Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1941. DEFEATISM IN ITALY.
()NLY a few clays ago, the Berlin correspondent of a Tokio _/ newspaper reported Ihe Japanese Ambassador to Germany, Lieutenant-General 11. Oshima, as declaring in a message to the Japanese people that, the German capacity lor carrying on the war was unimaginably great and that: —- In view of these actualities, the outcome of the present war must be clear. Japan, Germany and Italy should further strengthen their co-operation and strive towards the attainment of their ideal. How far the assertions of this Japanese militarist arc from being actualities is perhaps nowhere better demonstrated than in the state of affairs now riding in Italy—a state of affairs on which new light has been thrown by cablegrams received during the last few days. The position lias been summed up by the London “Daily Mail” in the statement that poverty, defeatism and distrust of Mussolini are increasing daily in Italy and that by thousands of Italians no enemy name is held in greater contempt than Mussolini's. Already regarded, with complete justice, as merely an agent, humbly subservient to the Nazis, Mussolini is now faced with a German demand for Hie extension of martial law throughout Laly and for an arrangement under which German “military advisers’’ will be allowed to sit on all courts-martial. Mussolini in fact is being ordered by his masters to round off his infamous career by co-operating in the complete enslavement of the. Italian people by Nazi Germany. The Dace is a popular orator of c.onsiderabie power, but it would certainly puzzle him Io show that the lot of his country as an ostensible partner in the Axis is in any particular belter than that of the nations whom the Nazis have brutally invaded, despoiled and out raged. In the developments now reported there is nothing very new. Some live months ago, for example, on his return to the United States after being Rome correspondent of the “Christian Science Monitor,” Air Saville R. Davis wrote in that newspaper: — Italy's key centres of power are today in the hands of Gorman troops—but not the troops which the outside world imagines. They are the battalions of Heinrich Himmler, chief of the German secret police. Premier Mussolini brought them in. Premier Mussolini today is using them to retain power in face of numerous revolutionary plots directed against him. As long as the German land power remains unbroken on the continent, he is likely to succeed. The Gestapo has its men in substantial control at very one of the vital points where power in a totalitarian State is exercised, and it works also through the efficient Italian secret police. In the event of any rebellion, the Gestapo would strike first. It .is not in doubt that had the people of Italy been free agents they would months ago have overthrown the dictator who has now become only a. Nazi puppet and sought a separate peace. It is equally clear, however, that the Italians have little enough prospect of gaining relief in this way so long as Mussolini is sustained and controlled by an undefeated Germany. Italy today is an invaded and occupied country and her people are helpless. Their time will come, with that of other victims of Nazi brutality, when the military power of Germany is seen to be definitely on the wane. Meantime Italy is an example to the whole world of what the Nazi new order means. The significance of that example, it may be supposed, must be apparent even to Japanese militarists who talk, in the manner of those whistling to keep their courage up, of the power of the Axis and even venture to credit it with an ideal.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 October 1941, Page 4
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618Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1941. DEFEATISM IN ITALY. Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 October 1941, Page 4
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