LAVAL & LIBYA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 October 1942, Page 6

LAVAL & LIBYA

SIMPLY OBEYING HITLER’S ORDERS

GERMAN HOPES AND FEARS. REGARDING FRENCH COLONIES & FLEET.

(By

J. Viktorov,

in “Soviet

War News.”)

Hitler has apparently given Mussolini permission to start his campaign against France. At the same time he has made new demands which, according to the foreign Press, have “stupefied” Laval. If Laval is so “disturbed” by the demands of Hitler and Mussolini that he is even trying to negotiate some sort of “French-Spanish Bloc” with Franco, why has he embarked on a new antiBritish provocation? Why the attack by a Vichy plane on a British flyingboat, and why is Laval so irreconcilable on the question of Martinique? Laval simply works according to Hitler’s instructions. The Germans do not dare to show their hand in relation to the French colonial possessions. It was the fear that the French colonies might break away from the metropolis that compelled Hitler to renounce his original plan of occupying (he whole of France and to agree to the existence of an unoccupied zone. The Germans want more than France. They want to lay their hands on the French African colonics, perhaps not on all at once, but at least onsome, and as soon as possible. Hitler is trying to get Laval’s official sanction for the German-Italian occupation of Tunis and for Axis control of the French Fleet, which is still an imposing force. It was for this purpose that Laval was appointed to his present office. The seizure of Tunis and its base, Bizerta, would greatly strengthen the position of the Axis Powers in the Mediterranean and facilitate for them the battle in Libya. The French Fleet would partly replace the severe losses suffered by the Italian Fleet. At the same lime, Axis penetration into Tunis would serve as a starting point for the seizure of other colonial possessions in North, Africa and of hew defence bases in the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic coast of Africa.

But it is by no means easy for Laval to carry out Hitler’s instructions. The internal situation in France and the French colonies is too tense. Hence the double blackmail resorted to by Hitler and Mussolini., Despite his subordination to Hitler, Mussolini realises that Germany today is not what she was a year ago. He is undoubtedly hoping to snatch something for himself. To facilitate his master’s game, Laval is trying to isolate France to the maximum extent, and to provoke animosity against Britain and the U.S.A. Hence the hullabaloo started by the Laval-controlled Press about Britain's occupation of Madagascar and the anti-American campaign in the Vichy Press.

The unstable rear of his army in France is only one of Hitler’s worries. He has given up his former policy of slow, gradual penetration into lhe French colonies. He is in a hurry. His immediate aim is not so much to secure the natural wealth of the French colonial possessions as to gain control of important strategic positions which would facilitate his operations in the Mediterranean and at the same time strengthen his hold on France.