ALLIES NEAR DAKAR

Southland Times, Issue 24880, 21 October 1942, Page 5

ALLIES NEAR DAKAR

Nazis Show Nervousness NEW YORK, October 19. “There has been no official explanation of the landing of American troops in Liberia,” observes The New York Times It adds that the news coincides with reports that German submarines operating against Allied convoy routes from the Cape to Las Palmas must cross the border of Eastern Liberia. “Vichy,” it continues, “will not fail to note that Monrovia is only 750 air miles from Dakar. Berlin says that Liberia will soon join the United Nations. In that event French West Africa will be entirely blocked off in the south-east by territory hostile to Germany. It is not surprising that German propaganda is nervous about Dakar and its hinterland or that Hitler is exerting the utmost pressure to obtain military control of the area. “Liberia is the closest that we have come to Dakar, although the British at Freetown are even closer. This new landing is apparently only the latest of a series of bridgeheads that we have flung around the Gulf of Guinea. Axis reports have declared that American troops are in the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Brazzaville (French Equatorial Africa) and Leopoldville (Belgian Congo). Moreover, the military resources of this vast section were very considerable even without the influx of the Americans.

“The map reveals how completely the Axis flank and rear in North Africa and Vichy’s stronghold at Dakar are open to an advance from the south.”