Belgo-Dutch Strategy: Delay Invader

Whatever may be Germany's military plans for the immediate future, the Belgian and Netherlands governments have information which has caused them to bring their defense machinery into almost full play. . . . The Dutch have strung around their frontiers light fortifications of barbed wire and blockhouses, contrived so as to halt an invader only long enough to bring their main defense scheme into operation. This scheme is to sacrifice two thirds of their territory, crowding themselves into the remaining third, along the coast, which they can isolate from the land side by an elaborate system of floods. . . .

The Belgians, with the experiences of the World War vivid in memory, and with no possibility of large-scale flooding, are planning to defend partly by a small edition of the French Maginot line, and partly with an elaborately devised system of dynamiting bridges, roads, and railroads.

The Monitor is looking back at the events of World War II.