THE LITTLE RIFT
By STRATEGICUS
It is probable that it is a complex of all these reasons, coming at the end of the liquidation of the whole of Italy's African Empire and the incidental destruction of the greatest of the Italian armies. It is not, in fine, any one thing but- the cumulation of a process; but it is, nevertheless, certain that the bombing of Rome and the overrunning of Sicily, the immediate antecedents, have played the governing role. The bombing of Rome needs no further discussion, since it was a minor affair as compared with the tre- mendous hammering Hamburg received the other night. In passing it -may be remarked how the recent high-water mark is made almost at once to seem modest and moderate by subsequent developments ; and that process is not entirely ignored by the Italian Command.
When we begin to enquire what it is in the Sicilian campaign that has led to this rift in the ranks of Italy we are at once con- fronted by the paradox that it has occurred precisely when the enemy has, at least momentarily, restored a defensive front across the north-eastern corner of the island. There is another difficulty in assessing the situation. It is estimated that six and a half divisions are holding the Messina tip of Sicily. As the number of prisoners taken is about 70,000 we are met by the problem : what has become of the rest of the garrison? There were held to be some three hundred thousand Italians, and about a hundred thou- sand Germans in the island when the campaign began. The present numbers account for much less than half ; and as the Italian troops have surrendered to the United States units with admirable ease, we cannot think that the rest of them are dead. It is as un- reasonable to think they have been withdrawn.
If we agree to leave the question of numbers alone we are left with the problem of the dropping of the pilot at the very moment when he seemed to have brought his ship into harbour. Indeed, there are some who warn us that the state of the question is repre- sented by the simple proportion sum: if two German divisions can hold up the Eighth Army for nearly three weeks, how long will the other 258 field divisions of the German Army hold up the Allies? Operating in support is the thesis of Clausewitz that the defensive is .the stronger form of war. We may recognise at once that to represent the situation in these terms is lunacy. Quite apart from the fad that the numerical assessment of fighting quality is sheer illusion, it is time to recognise that a great deal of Clausewitz needs reconsideration. Modern conditions—the immense growth in the size of armies, the transformation of what has come to be called logistics, the development of armour in its mobile form, and the evolution of the self-propelled gun—these, to mention only a few, have traversed the theories of Clausewitz, and left few of them unchanged. As to the defensive, General Fuller has said the pertinent word: "Unless tactical conditions favour the defence, the defensive is suicidal."
The position that faces Italy is more threatening than these cautionary stories would have us believe. What her rulers have to face is the blunt fact that what was held to be impregnable, what was admittedly so difficult as to be profoundly hazardous, was ac- complished without any of the difficulties and with little of the loss. This is a position that can be stated in two ways. It may either be taken as a proof of the organising power, of the strength of the complex of force which the Allies now wield, and of the expertise of the Allied troops, or of the lack of engineering ability and distaste for fighting of the Italian troops. It is, of course, absurd to imagine for a moment that the Italians lack engineering ability. They are among the finest military engineers in the world ; and, with a fine sense of the tactical value of ground, they can be trusted to do for their own country what they did for their colonial empire—if their heart is in it.
It is impossible to believe that the Italians fought the first two phases of the Sicilian campaign, impossible, also to imagine that they were more than half-hearted in the resistance at all. Making every allowance for the tremendous power of the war machine that Eisenhower now controls, the campaign could not have gone so smoothly if the Italians had fought as well from the first as the Germans are fighting now. But does this suggest that the resistance may now continue indefinitely? Such a conclusion would. be absurd. It has to be recognised that good German divisions are as good as any troops in the world—when they are given good positions to defend, and are amply provided with supplies and reinforcements. That is the case at present before Catania. It is a very strong position indeed to hold, all the stronger that it is bound to be most difficult to abandon. But the price of maintaining it is the abandon- ment of the whole of the western end of the island, inc:uding Palermo, a port that is distant from Naples only 170 miles. The defence, pivotting about Catania, has now" witndrawn its right flank to the coast ; and the shortened line looks stronger. But the United States troops are thrusting along the northern route, and in the centre the Canadians are exerting increasing pressure.
What is there to prevent the Allies landing in Italy itself? From some of their advanced airfields on the island they can give fighter cover to a landing anywhere about the toe of Italy ; and it is clear that if the enemy can bring in reinforcements by air the Allies can Jo at least as much. But the main condition that has forced the hands of Italy's rulers is the obvious power of the Allied machine, and the very small proportion of it that has yet been used. The Germans may be able to fight this powerful and successful rear- guard without giving the Italians any assurance that the Allies can be prevented landing twice or three times the number of divisions in Italy, even behind their backs, if they are so minded. Italy is open not only to devastation by air, but to methodical destruction by land. So much is implicit in the swift overrunning of so much of Sicily ; and it is the implications of the facts rather than the facts themselves that the Italian rulers must provide against.
Badoglio knows as well as anyone that the stand of the Germans at Catania is purely temporary. Better than anyone he realises that it has come too late. The tactical position on the Catania sector of the Etna front favours the defence ; but it has already suffered severe attrition from the Eighth Army attack, and it will fall in due course, if not to frontal attack, to flank assault or landings in the rear. The fighting there has been long and bitter ; but it will soon be brought to a close, and the Allies will enter Italy. From even the south of the country they can turn the Balkan position, which must already be in a process of dissolution from the call on the Italian troops. From the south, too, they will be able to cover Sardinia and Corsica and from them threaten southern France. If Badoglio is serious in asserting that the war will continue, it is difficult to find a line in the south of Italy he could hold ; and he has not the troops to hold any line very long. Hitler seems unable to assist effectively ; and if Italy should go out of the war not only would parts of Germany now immune be laid open to bombardment, but the Wehrmacht could not hold the front in Russia, the Balkans and France. Hitler would be compelled to cut his losses and perhaps fall back to that inner fortress which, as I showed some time ago, would be no more than a temporary expedient. Such prospects are opened by the little rift within the lute.
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