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Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 28, 1943. GERMANY AND ITALY.

FOR Hie moment considerable uncertainty exists as to the policy that is likely to be. adopted or attempt cd by the new Prime Minister of Italy, Marshal Badoglio, and his Cabinet — j a numerous body of Ministers including one who is entrusted with the somewhat academic task of taking an interest in Italian Africa. There is much Io suggest that the new Government will be impelled inevitably, whatever the inclination of its leaders and members may be, to seek for Italy the shortest way out of the Avar. There appears in any event to be no Question of a new dictatorship taking up the task ol carrying on the Avar in alliance with Nazi Germany. Whether that policy would lead to active and purposeful revolt may be open to question, but it is tolerably certain that if an attempt thus to extend the war were not defeated in any other way, it would be defeated by an ‘early and complete national collapse.

It seems probable that Hitler and his accomplices, as well as the more or loss stopgap Government now in office in Italy, will, be compelled to recognise and accept the limits on action imposed by the fact that the fighting forces and people of Italy have been driven to the limits of endurance and have reached a point at which they arc bound in one way or another to turn upon their oppressors, if only in despair. The prospect of Italy passing under the military control of the Allies, with her fleet definitely immobilised or taken - over, and her territory available as a base for air and other action, of course is bound to be regarded by the Nazi dictatorship with deep disquiet. For Germany the collapse of Italy is a disaster, but it is a disaster she seems to have no possible means of averting.

Questions have been raised of late as to the amount of military and other aid Germany could afford to give to Italy if that country continued Io struggle on as her ally. It presumably is completely out of the question that Germany should endeavour to shoulder the task at once of coercing the Italian nation and defending Italian territory against Allied attack. In view of the heavy and unprofitable losses she has suffered of late in Russia and of the extent to which she is menaced there, as well as from the Mediterranean and in Western Europe, the task of attempting to defend Italy in the circumstances that have now developed is one that Germany is unlikely seriously to contemplate. The great relative decline in her air strength which has been made manifest of late in all theatres appears in itself to be decisive in this matter.

Even in conditions otherwise much more favourable from the German standpoint, an attempt to hold Italy against the Allies would not be an undertaking on which to enter lightly.. It is true that the latest reports in hand at time of writing speak still of a stout defence by German troops of the Catanian plain, in north-eastern Sicily, but whether that defence is likely to be maintained much longer is decidedly open to question. Apart from the extent to which the final struggle in Sicily may be affected by the American and Canadian thrusts around the northern side of Mount Etna, it is by no means impossible that the Allies may solve the problem of the Messina bridgehead by operations extended to the mainland of Italy.

Emphasis has rightly been laid upon the extreme vulnerability of the Italian peninsula to air and other attack. Italy, for example, has the greatest hydro-electric system in the work! —one which produced in 1938 some 751,000,000,000 kilowatthours and has since been increased in capacity. On this vast system of power-production, 90 per cent of Italian industry and a great part of the country’s railway transport are dependent. There are upwards of 3,000 dams and generating plants on rivers flowing from the Alps and Apennines, but the bombing of a much more limited number of vulnerable points would in itself ruinously dislocate Italian industry and transport.

Taking' these factors, with others, into account, there appears to be little doubt that the Italian people will have the opportunity they desire of getting speedily out of the war, irrespective of what either Nazi Germany or the Badoglio Government may attempt to the contrary.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAITA19430728.2.4

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 July 1943, Page 2

Word count
Tapeke kupu
740

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 28, 1943. GERMANY AND ITALY. Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 July 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 28, 1943. GERMANY AND ITALY. Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 July 1943, Page 2

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