Thunder on the Left

As Phase One of the Battle of the Mediterranean ended last week, most eyes turned toward the east end of the inland sea for the next action (see p. 28). But the Battle of the Mediterranean involves its whole shore line, and last week's reports from France and the countries of the western Mediterranean thundered on the left.

Conquered France today is a gigantic sounding board for the shout of rumor, the whisper of fact. Last week it reverberated to an intensified campaign for collaboration with Germany. To Paris to talk with the Germans went Marshal Petain's "heir," Admiral Jean Franc,ois Darlan, who then made a quick and mysterious trip to Beauvais (near which last year he met with Adolf Hitler) before going home to report to his aged chief.

To help along "collaboration" Vichy last week was invaded by a propaganda army from the Occupied Zone. For three days hatless, raincoated members of the pro-Nazi National Popular Assembly stayed in the new French capital breathing dire but incoherent threats until they were bounced out by the Garde Mobile. Since France already is so completely under Germany's thumb that an estimated 90% of her industrial production goes to the Third Reich, "collaboration" could mean only one thing--acquiescence to the passage of German troops to Spain and Africa, permitting Germany to use France's African colonies as military bases for a western Mediterranean campaign.

There was much evidence that such a campaign was nearly ready. According to the British, General Weygand in Algeria had been forced to wink while German troops and supplies had passed through the colony on the way to the Libya front. In French Morocco, Nazis on the Armistice Commission had control of all gasoline supplies and airports, were building more landing fields and importing more Nazi technicians and "tourists" as fast as they could.

Propaganda-wise, the Nazis were getting in effective work by promising Moroccans that Germany would buy their surpluses of wheat, cattle and vegetables that France used to ignore. Helping spread the word were 25,000 native ex-soldiers who were released from Nazi prison camps after an intensive course of Hitler-talk.

For a Moroccan puppet, the Nazis were busy buttering up 63-year-old Moulay Abdelazis, ousted by the French in 1908, with promises of the Sultanate of a United Morocco that would include Tangier as well as French and Spanish Morocco. Germans in Tangier feted his nephew, Moulay-El-Hassan, the Caliph of Spanish Morocco. Backing up the Nazis was the potent ultra-nationalist Watan party, who want a unified Morocco.

Reports like these keyed all too well with word that the Germans were in virtual control of the International Zone of Tangier, that they were building airports in southern Spain within half an hour's flight of Gibraltar.

The threat of a Nazi Army moving through France and Spain to cork up Gibraltar and garrison northwest Africa was serious indeed to the British. If such a campaign succeeded, the British would practically have to abandon the western Mediterranean and Germany would have another base for the Battle of the Atlantic, as well as a steppingstone on the route to South America via Dakar.

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