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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 0100.PDF
34 JANUARY O,TH, 1941. THE FOURTH DIMENSION (Continued) line as far south as Leghorn-Florence-Ancona, thereby seizing all the important industrial area of Italy together with all the important transverse road and railway communications, the principal hydraulic electric plants, and all the important Northern Italian ports and, as we have seen from earlier articles, almost the entire Italian aircraft industry. Not Bad Going Can we count on more than that by the spring? If not, can we count upon doing as much a little sooner? Probably most people would say that if the Allies can do that by the spring they will have done well. In the meantime we shall have lost or used up some more ships, aeroplanes, tanks, guns and sundry other accoutrements of war; our cities will have been further damaged ; Germany's industrial centres and ports in her occupation will have been bombed still more and we shall be facing one another across the Channel if Ger- many has not launched an attempt to invade the British Isles in the interval. What shall we have gained materially? A clean-up of the Mediterranean generally ; strategic- ally useful, but otherwise useless, African coastline bordering the Mediterranean ; a reduction in the total man-power of our enemies ; the opportunity to block further German expansion—and we shall know precisely where we stand for the final stage of the war vis-a-vis our mortal foe. What shall we not have gained materially? We shall not thereby have affected the submarine bases whence operate the submarines against our ocean routes; we shall not have affected the air-bases whence operate the aeroplanes against our British cities ; we shall not have affected German power of industrial organisa- tion within Europe; we shall not have liberated one of the overrun nations to fight on our side; except in so far as our independent air-force, operating from the British Isles, shall have bombed German submarine and air-bases, factories, shipyards and industrial plant. Assuming, then, that Germany still holds the Conti- nental coastline from the basin of St. Jean de Luz to the North Cape—an almost straight line across Europe from Hendaye to Constanta and an almost straight line from the mouth of the Danube to Memel—where are the Allies going to begin the assault which the British Prime Minister has more than once promised? He set it forth, so to speak, as the vision of a promised land seen from a mountain-top but without (naturally) giving any indi- cation of the modus operandi by which it is to come about. Lebensraum This territorial colossus of the Nazi war-machine con- tains almost a million square miles of territory and a population of 225,000,000 white people. (Within it lies isolated the little mountain "island" of Switzerland with something more than 4,000,000 people living in an area of 16,000 square miles. The inhabitants use 13 different languages, and speak innumerable variations of them. The area includes men and women of different stages of cultural development, from the completely illiterate to the most accomplished. The Allies' main base of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland contains a population of about 45.000,000 people and has an area of 95,260 square- miles. Germany's cry for lebensraum was a lie—is a lie! Before the occupation of Austria Germany had a popu- lation density of 363 persons to the square mile ; now,in her swollen territory the population density is, in the area I have described., about 233 persons to the square mile. The population density in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland is 468 to the square mile. If Ger- many's fight is for lebensraum—and Hitler in his last speech made it clear that that was the bait which he still dangled before the mesmerised eyes of the German folk—it can mean but one thing; the new European order is but a blind drawn over the eyes of those who cannot penetrate its attempted black-out of the Nazi purpose; that new order (so-called) possesses no finality ; it is but a step in the planned progressive march of the Germans behind, or rather in front of, Hitler. The " new order," or subjugation of Europe, is as necessary to the widening campaign of the German people as the murder of Dollfuss was to the occupation of Austria. By no other means could Germany move militarily to the conquest of territory outside Europe. The present, anomalous position of the French Colonial Empire is an eloquent illustration of this^ peculiarity of the present war. Material Wealth Prior to 1938 Germany's population density was 77 per cent, of that of the United Kingdom and Northern .; Ireland ; to-day (in the area I have delineated above) it is only 50 per cent. If iebensraum were really the cry, j - then Germany had no need to go to war at all and she ' • is now twice as well off as are the British in Britain. This war is not being fought by Germany for lebensraum • but for material wealth. Much of that material wealth lies in Europe, already at her feet and of it she has taken freely. In Europe, too, lies the key to strfl more material wealth outside Europe. The British, the Greeks, and the remnants of the forces of our Allies bar the way which otherwise is wide open to the Germans. It is on that realistic view of the " action " behind the war that we can base our strategical postulates for the war developments of the near future. If the British and the Greeks defeat the Italian armies and force Italy back within her own homeland, defen- sively, with the farther-flung portions of her African* Empire beleaguered, the German approach to conquest f outside Europe must depend upon the defeat of th;.'•** British in the British Isles and the occupation of Britain. In this case the British Isles must bear the brunt of the German war effort this spring or thereabouts. If the British and the Greeks, either together or separately, do not defeat the Italian armies by the spring, German war strategy may be deflected to con- sider making the master-thrust from a point, or points, on its southern front. In this case the British Isles will continue to be a target for blockade attacks by air and sea. And, if German industrial organisation can achieve sufficient output for both purposes, the blockade of Britain maytje intensified. One or other of the methods, of German attack just outlined might be preceded by a feint attack on the other front. It is clear from this hypothesis that Britain and her Allies must be prepared to counter a thrust both to the west and to the south—unless the Intelligence gentlemen can be certain where the thrust will be made! The development of the air-war during the past 16 months has shown pointedly that the success of the attack, and equally the success of the defence, depends upon mastery of the air. Mastery to shoot down enemy
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