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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.