They Asked Rundstedt If Germany Really Planned to Invade England. He Was Amused.

In July 1940, Hitler signed Führer Directive Number 16 and ordered preparations for the invasion of Britain. The army side of Operation Sea Lion went to Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, working from a headquarters at Saint-Germain-en-Laye outside Paris. By the end of August he had a plan for nine divisions landing between Folkestone and Brighton, 2,400 river barges collected from four countries, and Panzer IIIs modified to drive along the seabed breathing through a rubber hose. The problem was everything the plan assumed. The Kriegsmarine had lost more than half its surface fleet off Norway. The Luftwaffe could not sink British destroyers. The supply figures for the Kent beaches did not work on paper, let alone under fire. And when Allied investigators questioned Rundstedt in 1945 about the invasion he had spent a summer designing, he gave them an answer nobody expected from the man who wrote it. This is the full story of Operation Sea Lion, what Rundstedt actually said about it, and the one time anyone put the plan to the test.