South Yorkshire Times – Saturday 7 August 1943
Between Two Fires
Marshal Badoglio continues to sit on the fence with military stolidity. Fascism has been publicly abolished but, as the Marshal announced when he took over the reins of government, the war goes on. So far, so good. No one in the Allied camp, and apparently very few in Italy, will indulge in any regrets over the abolition. Now what is to follow becomes important. Despite the political kite-flying of Rome Radio and other semi-official Italian sources it seems pretty clear that Italy’s fate still rests on the question of unconditional surrender. Italy and Germany between them have invented an assortment of peace proposals which almost certainly have never existed except in Axis propaganda departments. It is the old story of the butterfly wriggling on the pin.
Italy is in the tightest of tight corners, and is trying to make the best of a hopeless situation. She fears her German masters and dreads the trenchantly wielded might of the United Nations, an upper and a nether millstone which make her plight desperate indeed. With nothing to show for her entry into the war but a record of loss and ridicule Italy baulks at the last humiliation of sueing for peace and thus sharing the fate (with less excuse) of France, the nation whom she despicably assaulted in the hour of defeat and disaster.
As a soldier Marshal Badoglio probably wants to do what he deems to be the honest thing by the Germans, hence the present temporising. But whatever he hopes to do to help the ally who failed his country in the hour when the need was greatest it is unlikely that Italy will be in the war very much longer. There are plenty of signs that the people are clamouring for peace now. If no notice is taken of this popular clamour in the near future there are ways in which such sentiments can be “hotted up” to irresistible heat. Hamburg knows how it is done. If Italy cannot make up her mind the Allies will know how to help her.
Already the tempo of the fighting has speeded up again in Sicily. The conquerors of North Africa are businesslike men and do not waste time or words. General Montgomery has said, “We will now drive the Germans from Sicily.” That will be done, and while the task is being fulfilled preparations are afoot to bring the war even more closely home to the Italians. Battleships shell their coasts, bombers drone over their cities. Soon armies will descend upon their shores.
As a military power Italy is already broken. If she persists in the sacrificial attitude of interposing herself between the Allies and the Germans, she will only bring on herself devastation and slaughter in a cause that is lost. The Germans are calculatingly callous now as always in their use of the Italian alliance, and the time has come for the Italians to be realists and save what is left of their sadly tattered skin.
The longer they delay the more certain they are to be rent asunder by two adversaries bent on a reckoning. It is a reckoning whose settlement day Germany seeks to postpone and the Allies to speed. That in itself should show the Italians where their choice lies. Germany is hard put to it to protect herself, let alone her allies.