Free History of the Second World War by Basil Henry Liddell Hart Page B

almost certainly shift the weight of their attack elsewhere.
    In mid-November the Allied Supreme Council had endorsed Gamelin’s Plan ‘D’, a hazardous development — which the British Staff had at first questioned — of an earlier plan. Under Plan ‘D’ the reinforced left wing of the Allied Armies was to rush into Belgium as soon as Hitler started to move, and push as far eastward as possible. That played straight into Hitler’s hands, as it fitted perfectly into his new plan. The farther the Allied left wing pushed into central Belgium the easier it would be for his tank drive through the Ardennes to get round behind it and cut it off.
    The outcome was made all the more certain because the Allied High Command employed the bulk of its mobile forces in the advance into Belgium, and left only a thin screen of second-rate divisions to guard the hinge of its advance — facing the exits from the ‘impassable Ardennes’. To make it all the worse, the defences which they had to hold were particularly weak — in the gap between the end of the Maginot Line and the beginning of the British fortified front.
    Mr Churchill mentions in his memoirs that anxiety had been felt in British quarters during the autumn about that gap and says: ‘Mr Hore-Belisha, the Secretary of State for War, raised the point in the War Cabinet on several occasions. . . . The Cabinet and our military leaders however were naturally shy of criticising those whose armies were ten times as strong as our own.’* After Hore-Belisha’s departure early in January, following the storm which his criticisms had aroused, there was still less inclination to press the point. There was also a dangerous growth of false confidence, in Britain as well as in France. Churchill declared, in a speech on January 27, that ‘Hitler has lost his best chance’. That comforting assertion was headlined in the newspapers next day. It was the very time when the new plan was fermenting in Hitler’s mind.
     
    * Churchill: The Second World War, vol. II, p. 33.

CHAPTER 5 - THE FINNISH WAR
     

     
    Following the partition of Poland, Stalin was anxious to safeguard Russia’s Baltic flank against a future threat from his temporary colleague, Hitler. Accordingly, the Soviet Government lost no time in securing strategic control of Russia’s old-time buffer-territories in the Baltic. By October 10 it had concluded pacts with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania which enabled its forces to garrison key-points in those countries. On the 9th conversations began with Finland. On the 14th the Soviet Government formulated its demands. These were defined as having three main purposes.
    First, to cover the sea approach to Leningrad, by (a) ‘making it possible to block the Gulf of Finland by artillery from both coasts, to prevent enemy warships or transports entering the Gulf’; (b) ‘making it possible to prevent any enemy gaining access to the islands in the Gulf of Finland situated west and north-west of the entrance to Leningrad’. For this purpose the Finns were asked to cede the islands of Hogland, Seiskari, Lavanskari, Tytarskari, and Loivisto, in exchange for other territories; also to lease the port of Hango for thirty years so that the Russians might there establish a naval base with coastal artillery, capable, in conjunction with the naval base at Paldaski on the opposite coast, of blocking access to the Gulf of Finland.
    Second, to provide better cover on the land approach to Leningrad by moving back the Finnish frontier in the Karelian Isthmus, to a line which would be out of heavy artillery range of Leningrad. The re-adjustments of the frontier would still leave intact the main defences on the Mannerheim Line.
    Third, to adjust the frontier in the far north ‘in the Petsamo region, where the frontier was badly and artificially drawn’. It was a straight line running through the narrow isthmus of the Rybachi peninsula and cutting off the western end of that peninsula. This