MEDITERRANEAN FRONT

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 24092, 30 October 1943, Page 5

MEDITERRANEAN FRONT

LARGE ENEMY FORCES 40 DIVISIONS FIGHTING ALLIES (8i0.W.) RUGBY. Oct. 28. Including the German troops in the /Egean Islands, the Allied forces in the Mediterranean are containing and fighting more than 40 German divisions. As General Sir Harold Alexander recently said, the number of German divisions in Italy and the Balkans alone is between 35 and 40. General Alexander’s army group in Italy alone is fighting its way forward through country all of which is eminently suitable for defence, being very steep and broken, and the weather is becoming foul. The Mediterranean front, however, needs to be regarded as a whole. The fact that the British right flank rests on the Adriatic, covering the ports of Bari and Brindisi and the airfields of Foggia, compels the Germans to occupy all the Dalmatian ports and exert themselves continually against the swarming Jugoslav patriots. ■ The mere fact of the Allied advance into Italy enabled and encouragfed the patriots to increase their activities. They have now largely severed the communications of the German troops garrisoning the Balkans, forcing the enemy to resort to supply by sea. This method, under the eyes of the Allied air and naval forces on the Adriatic, is clearly precarious and wasteful. The ) possession of the Foggia airfields also gives the British and American bombers and fighters a first-class base for exercising their air superiority against south German and Austrian industries and communications whenever the weather serves. The occupation of southern Italy has reacted on the western as well as the eastern Mediterranean situation. By landing near Naples . the Allies manoeuvred the Germans out of Sardinia and Corsica. The fighter airfields in Corsica provide cover for operations to the north-east against Pisa and Leghorn, to the north against Genoa, and to the north-west against Nice, should General Alexander decide to take advantage of it. The possibility of a German counteroffensive in Italy is not ruled out. Until the ports in Allied hands are fully developed for supplying large armies, the Germans, working on interior lines, are in a position to send divisions to the front faster than the Allies. Before doing so, however, they must decide whether they can spare troops from other actual operational fronts. They must also weigh the risks of hostile Italian action against lengthy and inadequate communications and of Allied bombing of the same communications. The difficulties of supplying an army in central Italy from Germany are very great. The difficulties of supplying the Allied armies are also great but they are diminishing.