ITALIAN DESIRE TO END WAR

Southland Times, Issue 24760, 3 June 1942, Page 5

ITALIAN DESIRE TO END WAR

Fear Of Invasion (Rec. 10.30 p.m.) NEW YORK, June 2. The Swedish liner Drottningholni has arrived, bringing a large number of returning American diplomats, officials and journalists from Europe. They included Admiral William D. Leahy, American Ambassador to Vichy, and Mr Reynolds Packard, the United Press manager at Rome. Mr Packard said that fear of an Allied invasion led Italy to hold a mobile army of a million men in readiness to rush to any sector attacked. Italy was therefore not sending additional forces to Russia. The fighting spirit was entirely missing from the Italian Army. Every Italian soldier spoken to echoed the wish: “May this war end soon.” Mr Frederick Oechsner, the United Press manager at Berlin, said most Germans took the viewpoint that even success in Russian this summer would fail to bring the victory once pictured by Hitler. There was no indication that the Nazi system had reached breaking point, but there was increasing tension and the cracks were widening. Sabotage and go-slow were ever on the increase in both Germany and the occupied countries, in factories, ships and even in offices. Mr Oechsner expressed the opinion that external military pressure would finally cause the downfall of the Nazis. A big internal crack-up was unlikely in the immediate future. GERMAN REGARD FOR HITLER

Captain Adolph von Pickhardt, United States naval attache in Berlin, who was interned for five months, said that so far air raids on inland Germany had not affected German morale, but the Ruhr area was another story. He said the Germans still hoped to win, because they felt they were politically more unified, consequently production was better organized. Captain Pickhardt believed the German people still held the same regard for Hitler, but were disappointed by the American entry into the war. The Germans scorned Italy, But were surprised by the success of the Japanese. Those aboard provided a variety of backgrounds and included persons just out of concentration camps and other prisons. Some had been sentenced to death and reprieved by an exchange of Germans imprisoned in America. For the majority of the returning travellers the meals aboard constituted the first good food for many months.