Evening star., 1943-10-02
Germans in Italy
Face Hard Choice
BIZ Mai. GEORGE Fieldino Eliot.

The situation in Italy Is striking
example of the manner in which political
and military strategy are intertwined
with each other in this war. From the
German point of view. it was probably a
mistake to fight in southern Italy at
ALL and it may prove to have been a
very costly mistake. There is nothing
in the news dispatches to suggest that
the Germans are sending reinforcements
south, or are attempting to bar the path
OF the fast-driving Gen. Montgomery
up the eastern coast of the peninsula.
He may be by now farther north than
the Germans just retiring from Naples
The Allied forces are now we'll estab-
lished in Italy, with good airfields and
with command of the southern ends of
the main highways on both sides of the
mountains. They hold Sardinia and
Corsica. They have command of the sea,
and they have strong air-borne forma-
tions. The population of the peninsula
is hostile to the Germans On the face
of it, this is a situation in which the
Germans have but one problem-how to
get their army out of the peninsula,
and safe behind the shelter of their
mountain defense line of the Etruscan
Apennines.
But their problem is complicated by a
political difficulty from which they are
not going to be able to escape scot free.
The President at his Friday morning
press conference put the matter very
clearly: The Allied troops are advancing
from Naples to Liberate the Pope, the
Vatican, and the City of Rome, from the
hands of the Germans. This is an enter
prise which must arouse the enthusiasm
OF Christians everywhere-in Latin
America, for example, and in Spain and
Portugal. 1t must have a particular ap-
peal to Catholics, and even German
Catholics cannot be indifferent to the
fact that their government is thus dra-
matlcally presented to the world as the
enemy of the church. Not all the perse-
cutions of Catholic clergy and laymen
in Germany could do this one one
hundredth as vividly as the actual phys
ical domination of Rome and Vatican
City by German soldiers, and the ad-
vance Of an Allied army to the rescue.
1t would appear that the Germans,
having committed a military folly by
fighting SO far south in the Italian pen
insula. have not been content with that
but must add a political folly by invest
ing the Vatican and occupying Rome,
from which they must now either with
draw with their tails between their legs,
or else increase the scope of their mill
tary defeat by putting more troops into
position which cannot be held and
which is likely to prove the graveyard
of any German soldiers committed to it.
The present masters of Germany are,
of course, entirely capable of laying
waste Rome as they have laid waste
Naples, and of carrying off the Pope
into new "Babylonian captivity" But
one must wonder what would be the
reaction to such conduct of the 81 o0o-
600 Catholics of Germany, the 100000
Catholics of Austria, the 100000 Cath
olics of Hungary? 1t seems probable
that even the Nazis, who have sworn
to pull down the pillars of European
civilization if they could not conquer it,
Nouit 4CSoAl UCloi tllC pOSSlDl6 COllSS.
quences of such ruthless procedures
yet we have learned not to underesti-
mate the Nazi capacity either for brutal
stupidity or for inhuman outrage.
In any case, the decision must come
soon. The race for Rome is on. with
Gen. Montgomery certainly beyond Fog
gia, how far beyond we do not know:
with Naples in the hands of the 5th
Army and with the clear announcement
from Washington that Rome is the next
Allied objective. If the Germans make
fight for Rome, any destructive effect
which the city may suffer is clearly
German responsibility. If they fight
again south of Rome, they fight in the
certainty of disaster, under conditions
as nearly hopeless as the conditions of
any battle can be. If they abandon
Rome and retire to the north-and it is
hard to believe that they will now follow
any other course-they will in so doing
allow the Allied armies to march tri-
umphantly into the Eternal City, there
to be hailed as the rescuers of the sacred
shrlnes of the Christian church from
the hands Of the pagan despoiler. 1t is
not pretty set of choices. We ought
not to be too sure what the Germans
will do, for it is exactly the sort of
dilemma from which in the past Ger
mans have sought escape by a furious
orgy of destruction.
Whom the gods would destroy they
first make mad.
(Copyright, 1943. by New York Tribune. Incl