Bugaboo

We know we cannot win the war. What with your sickening, gottverdammtes advantage in numbers of men and weight of arms, we may not be able to put up much resistance on the flat plains of northern Germany. But you can plainly see the bitter, skillful, grinding fight which we are putting up in Italy, where the terrain favors us. What will you do when you have driven us into our last great bastion, anchored on the high Alps from Salzburg to Lombardy? The terrain will then favor us on all sides, and we will make any attackers pay a hideous price. Think it over. We do not ask for much--only that we, ourselves, be permitted to live out our lives in dignity and comfort, as Napoleon did at St. Helena. You may do what you will with Germany. Think it over.

Something like this may have been in the minds of the Nazi leaders last week. It may have been the inner core of the peace feelers which, according to the week's flurry of rumors, were held out in several neutral capitals.

Protecting the Bastion. Under "Smiling Albert" Kesselring, the Germans still had 27 good divisions fighting General Mark Clark's armies in Italy. No doubt they wanted to hold northern Italy's crops and factories as long as possible, but above all, the Nazis wanted to keep the Allies away from the Alps--the southern wall of their bastion--until the battle of northern Germany is over.

For two weeks the Germans had been throwing heavy counterattacks, in one of which they lost 300 tanks in three days, against Soviet Marshal Fedor Tolbukhin's forces between Lake Balaton and the Danube, in Hungary. From Lake Balaton to the Moravian Gate (northeastern entrance to mountain-girt Bohemia) they had 30 German and 20 Hungarian divisions. Fighting Marshal Tito's forces in Yugoslavia they had ten more. The only sane military explanation for this spreading-out of force was a desperate Nazi desire to keep the Allies away from those approaches to the bastion.

Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, Allied commander in the Mediterranean, conferred with Marshals Tito and Tol-bukhin last month. That seemed to signal a concerted Allied drive in Italy, Yugoslavia and Hungary, possibly aiming at a common front from the head of the Adriatic to the Danube. Last week, forestalling a possible German sortie through the Moravian Gate against the flank of their northern armies, the Russians were attacking the gate themselves.

Building the Bastion. Meanwhile, the Nazis went ahead with preparations for their last stand. In Bolzano and Klagenfurt concentrations of 55 troops were reported, and work was being rushed on fortifications. Hitler's own Berchtesgaden was said to be another strongpoint. According to the stories reaching neutral capitals, the mountains around the Nazi strongpoints now bristle with defense works, repair shops, arms and munition depots. The caves of the ancient salt mines around Koenigs-See have been converted into subterranean hangars and air-dromes; into factories making guns, planes and synthetic gasoline.

The voluminous files of Gestapo headquarters in Berlin had been moved to Innsbruck in Austria. Joachim von Ribbentrop had "requisitioned" a snug mansion in the Austrian resort town of Kitz-buehel. In Salzburg, Heinrich Himmler was a frequent visitor. Salzburg was veiled by a chemical smoke screen every day and the natives were getting sore eyes from it.

Some Allied commentators have asserted that the Nazis, even with 20 SS divisions, cannot make a protracted stand in their "last bastion," that they will be quickly rooted out. That may prove true. Even so, at this stage of the war, the Nazis had nothing to lose by holding up a bugaboo.

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