Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1943. A STAGE TOWARDS VICTORY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 October 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1943. A STAGE TOWARDS VICTORY.

TX the progress of the campaign on the mainlanc| ot Italy to 1 date attention has centred much more on the hard fighting in which the Fifth Army has been engaged since it landed in the Gulf of Salerno than on the less advertised 1 , and; less seriously opposed advance of the Eighth Army up the east coast of the peninsula. Probably, however, there is every justification for President Roosevelt’s statement that the capture of Foggia by the Eighth Army is one of the most important Allied successes of the war from a strategic point of view,

as it brings the Allied air forces nearer to Germany and will permit air cover for all operations henceforth in Italy and the Adriatic coast area, especially in northern Italy.

With its great centra] aerodrome, surrounded by twelve or more satellite airfields, the Foggia area is one of the most important air bases in Italy, if not the most important of all. It is commandingly placed with reference to the Balkans and to virtually all parts of Italy. At the same time Allied bombers based on Foggia will now be very much nearer than they have been to those parts of Germany and German-occupied Europe which hitherto have been, as Mr Roosevelt observed, outside the vulnerable area. From the standpoint of. the Germans the conquest by the Allies of the Foggia region is so serious that it is difficult to understand why the Eighth Army was not opposed in greater force and more resolutely in its northward drive. It has been suggested by an American radio commentator that the Salerno landing, though it has yielded important results in opening the way to°the capture of Naples, embodied an element of feint, and that the principal immediate object of the Allies was to gam possession as speedily as possible of the Foggia airfields. Ceitainlv the Allies are now well placed to extend their northward drive in Italy to Rome and well beyond it, but whether they intend to do that or not they are already in a good position to extend their offensive operations, under powerful air cover,, in any one of several directions and also to intensify their bombing of Central Europe. The way obviously is being opened to extended offensive action by the Allies in the Mediterranean region and on the western front which, as Mr Churchill has said, already exists potentially. Meantime the magnificent drive of the Russian armies, concentrated at the moment against the Dnieper crossings and on powerful thrusts into White Russia, is leaving the Germans nothing more hopeful to do than make what one ol their spokesmen has called “clever retreats.” The leading contention of Nazi propagandists is that the German Hues are being shortened, but as a Soviet authority has pointed out, recent operations on the Eastern front have actually lengthened the line. No short line is available to the German armies if they are to cover the Rumanian frontier and to retain their foothold in Baltic territories on the north.

In spite of the good promise current developments appear to hold, Allied military authorities of the highest standing have of late been insisting that as yet there no sign of a German collapse, either military or moral, and that victory continues to depend vitally upon still greater military and industrial efforts than have yet been put forth by the Allies. The aim of the. Nazi gangsters obviously now is to extend resistance to its limits in the hope of gaining compromise peace terms. Of the German civilian masses it has been said that their continued submission to their Nazi overlords and the Gestapo is attributable in part to the fact that the terror of Allied bombs is still not as. great as the fear of what will happen to individual Germans if their country is invaded and conquered. How long that state of mind will be maintained in the conditions now developing has yet to be determined.