THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, June 17, 1944 THE ITALIAN FRONT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25564, 17 June 1944, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, June 17, 1944 THE ITALIAN FRONT

In the past week the news from France has tended, inevitably, to divert attention from the remarkable successes achieved by General Alexander’s armies in Italy. The series of brilliantly co-ordinated offensives which drove the Germans from the heavily-fortified southern approaches to Rome did much more than clear the way for Allied occupation of the city. It is now apparent that Marshal von Kesselring’s armies suffered shattering losses in their endeavours to hold the Gustav and Adolf Hitler Lines, to keep open Highway Six and to check the fatal lateral thrusts launched by General Clark from the beach-head at Anzio. One estimate is that two-thirds of von Kesselring’s strength was sacrificed in the bid to contain the Fifth and Eighth Armies in the mountainous terrain south of Rome. This was an appalling price for the German commander to pay. Yet he might have deemed his delaying tactics worth the cost had he succeeded in compelling General Alexander, after the great prize of Rome had fallen into his hands, to halt his own advance for the purposes of regrouping and reinforcement. But there was never a pause in the forward surge of the victorious Allied forces, with the result that von Kesselring, himself badly in need of opportunity to restore the semblance of solidarity to his beaten and exhausted divisions, has been kept on the run. His headlong retreat has now carried him, in the west, more than half way to the Ligurian port of Leghorn. His defence line between Lake Bolsano and the Tyrrhenian Sea, south of Orbetello, failed to stop the Americans, and the spearheads of the Fifth Army are now reported in the neighbourhood of Grosseto, with the men of the Eighth Army keeping pace on the main line of communications leading to Florence. The expectation in Allied quarters is that von Kesselring may now find it impossible io offer anything like effective resistance to the Allied advance short of the prepared line running from Leghorn and Pisa in. the west, through Florence to Rimini, on the Adriatic coast. That prospect must be gravely disturbing, to the enemy, for if he is to retain a foothold in Italy he must at all' costs prevent an Allied break-through into the open country of Lombardy _and the valley of the Po—perfect terrain for the exploitation of armour and the establishment of advanced air bases. There are other considerations which must be weighing heavily with the German commander. Informed quarters believe that he has kept no more than six divisions in reserve for the battle of Northern Italy. He may have drawn on these already. The outlook will be grim for him if he has done so, for there will be no reserves to spare from France, already invaded in the west and seething with revolt elsewhere. It was thought some weeks ago that the accumulation of Allied strength in Corsica heralded assaults either against the French or the Italian Riviera coast. It may even be part of General Alexander’s plan, as we have previously suggested, to use again the strategy of amphibious ■ landings in advance of the present line of battle—a possibility that will be in von Kesselring’s mind if he contrives a stand on the LeghornRimini line. In any case, the knowledge that the French patriot movement is at its strongest in the mountains of Savoy and Dauphiny will not be comforting while doubts remain as to the meaning of the Allied concentrations of armoured and foot divisions in Corsica. This estimate of possibilities in Northern Italy takes no account of the changing position in the Adriatic, while the east coast advance of the Allies continues to make headway and while Marshal Tito increases the pressure of his attritional warfare against the Germans in Bosnia and along the Dalmatian coast. We have President Roosevelt’s woyd that the plans of the Supreme Allied Command will soon require the enemy to fight great battles on' every front —that the Normandy operations are “ only part of a far larger pattern of combined, assault against the fortress of Germany by the Russian armies from the east and by our forces from the Mediterranean.” •General Alexander, in Italy, has shown superb skill and competence in preparing the Mediterranean theatre for the decisive engagements that are to come.