If Not Today, Then Tomorrow

In North Africa, the base of Allied operations against southern Europe, the Prime Minister of Britain and the commander of all U.S. armies conferred last week with General Dwight Eisenhower. Winston Churchill had returned to London, but General George C. Marshall was still in Africa when authorized accounts of the conference appeared:

P:First in Washington, then in Algiers, the Allied strategists planned "the most powerful blow possible at the Axis."

P:The strategic aim of the Allies is to conserve and mass available forces "to strike mightily in one theater."

Much of the world's press and millions of people were certain by this week that Europe was the theater and that the Allies were about to invade it. Both Allied and Axis observers shared this certainty. A United Press correspondent in London cabled: "The curtain is about to go up on a great Allied offensive against Europe." A German correspondent in Rome wrote: "The decisive hour for Europe has come. The European Fortress is under siege and will be attacked, if not today, then tomorrow. . . ."

These and many similar reports were at once the consequences and the weapons of an Allied war of nerves against the Axis. If the reports happened to be correct as well, the greatest secret of World War II was a secret only in detail. There were many signs that the Allies did plan to move into the Axis' island outposts in the Mediterranean--soon. There were signs that Allied plans also called for an invasion of the Continent. But there were few reliable signs that such an invasion would end the European war in 1943.

They Will Not Be Easy. Nearly everyone supposed that the invasion was to begin with the seizure of Italy's western Mediterranean islands, Pantelleria, Sicily and Sardinia. There was an impression that this preliminary would be a rather minor operation, hardly in keeping with the great Allied convoys seen on their way into the Mediterranean, or with the supposed strength of the Allied forces in North Africa.* Nothing in the nature of the islands, or in the record of this war to date, indicates that the operation will be easy. It was against just such optimism that Admiral Ernest Joseph King, the U.S. Fleet's realistic COMINCH, cautioned months ago when he said of Mediterranean possibilities: "I can't see them as anything but seaborne invasions, and they are not going to be easy."

Smallest of the island objectives is humpy, volcanic Pantelleria (see map). Its single harbor, its one known airfield, its coastal and interior fortifications were bombed around the clock last week. Five times in seven days British naval guns raked the island's shores. Apparently Pantelleria was to be the first objective, perhaps with simultaneous moves against the other islands.

The weight and intensity of aerial at tacks on the harbors, airfields, artillery positions and railways of Sicily and Sardinia steadily increased (see p. 55). Italian and German resistance, particularly in the air, steadily decreased. But softening by air is not conquest. At the weekend, Americans struck at Italy's chief weapon of Mediterranean defense, its navy, with an air attack on three battleships at Spezia. Results: uncertain.

Allied planners had to assume that resistance would be as fierce as the opportunities for it were great. Taking any one of the islands, and certainly taking all of them, might be the most formidable task of its kind yet undertaken by Britain or the U.S., and the task could absorb all the forces visible in the western Mediterranean last week.

Mixed forces of Germans and Italians apparently hold Sicily and Sardinia; only Italians, so far as was generally known last week, are on Pantelleria. Local air defenses on all the islands dwindled to ward zero. But attentive observers noted that the Luftwaffe was not entirely destitute or inactive in the Mediterranean: it put a few fighters over Pantelleria last weekend, and it still had bombers and fighters to send against Malta, whose survival had taught the world a lot about the strength of islands and the shortcomings of air attack.

Germany's Vice Admiral Pfeiffer suggested that action might also be imminent in the eastern Mediterranean. German forces hold Crete, the Dodecanese, many other islands in the Aegean. Attack against these approaches to the Balkans would presumably come from Egypt and the British island of Cyprus (where, according to Axis reports, U.S. forces have recently augmented British strength). But up to this week Allied air activity in the eastern Mediterranean has been limited to intensive scouting and occasional forays against Axis shipping. Nothing like the intense preparation in the west has been reported.

They Are Soon Forgotten. If the islands might be difficult, the Continent would be immeasurably more difficult. Invasion of the Continent, on a greater or lesser scale, may indeed be contemplated by the Allies this year. If so, everything in the record of past performances and recent utterances points to the magnitude of the task: P:The press last week was in the mood to play up the signs of impending action and victory. Headlines and lead para graphs went to General Henry H. Arnold's statement that bombing would end the war, "and end it soon." Less attention was paid to his qualifying statement, in the same speech at West Point, that victory was a hard and bitter way ahead ("I do not want to arouse false hopes").

P:Lieut. General Brehon Burke Somervell, the U.S. Army's supply chief, said in April: 1) the job of supplying critical military equipment to America's allies would not be completed before the end of this year; 2) the U.S. Army would not be fully equipped until late 1944; 3) the Army at times was still put to it to fill available shipping space with combat equipment.

P:Great and growing though U.S. aircraft production is, it is still: 1) behind schedule; 2) insufficient to meet even the minimum demands of all theaters; 3) far lower in terms of combat actualities than the overall monthly production figures seem to indicate. According to Under Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, the supply of aviation gasoline is also short.

P:Building a ground army on invasion scale, in addition to building up the R.A.F. and the Royal Navy, has so far been beyond Britain's capacity (sustaining the early campaigns in Africa, and finally creating the victorious Eighth Army long absorbed a tremendous proportion of British and Dominions strength).

The U.S. has the capacity to build such an army, and the job is proceeding apace. But there is an enormous and generally unappreciated difference between the total of men in that army (about 6,100,000 this spring) and the actual front-line potential of the army. It is public knowledge, for example, that the Army had to strain every nerve and facility to supply four combat divisions and a comparatively small air force for the North African campaign.

P:Every new campaign, every combat lesson in World War II has tended to lengthen, rather than shorten, the training period necessary to make an army. Of all the U.S. Army's infantry divisions (more than 70, and climbing toward 100 at last published reports), not more than seven have had battle experience in Africa, New Guinea, the Solomons or the Aleutians.

In times of great expectancy, such facts are seldom heeded and soon forgotten. The men who plan the coming Allied offensive cannot forget them.

*At last reports, the ground forces in North Africa consisted of the British First and Eighth armies, the U.S. Fifth Army (which presumably includes the four divisions of the U.S. II Corps) and the underequipped French armies--a total of perhaps 750,000 men. The extent of recent addition to those forces and the actual number of combat effectives are unknown.

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