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> Although experts dispute its exact size the German air force is still the biggest and best in Europe. Major George Fielding Eliot in his new book, Bombs Bursting in Air* estimates it at 4,000 first line planes, 4,000 in a first-line reserve, 2,500 in a second-line reserve, and a war-time replacement manufacturing capacity of 1,000 a month.
> The British Navy is big enough to whip any two European navies, strong enough to command the English Channel, the North Sea and the whole Eastern Mediterranean, thus leaving the French Navy free to police the Western Mediterranean.
> The French army, 800,000 men (with a trained reserve of 5,500,000) for a total male population of 20,000,000, was the big armed force of Europe from 1919 to 1935. Last September General Marie Gustave Gamelin, France's Chief of Staff, assured his Government that he could roll his men through the unfinished German Siegfried (or Limes) Line like marmalade. Both the German army and the Limes are stronger now, but as of June 1939 the French army is still the strongest all-around fighting machine in Europe.
Sum Totals. Like the last, the next great European war is not likely to be fought between only two nations. Most of Europe will choose sides and victory may well go to the weakest nation if it is on the stronger side.
In counting up the strength of sides, military men talk about divisions, the basic, more or less self-contained units which generals add or subtract from armies. In fact divisions figure in their calculations as building blocks figure in the architectural dreams of children. Divisions are only roughly equal in size and strength—in France and Russia there are 18,000 men to a division, in Germany, 15,200; in Poland and England, 12,000. Mechanized divisions are even smaller, but their strength is computed in terms of tanks, armored cars, machine-guns.
Assuming that Germany, Italy, Hungary and Spain fight under the banner of the Axis, and that Britain, France, Poland, Rumania, Turkey, Greece and Egypt fight as allies in a "stop-Hitler coalition," Major Eliot last month offered his tabulation of relative strengths in the New Republic:
First-Line Divisions Reserve
Infantry Cavalry Armored Divisions
Germany 49 3 4 38
Italy 46 3 — 35
Hungary 7 1 — ?
Spain 21 1 1 ?
— — — —
Total Axis 123 8 5 73
France 32 4 2 40
Britain 4 1 2 12
Poland 30 5 1 30
Rumania 24 3 — 22
Turkey 22 3 — 18
Greece 13 1 — 10
Egypt 3 — — —
— — — —
Total Allies 128 17 5 132
This would give the Allies the edge with a grand total of 282 divisions to 209 divisions for the Axis. It gives a rough idea of relative strength but is not definitive. Yugoslavia with 30 divisions. Bulgaria with some four divisions might join the Axis. Some professional soldiers believe that Germany has at least 30 more divisions—nearly half a million men—besides those Major Eliot names. So instead of 209 divisions the Axis strength would come to 273 divisions—not counting Japanese aid.