Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Definitions
- List of abbreviations
- Map 1 Scandinavia and the Baltic 1939
- Map 2 The Gulf of Finland
- Map 3 Entrances to the Baltic
- Introduction
- 1 The end of isolation: Scandinavia and the modern world
- 2 Scandinavia in European diplomacy 1890–1914
- 3 The war of the future: Scandinavia in the strategic plans of the great powers
- 4 Neutrality preserved: Scandinavia and the First World War
- 5 The Nordic countries between the wars
- 6 Confrontation and co-existence: Scandinavia and the great powers after the First World War
- 7 Britain, Germany and the Nordic economies 1916–1936
- 8 Power, ideology and markets: Great Britain, Germany and Scandinavia 1933–1939
- 9 Scandinavia and the coming of the Second World War 1933–1940
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - The war of the future: Scandinavia in the strategic plans of the great powers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Definitions
- List of abbreviations
- Map 1 Scandinavia and the Baltic 1939
- Map 2 The Gulf of Finland
- Map 3 Entrances to the Baltic
- Introduction
- 1 The end of isolation: Scandinavia and the modern world
- 2 Scandinavia in European diplomacy 1890–1914
- 3 The war of the future: Scandinavia in the strategic plans of the great powers
- 4 Neutrality preserved: Scandinavia and the First World War
- 5 The Nordic countries between the wars
- 6 Confrontation and co-existence: Scandinavia and the great powers after the First World War
- 7 Britain, Germany and the Nordic economies 1916–1936
- 8 Power, ideology and markets: Great Britain, Germany and Scandinavia 1933–1939
- 9 Scandinavia and the coming of the Second World War 1933–1940
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter is about a war that did not happen. It was a war of daring British assaults on Esbjerg and the Kiel Canal; of great naval battles in the entrances to the Baltic; of an Anglo-French drive from the German Baltic coast to Berlin; of a German–Swedish invasion of Finland, followed by an advance on St Petersburg. That this war existed only in the minds of politicians, publicists and naval and military planners is no reason why it should be ignored. Belief in the possibility of armed conflict in northern Europe reflected the fears produced by a period of profound international disturbance. It was also the result of attempts to come to terms with rapid changes in military technology, the implications of which could in many cases only be guessed at. Moreover, the implementation of ideas ventilated in the pre-1914 period was actively considered during the war itself.
Many of the plans for war in Scandinavia were expressions of institutional rivalries between the armed services of the great powers. Those produced by the British and German navies (discussed in the next two sections of this chapter) represented prolonged rearguard actions against the growing predominance of the military, and of the continental European theatre. Naval officers who favoured action in Scandinavia shared the common ‘ideology of the offensive’ but wished to see it directed towards a theatre where, they believed, their own country or their own branch held the strategic advantage. Army officers in Germany and, to an increasing extent, in Britain as well wanted to avoid any diversion of resources or effort from the western and eastern fronts where, they believed, the best prospects for a successful offensive lay.
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- Scandinavia and the Great Powers 1890–1940 , pp. 83 - 117Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997
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