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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.