Breakneck pace

The attractive at the first glance theory of Gen. Giulio Douhet, prophesizing a total air war, did not fool the leading military brains of different countries. They understood that deploying heavy horizontal bomber planes against the enemy troops dispersed in the battleground would be ineffective: capable only of area-bombing, and on top of it - from high altitudes, they hardly would be able to destroy highly mobile armoured troops and motorized infantry. More >>>

A wolf in sheep's clothing

There came the spring of 1938, and the spectre of a new war haunted Europe again! This time the ominous clouds of the new conflict had been gathering over the mountainous massifs of the Sudetes. The Sudeten-German Party (Sudetendeutsche Partei - SdP), by orders from Berlin, launched a massive propaganda offensive against the Czechoslovak Republic. More >>>

Indian Ocean raid

In the beginning of the spring of 1942 the Japanese occupied the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The British garrisons of the islands left them earlier due to menace from the north, where the Japanese took Rangoon on 8 March, and the south, where the Japanese landed on Sumatra. The enemy presence in the Andaman Sea, in the north-eastern section of the Indian Ocean, meant in the first place the menace to the main forces of the Eastern Fleet in Colombo on Ceylon. The base did not possess any adequate anti-air defence - either anti-aircraft artillery or aircraft. After all, the British air forces in the Indian Ocean was weak as far as the quantity and quality of the equipment is concerned. The forces of the Royal Navy comprised three aircraft-carriers, but the Japanese could oppose them with six ships of the same class. More >>>

Occupation

Occupation of Albania on 7 April 1939 did not crown the Italian imperial ambitions. After all, Albania was supposed to become merely the bridgehead of the Italian fascism in the Balkans, from which soon further aggressions would be launched against Greece and Yugoslavia. The invaders also had perfect knowledge that - despite of official propaganda about the Italian tutelage being received favourably in the broad circles of the Albanian society - Albanian highlanders would never reconcile with the loss of their freedom. They were actually bound to open a new chapter in the history of the Albanian struggle for independence very soon. Yet, Rome believed that resistance sooner or later would be suppressed, and the rule of the iron fist would, with time, turn the annexated country into a calm overseas province of a modern Roman empire. As the Italians issued from such assumptions, they immediately undertook the efforts to create in Albania a strong and efficient administration. More >>>

Soldiers of the Army "Poznań"

Germany commenced direct preparations for the war with Poland in the early spring of 1939. On 3 April German generals presented to Adolf Hitler the outline directive of the Wehrmacht deployment in 1939-1940. Its second part, codenamed Fall Weiß, dealt with the plan of destroying of the Polish armed forces. That plan had to be realized by surprise attack of concentric thrusts from Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia, beating the Polish armies concentrated in the west of the the rivers Vistula and Narew, and then pursuit eastwards to prevent the Poles to rebuild their defences along Narew, Vistula and San. The focal point of those thrusts was Warsaw, the capital of Poland and its major political, administrative and economical centre, which was supposed to be taken in the third, and last, phase of the war. More >>>

Burma

With the occupation of Malaya and Dutch East Indies rich in oil, rubber and other raw materials, the Japanese had achieved their primary strategic goal. Yet, in order to guard the perimeter of their conquests, they had to establish a system of advanced positions from the Indies to the Gilbert Islands. That is why they laid an eye on Burma - the country located ideally for safeguarding their conquests in the west. High, longitudinally stretched ranges of Arakan, Assam and Manipur could constitute a natural defence line, blocking the only three local roads, impassable during the rainy season. More >>>

Polish coast in war plans

Poland, brought to the independent being after 123 years of absence on the political maps of Europe, on 10 February 1920 received access to the Baltic Sea. However, it was not a reason for excessive joy, as the coast awarded to Poland by the decisions of the Treaty of Versailles constituted merely a 142km-long stretch of sandy beaches from Hel Peninsula to the outskirts of Zoppot. Danzig with adjacent area was declared a free city under the international control; although it maintained certain formal links with Poland, majority of its population was German. Poland was too weak politically to get a better deal. The narrow "corridor" of the Polish Pomerania, wedged between the German Pomerania and East Prussia in a space no bigger than 40 kilometres, was impossible to defend in case of a conflict with Germany. The whole area had barely few fishermen villages, with only one small port in Puck. The Germans made sure that no objects of economic importance was left to the Poles; the land was stripped of anything that Poland might use to build a real sea economy and a navy. In the beginning of 1920s Poland's access to the sea was an illusion rather than a reality. More >>>