The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, The Morning News, The Echo and The Sun MONDAY. DECEMBER 20, 1943. GRIM FIGHTING IN ITALY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 301, 20 December 1943, Page 2

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, The Morning News, The Echo and The Sun MONDAY. DECEMBER 20, 1943. GRIM FIGHTING IN ITALY

/"GERMANY'S desperate attempts to hold the winter line which she rapidly organised after the Allied landings on Sicily and the mainland are dictated by two reasons, first the determination of the Nazis to keep the lighting off German soil, and secondly the stark necessity of demonstrating to the satellite nations that Hitler can "protect" them. xi he cannot assure them of that his grasp, already precarious and maintained by terrorism, will become so weakened that they will slip away and open up his frontiers to direct assault. He has therefore to prove that it does not pay to abandon the German alliance and that no arrangement with the Allies will shelter them from his wrath. That will be disproved when freedom is restored to Northern Italy, but the fight to secure it will continue to be as hard and as bitter as it has been in the last five weeks.

_ The Allies, by the restoration of peaceful ways of living in the areas which they have cleared of the enemy, are demonstrating that those who now find a way open to acceptance of Allied ideals will not suffer a repetition.of the disasters which befel the nations having the courage to defy aggression in the first year of the war. The Germans also know that every advance towards Northern Italy increases the menace to their hold on the Balkans, that better air cover can be provided for ships in the Adriatic, and that when all the airfields are held the big ships as well as the little craft will be taking their full part in harrying the Balkan coasts, and in landing supplies and reinforcements for a blow which will demand a further great diversion of strength from the Russian and French fronts. They are therefore throwing everything they have into the battle, and are reinforcing their air strength as well as their land forces.

In such a mountainous terrain the work of dislodging a wellentrenched and powerful enemy is one of .extreme difficulty, and that the Allies have made progress through the first line of defence and well into the Rome-Pescara line is evidence of the enormous strength in men and guns which they have collected, and of the safety of the sea lanes behind them. The possession of Rome, from a prestige point of view, is of an importance which it is difficult for New Zeaianders to appreciate, but the Nazis know it well, and they will only surrender it when they have been thoroughly beaten along their prepared line. The Germans are now tentatively endeavouring, by a series of counterattacks, to put our forces on the defensive. So far they have failed, but the weight they have thrown into their attacks is the best proof that they realise the full implications of defeat, and it may well be that they will take the risk of heavily reinforcing their divisions in Italy in an effort to regain the initiative. The yard-by-yard advance of the Allies is meantime of greater value than appears upon its face, for the campaign is not being fought for possession of the hills but to break through to the plains of Northern Italy, where in all past invasions the decisive battles have been fought north and south of the Po, from Milan and Turin to Padua and Ravenna. When the way is cleared to battles of manoeuvre here it will also be at least partially open for an Allied attack upon the Balkan countries, which afford the greatest opportunity of entering a still greater and more important plain, that of the Danube, which has been the scene of many decisive campaigns in the past. There, are thousands of Yugoslavs, Greeks, Albanians and Czechs ready to fight with the Allies as soon as they can land in force on the Adriatic's eastern shore, and the possibility of this being accomplished is very closely related to the thrust up the Italian peninsula.