famous purges Stalin commited against his own people, but people often do use their position of power for selfish purposes.  Self preservation is always critical when you live in an environment like Stalin’s Soviet Union, however it does not explain why officers were using their positions as stepping stones to power and leadership in the Soviet Union.  Stalin’s closest advisors were often among those who were killed in the purges, so leadership in the Communist Party did not necessarily insure survival.

She also discussed the diaries and memoirs of the Soviet Union (her primary sources) thoughout her presentation, referring to them thoughout the outlining of her arguements.  I believe the quotes and constant refererences to diaries/memoirs made the presentation because it made her arguements more legitmate and made the presentation itself more interesting.  The only recommendations I would of made for her presentation were the development of an introduction and the delivery.  The speaker spoke much too quickly and that took away from her presentation.  If she had tone a better job controlling the tone of her presentation, it would have been near perfect.

I have recently recieved a book over Amazon called Invasion! Operation Sealion 1940 by Martin Marix Evans.  The book notes upon the real threat of invasion that Great Britain felt in the summer of 1940 and how vigorously Great Britain was preparing for the inevitable landing of German troops.  Evans also observes that the Luftwaffe changes of attack on the Royal Airforce Force airfields to bombing of London, led to the British victory in the battle of Britain.  He believes that if Operation Sealion had begun on September 1940, the Germans could of still successfully landed troops on Great Britain despite the Britain’s continued control of their airspace.  However, he believes that the Nazi troops would have defeated by British army because of their supply and communication lines of the Germans would have been cut off and the difficult mountain terrain of Southern England.  This differentiates from other works,who almost all argue that if the Nazis could of landed enough troops on Great Britain, it would of been all over for them.

I have also learned that an interesting piece of infomation, that supports the thesis of my literature review (British authors believing Operation Sea Lion was a bigger threat then authors of other nationalities).  Despite the fact that history has almost forgetten about Operation Sealion, the threat of invasion with the British public is still vividly remembered by them to this day.  A visit to anywhere on the coastline from Kent to Cornwell can remind any visitor, there are still concrete humps to stop the german tanks and children are still taught today that if it wasnt for the bravery of the RAF they would not be here today.  All of this reinforces the national bias argument I used in my literature review.

I have recently modified my research methods, to include some of the resources the library provides.  After I made an appointment with Jack Bales, he introduced me to the interlibrary loan system (ILL).  With his assistance, i managed to find two articles and about 6 books.  The ILL system has been a real help because there are only two books that are written on Operation Sea Lion ( I found books with Operation Sea Lion as a chapter or a topic of discussion but having the entirely of the book written about Oper. Sea Lion allows for new insight and the author’s personal opinion to come though).  I have only recieved the articles electronically so far, but I am hoping that the books will reveal new points on the view of why Operation Sea Lion was canceled.  The new historians might even provide a new school of thought to why the Nazi never attempted to land troops on Great Britain.  The two schools of thought are that Hitler was never serious about invading Great Britain and the other was he was discouraged by the results of the Battle of Britain.  I am currently leaning towards the idea that Nazi lacked sincereity for invasion.

I have recently narrowed my research topic, because I realized a question like ”Why did the Nazi cancel Operation Sea Lion” is too broad for a 6-8 page paper.  My new primary research paper question is something to the nature of ” Why was Operation Sea Lion canceled based on the public speeches and proclamations of Adolf Hitler and the memoirs of one of his Luftwaffe commanders?” (Albert Kesselring).  I have obviously focused on using Kesselring’s memiors and a collection of Hitler’s speeches and proclamations as my main primary sources.  I have slightly shifted my hypothesis to “Operation Sea Lion was canceled by Adolf Hitler because of a lack of a personal desire to invade a nation he admired, leading to mistakes in both the planning and implementation of Operation Sea Lion”.

Over the past week, I have been to the library twice and spend several hours looking for infomation on my topic.  Finding secondary sources has not been difficult, I have already checked out the two books on Operation Sea Lion itself, one book on Hitler’s relationship with his generals, two on the Royal navy and one on the German navy.  I have also located books on the Battle of Britain, the Royal airforce, the Luftwaffe and Adolf Hitler himself.  However, despite this i have had a difficult time finding creditable primary sources.  Since, I am taking the Nazi perspective in this sitution, diary entries of members of the Royal Airforce can only help me so much.  Many primary sources that would actually assist me are either classifed, found only in German or both.  Because I do not have security clearance of any kind and only an elementary understanding of German, none of this helps me.  Luckily for me, Mr. Bales was working in his office at the time.  He did not have time to assist with my research at that moment, so he used my topic as a demonstration on Friday.   Next time, I go by the library to do some research I will mostly likely find some creditable primary sources for my topic.

The development of my research question has expended with my research.  Orginally my question was “Why did the Nazi miliary leadership cancel Operation Sea Lion”.  It has now been expanded to “Why did the Nazi miliary leadership cancel Operation Sea Lion and end the Battle of Britain when they have the resources to continue to battle for control of the British skies? ”.  Also, I have developed a secondary question to my research.  “Why did not Adolf Hitler change his focus so quickly from defeating Great Britain to other miliary operations such as the invasion of the Soviet Union”?   My hypothesis has been changed to “Operation Sea Lion was canceled because the Luftwaffe was taking heavy casuilites in the Battle of Britain and Adolf Hitler wanted to use his miliary machine to conquer nations he depised such as the Soviet Union instead of Great Britain who he sopposely admired as fellow Aryans”.  In other words, I hypothesis Hitler did not think the lemon was worth the squeeze.

Operation Sea Lion or Unternehmen Seelöwe was the Nazi plan to invade the United Kingdom during World War Two.  After the Fall of France, the Nazi high command felt the war in the West was won and attempted to make peace with the British.  However, Winston Churchill refused to even discuss peace talks with the Nazi so they decided they had to force the British into peace talks.  To defeat the British, an invasion across the English channel seemed the obvious route.  However, the Germans had to destroy the British Royal Navy and British Royal Airforce to even began that discussion.  The Nazi high command also realized that a modest landing of German troops on the British isles could overrun the British. Although the Nazis did attempt to destroy the British airforce in the Battle of Britain and planned to engage the Royal Navy in the North Sea as a distraction, Hitler eventually canceled the plan.  He believed that control of the airspace was unachieveable and the three branches of the miliary could not coordinate with each other successfully.  Hitler then moved on to the invasion of the Soviet Union and the rest is history. 

For my research paper, I am going to be looking from the perspective of the German high command and looking at their true objectives.  Was the Nazi High Command really interested in invading the United Kingdom?  Based on the limited research I have done so far, I hypothesis that the Nazis with the their superior manpower and resources could of won a war of attriation and successfully invaded the United Kingdom given time.  However, I hypothesize Adolf Hitler was more interested in fighting socialists and Slavs then people whom he sopposely admired.  I also think he felt he could eventually bring the United Kingdom on his side as an ally against the Soviets.

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