EUROPE: The Geography of Battle

“War,” says Nazi Theoretician Ewald Banse, “is above all things a geographical phenomenon. It is tied to the surface of the earth; it derives its material sustenance from it, and moves purposefully over it, seeking out those positions which are favorable to one side, unfavorable to the other.”

Not every great general has succeeded in expressing this axiom of military science so sententiously. But every real master of strategy, from Carthage’s Hannibal and Rome’s Caesar to France’s Gamelin, has understood the intimate relationship between troops and terrain, countryside and conquest, strategy and topography. Sometimes God is on the side of the heaviest battalions; sometimes, as in the case of Switzerland, He is on the side of the country with the tallest mountains. Geography has always decided where wars are fought and how they are fought. World War I was no exception. World War II is not likely to be—even though airplanes add to the geography of war a new three dimensional veneer.

In Europe, crisscrossed north and south as well as east and west by sworling mountain ranges, the theatres of war are limited with almost mathematical precision. Every great plain and basin in western and central Europe has been soaked in blood, every pass and gap and gateway has been powdered by the hobnails of marching men. Possession of the mountain bastions frequently determines just whose plains and basins are the site of bloodletting.

Bismarck once said: “Whoever is master of Bohemia is master of Europe.” What he meant to say was that so long as Germany controlled the Bohemian bastion it would be relatively easy to keep invaders from the east from carrying warfare into the South German Basin or out on to the north German reaches of the Baltic plain. Similarly, command of the heights on either side of the Rhine has a lot to do with whether a war between Germany and France is to be fought in front of Munich or in front of Paris.

New Fields. If World War II takes one of its expected forms, with Britain, France and Poland lining up against Germany, Italy and Spain, nearly every historical theatre of battle in Europe might be ultimately involved. Because of the airplane, some quite unhistoric theatres might be involved as well. London, for example, has been safe from assault since William the Conqueror crossed the English Channel in 1066. In the World War air raids on London frightened a few shopkeepers, killed about 5,000, served chiefly to keep 300-odd British planes at home for defense instead of fighting in France.

But had war come last year, London might have been the scene of one of the most decisive battles in history. Modern Nazi bombing planes would have strafed it mercilessly. If they could have wrecked its essential services by perhaps a fortnight of intensive bombing—wrecked its communications, its power supply, its waterworks and sanitary facilities until plague stalked the streets and 10,000,000 human beings were thrown into horror-stricken disorder—the British Government might have been forced to make peace even at the cost of surrendering the proud British fleet.

The British still expect London to be strafed in event of war, but they are confident that much as its buildings may be damaged, with its new defenses life cannot be made impossible in the metropolis. They are certain that if London is not wrecked in two weeks, it will never be wrecked and the Germans will lose the war. Other areas which are virtually certain of becoming battlegrounds because of the airplane are the great industrial areas of the British Midlands and the German Ruhr. These would be battles of industrial attrition, productive of great wreckage but effective in the military sense., as blockade is effective, chiefly by cutting off war supplies. Wars of attrition are the costliest, and in a prolonged war these areas might be battlefields from beginning to end.

Back to Napoleon? To force Germany to fight on two fronts, to cut her off from the oil and grain fields of East Europe is vital to England and France. To do so they must help their allies in the East. Once war begins, they will be practically cut off from sending aid to Poland, which aims to fight a delaying war, retreating bloodily to Warsaw and the Vistula. If they are also cut off from Turkey, Rumania and Greece, they will not be able to use any of their strength to squeeze Germany between pincers.

Italy threatens to cut them off. The military brains of London and Paris will be virtually forced to devote their attention to clearing out the Mediterranean, to pulverizing Italian opposition on sea and land, in order to open their communications from Gibraltar to the Bosporus.

If this strategy is adopted military history may take a running broad jump back to Napoleonic times, when domination of Spain and the Po River Valley of northern Italy bulked large in the campaigns of the French.

The Peninsula. The Chamberlain and Daladier Governments have been savagely criticized for letting Spain fall into.the hands of Fascist Franco, who is now in a position to train big guns on Britain’s Gibraltar from the landward side. The result of this strategic boner is that the British can no longer count on Gibraltar as a firm support for naval operations along the British Mediterranean lifeline, that France is worried about submarine and airplane attacks on her Marseille-Algiers shipping from Italy’s Sardinia and the Spanish Balearic Islands. But Spain is not necessarily a fatal loss to Britain and France. Along the Pyrenees (see map, pp. 28 & 29) the French have railway spurs running up into high country at the Spanish border; the Spanish, on the other hand, have few such spurs—and also few good roads.

This means that on the offense the French would have a dozen jumping-off places for diversions to mask a drive over one of the three main routes into Spain. If, as is more likely, they decided to quarantine Spain for the duration of the war, a comparative handful of French soldiers could be shuttled from end to end of the Pyrenees holding at bay a much larger number of Spaniards who would not have the advantage of such a transportation network.

Isolation of Spain would involve a blockade of the Strait of Gibraltar. To protect a French blockade of the Spanish Mediterranean coast France could not afford for long to leave Italians in the Balearic Islands. Italian Sardinia with its naval bases at Cagliari and Maddalena is the one bad break in an Allied north-south front that extends from Flanders to Bizerte, in French Tunis. Its capture by the French—a tough proposition in face of current military prejudice against combined land and water expeditions—would shake Italian control of the Central Mediterranean.

Contrary to popular impression, the French do not desperately need their Algiers-Marseille route to bring North African recruits into France and French reinforcements to Tunis. They have an alternative route, extending by rail along the North African coast from Bizerte to Casablanca on the Atlantic Ocean, thence to Bordeaux by transport under cover of the French and British Atlantic fleets. The French have built a big naval base at Bizerte; and they have an excellent harbor for submarines at Mers-el-Kebir, halfway between Algiers and Gibraltar. Mers-el-Kebir can be used to blockade the Strait of Gibraltar from the Mediterranean side, for the French have constructed oil and gas tanks and even submarine slipways under the protecting coastal rock.

The Po Target. Italy herself is extremely vulnerable—a fact which might cause Mussolini to sit out the next World War. Flying from bases in southern France and their advanced refueling fields in Corsica, the French could with the greatest of ease bomb Rome, La Spezia, Genoa, Naples and the railway that skirts the Italian coast. Airplane attacks from the sea come without warning.

The Po Valley, seat of Italian industry, is not only a sweet target for air raids but a natural magnet for enemy armies. Time without end the Po Valley has been invaded from France and Switzerland; but never since Gaul was civilized has there been a successful invasion of France or Switzerland from the Po. Napoleon won his great early victories in the Po Valley: at Lodi and Rivoli in 1796 and 1797, and at Marengo in 1800. And long before Napoleon’s time, Hannibal crossed the Alps into Italy with elephants and a full baggage train, probably via the Little St. Bernard or the Mt. Genevre pass (the northernmost and the middle of the passes west of Turin).

The Po region is very open to attack if the French can once accomplish the none too easy job of forcing the passes, all of which converge toward Turin. Army corps starting from widely separated depots in southeastern France would meet when they came down into flat fighting country around the important Italian industrial centres, whereas Italian divisions invading France would find themselves scattered in rough mountain country a long distance from the Rhone Valley, from Marseille and from Lyon.

Since Italy and Germany are friendly, the Brenner Pass which leads from the Po Valley to Austria and Bavaria would naturally figure in the next war, chiefly for communication and supply.

This picture might be changed if the Swiss, whose Alps have been their defenders for 125 years, should be invaded, and an Italian-German thrust between Basle and Berne through the Bernese Alps should succeed in turning at Belfort the right flank of France’s defenses on the Rhine and the left flank of French Savoy. Nature provided Switzerland with its least formidable defenses on its northern border. The Swiss, fearful of German strategy, have recently mined their passes, particularly the bottlenecks through which a German Army of invasion would have to march. Only the German General Staff knows whether such a military longshot may be taken.

The Paris Wheel. In the Middle Ages, when England was France’s enemy, the Aquitanian Basin behind the coastal city of Bordeaux saw its full share of fighting.

But since the Hundred Years’ War and the subsequent French dynastic wars, Aquitania has been luckily hors de combat. Not so the Paris Basin, which stands at the crossroads of Europe.

Paris is in the hub of a peculiar wheel which has many rims. For the Paris Basin is protected particularly to the east by a number of concentric circular outcroppings known as cuestas, with the steep faces sloping outward and the gentle faces sloping inward. Eight distinct cuestas lie between Paris and the Rhine—which means that German invaders must fight their way over eight natural obstructions. The fortress of Verdun protects the Cote de Meuse cuesta through which the Meuse River cuts its way to Belgium. Another cuesta, rugged and wooded, is famous as the Argonne Forest. The easternmost cuesta is the dissected edge of the Lorraine Plateau, which Germany owned before

1914. This time there is a big difference because France sits on the edge of the Lorraine Plateau—which means one more obstacle for German attackers to cross. Now in addition to the cuestas, the Paris Basin is defended by the man-made Maginot Line, which extends not only along the Rhine but the full length of the Belgian border to the sea.

Like spokes extending beyond the rims of the Paris Basin are its military gateways. From the Paris Basin: i) the Belfort gap leads to the upper Rhine; 2) the Lorraine Gateway—a gap between the Vosges and the Slate Mountains—to the so-called Rhine Graben; 3) the Flanders Plain opens to The Netherlands and North Germany. Armies have poured through all these gateways in both directions. And sometimes Paris has fallen, as in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Generally speaking, the advantages of fighting in the Paris Basin lie with the defense.

In 1914 the Germans outflanked the obstructive cuestas by slipping into the Paris Basin from the Flanders Plain, where the stony outcroppings tend to disappear. This Flanders Plain is an extension of the Baltic Plain that runs all the way from the North Sea to Russia. There Winston Churchill’s great ancestor, the first Duke of Marlborough, won his victories of Ramillies (1706) and Malplaquet (1709). There the French under the great Marshal Saxe defeated the British and the Dutch at Fontenoy in 1745. There Waterloo was fought and Napoleon finally defeated in 1815. The Flanders Plain is protected to the East by the Belgian hills and fortresses of Liege and Namur. It is protected to the northeast by Belgium’s new Albert Canal, built as much for defense as for commerce, and beyond that by low-lying Dutch country that can be flooded if necessary. But even with fortresses and canals and emergency breaches in the dikes, the Flanders Plain offers the least difficult road to Paris and the French channel ports. It is a road that should be captured in summer. Flanders mud is a potent delayer during the sloppy months of the West European winter. The Belgians hope they can remain neutral in the next war, and King Leopold is a strong neutralite. But practically Belgium must ally itself with the enemy of its first invader.

Bloody Plains. Germany contains two major theatres of war although for more than a hundred years no big war has been fought on German soil. In 1914 this was due to German possession of Alsace and Lorraine, which kept the French from pouring through the Lorraine Gateway and the Belfort gap. In 1870, when the French owned the border provinces, the stupidity of Marshal Bazaine, who shut himself up in the fortress of Metz and refused to stir, deprived France of the opportunity to push into the South German Basin.

General Gamelin knows all about Bazaine’s blunder and he knows also the history of the first Napoleon, who never made such mistakes. Napoleon frequently carried his eagles through the Black Forest into southern Germany. Ulm, Ratisbon and Hohenlinden in the South German Basin were all sites of Napoleonic victories against the various coalitions of Austria, Russia and England. A few miles from Ulm, at Blenheim, the Duke of Marlborough won his “famous Victory” in 1704—the victory over the French that so nonplussed the grandfather of Little Peterkin in Robert Southey’s poem. To prevent a new war from being carried into the South German Basin or to the western end of the Baltic Plain the Nazis have built the Siegfried—or Limes—line. At its vital segment (between the Lorraine Gateway and Luxemburg) where the French might penetrate into the German concentration areas on the Rhine, this “line” is not a mere chain of forts, but a network organized in depth. A year ago the French might have crossed the Rhine; now the chances for carrying the war into Germany are not so good. Nevertheless, Gamelin is maybe game for the try.

Opposite the corner of the South German Basin which is entered by the Belfort gap lies the Moravian Gateway (where Napoleon fought Austerlitz in 1805) and the Moravian Gate leads to the Baltic Plain, to Breslau, Warsaw and Danzig (which Napoleon entered in 1807).

The Baltic Plain is glacial country. When the ice cap was inching out over Europe, drainage toward the north was blocked; hence the plain is now crisscrossed—by old river beds that run from east to west, by rivers that now flow into the North and Baltic Seas. The new river beds and the old connecting valleys make it relatively easy for soldiers to roll across the Baltic Plain in any direction. Germany’s soldiers rolled against Russia in 1914 on railroad lines built especially to serve strategic purposes. On the Russian side of the border railroafls were as few as they were many in Germany. It was a situation which parallels that on the Spanish-French frontier. The situation still exists but the border has moved and the outer fringe of German lines is now in Poland and the Polish corridor.

In the early stages of another war Poland can use this border network. If the Poles are forced to retire, as expected, they will have no rail network to supply them but beyond a certain point the advancing Germans will also be without such communications close up to their lines.

Before they retreat from the main German border, the Poles may attempt an offensive into East Prussia where Hitler has soldiers who will “take” Danzig unless kept busy fighting off the Poles from their rear. The Poles are not likely in any case to’ attack Danzig via the corridor for that would expose their rear to the main German attack. On a long neck of land called Hel, stretching into the sea near Danzig, the Poles have heavy guns and troops ready to be massacred by the Germans, but only after the guns of Hel have made a shambles of Danzig.

Poland has attempted to concentrate her industry in the so-called Polish triangle on the upper Vistula. After the first fight in the railroad network area, after the German mechanized army had had a chance to bog down in the muddy roads back of the old frontier, the Polish army would still have its own industrial area behind it—provided the Germans had not got into the triangle by the backdoor. On the south (Slovakia) the triangle is guarded by the Carpathians which stand next to the Alps as a first-class natural fortification. On the west it faces greater danger from attack across the German border in the area between Breslau and the Moravian Gate. In this region many an observer believes that the first great battle of a German-Polish war may be fought.

The Balkan Sworl. South of the Carpathians, Germany and her opponents face another geography. Four centuries ago when the Turk was rampant in southeastern Europe, he scared the life out of Christendom by pushing northwest, up the few (Continued on p. 35) narrow lowland channels through the sworling mountains of the Balkans to the Hungarian Plain and the walls of Vienna itself. In World War I, the Allies hoped to emulate the Turk but failed at the start in failing to force the Dardanelles. Lacking support from British and French troops, the Serbians and Rumanians found themselves penned up between the Germans and the Austro-Hungarians on one side and Bulgarians and Turks on the other. The Germans under Falkenhayn and Mackensen had little difficulty in storming the passes in the Transylvanian Alps and the Iron Gate to overrun Rumania. They might try it again.

Strategically, the Allies might be better fixed for World War II. With Turkey, Rumania and Greece on the Allied side, expeditions could be sent against a German-Hungarian alliance through the Vardar River valley from Salonika, along the so-called Diagonal Furrow that reaches from Istanbul through Bulgaria to Belgrade, up the valley of the lower Danube from Rumania, and over the passes of the Transylvanian Alps, which are a southerly extension of the Carpathians. All this could be done provided the Allies eliminate Italy.

Italy alone stands in the way. Since 1934 all of Mussolini’s moves have been aimed at driving wedges between the Allies’ Eastern and Western Fronts. From Sicily, Sardinia and the Spanish Balearics, the Italians menace Britain’s island of Malta; from Libya they threaten Egypt. Off the coast of Asia Minor they have a naval base at Leros in that happy hunting ground of submarines—the Aegean. The master stroke of recent Italian history was the seizure of Albania. For between Albania’s capital of Tirana and the Greek port of Salonika there is a trough, along which Italian troops could move to intercept a Franco-British thrust into the Balkans.

World War II will have to be fought in the pattern of European geography, but there are many reasons for believing that it will not be fought in the pattern of World War I.

German strategy is necessarily to attack on one front and stand on the defensive on the other. In 1914 the Germans chose to fight first in the west, failed there, then concentrated on winning a victory in the east before turning to the west again. Now faced with the Maginot Line and the modern French army, Germany may reverse her former plan, strike first in the east, giving her airfleet the job of hanging her western enemies.

But logic cannot predict where the next battles will be fought because: i) military men are often stupid, and 2) each side is trying to outguess the other and knows that the least likely point of attack is often the most profitable. Today General Staffs have the map of Europe spread before them and are playing a shell game with one another. Instead of three shells, however, they have half-a-dozen, each covering one of Europe’s theatres of war. Not till the big guns blow the shells to bits will anyone know under which shell lies the pea.