Again, the Nerves

Both sides were engaged in a "war of nerves" last week. With Winston Churchill talking in Washington, Anthony Eden talking in Moscow and Franklin Roosevelt hinting of ominous U.S. Navy movements (see p. 11), the Allies could lay claim to their own major nerve strategies. Responsively, the Rome radio reported that the Tokyo Nichi Nichi declared that "Mr. Antony Eden" would soon move on from Moscow to Chungking.

But the veteran nerve campaigner of Berchtesgaden was not idle. Angered by his reverses in Russia and Libya, undoubtedly bent on some recuperative blow, he appeared to be covering his retreats with a barrage of rumors calculated to test the reactions of possible opponents or "collaborators."

> It was noised abroad that Marshal Henri Philippe Petain had resigned, leaving Vichy to wily Vice Premier Jean Franc,ois Darlan, that German troops were already sluicing through France toward Spain, northwest Africa, and the western relief of Axis Libyan forces.

This rumor, in connection with the Free French seizure of St. Pierre and Miquelon (see p. 26), briefly produced great Allied confusion. But Vichy shortly called the reports "stupid lies."

> In Madrid the newspaper Madrid declared that "not many days must pass before we see surprises of a military nature. . . . Despite the . . . Russian winter . . . there exists for Germany another theater of war, in North Africa." Said London's well-informed Spanish News Letter: "Spain must come into the war. . . . All that remains is for the button to be pushed."

> In Turkey, German circles whispered that the German colony was evacuating en masse. Turkey stood squarely in the way of what seemed the most logical German drive: toward Suez, the oil of Iraq and the Caucasus, and the eastern relief of the Axis in Libya. There were constant reports of German massing in Bulgaria, just across the Turkish frontier. The Allies were alarmed by reports that Turkey, on peaceful assurances from Germany, had signed a treaty with Germany and Bulgaria calling for the rebuilding of bridges across the Turkish-Bulgarian border which had been removed during Germany's Balkan advance last spring.

> The Vichy-controlled Toulouse radio quoted Premier Ali Feranghi of Iran as saying: "The war is going to touch us very soon."

> Other rumors held that Germany's likeliest next move was an attack on the island of Malta, Britain's commanding base in the Mediterranean. German-Italian air raids on Malta had multiplied, and it was remembered that the Nazis had perfected the parachute technique of island attack in Crete.

> German broadcasts claimed that 18 months' work on Channel bases for an invasion of England had been completed. On Christmas Eve German Channel guns shelled the Kentish coast for 30 minutes.

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