Word: struma
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...heaviest and by far the more important drives were farther south. Through the mountains from Sofia to Nish and Skoplje went drives intended to cut the vital Vardar Valley and divide the Yugoslavs from the Greeks. And down the Struma River valley towards Salonika went another drive to break the Greeks' back and roll the British into...
...nation in Europe. For an hour, Yugoslavia was stopping Hitler. The Yugoslavs realized that until Hitler was sure of them, he preferred to undertake no new adventure in the Balkans. He could scarcely afford to attack Greece from Bulgaria alone-through what the Yugoslavs could make a deathtrap, the Struma River Valley. He would have to be sure first of the Yugoslav flank; he would like to have Yugoslavia's broader, safer Vardar Valley...
Down Goes Paul. If Hitler attacked Greece only from Bulgaria, through the Struma River Valley, he would undoubtedly find it hard going. The frontier is only 25 miles wide, the terrain is barren, forbidding, and 90,000 or more Greeks could put up stiff resistance against the heaviest odds. But if the Nazis also attacked through Yugoslavia's Vardar River Valley, west of the Struma. leading directly to Salonika, they could strike the Struma's defenders from the rear and probably crush any forces that Greece would be able to muster...
...Nazis in Bulgaria were a few scattered thousands in mufti. Next day Bulgarian Premier Professor Bogdan Filoff had signed with the Axis in Vienna and Bulgarian roads were jammed with mechanized Nazi columns. Within 48 hours the grey-green uniformed vanguard had rumbled 175 miles to villages in the Struma Valley a few miles from the mountainous Greek frontier which is only 55 miles from Salonika. If in the next few days or weeks this force was met by the British and the Turks-the British would be daring indeed to risk another lonely Narvik-the campaign for control...
...opposition from the forces of some real power, could make its way through Greece, or via Monastir in Yugoslavia to Salonika. From that point it could either ascend the Vardar River Valley towards Nish, or if that route is blocked by Hitler, make its way into Bulgaria up the Struma and Maritsa Valleys, or along the coast toward the Dardanelles...