Sarah Paine

Well, Britain, all four are some of the later ones of four peripheral theaters.

First, the North Sea.

That's essential for British homeland defense.

And there are three keys to the North Sea, Scapa Flow, Strait of Dover, coast of Norway.

Britain always controlled the Strait of Dover and Scapa flow.

So Germany went after Norway to try and open things up that way.

And Norway is not an ideal peripheral theater for Britain because the Germans had better land and sea access to that theater.

They take Norway and then they set up sub bases at Bergen and Trondheim in addition to the ones they had at Kiel, Hamburg and the Heligoland.

archipelago.

And these are the things that are ruining those Arctic convoys.

So that one does not go so well for Britain.

It winds up facing a totally hostile continental Europe shoreline.

The Axis has it all.

All right.

In the Mediterranean, there are certain keys that Britain controlled.

Gibraltar, that's access to the Atlantic.

Suez Canal, access to the Red Sea.

Crete,

That's access to the Black Sea.

And then the British had a fallback position, a midway point at Malta if things went really bad.