HITLER FIGHTS FOR MORALE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 67, 16 September 1943, Page 4

HITLER FIGHTS FOR MORALE

The war of movement in R&ssia and in Italy must presently become stabilised along a German defensive line. Where that defensive lino will be, in Russia and in Italy, is a subject of speculation, 'on which little light is shed by transitory events. For instai*|;i, the intense fighting in a small but important Italian area, Salerno, does fiJ.'t decide whether Germany's defensive line will be south or north of Rome; and the German falling-back policy in Russia has not yet defined the line of the Russian winter front, though the bulk of evidence is that the Germans will try to stand on the River Dnieper. The course of this river from the neighbourhood of Kiev to that of Zaporozhe, and a front southward therefrom along a railway line (east of the river) to Melitopol, are considered to be the probable choice of German strategy. The chief interest of the Zaporozhe-Melitopol portion of this defensive line is that it would enable Germany to hold the Crimea peninsula and its isthmus. Russia's war of movement is based on the principle of attaining local superiority of force at selected points along a well-established front of huge length. The' war in Italy at present is of a totally different character, being a i catch-as-catch-can race for tactical positions along a front which is being formed gradually by the course of events. Everything is mobile—with big gaps between co-operating armies— except at Salerno, where one Allied force at present is pinned down near the sea.

The severity of the stranglehold with which the Germans have pinned down the invader at Salerno is freely admitted. The invader holds on with the help of naval and air support, and hopes that other Allied armies of invasion, by rapid movement in other parts of the Italian peninsula, will break the German stranglehold. The Germans taunt the Allies with arriving too late to secure free and unopposed entry at Salerno. It is at least equally true to point out that the Germans themselves arrived too late to defend Italy's toe and heel, though early enough to stage a severe resistance at Salerno. Both belligerents, in fact, were embarrassed by Mussolini's resignation and the vague situation created thereby. It so happened that the invader reached Salerno and the Germain defender reached Salerno hinterland at a time when the defender

was able to mount a full-dress rehearsal of the drama of amphibious assault, on which military factor the fate of the Fortress of Europe may pivot. Hitler rapidly grasped the symbolic value of this Italian beach battle; he realised that German civilian morale would be improved if the invader could be pushed back into the sea; he recognised that such a German victory—however local —on the Italian coast could' be held to point a moral for the French-Belgian-Dutch coasts, a moral to be construed as reinsuring German safety from amphibious assault. There is, therefore, plenty of inducement —apart from strategy—for a special Hitlerian effort at Salerno; but the Salerno battle does not decide the German defensive line in Italy any more than Hitler's abortive offensive early in the northern summer denned the still undetermined Russian front. At the same time, great relief will be felt when the Salerno danger is met. The forcing back of the. Germans to the Dnieper line in Russia and to the Po line in northern Italy is not to be achieved without

sacrifices,