DICTATOR REPROACHES DICTATOR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 123, 26 May 1945, Page 6

DICTATOR REPROACHES DICTATOR

It is alleged that among the personal effects of the late Benito Mussolini was a letter from Hitler rebuking Mussolini for invading Greece. Unfortunately the cabled summary of this letter, attributed to the German dictator, does not give its date; and the reader is left to assume that it was written after the Italian campaign in Greece had made its slow and sometimes calamitous beginnings—indeed, it may have been written after Hitler had been compelled to come to the rescue of Mussolini's army by sending German divisions into Greece to overpower both the Greeks and the British Empire invaders. Whatever the date of the letter may be, its contents suggest that Mussolini's inglorious military adventures in Greece and in Africa had produced (in Hitler's opinion) a bad impression in Spain. In fact, Hitler wrote (if this letter is genuine) that Mussolini's misfortunes "made Franco hesitate for the first time. All subsequent attempts to induce the Spaniards to enter the war have failed." It will be the historian's task, in a calmer future, to value this piece of evidence. Roughly, it seems to amount to this: Franco owed Mussolini and Hitler a debt for military help in the Spanish war for the control of Spain, but Mussolini's military misfortunes dulled the edge of Spanish gratitude, and even Hitler's Germany could not swing Franco Spain into the firing-line—apart, of course, from the "token" force of volunteers sent from Spain to the Russian front. But the letter, at the best, is only one piece of evidence. Some day events may open the Spanish archives friemselves v and only then will the full scope of Hitler's western Mediterranean machinations be known.