Thursday, February 13, 1941

IS ITALY LOOKING FOR AN ARMISTICE? A volley of rumors in the last forty-eight hours offer a couple of tantalizing possibilities -- is Mussolini trying to find a way out of the war? Would Hitler actually let him quit? The front-page story in the Washington Post says that American correspondents in Rome have been trying to get a "big story" past the censors, and quotes a dispatch from the New York Times’ Herbert Matthews -- "It is not permitted to write a word from Rome tonight about the big story (section censored)...American newspapermen have already been sanctioned for writing about (section censored)....It is hoped a communique will be issued...(section censored)..." All we really know is that President Petain was set to meet with Generalissimo Franco, who in turn would confer with Mussolini. C.B.S.’s Vichy correspondent, Courtenay Terrett, said flatly in a broadcast Tuesday night that "the visit of Generalissimo Francisco Franco to France is likely to result tomorrow in an armistice between England and Italy." I can’t believe that Germany would allow that, but an N.B.C. report from London claims that, simultaneously, the Nazis are trying to negotiate, on Italy’s behalf, an immediate truce with Greece that would allow the Greeks to hold on to all the territory they’ve taken from the Italians in Albania.

If that’s true, it suggests that Hitler would go very, very far and swallow a lot of Axis pride to end at least for now the fighting on his southern flank, which has gone so badly for the Duce since November. British troops in eastern Libya haven’t let up a bit -- they’ve already covered a third of the distance from Bengazi, captured just last Friday, to what the United Press calls the "great Fascist base" at Tripoli, possibly the last place where the Italians could make a major stand. Advance British tank units have taken El Aghelia, the last town in eastern Libya and 170 miles south of Bengazi on the coast. The Fuehrer might be betting that taking Italy out of the conflict would free up more German forces to attack England that it would British units to defend the home islands.

David Darrah of the Chicago Tribune gets downright giddy about these reports, writing that they might portend "a general cessation of hostilities" -- though he doesn’t explain how meetings among senior French, Spanish, and Italian officials could bring about peace between Germany and Britain. But it’s certainly reasonable to suspect that Mussolini wants out, and would actively exploring the possibility. There was nothing Wednesday or this morning to follow up on these reports, save for a bland communique of the Franco-Mussolini meeting, saying the pair had "a complete identity of views" on European matters. But if something comes of all this, we should hear about by this week-end.

SOMETHING’S UP IN BULGARIA. On the other hand, the persistent and ominous reports coming from Bulgaria raise another possibility -- the peace rumors are Nazi bluff. Russell Hill of the New York Herald Tribune writes that Bulgarian statesmen consider themselves "powerless to alter the course of events" and would not oppose the expected Nazi "request" to move troops through their nation. Meanwhile, Reuters says that over 1,000 German warplanes have landed in Bulgaria and that Bulgarian airdromes have been taken over by the Nazis. An Associated Press dispatch from Belgrade says German troop transport planes are flying towards the Balkans. Another A.P. report says those transport planes are landing at Bulgarian airports. A radio report this morning says that Hitler has amassed 600,000 troops in nearby Rumania, and that the ice in the Danube River, which has prevented a German crossing into Bulgaria during the winter, is breaking up in a premature thaw.

In a way these moves point up how much things have changed since last fall, when there were numerous press stories about plans for a grandiose Nazi sweep through the Balkans that would move on through Turkey to seize the oil fields of Irak, then join in a pincer with then-advancing Italian troops in Egypt to take the Suez Canal. The latest alarms of German troop movements do not raise any extravagant fears. This time, Hitler’s purpose is considered to be far more modest -- to get German troops into Greece before the British can move up forces from their African campaign to aid the Greeks and pose a threat to German interests in Rumania.

HOW BRITAIN COULD BEAT GERMANY. Colonel Lindbergh went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a few days, repeating his message that "Britain can’t win the war." His argument is based mainly on comparative numbers of troops, tanks, planes, etc., which show what a daunting task it would be for a British invasion force to dislodge the Germans from their conquests. But Lindbergh makes no account for issues such as strategy and troop morale, and indeed, as we’ve just seen in North Africa, a numerically-inferior British force has routed a well-trained, well-equipped Italian army. Could the British do the same thing to the Nazis? Obviously it is a much greater task, but Ernest K. Lindley set forth in his Washington Post column yesterday some ways it could be done --

"Roughly, there are two theories as to how the British could destroy the Nazi regime. By the first theory, they must invade the European continent and defeat the German armies in the field. This would be an immense undertaking, even from a base as close to Europe as England is, if the morale of the Germany army had not been undermined. By the second theory, the Nazis will begin to wane when the British become able to punish severely from the air military targets in Germany. When the British become able to do this, the Nazis will know the British are on the upgrade, from a military viewpoint. The Germans have nothing to fall back on. The British will have our immense resources to reply upon, and justifiably it will be supposed that their strength will continue to increase. Somewhere on this rising scale of British strength, it is supposed, German morale will begin to crack. This is especially likely to happen if the British assert convincingly that their aim is the destruction of the Nazi regime, not of the German people. By this second theory, the British will not need to invade the continent at all, or at least until the morale of the Germany army has been sapped. There are variations of these theories. For example, one is that if Hitler attempts to invade England and fails, at heavy cost in life, there may be a revolution in Germany, engineered by leaders in the army who openly or covertly were against the attempt at invasion."

There’s already evidence that the Royal Air Force is capable of dealing punishing blows to Nazi targets, such as the six-hour attack Monday on the industrial district of Hanover, which left the area "a sea of blazing fires," according to the New York Times. It’s this and the possibilities Mr. Lindley mentions that help illuminate Prime Minister Churchill’s renunciation of aid from an American expeditionary force. And there are more practical issues that would keep the British from desiring U.S. troops -- "Even through 1942, [Churchill] says, large numbers of new ships will be needed to carry supplies to Great Britain. There will be no shipping space left to transport and supply American troops.....Anyone who attempts to forecast the course of the war is only guessing. But Churchill’s speech shows that he realizes the British must not rely on us for more than weapons and ships. In turn, he is making the British people and their Allies realize this."