AXIS STRENGTH

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 11, 13 July 1943, Page 5

AXIS STRENGTH

BATTLE REGARDED AS TEST Rec. 12.30 p.m. LONDON, July 12. According Jo the Berlin correspondent of the Swedish newspaper "Tid<ningen," the German public regard Sicily as a test of the Axis military strength. , The "New York Times" Berne correspondent says that the early German appraisals of the Allied landings do not minimise their initial success and ultimate strategic importance. It is assumed that the Allies intend to expand their hold on the south-eastern corner of Sicily into a huge springboard for invasion of the mainland. The Italian public are not being given official details of the progress of the fighting, but are offered a spate of "pep" editorials and articles stressing the- determination of the Sicilians to aid in the defence of their homes. The correspondent says that psychologically speaking the materialisation of what hitherto has been regarded as a vague threat seems at the moment to have welded the Italian nation into a single bloc, and should the operations reach a stalemate Mussolini's popularity will be indefinitely assured. Only a few hours after being taken prisoner, Italians in Sicily were cheerfully helping to unload stores from Allied landing craft, reports Reuters correspondent. The first prisoners, captured at dawn on Saturday, descended from a hill on which they had been fighting and surrendered. A British naval officer commented: "It was the same as at Pantelleria."