After Mussolini, Who?

When Italy follows Benito Mussolini out of the war:

> The Germans must choose between defending all of a hostile mainland, withdrawing to northern Italy, or withdrawing entirely into Germany itself.

>In either event, Adolf Hitler will be confronted with a true second front. German troops will face Allied troops at the very gates to Germany and to France.

> Southern Germany, now almost immune to air attack, will be within range of Allied bomber bases (see p. 40}.

> Germany's defenses in southeastern Europe will be disrupted by the loss of the Italian Army. Italian troops, weak in battle, nevertheless do garrison duty in guerrilla-torn Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete. Algiers heard that Marshal Badoglio had ordered the withdrawal of 22 divisions from garrison duty. If this was true, the Germans will have to garrison these countries, or else abandon them. The German chances of holding the Balkans against their own heartened rebels, much less against invasion, will be lessened. Said A.P. Correspondent Wesley Gallagher, recently returned from Allied Headquarters in Algiers: "If Italy sues for peace, military moves will follow in the Balkans with lightning rapidity."

>If the Germans choose, they can pin down in Italy Allied planes and troops which otherwise would be free for further offensives. In any case, supplies for the Italians and occupying forces will take much Allied shipping.

Farewell, Fortress. The Swiss weekly Weltwoche, known for its authentic military information, said last week that the German idea of Fortress Europe was already dead. According to Weltwoche, even before Mussolini quit, the Germans had abandoned any hope of holding all the shores and lands of Axis Europe. Instead, they planned to turn Norway, Denmark and Belgium in the north, France in the west, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria and Crete in the south into rear-guard battlefields. As in Sicily, limited German forces would fight for those lands--not to hold them indefinitely, but to make invasion as slow and expensive as possible for the Allies. Weltwoche said that the Germans hoped only to hold an inner citadel--Germany itself, a part of Holland, and the eastern borderlands of the Ukraine, Poland, Hungary and Rumania.

If these were indeed the German plans they were plans of despair when they were conceived. Now, as never before, the Russians threaten the citadel from the east (see col. 2). The Allies move upon it, though slowly, by land and by air from the west and the south. In the end, inner Europe cannot be a citadel for the Germans. It can only be a trap.

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