Where Is the White Bread?

To the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory (AMGOT), grappling with its first job in Sicily, everything seemed to go fine. Most of the island's 4,000,000 people were "cooperating wholeheartedly." Sometimes they become confused, as did the peasants who gave the Fascist salute, then shook hands.

Food was the immediate problem. AMGOT improved civilian mule-cart transport so that the island's farms could get their products (wheat now being harvested, tomatoes and olives, lemons, oranges and grapes) to the cities. Carefully it doled out, where necessary, Allied food stocks. Its reputation flew ahead. In many a liberated town the first question asked by black-bread eaters was: "Where is the white bread?"

A fortnight after the Allied landing, AMGOT's Lieut. Colonel Charles Poletti declared: "We have the food situation well in hand." The former New York Governor found himself the only American in a town captured and swiftly passed by U.S. troops. He made a speech, in Italian, to the populace. They cheered. Then he launched the AMGOT program: 1) proclamation of the anti-Fascist decrees of AMGOT's chief, General Sir Harold Alexander; 2) cooperation with local officials as the initial step in restoring civilian life (TIME, July 26).

Will There Be Expediency? Many an Italian wanted more than white bread from the liberators. In a letter to AMGOT an unnamed citizen of Ferla denounced the mayor, who was cooperating with the Allies yet continuing to run the town in the "corrupt Fascist tradition." The writer touched on AMGOT's biggest and toughest problem: the replacement of Fascists in a land where practically every officeholder owed allegiance to the Party.

Many an Ally, remembering Darlanism in North Africa, was anxious over AMGOT. Some Britons were displeased with the choice of Major General Lord Rennell of Rodd as the real civil administrator of Sicily under General Alexander. A veteran diplomat, a banker and an Oxford Grouper Lord Rennell had been a friend of Italian big business, which backed Fascism. Said the New Statesman and Nation: "That he knows the country intimately may be conceded, but . . . will it be easy for groups which might organize a popular mass movement . . . to deal with him?"

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