ITALY'S LOSSES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 164, 14 July 1941, Page 7

ITALY'S LOSSES

HALF A MILLION

Casualties In All Theatres

Of War

Rec. 11.30 a.m. RUGBY, July 13. Italy lost well over half a million effective soldiers during the campaign in the Mediterrane'an theatres of war to the end of June, 1941 Thus, when Hitler referred earlier in the year to the "slight misfortunes" of his Axis partner, he must have been interpreting such misfortunes in an extraordinarily relative sense.

Authoritative figures given in London show that in Libya. East Africa and Albania white prisoners totalled 241,000, while other casualties reached the figure of 135,000.

Of the native forces, 6f1,000 were made prisoners of war in these three theatres of war and 137,000 are included among the other casualties. Of the 132,000 native "other casualties" in East Africa, most were deserters.

These figures in all cases are a close approximation, and it is fairlv pointed out that most of the 25,000 white prisoners taken in the Albanian operations were released when Germany invaded Greece. The total figure of 582,000 Italian casualties is not therebv considerably lessened.