CLOSING THE BRENNER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 July 1943, Page 3

CLOSING THE BRENNER

AGAINST FURTHER ENTRY OF GERMANS BADOGLIO’S REPORTED ACTION. SOME CONFLICTING STORIES (Bv Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (By leiegrap LONDON. July 23. According to reports from the frontier of France and Italy, Marshal Badoglio has ordered two Italian army oerps stationed at Padua and Vicenza to move to the Brenner Pass to resist any further arrivals of German troops, says the Madrid correspondent of the British United Press.

The Italian troops are believed to consist of about five divisions, with heavy artillery, he says. The Italians have been ordered to block the railways and roads behind them. Badoglio is reported to have informed Hitler that since Germany refused to defend the whole of Italy. Germans would no longer be allowed to enter the country. The correspondent adds that 60,000 Germans in north Italy are said to have been ordersd to take up strategic positions regardless of Italian Civil and military opposition, and that other Germans from the Tyrol are crossing the Brenner Pass as reinforcements. Italian partisans and army units participated in anti-German demonstrations.

The Germans have established their general headquarters in Italy at Bolzano, near the Brenner Pass. Large numbers of German officers and men are moving to strategic points and building defences in northern Italy. German Storm Troop and police formations are leaving southern Italy by special trains. The German-controlled ..Scandinavian telegraph bureau quotes a Berne report that Badoglio is unsuccessfully endeavouring to persuade the Germans to withdraw their troops from Italy and that negotiations with Herr von Mackensen failed because of German insistence on defending the lino of the River Po.

The Rome radio says that additional Italian provinces which have been declared war zones are Naples, Benevento, Avellino, Salerno, Potenza and Matora. ’ >