Notice of Motion

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 24051, 13 September 1943, Page 4

Notice of Motion

In the early months of the war and, indeed, before the war began, Hitler had won repute as a prophet both inside and outside his own country. He had fulfilled in action the doctrines of “ Mein Kampf. Even those who detested or distrusted the man and his works were impressed. It wss no uncommon, thing, when the trend of the war was being discussed, to hear the gloomy remark, “ Well, up to now “ he’s done everything he said he “ would do.” Hitler at that time was making dire threats against Britain, and there were many who wondered whether he could be stopped in time, or stopped at all. Those days seem far-off now. The fortune of war has changed; and the capture of Italian North Africa and of Sicily and the capitulation of Italy itself vindicate other prophecies, those of Mr Churchill. They were made before he was in office either as First Lord of the Admiralty or as Prime Minister. Office has been the means of proving conceptions formed much earlier. Reference to some of his writings, printed by special arrangement in “The Press” in 1939, before the war broke out, shows how accurately he estimated the fundamental weaknesses of Italy, and how wisely he pursued the estimate to its issues. “ Should “ trouble come, Germany would “ have to carry Italy upon her “shoulders to a far greater extent “ than she carried the Austrian- “ Hungarian Empire in the last “ war,” he wrote in an article printed in “ The Press ” on March 28, 1939. “The peculiarly vulner- “ able character of the Italian pen- “ insula, and the impossibility of “ maintaining large Italian armies “ overseas once the command of the “ Mediterranean was denied, would “ make the discharge of the Ger-

'• man task even more burdensome.” Again, on April 1, 1939; “ Mean- “ while on the great field of Europe

“Germany has become the domin“ant aggressive Power. Austria “ has fallen, Czechoslovakia has “been obliterated; German authority and German trade stride together down the Danube valley. “. . . The steel helmets of the “ German army glint upon the "Brenner Pass. ... In the unequal “partnership of the two dictators “Hitler has gained everything and “ Mussolini nothing. ... Do the Ital- “ ian people realise that they might “easily be drawn into a struggle “which would either end in their “defeat or in their rescue by Ger“many at a price fatal to their independence?” A month later, on May 1, Mr Churchill again directed attention to the vulnerability cf Italy: “There is a school of.British “strategists who hold that in a “ world struggle with Nazidom it “would be a positive advantage to “have Italy as an enemy. In this “ long, vulnerable peninsula, with “its lack of raw materials, they “ observe a theatre in which impor- “ tant victories could be gained. ...

“ German munitions and supplies “would have to be poured south- “ ward. . . . Even if the brightest “hopes of the Berlin-Rome Axis “were realised, Italy would be m “fact, if not in name, a depend- “ ency of the Nazi power. But the “ fortune of war might not take this “ course.” For clear prediction these statements would be hard to equal. The Allied advance along the toe of Italy, the collapse of Italian resistance, the predicament in which the Germans in Italy now find themselves, may well confirm Mr Churchill’s long-held belief that this was a way to expose the Achilles heel of all Nazidom. To-day it is not only the helmets of the German army .that glint threateningly upon the Brenner. The wings of Flying Fortresses have also caught its light; and the bombs they dropped have closed the pass. Hitler is not the only leader who has furnished written notice of motion.