GERMAN STRATEGY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25458, 12 February 1944, Page 5

GERMAN STRATEGY

ITALIAN CAMPAIGN “ UNLUCKY ” BRITISH GENERAL (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, Feb. 10. It now appears that the German General Staff has its dispositions so arranged that it hopes to contain the Fifth Army in and around Cassino long enough for the execution of a bigscale offensive designed to drive the Allied forces in the north back to the beaches, says the Daily Telegraph’s correspondent at Allied headquarters. The latest report from the Anzio beachhead to-night says that the German drive appeared to have been slowed down and that American resistance has tightened and held. The Daily Mail, in a leader, says: “Whether it was owing to bad judgment or bad luck there is no doubt the beach-head operation has not proved a success.”

After referring to previous failures in Italy, the Daily Mail’s article concludes: “ Luck plays a part in war. as Napoleon knew when he said. ‘ 1 don’t want only good generals. I want lucky generals.’ Nothing in the part played by the Commander-in-Chief m the Mediterranean area, General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, suggests that he is a lucky general. Fortune was not on his side in the Greek campaign in 1941 or in the Dodecanese last year, and it is not on his side at Nettuno now. The fortune of war veers first to one side and then to the other. When it returns to our side we must be ready for it.”