GERMANS' TROUBLES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 65, 14 September 1943, Page 5

GERMANS' TROUBLES

UNREST IN THE NORTH

Rec. 9 am

LONDON, September 13

The German radio says that the Germans occupied Como, in northern Italy, last night. A report received in Zurich states that 100 members of the Gestapo have arrived in Milan and Turin to round up political and trades union leapers. The Gestapo in Milan officially announced that a great number of socalled political leaders who shared the guilt of the betrayal of Germany had been deported to Germany.

LONDON, September 12. The Berlin news agency says that serious Communist unrest broke out in Milan and. Turin, and German troops intervened with the support of armed Fascists.

Reuters correspondent at Chiasso, on the Swiss frontier, says that the Germans in occupying northern Italian towns freed the former Fascist chiefs who were interned after the fall of Mussolini, and are now persecuting the Liberals who were active recently.

Anti-German feeling is increasing. Civilians are supporting Italian soldiers who are engaged in a full-scale battle against the Germans in Turin. The people in the unoccupied areas are feeding and sheltering British, American, South African, Greek, and Senegalese troops who escaped from the prison camps!

Neutral correspondents in Stockholm say it is known that the Fascist Militia has gone over to the German side. A- Berlin spokesman claimed that 30 battalions of Italians and some specialists are fighting with the Germans.

German officials charge Italians with 35 acts of sabotage against German telephone and telegraph lines in Italy. News dispatches from Berlin to Stockholm state that the German commander in northern Italy, Field-Mar-shal Rommel, has taken emergency measures to strengthen his defences from the Riviera to the Adriatic Sea after a hurried tour of inspection. Elite troops and Storm Troops with their equipment have been drawn from the Eastern Front, and' German troops are reported to be moving into Italy without interruption. Authoritative Nazi quarters admit that the situation was serious for the Germans immediately after the Italian capitulation, but it is claimed they have now established control. x The Berlin Press has printed pictures showing long lines of disarmed Italian soldiers marching to detention camps.

either still in alliance with Germany or under German domination, that if Hitler fails the consequences for him will far exceed even those of Stalingrad and the fall of Mussolini. It must therefore become an Allied war aim in Italy that Hitler shall fail utterly in this, and that there shall be no opportunity anywhere for doubt about the'issue."

"Liberator" believes the war in Italy is only just beginning, and adds that the situation at the moment is that the initiative in Italy is in the balance, and that Rommel and Eisenhower will try to put each other on the defensive. "In taking on the Allied challenge iii Italy and making its outcome a prestige issue both for himself and his foremost generals," says "Liberator," "Hitler has once more destroyed his central reserve which his generals laboriously sought to create. The war in Italy has drained every available German division from France, and from the Reich. Any further increase of. the German garrisons in France, Italy, or the Balkans can only be made at the expense of the Russian front. It will be the Allies contribution to the next big winter battle in Russia if they can now maintain relentless pressure on Rommel and compel him to seek reinforcements from the. east, while German officers in the Balkans and the west may be forced to'act likewise."