UNCERTAINTY IN EUROPE

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23949, 17 May 1943, Page 3

UNCERTAINTY IN EUROPE

growing fears of AXIS

THREAT of invasion DISCUSSED

LONDON, May 14. * x is radio spokesmen and newsnaners are hourly increasing Europe’s Uncertainty and trepidation by preu ting every angle, from the immediate invasion of Europe to the impracticability of a second front. It is now acioarent that the Axis is suffering from oreatest attack of nerves since long More the outbreak of war. Allied nrooaganda is proving most successful, t.daing from reports pouring in from .'l corners of Europe. The British United Press says there . uttie foundation for a number of rumours from Europe, including the claim of internal disruption in Italy, or the report that thousands of people rioted outside the Wehrmacht InformaBureau in Berlin in an effort to i ,jn news of Germans in Tunisia, i /ever, a demonstration certainly occd in Berlin. soc Stockholm correspondent of the B? sh United Press says that 17-year-olcPGermans have been called up for military service in Hitler’s latest effort to strengthen manpower. Axis newspapers and radios meanwhile are anxiously discussing what the Allies intend to do next, A military commentator, writing in "Das Reich." concludes that the Allies will invade Europe while the main Axis forces are engaged with the Russians. He admitted that the Italian fleet had suffered heavily and he gave a warning that the Germans should not underestimate the advantages the Allies had gained in North Africa. The Berlin radio commentator, Captain Sertorius, trying to guess the result of Mr Churchill’s visit to Washington, argued that a double offensive against Europe and Japan was impossible, and that therefore the Allies would most likely follow the lines of the Casablanca decisions. Quoting a pro-Axis French writer, the Paris radio said: “The Allies must attack France because they must destroy the German U-boat bases on the French coast. The British will attack first. It is a matter of prestige with them.” Rome Denies Report The Rome radio states that there is no truth in reports from Berne that the defence of Italy has been entrusted to six men, including Mussolini, the King of Italy, and Marshal Graziani. or that Marshal Badoglio has been recalled from retirement to assume command in the south of Italy. "Reports from Greece agree that the Germans, fearing an Allied landing, have initiated a reign of terror to cow the Greeks into passive submission,” says the Istanbul correspondent of "The Times." “John Rallis, who is a new Greek Quisling, has'issued several decrees providing for the harshest measures against the relatives of missing Greek officers, meaning those who fled from Greece or are fighting with the guerrillas.” According to Reuter’s correspondent in Madrid, the Axis is installing hundreds of searchlights on the Calabrian Sicilian, and Sardinian coasts and is maintaining continuous air patrols and conducting practice alarms in evacuating coastal towns. Thousands are employed on coastal fortifications. German newspapers are now practically ignoring Tunisia, also the fate of the German troops and generals, but they have taken their cue from Goebbeis and have begun a new campaign against the Jews. Amid the bewildering flood of Axis propaganda, the Berlin radio for seve a! nights past has been again telling English listeners that they 8 have as much to f°ar from Bolshevism as Germany and urging them to realise before it is too late that they should recast their opinions about the entire