HITLER QUITTING THE MEDITERRANEAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 84, 6 October 1944, Page 4

HITLER QUITTING THE MEDITERRANEAN

France has seen the Germans come and go; Italy sees them pushed back almost to the Po; and Greece, like France, sees the invaders of 1941 seeking nothing better than a line of escape —if they: can find.it. The slightnessiof the resistance to'the landings in Greece by the Western Allies shows ■ how far the German star has waned in the south. The Allies attacked the .Italian Peninsula from the bottom 1 upwards, but in 1944 the Balkan Peninsula has been attacked from the top downwards, with the result that the Mediterranean part of Greece seems to be no longer held by the enemy in any great force. A little over a year ago Britain and America were struggling desperately for the command of the Mediterranean Sea; today that command has been won,' and the issue now is in the Adriatic and Aegean Seas, branches of the Mediterranean Sea, and therefore a portion of Mediterranean strategy. Italy, Albania, Greece, and their various outlying islands are part of the same strategic area, from which Germany is about to be banished. Since Hitler came to the rescue of Mussolini, Hitler has seen the remnants* of his Mediterranean Sea power ousted from Toulon and the south of France., Its hold on the upper Adriatic and. the Aegean is

likewise disappearing. Soon the African and Mediterranean files in Goebbels's library will cease to have propaganda value and will become collectors of dust.

The changes have been so great that it does not seem possible that only two or three years ago Hitler was making a two-pronged drive through Russia and North Africa towards the Orient and that the prongs of his drive might meet at the Persian Gulf. Egypt and the Caucasus appeared to be almost in the conqueror's clutches. The Black Sea and the Caspian Sea on his northern route, and the Red Sea oh his southern route, seemed to be, almost at his feet, and the Mediterranean1 Sea bore the aspect of a German-Italian lake. Everything that Alexander did, and more, seemed to be within Hitler's reach. Kaiser Wilhelm's Bagdad objective v/as considerably less than the limit of Hitler's ambition; India also beckoned, and the only doubt in Berlin was whether the Germans or the Japanese would get there first' It was a German dream embracing three continents, and the Nazi prophet Rosenberg was capable of rationalising it with all .the teachings of. history and with ' all the principles inherent in .world domination by a Master Race. But now Father Time, with a few scythe: strokes,-has driven the Teuton from the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, even from part of the Baltic. The blonde beast returns to his lair. A dream of three continents' has faded- .;

It is now: said that the Nazis have a lair, psychology as well as a worldgoverning psychology. The Nazis are very adaptable. They feel quite able to undertake the government of other countries, and to stamp, out underground resistances therein. But now that they are being driven; back to their lair, they also feel quite capable of setting up a German underground resistance .armed with ' the finest irregular technique. When the Nazis took charge of the Low Countries and France, and shot hostages as a measure of terrorising the resistance forces, that form of terror was deemed by the' Nazis to be -justifiable and correct technique.. What, then, would they say if they received some of their own medicine? According to Himmler, when the Nazis pass froni their world-' 'governing psychology to their new lair psychology, then "death will lurk behind every street corner," and, according to G'oebbels, "every house will be a fortress." In such manner the Nazi leaders threaten to fight a new Thirty Years' War. It does not seem to occur to them that, if they succeed as underground resisters, they will have demonstrated the impracticability of their recent dream of world conquest. If -underground resistance can effectively chepkmate above-ground military conquest, where is the necessity for either? ...