World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF ITALY: Out of the Darkness

The battle waged by German and Allied soldiers on the invaded mainland of Italy was only one part of a developing campaign for southern Europe. For the Germans, that campaign was already a nightmare of uncertainties, hidden threats, blows in the dark.

The Italians won Sardinia for the Allies. Authorized accounts, revealing that Marshal Badoglio was working with the Allies behind their lines in Italy, said that on his orders two Italian divisions had pushed the Germans out of Sardinia. An Algiers communique called the German departure an “evacuation.” The Nazis had given up an island naval and air base from which torpedo boats and bombers could hinder Allied shipping; a base which, in Allied hands, will bring German positions in southern France and northern Italy within easier bombing range. French Commandos, Corsicans, Italians harried the Germans in Corsica, where Allied fighters would also be within range.

Of Italian activities and sympathies elsewhere there was almost no authentic news. In the occupied south the Italians generally were friendly. Swiss reports said that in the north, where Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is preparing his defenses, Italian bands seized a section of railway from the Germans, otherwise harried and fought them. A roundabout report from Cyprus, Britain’s island in the eastern Mediterranean, said that Italian refugees told of fighting in the Dodecanese Islands between German and Italian soldiers. A German communique reported the seizure of an Italian troopship, gave the impression that the Germans regarded the Italians as enemies.

At Rommel’s Back. From Yugoslavia came a story of a victory for the Allies. The respected Swiss weekly Weltwoche and other sources in Bern heard that Yugoslavia’s indomitable Partisan guerrillas had leaped from hiding in Croatia, seized-seven of nine useful ports on the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic, taken Fiume in preparation for Allied landings. According to these reports, the ports held by the Partisans included Split (Spalato), which the Germans immediately devastated by air attack but failed to wrest from the Partisans. Serbian General Draja Mihailovich’s secret radio YTG claimed credit for his forces, but most reports from Europe agreed that the Partisans did the work.

If the Dalmatian coast is indeed in friendly hands, and can be held, the Allies have an open door at Rommel’s back. But London, Washington and Cairo, as usual, received the stories of Partisan success with cold doubt, indicated that the Allies still assume that they must fight for entry into Yugoslavia. At the most, these sources preferred to await their own reports.*

Step to the Balkans? Something was cooking in the eastern Mediterranean. Ankara heard that Allied troops had landed on the Dodecanese isles of Leros and Kos, on the Greek island of Samos in the Aegean. If so, Allied forces had sneaked behind Scarpanto and Rhodes, the principal islands guarding the eastern entrance to the Aegean, and, at Leros, had managed to seize a base complete with an airfield and two U-boat bases. Both Ankara and Stockholm heard that Britain’s Ninth Army had actually sailed from Syria, was presumably headed toward the southeastern Balkans. Even if these reports were premature, they were augurs of more trouble for the troubled Germans.

-A Nazi-controlled newspaper in Yugoslavia referred to “Allied officers who are now at the headquarters of Yugoslav patriot forces.”