The Evening Star FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 1945. ITALIAN FRONT ALIVE.

Evening Star, Issue 25469, 27 April 1945, Page 4

The Evening Star FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 1945. ITALIAN FRONT ALIVE.

When, at the beginning of the Eighth Army attack in Italy, slightly more than a fortnight ago, we wrote that once the crust of German resistance was broken there would! be a comparativ'y swift surge towards the industrial north, we did rtot expect the break-through to be as sudden as it has proved to he. The news from this front has been little short of electrifying, which may mean that the Allies are stronger now than they have ever been, or that the virus of defeat is working among the opposing German forces as they see what is happening in their homeland. The two factors may be combined, .and it may also be possible that the change of command, a weaker man superseding the dogged Kesselring, whose defence tactics were excellent; has played a part. There was certainly every reason to suppose that,in a terrain described as one of the worst in the world for campaigning tli© Germans, whose Italian forces have repeatedly been referred to as the cream of the Wehrmacht, would fight long and stubbornly before permitting Allied advances, but all natural obstacles have been overcome, and, one by one, rivers which should have been effective defence barriers have been hurdled, including Italy's biggest, the mighty Po. Since the Germans were broken along the Hitler and Gustav lines in South Italy the Allies have not mounted any attack commensurate with that begun on April 9; developments hi Western and Southern Europe contributed': to reducing the strength _ of tlie veteran Italian, armies, men being sent to fronts considered more vital in the general strategy. The Middle East Commander - in - Chief, Field - Marshal Alexander, and the field commander of the Allied armies,. General Mark Clark, have never acknowledged more than a bare superiority over the enemy. The Germans havo consistently shown a superb fighting quality in Italy, and the Allies have been content to thrust gently, but firmly, taking positions piecemeal, to the best of their ability, with restricted resources. But at last the High Command has decided that the end shall come in this peninsula, the first in Europe to know .the armies of liberation, and the full fury of everything to hand has been turned against the enemy. In rapid succession there •have fallen Argenta, Bologna, Modena, Ferrara, Reggio, Parma, and) the naval base at Spezia, while the bag of prisoners has been extraordinarily large as the enemy flees, in obvious panic, northwards. Now, on top of the sensational military developments, comes news of the great British-led partisan revolt in the north, which has driven the Germans from Milan, Genoa, Como, and a number of other cities, and cleared about half of the important industrial centre of Turin. If the partisans can now close the escape route from the south around the Gulf of Venice to Austria, the German forces confronting the Fifth and Eighth Annies will be in danger of becoming engulfed in a giant trap. The loss of Northern Italy will be a dual blow to the Germans; they are losing not only industrial centres, which must be important in supplying the German army now that the Ruhr and Silesia have been made impotent, but they are losing the Po River Valley, a blow indeed, for here are rich agricultural lands—the granary of Italy, important in feeding the'Reich. The Germans may yet find it possible to make a backs-to-the-wall against the Alps, but the fact remains that the Allied armies have achieved what General Eisenhower describes as a " real victory," and the enemy in Italy is, for all practical purposes, broken.