...Hitler is lulling France to sleep, for he does not wish to give cause for the growth of French armaments.

It goes without saying that Hitler's imperialist plans have not only an anti-Soviet edge. This edge serves as a convenient screen for covering up revisionist plans in the west (Belgium, France) and in the south (Poznan, Czechoslovakia, Anschluss). Apart from everything else, one cannot deny that Germany needs French ore. It also needs an expansion of its naval base. The experience of the war of 1914–1918 demonstrated with all clarity that without firm possession of the ports of Belgium and the northern ports of France, it is impossible to build up Germany's naval power. Thus, for the realization of its revisionist and expansionist plans, Germany will have by the summer of this year an army of at minimum 849,000 men, that is, an army 40 percent larger than France's and nearly equal in size to the USSR's (the USSR has 940,000 men, counting all service branches). And this despite the fact that the USSR has 2.5 times the population and tens of times the territory of Germany. This is what so-called equality in armaments looks like in practice.

Izvestiya TsK KPSS. 1990. No. 1. Pp. 161–169.