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Baldwin, Stanley (1867–1947) example, East Prussia like a balcony over prewar Poland, while the Baltic coast served as a German balcony threatening the Soviet advance on Berlin during the conquest of Germany in 1945 See also BAGRATION; BARBAROSSA; Pripet Marshes BALDWIN, STANLEY (1867–1947) British statesman Conservative prime minister 1923, 1924–1929, 1936–1937 In the 1920s he faced economic dislocations stemming from World War I, including issues of war debts and reparations He was mostly passive during the 1930s, clinging to the League of Nations well beyond that failed organization’s past due date Early tracings of full-bore appeasement are detectable in Baldwin’s diplomacy as his government responded without vigor to several key crises: the Abyssinian War, during which he approved the shameful Hoare-Laval Pact; the Rhineland crisis; and the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 On the other hand, Baldwin speeded British rearmament and increased fighter production—under public pressure from Winston Churchill He agreed to the India Act of 1935, promising eventual Home Rule He was badly distracted from the real issues of the day by a constitutional and abdication crisis provoked by the pending marriage of King Edward VIII to an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson BALIKPAPAN ( JULY 1–AUGUST 15, 1945) The Australian 7th Division landed on this bit of Borneo in the Dutch East Indies in the last major amphibious operation of the war Unheralded and off the front pages other than in Australia, the 7th Division retook the main oil and air facilities of Indonesia within nine days, at a cost of 863 casualties Most of the Japanese garrison was wiped out, fighting to the last with the war nearly done Desultory mopping up of jungle hold-outs continued to the end of the war BALKAN AIR FORCE (BAF) A Western Allied joint command established in mid-1944 to coordinate operations over the Adriatic and lower Balkans Its main responsibility was air supply of Yugoslav and Italian partisans It also bombed in support of local Allied land and sea forces It was effective in harassing German island garrisons and during German withdrawals from Greece and Yugoslavia in 1945 See also Dalmatian Islands BALKAN CAMPAIGN (1940–1941) Benito Mussolini committed Italy to an invasion of Albania in April 1939 That opened the door to Western power guarantees to Greece and Rumania but also led to the Pact of Steel signed by Germany and Italy That posed a strategic threat to containment of the Axis powers even before Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September The Balkans were quiescent into mid-1940, as Adolf Hitler and the OKH concentrated on FALL GELB, the invasion of France and the Low Countries But Mussolini was determined on waging a “parallel war” (“guerra parallela”) in the Balkans and across the Mediterranean to keep up with German gains farther north He ordered an invasion of Greece 116
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