The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945

by The New York Times

  The Mussolini decrees, said to be signed by the former Premier, were read over the German radio station Zeesen. They were read, not by Mussolini but by Alessandro Pavolini, former Italian Propaganda Minister, who was named in one of the decrees as “temporary secretary” of the new Fascist party.

  A short time later the Italian agency Stefani, now under German control, broadcast a dispatch containing an ordinance signed by Calvi di Bergolo naing Dr. Augusto Rosso, former Ambassador to the United States, as Commissioner of the Foreign Ministry, to replace Raffaele Guariglia, the Badoglio Foreign Minister.

  A Swiss broadcast, also reported to the OWI, said that Signor Guariglia had been placed under arrest in Rome and that other Ministers of the legal Cabinet still in Rome also were reported under arrest.

  The Stefani broadcast listed these appointments by Calvi di Bergolo in addition to that of Rosso:

  Presidency of the Council of Ministers—Dr. Gian Giacomo Bellazzi.

  Interior—Dr. Lorenzo Lavia.

  Italian Africa—Dr. Enrico Cerulli.

  Administration of Justice—Dr. Giovanni Novelli.

  Finance—Dr. Ettore Cambi.

  National Education—Dr. Giuseppe Guistini.

  Public Works—Engineer Paolo Saltino.

  Agriculture—Professor Vittorio Ronchi.

  Communications—Engineer Luigi Velani.

  Industry and Commerce—Dr. Ernesto Santoro.

  Popular Culture—Dr. Armedeo Tosti.

  Foreign Currency and Exchange—Dr. Francesco Cemonese.

  War Production—Dr. France Liguori.

  TEXT OF BROADCAST

  The text of the alleged order of the day by Benito Mussolini as broadcast yesterday by the German Transocean news agency and recorded by The United Press in New York follows:

  Order of the Day No. 1

  To all loyal comrades in the whole of Italy: From today, Sept. 15, 1943, I again assume the supreme leadership of fascism in Italy.

  Order of the Day No. 2

  I appoint Allessandro Pavolini provisional secretary of the Fascist National party, which from today will be known as the Republican Fascist party.

  Order of the Day No. 3

  I decree that all military, political, administrative and educational authorities, as well as all others who were dismissed by the capitulation of the Government, shall immediately be reinstated.

  Order of the Day No. 4

  I decree the immediate re-establishment of all party organizations on which the following duties will be incumbent: (1) To actively assist the German armed forces that are fighting the common enemy on Italian soil; (2) to afford immediate and effective moral and material assistance to the people; (3) to revise the lists of party members with the aim of ascertaining the attitude taken by members toward the coup d’etat capitulation and dishonor and of inflicting exemplary punishment on cowards and traitors.

  Order of the Day No. 5

  I decree the re-establishment of all formations and special sections of the voluntary militia of national security. Mussolini.

  SEPTEMBER 17, 1943

  WAR PRISONERS AT WORK

  110,000 Axis Men Are Filling Farm And Other Jobs

  WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 (AP)—Many Axis prisoners in this country were being used to relieve manpower shortages, the War Department reported today, announcing that 110,000 of the nearly 141,000 captives were at work on farms and elsewhere.

  The department said the war prisoners had helped relieve labor shortages in many States, adding:

  “They have harvested peanuts in Georgia and South Carolina, tomatoes in Indiana, corn in Iowa, have picked cotton in Texas, dug potatoes in Missouri and worked on a variety of non-agricultural jobs in several sections. One group now is engaged in constructing a dam for flood control in Oklahoma.”

  All prisoners, except officers, may be required to work on projects having no direct relation to war operations under the terms of the Geneva convention. They receive 80 cents a day, the money being credited to them regardless of whether the work is done for a Federal, State or private contractor.

  SEPTEMBER 19, 1943

  PROPAGANDA BATTLE JOINED

  We Try to Bolster Italian Morale, While the Germans Play Up Mussolini’s Rescue

  By HAROLD CALLENDER

  WASHINGTON, Sept. 18—The propaganda battle in the Mediterranean this week has been in its own way as intense and as continuous as the land, air and sea tussle around Salerno, each side making full use of its military achievements to encourage its own people and to depress the morale of the enemy.

  The surrender of Italy was not only a great military achievement. It was—or so our propagandists like to think—partly a propaganda achievement, and it certainly was a propaganda opportunity. As such it was exploited to the full in broadcasts to Italy, Germany, the Balkans and Europe generally.

  The theme of these Allied broadcasts this week has been that while Hitler has got Mussolini, the Allies have got the Italian fleet and thus in effect Increased their already overwhelming naval power by eliminating the only naval opposition in the Mediterranean and releasing surface ships for use elsewhere.

  For the edification of Europeans generally our propagandists emphasized the value to the Allies of the air bases they hold or will capture in Italy, from which they can readily bomb within a radius extending to Central Europe, to which Germany has moved some of her war industries in order to get them out of the range of Allied bombers striking western Europe from Britain.

  MORAL FOR GERMANS

  In addressing the Germans, our broadcasters have dwelt upon the fact that the initiative is now on the side of the Allies who, first, by invading North Africa and then by moving into Sicily and Italy, themselves decided where the present major campaign would be fought. Moreover, the Germans are told, the geography of the present phase of the war favors the Allies because they have virtually the same sea communication lines to Italy that they had to North Africa, not more extended lines.

  Meanwhile, continue the German-language broadcasters, the German forces in Italy are handicapped by having to get their reinforcements and supplies through mountain passes and along railways that can be bombed. Italy is described as a “sink hole” into which the Germans will drop, never to return.

  In talks to Italy, where the Germans have instituted a reign of terror apparently worse than in France, the effort has been to sustain Italian morale—odd as that now sounds in the reversed situation—pending Italy’s liberation by the Allies, to turn fear of the Germans into hatred of them and resistance to them and to stimulate the normal Italian desire to get back at the Germans by sabotage.

  The German propagandists also have had their innings this week and made their score, principally with the reports of the rescue of Mussolini and with the battle for Italy in which they have given the Allies a hard fight.

  Their aerial salvage of Mussolini was depicted by the German radio as a great stroke, tantamount to a major military victory. Mussolini’s value to anybody appears at this stage highly doubtful. The Germans’ repulse of earlier Allied advances around Salerno was described as “a Dunkerque,” and that ominous story was heard and momentarily believed at least as far as Washington—which was a tribute to German propaganda, as obligingly relayed by American radio speakers.

  ‘A DARING DEED’

  Having had no victories to talk about for a long time, the Nazis let themselves go on the Mussolini rescue. Their press and radio called it “one of the most daring and sensational deeds of history” and a “touching demonstration of friendship” between two dictators. “A nation capable of such deeds must win the war,” they said.

  Mussolini, said the Nazis, was transferred on Aug. 28 from the island of Santa Maddalena to the Abruzzi Mountains. The Nazis followed him, they say, as he was sent by motor car, motor boat, airplane and battleship from place to place. Finally, when an S.S. captain reached the mountain retreat and told Mussolini, “The Fuehrer sends me to deliver you,” Mussolini embraced h
im and said he had known the Fuehrer would save him. Just then a German plane, a helicopter, according to some versions, picked up the fallen Duce and “the rebirth of fascism” was assured.

  This action, or the story of it, was a propaganda stroke of great value, and a Swiss commentator in the Neue Zuericher Nachrichten thought it would divert German attention from the Russian front and even make the war in Italy popular. It is believed here to have ministered considerably to Hitler’s much injured self-esteem and it did not dismay the neutrals whom President Roosevelt had warned not to let Mussolini cross their frontiers.

  The Nazis professed to have cheated the Allies of a victim in rescuing Mussolini who, they said, was to be led in chains before President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in Washington and then executed. It was for this that Mr. Churchill had remained here, they said. Morever, the capture of Mussolini was to be “a trump card in Roosevelt’s election propaganda” and Elmer Davis, Director of the Office of War Information, was all set to publicize it, said the Nazis.

  DISSENTING VOICE

  Allied propaganda sought to minimize the Mussolini rescue by saying he was of no use to the Germans and that, having been a dictator, he had now sunk to the level of a puppet, like the Frenchman Laval.

  In telling of the battle for Italy, the Nazis began on Monday by reporting repulses of the Allies; on Tuesday they spoke of a “decisive defeat,” a “collapse” and “a Dunkerque”; the next day they magnified their story but gave the impression of a finished action in which the Germans had definitely triumphed.

  SEPTEMBER 21, 1943

  In the Nation

  The Rumored Transfer of General Marshall

  By ARTHUR KROCK

  WASHINGTON, Sept. 20—If the rumors prevalent in high military circles prove correct, and General Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, is sent abroad in a post of supreme combat command in the European theatre, the event will shock and disturb a great many people who have observed his work at first hand and are qualified to evaluate it. The discussion, private and public, which has followed an editorial in The Army and Navy Journal opposing the replacement, demonstrates this statement to be a fact and not an opinion.

  PERSHING’S APPREHENSION

  The discussion has been all the more earnest because of the source of the editorial, a military newspaper known to be close to the services and especially to General Pershing, whose aide General Marshall was in World War I. It is accepted here, though there is no public evidence to support the view, that the editorial, as often before, expressed General Pershing’s sentiments and reflected apprehension on his part that the transfer is being seriously considered by the President.

  The President is the Commander in Chief of the armed services, and in time of war his activity in that field is very great. He is ultimately responsible for the military conduct of the war and personally selects the commanders. The qualifications and records of none come into the President’s purview more intimately than those of the Chiefs of Staffs of the Army and the Navy.

  This being so, the President alone must decide who shall be the Chiefs of Staffs and when they shall be replaced. If Mr. Roosevelt has determined, or shall determine, that military objectives can better be served by transferring General Marshall to command the European invasion zone than by retaining him in Washington, his decision will be accepted in dutiful silence by the Army, including Generals Marshall and Pershing.

  PROTEST REGARDED AS LIKELY

  But Congress, which has a legal responsibility second to the President’s for the conduct of the war, would probably not bow in silence to such a decision. And when the points against it which are being made here were circulated throughout the country, as they would be, the chorus of dissent could be expected to grow.

  These points are several, among them the following:

  1. In World War I the best-known Army officer, and rated by the public as chief American military factor in the victory over Germany, was General Pershing. The Chief of Staff, General March, though his contribution was very large, was nothing like so well known. The fame and glamour of field command that surrounded General Pershing were of essential value in stimulating and maintaining home front morale.

  But in that war there was only one important, or at any rate conspicuous, war theatre—the Western Front. The general in the field was far more important, and was required to make the great and immediate decisions. In this war Army fighting covers the whole planet; it must be closely integrated with the work of the Navy; its direction must be from a central point, which has been and will be Washington; and that direction by General Marshall has been notable, as his recent report brilliantly reveals.

  A LIMITING ASSIGNMENT

  Therefore, to transfer him to just one theatre of combat, however vital, and even though he might lead the successful invasion and conquest of Germany, would be to confine his great talents and deny them to commanders in other combat zones, including our fronts in the Orient.

  Another invasion commander can be found, but not a Chief of Staff of General Marshall’s caliber; also, he does not aspire to this field command.

  2. Never have two Chiefs of Staff worked together more closely and harmoniously than General Marshall and the Navy’s leader, Admiral King. They have been sedulous in asserting national interests whenever they believed that these were being subordinated to those of an ally without benefit to anti-Axis military operations as a whole.

  POLITICS KEPT OUT

  They have collected some of the same detractors and aroused opposition from the same outside sources. They have been as one in keeping politics out of their considerations. They have repelled civilian attempts, however high the source, to interfere with the discipline for which they are responsible. They have adopted the same general pattern of war and, though occasionally overruled, continue to advocate it.

  To break up this team would produce a loss that could not be canceled by General Marshall’s exploits in Europe, however sensational.

  3. If the Army’s Chief of Staff is replaced, those who have urged it will the more easily be able to displace Admiral King.

  It may be the President has not been considering a transfer for General Marshall. But, if he has, many influential persons, in and out of the war program, who have developed unbounded admiration for this gifted and high-minded officer hope these reasons will induce Mr. Roosevelt to decide in the negative.

  SEPTEMBER 24, 1943

  NAZIS WRECK NAPLES PORT, SINK SHIPS; ALLIES SWING THEIR LINE NORTHWARD; POLTAVA TAKEN, RUSSIANS AT DNIEPER

  RETREAT REPORTED

  Enemy Quitting Naples Area After Scuttling 30 Vessels, Berne Hears

  ALLIES MAKE WIDE GAINS

  Advance Up to 14 Miles in Some Sectors—Our Fliers, Unopposed, Smash at Foe

  By MILTON BRACKER

  By Wireless to The New York Times.

  ALLIED HEAD QUARTERS IN NORTH AFRICA, Sept. 23—The Germans have sunk at least thirty ships in the harbor of Naples to block Allied use of the port. The city is ringed with fire and palled with smoke from the enemy’s demolition of harbor installations and possibly valuable military installations.

  “Practically every usable berth along the docks has been blocked,” an official statement said. “Fires have been burning along the docks for several days. Charges have been seen to explode.”

  The destruction carried on in the last few days is designed to make Naples, one of Europe’s largest and best peacetime harbors, completely useless to the Allies when they occupy it, military leaders say, but they are inclined to doubt that the Germans are sacking the city.

  [The Germans in the Naples area, totaling seven divisions, were forced last night to abandon their lines and retire to new positions, according to reports received in Berne, Switzerland, from Rome.

  [Field Marshal Gen. Albert Kessel-ring was compelled to pull out his infantry because of lack of artillery ammunition, which was due to the cutting of his communication lines by Italian troops, it was said.
]

  GERMANS STILL USING TANKS

  Meanwhile the Allied front in Italy moved up rapidly yesterday as the opposing armies, getting ready for the next stage of the campaign, remained locked in bitter fighting only at the “hinge” of the back-swinging German line north of Salerno.

  The advance reached as much as fourteen miles in some sectors, with probably the most important gains being from Sala Consilina to Caggiano and from Potenza to Avigliano. The Fifth Army also captured Acerno, five miles northeast of Montecorvino Rovella, while the British Fifth Corps driving forward from Taranto took Ginosa, fifteen miles southwest of Gioia del Colle.

  On neither the Eighth Army nor Fifth Corps front was there any action comparable to that which kept Lieut. Gen. Mark Clark’s Americans and British busy in the difficult German-dominated heights above Salerno.

  Here the Germans still called on tanks in small numbers and more mines and demolitions to hold off the Allies pressing them back toward the region of Mount Vesuvius. [A British Broadcasting Corporation correspondent reported that Allied guns opened a thunderous barrage in the direction of Naples.]

  ALLIED FLIERS BATTER FOE

  The Allies’ continual air war went on in the Naples area although targets within the city itself were spared. Medium bombers did some pinpoint bombing behind the battle lines in the mountainous defiles north and east of the battered city while fighter-bombers continued their personal war against enemy truck convoys and Wellingtons flew beyond Naples to Formia on the Gulf of Gaeta.