GERMAN SPEED-UP

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21009, 4 February 1943, Page 3

GERMAN SPEED-UP

COASTAL DEFENCES MEDITERRANEAN ZONE OUR PATROLS INCREASED (10.30 a.m.) LONDON, Feb. 3. The Germans, after fortifying Europe’s coast against the Allies from North Cape in Norway to Biarritz in the South of France, are now hurriedly fortifying the shores of the Mediterranean, says the Madrid correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, in view of the possibility of Allied landings. The Germans are most active on the Riviera which is described as a “buttress of cement, bristling with guns. Since the German occupation the famous Cote Bleu has lost all its gracefulness. The waters on which yachts once sailed are now filled with mines and U-boats. The bathing beaches have been converted into camps, and palaces, country houses and villas into barracks.

The German programme incorporates all strategic coastal territory. The Germans are ordering the evacuation of any zones that they regard as essential, such as Marseilles. Reuter’s correspondent in Madrid says that Germany is-speeding up the defences along the Balkan coasts and in the Dodecanese Islands. They are using Hungarian, Yugoslav and Greek labourers on the construction oi deep fortifications from Kavala to Salonika, in Vardar and Moravia valleys, the Italian Adriatic coast and also southern Italy and Sicily. The Germans and Italians have doubled air reconnaissance from Crete to Rhodes, patrolling daily, especially the Cyprus zone. Axis forces in the Balkans are estimated at 28 divisions, excluding Bulgarians. The Stockholm correspondent of the Daily Mail says that Mr. Winston Churchill’s talks in Turkey were a staggering and unpleasant surprise for the Germans who were emphatically asserting Germany’s preparedness in the Balkans gencially and in Greece and the Aegean Sea in particular. Their final defences are nearly complete m the Salonika area and also along the Italian and Sicilian coasts.