Word: flank
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...Fossum forts, southwest of Oslo, Norse garrisons fought bitterly. Elsewhere the Nazi juggernaut rolled comfortably from town to town, in its own lorries and commandeered busses. With the occupation of Sarpsborg and Halden it reached the lower Swedish border and threatened Sweden's flank behind her main southern defense zone...
Their hold on the mountain ridge down to Halden would enable them to flank Sweden's southern defense zone, which runs southeast through her big lakes, Vaner and Vatter. With their command of the air, their superior arms (automatic rifles against old 6.5-mm. Kraag-Jörgensens, for which the Norse can get more ammunition only from Sweden or the U. S. ), they should be able soon to take southern Norway. Unless King Haakon would order nonresistance, the Nazis promised "martial law," the Gestapo, the death penalty, confiscation, destruction, starvation, the whole bag of tricks displayed in Poland...
Secondary outcome of peace in the North last week was a journey undertaken by Adolf Hitler down to Brennero, Italy to talk more peace and more war with his ambiguous Fascist partner. For Germany the Russian victory looked fine. Her Swedish iron ore was safe. Her northern flank was shielded. Her prestige was generally conceded upped. Russia was now free. The Allies and their unfulfilled promises were fair bait for sarcasm...
Thursday. Finnish Minister to the Court of St. James's Georg Achates Gripenberg was summoned to the Foreign Office and asked what he knew about the peace negotiations. London was naturally anxious. If peace were concluded, Germany's northern flank would be secure, the southern made more secure. The important Scandinavian neutrals-"Norway points like a pistol at the heart of England," wrote Leslie Hore-Belisha recently -would fall deep into Russo-German influence...
...fate of Finland been settled according to customary jungle-law than the European capitals are busy passing the buck. Helsinki blames Stockholm, Paris, and London; London blames Stockholm; Stockholm, London. Finland is fettered; the Allies have lost face; and a rare opportunity to strike Germany on her open flank is gone. Aggression scores another triumph; and the democracies smart under a defeat they feel might have been averted...