Word: balkans
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Foreign Affairs, in whose aristocratic veins flowed the blood of Hungary's unscrupulous, wheedling past. Assured of a career by virtue of birth, Count Csáky became Europe's foremost professional in the art of diplomatic tightrope-walking even after the rope had become a Balkan tangle...
...more interesting than numbers alone was Britain's speculative distribution of the German Armies. Surprising was the strength to the northeast (50 divisions in Poland, four in Moravia), the relative weakness of the Balkan front (five in Rumania, 25 pooled in Austria). Most significant was the concentration along the western front: all attack troops, nearly two-thirds of Germany's total 224 divisions massed in Norway, western Germany, the Lowlands and France. If the British had guessed right, it could mean only one thing: a full-out attack across the Channel...
...Balkan rumors set a deadline for the German attack. Some rumors even had German troops already in Bulgaria, in mufti...
...deadline passed. A deep blanket of snow made communications by rail and wire uncertain and made a war by mechanized forces almost impossible. As Italy found in Greece, it does not pay to fight Balkan troops under conditions which give an advantage to old-fashioned armies on foot. Moreover, the Danube was frozen-not heavily enough to bear mechanized forces, too heavily to tolerate pontoon bridges. And there are only three permanent bridges over the Danube. Unless the British appeared in Greece in force, there was no need for haste. But the main reason why such a push could well...
Friend or Foe? The biggest unfinished span was, as always, the Soviet connection. Obviously, Russia would not particularly care to have her little friend in the Balkans pass like Rumania into German hands. One day last week an unknown young Russian diplomat, Alexander Mihailovich Alexandrov, said to have been chief of the Balkan Division of the Foreign Commissariat, turned up in Sofia as Counselor of Legation, reportedly charged with giving Boris moral support in refusing German demands. Another day Tass, the official news agency, issued a gruff statement: "If German troops really are present in Bulgaria and if the further...