Implications of the Surrender

Manawatu Times, Volume 68, Issue 215, 10 September 1943, Page 5

Implications of the Surrender

l Keystone of Germany’s Power Puiled Out Received Thursday, 7.30 p.m. LONDON, Sept. 9. Italy’s surrender throws into confusion Germany’s whole position in the Balkans which thirty Italian divisions occupy, says the Evening News military writer. The Germans face the choice of allowing the situation in Yugoslavia and Greece to get out of hand or of transferring an equivalent number of divisions from the Russian front or other parts of Occupied Europe. The eastern shore of the Adriatic also becomes a vulnerable front. Moreover, with the surrender of the Dodecanese Islands off the Turkish coast, useful bases will fall into Allied hands for any invasion of Southeast Europe. Crete, now isolated, faces a hopeless siege or early surrender. Finally, in addition to rebuilding the Balkan front, the Germans must establish a new front south of the Alps somewhere in Northern Italy. Mr. Ward Price, writing in the Daily Mail, says our armies will soon share a common front with Germany in France. Munich, Linz and Vienna lie within one hour’s flight of Italian bombing bases. Sardinia and Corsica fell to us without a shot. The German positions in the Balkans is outflanked from the I Alps to Athens and the way to Southern • Europe is opened wide. Italy was the j buttress of the whole position in Europe south of the Danube. Now this prop has been demolished, her situation everywhere along the Mediterranean from the frontier of Spain to the frontier of Turkey, will begin to totter. The keystone of that great arch of Nazi military power which spanned the Continent from the Pyrenees to the Black Sea, has been pulled out. Without it the rest of the structure cannot v stand. The Allies have driven a wedge into the mainland of Europe, whose point presses directly against her heart. The clearance of Italian, mines in the Aegean should enable us soon to ship supplies for Turkey straight into Smyrna instead of by the single railway into Turkey from Syria. The Times’ military correspondent •ays that a German attempt to hold Southern Italy appears out of the question, but it might well be practicable from the German viewpoint to hold the heights north of the Po Basin which cover the passes into German Austria. It is not a question of holding the Brenner Pass only. The Allies’ imme diate advantages from the armistice are a gateway to the Adriatic, a firm foot hold on the Continent and the oppor tunity to advance their airfields agains Germany.