PLANNING AND PREPARATION continued...

...Before detailed planning could begin two main conditions needed to be met. Firstly, enough men would need to be trained and equipped for the task and sufficient shipping would need to be available to supply to Britain from where the invasion would be launched and sustained. The success of invasion hinged on eliminating the German U-boat threat in the North Atlantic; achieving air superiority over enemy-controlled Europe; destroying or disrupting the German economy and war industries; degrading the German military machine on other fronts; and establishing harbours and military bases in Britain.

It was an almost impossibly tall order, especially given the fact that the United States at this time was still a third-rate military power with a small army and obsolete equipment. By the end of 1941, British Chiefs of Staff began to face Winston Churchill’s challenge:

"You are to prepare for the invasion of Europe. You must devise and design the appliances, the landing craft, and the technique. The whole of the South Coast of England is a bastion of defence against the invasion of Hitler; you've got to turn it into the springboard for our attack.”

At the end of 1941 Field Marshall Alan Brooke was appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff. "Brookie” was the foremost of all Heads of the British Army. His influence on the Allied grand strategy was strong, perhaps the strongest of any individual.

Among the most important of his contributions to the course of the War ranks the delaying of the Second Front. The partnership between Brooke and Churchill was a very successful one. The combination of Churchill's vision and Brooke's down to earth, strategic method
of running the war powerfully contributed to victory...