Dynamic Defence: The Northern Flank

Abstract

Every now and again the Northern Flank is rediscovered, rather like an ageing Hollywood star. I guess this is due principally when, from time to time, the appetite of strategists becomes sated with the problems of the Central Region: not least the appetites of those, like the British, whose professional land and air forces tend to be preoccupied with what is, after all, their major theatre of operations on mobilisation. Yet it is also rediscovered now and again, I suspect, when the eye of the strategist, professional or amateur, wanders northward across the Elbe river. There is sometimes a shock of discovery: why, here is a piece of West German territory which is not in the fief of the Commander-in-Chief of the Central Region! Astonishing, too, it is an area across which Russian tanks and aircraft might travel in an enveloping movement in the onrush of an offensive. I am speaking of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, the northern-most and populous länder of the Federal Republic of Germany. These lie in the area of Allied Forces Northern Europe, the Northern Region.