AXIS KEPT GUESSING ON SICILY INVASION
Propagandists said ‘weary’ Allied troops were being treated to a ‘rest’
Enemy caught napping; foe had expected action, but did not succeed in picking the time and place
Nine hours before this morning’s announcement of the start of Anglo-American-Canadian operations against Sicily, the German DNB Agency said in a dispatch for European consumption that one reason for recent Allied troop movements in the Mediterranean area was a desire on the part of the Allied commanders to “rest the battle-weary troops” and remove them “beyond the range of German and Italian bombers,” the Office of War Information reported.
A survey of Axis press and radio propaganda this week by the OWI indicated that the Germans and Italians had been expecting some sort of action against Europe, but there was no indication that they expected the next blow to come against Sicily or that it would come so soon.
An hour and 20 minutes of silence after the announcement of the Anglo-American-Canadian landings on Sicily, Axis propagandists made their first mention of the operation, the Office of War Information reported this morning.
The Nazi Transocean Agency, operating for foreign consumption only, made two bare mentions of the story, in German-language telegraphic code transmissions.
Not yet having developed a “line,” the Transocean Agency, as is customary for it in such situations, carried the story straight, mentioning London and Washington announcements of the landings.
Up to 2 a.m. EWT, however, neither the U.S. foreign broadcast intelligence service nor the OWI monitoring representatives overseas had reported any Axis mention of the landings on any voice broadcast. There was no indication that either the Italian home audience or the German home audience had heard from their own broadcasts about the landings, although United Nations transmitters were telling the story to them.
One indication that the Italians did not expect so immediate a blow came in a German-language broadcast to Europe by the British radio at 6 o’clock last night. The broadcast quoted a report that Carlo Scorza, Secretary of the Fascist Party, had called Fascist officials from Sicily to Rome for “instructions.”
Ship movements and troop concentrations, easily established by aerial reconnaissance, gave the Axis a clue that something was afoot, but the Axis propagandists were unable to put their finger on just what was about to happen.
For propaganda purposes, the DNB dispatch went on to say that the troop movements were being carried out for the added reason of diminishing “the constant clashes between American and British troops.”
Following weeks of Nazi reports of Allied ship movements, the German Transocean Agency, in a wireless telegraphic-code dispatch for American consumption today, said that a big Allied convoy had passed through the Strait of Gibraltar Thursday without stopping at Gibraltar. The dispatch, however, did not hazard a guess as to the destination of the convoy.
Italian propagandists this week also anticipated some sort of action against Italy without knowing just where and when the move would come.
The Fascist scare propaganda line for domestic consumption was clearly delineated by Premier Benito Mussolini in a speech released in Italy last Monday, 11 days after Mussolini had delivered the speech before a meeting of the Fascist Party directorate in Rome. Mussolini told the Italian people that a defeat would relegate Italy to the position of “fourth or fifth place among the great powers.”