In the interwar period Rommel had mentioned the hedgehog as a protective tactic used during rest periods, at
platoon and
company level, in
World War I. Use of a pattern of hedgehogs, comprising larger units and forming a defence in depth, was proposed by General
Maxime Weygand in 1940 during the
Battle of France. However, Allied forces were unable to apply the tactic before they sustained heavy losses; the remaining French forces applied it but were successfully bypassed, and France signed an armistice with victorious Germany a few weeks later. 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 made resupply of isolated strongpoints by air difficult. In particular, Hitler had hoped that the surrounded
Stalingrad could be turned into a giant hedgehog, tying up vast numbers of Soviet troops. After the
Battle of Kursk in 1943, the
German Army lacked the essential components of the tactic, the mobile armoured reserve and an air combat capability necessary to secure local
air superiority for keeping open aerial supply corridors, thus losing the war. The
British Army used "brigade boxes" during the
Western Desert Campaign, the boxes consisted of reinforced
brigade-sized forces of all arms, protected by barbed wire and with the space between boxes covered by mine fields, defence of the boxes was centered around mutually supporting field artillery and anti-tank guns, which covered the mine fields and the approaches to neighbouring boxes. In the jungles of Burma during the
Burma Campaign, the British and Indian armies formed forward defensive positions called "battalion boxes", which consisted of
battalion sized forces that would be supplied from the air if surrounded. ==Post-World War II==