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“ITALY IN DANGER”

FASCIST COWARDICE & CORRUPTION ATTEMPT TO USE THRONE AS SHIELD. FLOOD OF DEVASTATING CRITICISM. LONDON, May 25. Under the heading, “Italy in Danger,” an editorial in “The Times,” declares: “The ineffectiveness of the defence which Italy is able to offer against the Allied air attacks is characteristic of the helplessness in which she now finds herself. “Some 20 Italian divisions are assisting to hold down the insurgent populations of Yugoslavia, and Greece, which is a larger force than remains for the defence of Italy. Could a country that is threatened by invasion find itself in a more deplorable plight?” The editorial refers to the local shortages of food and soaring prices, and reports of sit-down strikes in industrial towns in northern Italy, where the workers demanded the payment of their wages in food. This, it says, testifies to a serious break-down in organisation, which is no doubt due partly to the confusion in railway and sea communications, itself the result of the Allied air attacks. “The Fascist Party has shown itself to be rotten to the core. Its own newspapers have confessed to the flood of devastating criticism which the man-in-the-street pours out on the bungling, cowardice and corruption of its Jacks-in-office,” the editorial continues. “Now Mussolini, at the eleventh hour, has ordered a super-purge of the party. “The bankruptcy of the party’s reputation is proved by the way in which its leaders have begun to use the throne as a shield for the party. Prominent Fascist spokesmen twice in the past few days have appealed to the Italians to rally round the Royal House of Savoy and the Duce, and thus the Italian Royal Family, which for 20 years has been slighted and thrust aside by the Fascist upstarts, again comes into the picture.” GERMANY’S DILEMMA.

As far as Germany is concerned,. “The Times” believes that she is placed in a dilemma, because if she sends troops to defend the Italian coast, she must draw on her strategic reserve before the land attack on the “fortress of Europe” is even begun. ..Moreover, she will be placing them in a position from which it may be difficult to extricate them when the time comes.

The Allied bombing will increasingly

disorganise Italy’s internal communications, and the German divisions might find themselves almost as completely bottled up in the Italian peninsula as they were in Tunisia, "The Times” explains.

“The reported visit to Italy by Air Marshal Kesselring may presage a more determined attempt to recover control of the air in the central Mediterranean for the Axis; but if Germany uses her full strength to assist Italy she will weaken her position elsewhere and play into the hands of the Allies, while if she abandons Italy to her fate then the shores of Italy may offer the Allies excellent jumping off places for the further penetration in Europe.”

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAITA19430526.2.22.3

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 May 1943, Page 3

Word count
Tapeke kupu
478

“ITALY IN DANGER” Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 May 1943, Page 3

“ITALY IN DANGER” Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 May 1943, Page 3

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