The hedgehog defence is a military tactic in which a defending army creates mutually supporting strongpoints in a defence in depth, designed to sap the strength and break the momentum of an attacking army. The strongpoints are designed to be expensive for an attacker to assault. Although the defending positions are intended to be bypassed, doing so exposes the attacker's rear echelons and line of communications to counterattack. Description In warfare, it is a military tactic to defend against a mobile armoured attack, or blitzkrieg. The defenders deploy in depth in heavily fortified positions suitable for all-around defence. The attackers can penetrate between the "hedgehogs", but each position continues to fight on when it is surrounded. That keeps large numbers of attacking troops tied up, attacking the well-defended strongpoints, and it allows the defenders to counterattack against the units that bypass the strongpoints with their own armored reserves, by cutting them off from their supporting elements. World War II The tactic was proposed by General Maxime Weygand during the Battle of France in 1940. However, Allied forces were unable to apply the tactic before they sustained heavy losses and France signed an armistice with victorious Germany a few weeks later. The remaining French forces that applied the tactic were simply bypassed. On the Eastern Front, the German army used the tactic successfully during the Soviet winter advances, notably in the Battle of Moscow in 1941, in the Second Rzhev-Sychevka Offensive in November 1942, and in the battle around Orel during Operation Saturn in February 1943. The Germans adopted the additional feature commonly associated with hedgehog defence, resupply of the strongpoints by air. Particularly in the winter of 1941–42, the advanced "hedgehogs" effectively surrounded by the Soviets, such as the Demyansk pocket, were supplied mainly by air. Although casualties were heavy, the strongpoints held up large numbers of attacking Soviet troops and prevented them from being deployed elsewhere; the successful defence of the Demyansk pocket, for example, helped stem the Soviet counteroffensive following the Battle of Moscow. Although aerial resupply reduced reliance on vulnerable ground transport, it inflicted an enormous strain on the Luftwaffe. The successful holding of forward positions in the battles led Adolf Hitler to insist, for the remainder of the war, for static positions to be held to the last man. However, the increasing weakness of the Luftwaffe and the improved combat capabilities of the Soviet Air Force