The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

by William L. Shirer

There is, of course, a reason for this, although it was not clear to us at the time. The Germans, despite their vaunted military talents, lacked any grand strategic concept. Their horizons were limited—they had always been limited—to land warfare against the neighboring nations on the European Continent. Hitler himself had a horror of the sea* and his great captains almost a total ignorance of it. They were land-minded, not sea-minded. And though their armies could have crushed in a week the feeble land forces of Britain if they had only been able to come to grips with them, even the narrow waters of the Dover Straits which separated the two—so narrow that you can see across to the opposite shore—loomed in their minds, as the splendid summer began to wane, as an obstacle they knew not how to overcome.