[FalkeEins]

..have a look at Tooze ('Wages of Destruction - the making and breaking of the Nazi economy') while you're about it...it's cropped up a few times in recent dicussions here.

his basic premise (roughly summarised) is that Hitler launched world war because Germany was economically weak both in production & resources, and while he was able to over-run militarily weak neighbours, when it came to crossing the Channel , " the basic preconditions for the defeat of Britain were never met...the task of assembling the naval & aerial forces necessary to subdue the British ..were beyond Germany's industrial resources.."

" In Churchill's high flown rhetoric the clash between the Luftwaffe and the RAF took on a decisive turning-point in the war..in reality it was an extremely one-sided affair.."

of course the fact that the British couldn't be eliminated was crucial for the outcome of the war (in the West) since it gave the US somewhere to park their bomber & fighter fleets & provided a springboard for the re-occupation of Europe...therein lies the prime importance of the 'so-called' Battle of Britain - the same outcome whether it was ever fought or not...