Judenanmaßung in Rom –
‚Glücklichere Zeiten sind angebrochen‘
Von unserem Berichterstatter in Italien
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Judenanmaßung in Rom –
Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (June 17, 1944)
Communiqué No. 23
Allied troops continue their advance with leading elements in SAINT-SAUVEUR-LE-VICOMTE. Local advances were made in the face of heavy enemy opposition between CAUMONT and TILLY. East of CAEN, a strong enemy attack was beaten off.
Throughout yesterday Allied cruisers and destroyers engaged gun batteries which the enemy had established on the eastern bank of the river ORNE.
Concentrations of enemy armor northeast of CAEN were bombarded by HMS RAMILLIES (Capt. G.H. Middleton, CBE ADC RN).
Merchant convoys continue to arrive at beaches steadily and in safety.
Adverse weather again restricted air operations yesterday afternoon and evening. Heavy bombers attacked enemy airfields near PARIS and LAON and objectives in the PAS-DE-CALAIS. Railway targets, road transport and tanks behind the battle zone were attacked by fighters and fighter-bombers, and an ammunition dump near CAEN by medium bombers. Fighters also flew protective patrols and escorted the bombers.
During the night, our light bombers attacked supply dumps in the CHERBOURG PENINSULA. Two enemy aircraft were shot down over NORMANDY.
U.S. Navy Department (June 17, 1944)
CINCPAC Communiqué No. 53
U.S. Marines supported by elements of an Army infantry division have improved their positions on Saipan Island, and are driving forward toward Aslito Airdrome. Harassment of our beachheads by enemy mortar fire has been considerably reduced.
On the night of June 14 (West Longitude Date), enemy torpedo planes launched an attack against our carrier force, but were repulsed without damage to our ships.
Our heavy surface units bombarded Guam Island on June 15.
Liberators of the 11th Army Air Force bombed Matsuwa, Paramushiru and Shimushiru on June 14. Five enemy aircraft were airborne near Matsuwa but only one attempted to attack our force, and did no damage. Fourteen enemy fighters appeared over Paramushiru and several made attacks causing damage to one of our planes. One enemy fighter was probably shot down and an enemy medium bomber was damaged. Ventura search planes of Fleet Air Wing Four also bombed Paramushiru and Shumushu on June 14. Fifteen enemy fighters attacked our force, causing minor damage to several of our aircraft. Shimushiru was again attacked by 11th Army Air Force Liberators on June 15.
Army, Navy and Marine aircraft of Central Pacific Air Forces bombed objectives in the Marshall Islands and Eastern Caroline Islands on June 13 and 15 (West Longitude Date).
CINCPAC Communiqué No. 54
U.S. Marines and Army troops advancing east across the southern portion of Saipan Island, made gains averaging 1,500 yards during the night of June 15‑16 and on June 16 (West Longitude Date). The area now held by our forces extends from a point just south of Garapan for a distance of approximately five and a half miles to Agingan and extends inland two miles at the point of deepest penetration. Our forces have captured Hinashisu due east of Lake Susupe.
Our positions were under sustained enemy fire during the night of June 15‑16, and before dawn on June 16 the enemy launched a determined counterattack. This attack, which was broken up, cost the enemy heavily in lives and destroyed more than 25 enemy tanks.
Early in the morning of June 16, our troops launched the offensive which resulted in general advances. Some of our forward echelons penetrated the naval air base at Aslito Airdrome, but were later withdrawn under severe enemy fire.
During the action on June 16, our aircraft bombed and strafed enemy positions, and during the night of June 15‑16, enemy strongpoints were shelled by our ships.
On June 15, one of our destroyer transports encountered five enemy coastal cargo ships and sank them. Twenty‑nine survivors were rescued and made prisoners of war.
CINCPAC Press Release No. 448
For Immediate Release
June 17, 1944
As the South Pacific has become relatively quiet, Adm. William F. Halsey Jr., USN, has been relieved of command of the South Pacific Area and the South Pacific Force. He will henceforth command the Third Fleet which will operate in the Pacific Ocean in the same way that the Fifth Fleet is operating under command of Adm. Raymond A. Spruance, USN.
The Free Lance-Star (June 17, 1944)
YANKS MAY CUT OFF GERMANS IN CHERBOURG
Americans push onward across peninsula
Heavy artillery hits escape road
By Wes Gallagher
Bulletin
SHAEF, London, England (AP) –
U.S. troops punched forward two to three miles today in the developing drive to choke off Cherbourg Peninsula.
SHAEF, London, England (AP) –
U.S. troops driving to punch off the top of the Cherbourg Peninsula brought the Germans’ last escape road under hammering artillery fire today, and a U.S. fighter pilot reported signs of German flight from the cape and its great port.
One U.S. column beating west of Carentan fought within four miles of La Haye-du-Puits, the Nazis’ last main road junction at the shortest neck of the peninsula, and forces farther north had cut Cherbourg’s western railway by seizing Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte. Still other Americans had recaptured Montebourg, 14 miles southeast of Cherbourg.
Even as artillery blasted the Germans’ last road on their dwindling western strip of the peninsula, an American pilot said he saw enemy trucks and staff cars moving south, and declared he believed the Germans “want to get out of there, but our troops are moving in fast as hell.”
‘Another Sevastopol’
Cherbourg threatened to become another Sevastopol for the Germans, with their escape cut off except by sea, as happened in the Crimea.
Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley, commanding six U.S. divisions fighting in two Army corps, said 3,283 Americans were killed and 12,600 wounded in the first 11 days of the invasion. These 15,883 casualties included reports up to last midnight, he told a press conference in France.
U.S. losses are expected to be higher than those of the British and Canadians – figures as yet undisclosed – because the U.S. 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions met the heaviest fighting on landing. Going ashore in the center, these units ran into a Nazi division holding maneuvers on a difficult beach. Both the British and Canadians made their original landings comparatively easily – as did other Americans on the west flank – although they have been engaged in heavy fighting since then.
Counterblows beaten
On the eastern end of the battlefront, Supreme Headquarters declared strong German attacks were beaten off east of Caen, and a headquarters officer said two unsuccessful Nazi counterblows in the Troarn area, seven miles beyond Caen were “extremely costly” to the enemy.
Toward the center, the Allies punched out local advances despite heavy opposition between Caumont and Tilly-sur-Seulles, the communiqué said.
The German High Command said Nazi counterattacks had regained the greater part of the forest area south of Bavent, three and a half miles north of Troarn, and east of the Orne River.
The biggest news of the day was the weather, which again blew at “force four” from the north. Any wind from “force three” or above delays unloading on the beachhead, Supreme Headquarters said.
It was officially disclosed that Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley, U.S. ground commander, has two Army corps under his command, the Fifth and the Seventh. The Fifth is composed of the 1st, 2nd and 29th Infantry Divisions while the Seventh includes the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions and the 4th Infantry Divisions.
It was these forces which registered the only new advances along the bridgehead front.
3,283 dead, 12,600 wounded is U.S. invasion toll
By Don Whitehead
With U.S. forces in France (AP) –
The U.S. Army had 3,283 killed and 12,600 wounded in opening the western front in Normandy, Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley said today.
The total of 15,883 casualties was for the first 11 days of the campaign, and included reports up to midnight last night, Gen. Bradley said.
He paid high tribute to the courage of doughboys in establishing the beachhead on the European continent.
The tall, tanned Missourian, looking extremely fit and in good spirits, appeared before beachhead correspondents in a group for the first time to discuss the campaign.
Bradley said casualties on the central beachhead, where the U.S. 1st Infantry Division and elements of the 29th Infantry Division landed, had run higher then anticipated, but that casualties in the peninsula area to the west had been lower than anticipated.
This casualty report confirmed Bradley’s confidence before the invasion when he predicted that the continent could be invaded without creating the bloodbath which the enemy insisted would result and which many persons expected.
Bradley’s first words to the correspondents who gathered in the tent under the shade of a huge beech tree were in praise of his doughboys and parachute troops and their leaders.
He said:
Only by guts, valor and extreme bravery on the part of the men and their leaders involved were we able to make the landing a success, and I cannot say too much for the parachute troops who dropped in the rear and made the job easier for the beach troops. They did a marvelous job.
D-Day casualties below casualties
Medical services set up immediately behind lines
SHAEF, London, England (AP) –
D-Day casualties were below what had been expected and planned for and less than one percent of the American wounded who reached medical stations died, it was officially disclosed today.
The invasion medical service surpassed that available in the North African landing or in World War I.
Extensive use was made of a new anesthetic, sodium pentanal, which is administered intravenously through an operation which is quicker acting and more pleasant than ether. This anesthetic, however, is unfeasible where abdominal relaxation is required.
The most frequent type of wound was from big expensive shell fragments in the arms and legs. In World War I, there was a big proportion of chest wounds because of more static fighting.
Evacuation hospitals with nurses were set up within five miles of fighting lines four days after D-Day and were doing major surgery within two hours.
There was extensive use of penicillin and sulfa drugs and many transfusions of plasma and whole blood which were delivered by both ship and air.
Gangrene from a gas-producing bacillus, which developed in about three percent of the wounds in the last war and which was greatly feared, has been almost negligible in the Normandy operation because of quick treatment. It occurred mainly among German wounded.
Yanks drive ahead in Saipan invasion
Street fighting in progress in town; task force hits Bonin and Kazan
USPACFLT HQ, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (AP) –
Grimly fighting Yank invaders, after street-by-street seizure of a coastal town and captured of its airstrip, punched slowly inland today on Saipan in the Marianas – unlocking bombed Japan’s inner defense perimeter.
Official sources also disclosed that a task force had made the war’s first attack on the Bonin and Kazan Islands, destroying 47 planes, sinking two ships and damaging 10. This completed the dramatic picture of a grand-scale air and naval operation which smashed Japan’s steel industry and every base for 3,000 miles along a defense line from Paramushiru to Palau. The Bonins were the last link.
The first eyewitness reports from Saipan, where U.S. forces which landed Wednesday along a two-mile beachhead have won the town of Charan Kanoa, supported official accounts of a bitter battle.
Civilians evacuated
After the intense battleship bombardment and the 100-ton bombing by carrier planes had forced the Japs back from the beaches, the Yanks landed on both sides of Charan Kanoa on Saipan’s southwest coast, 1,500 miles from Tokyo. The enemy evacuated Charan Kanoa’s 3,000 civilians, but Richard W. Johnston, representing combined Allied press, said they left behind a strong rearguard which had to be “cleaned out in the first Pacific fighting comparable to Europe’s house-to-house encounters.”
Summarizing the situation, he reported the Charan Kanoa Airstrip has been won but still is under enemy mortar fire; on the south end of the beachhead, Yanks opened “a powerful attack today which carried them close to the Aslito Airdrome;” on the north end, less than five miles below Garapan, that main town of Saipan was subjected to daylong American artillery fire.
No air opposition
Johnston wrote:
Thanks to the preparatory strikes against dozens of Japanese bases in the Carolines, Nippon was unable to send aloft a single plane to interfere with landing operations.
Adm. Chester W. Nimitz announced last night that the Yanks recoiled from an earlier reverse to score their hard-won success at Charan Kanoa. Then he added this cautious note:
Our assumption that Saipan Island would be strongly held because of its strategic location in the Japanese defense system has been proven correct. Preliminary estimates indicate there are upwards of two divisions of enemy troops defending Saipan.
RAF strikes Pas-de-Calais area
Attack aimed at bases for pilotless planes
Bulletin
SHAEF, London, England (AP) –
U.S. heavy bombers pounded half a dozen Nazi air bases in a great arc extending halfway around the Normandy battle zone today.
SHAEF, London, England (AP) –
RAF heavy bombers smashed last night at enemy installations in the Pas-de-Calais area of France from where the Germans are believed to be launching their pilotless planes, while other British formations hammered a synthetic oil plant near Duisburg and targets in Berlin.
The night blow against Pas-de-Calais came a few hours after U.S. Flying Fortresses and Liberators in the last hours of daylight yesterday pounded these same installations.
Despite day and night thrusts at that portion of the French coast nearest to England – an area battered repeatedly before the invasion – the Germans kept their mysterious robot planes hurtling across the channel last night in a continuation of attacks kept up yesterday and the previous night. Damage and casualties were caused in several places in England.
Although miserable flying weather once more hampered the air support of the invasion armies yesterday, Supreme Headquarters said 2,500 sorties (individual plane flights) were flown by Allied air units – about 1,000 of them by U.S. heavy bombers and their escort in the twilight smash at the Pas-de-Calais.
The night attack on Berlin was made by Mosquitos, while British Lancasters and Halifaxes continued the Allied campaign aimed at drying up Hitler’s war machine by dumping tons of explosives on the Fischer-Tropsch synthetic oil plant at Sterkrade, about five miles north of Duisburg.
Thirty-three RAF bombers were missing from last night’s operations, described by the Air Ministry as involving a “very strong force.” This indicated about 1,000 planes were used.
Robot plane hit England blindly
Several casualties as projectiles strike at random
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King George visits beachhead
London, England (AP) –
King George VI visited the Normandy beachhead yesterday, his trip marking the first time in four centuries that a reigning sovereign of England had set foot on Norman soil to visit his armies fighting there.
King George crossed the Channel on the cruiser HMS Arethusa and landed from an amphibious “duck,” Louis Wulff, Reuters correspondent representing the combined Allied press, said in a dispatch from the warship.
Before he returned safely to an English south coast naval port, the monarch lunched with Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery at advanced headquarters and made Maj. Gen. R. F. L. Keller, a commander of the British Empire. Keller, from Kelowna, British Columbia, is in command of the 3rd Canadian Division.
Relentless Yanks gaining on Biak
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Stilwell forces joined by Chinese
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Japanese minimize damage of bombing
By the Associated Press
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Editorial: Importance of Cherbourg
Although Nazi generals could not know exactly where the Allies would strike and consequently had to prepare their defenses for hundreds of miles along the northern coast of Europe, there is strong evidence that they did anticipate Gen. Eisenhower’s first major objective. When Allied landings were made in Normandy and American troops began driving westward to cut off the Cherbourg Peninsula, their suspicions were confirmed.
This is the most powerful of Allied operations from the beachhead, with many divisions taking part. When the Cherbourg Peninsula is severed, hundreds of square miles will be added to Allied holdings.
But size of this territory is secondary to the advantage – rather, the necessity – of seizing a port large enough to accommodate the transport requirements of a sustained European campaign. Cherbourg itself must be taken. Then, and then only – barring a successful assault on Le Havre – can Gen. Eisenhower be sure of solving the supply problem.
American troops engaged in this operation are hampered by low terrain which the Nazis have flooded. It is now revealed that the Germans let in the water before D-Day, not afterward, in anticipation of the Allied maneuver. But they did not, perhaps could not, spare enough troops to defend the area effectively. Furthermore, the Americans lost little time in winning control of sluices which are being used to reduce the floods in that area.
When U.S. divisions engaged in the operation succeed in taking Cherbourg, it will be a victory of top importance and will have a positive effect on the future conduct of the entire European campaign.
The Pittsburgh Press (June 17, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Normandy beachhead, France –
In the preceding column, we told about the D-Day wreckage among our machines of war that were expended in taking one of the Normandy beaches.
But there is another and more human litter. It extended in a thin little line, just like a high-water mark, for miles along the beach. This is the strewn personal gear, gear that will never be needed again, of those who fought and died to give us our entrance into Europe.
Here in a jumbled row for mile on mile are soldiers’ packs. Here are socks and shoe polish, sewing kits, diaries, Bible and hand grenades. Here are the latest letters from home, with the address on each one neatly razored out – one of the security precautions enforced before the boys embarked.
Here are toothbrushes and razors, and snapshots of families back home staring up at you from the sand. Here are pocketbooks, metal mirrors, extra trousers, and bloody, abandoned shoes. Here are broken-handled shovels, and portable radios smashed almost beyond recognition, and mine detectors twisted and ruined.
Here are torn pistol belts and canvas water buckets, first-aid kits and jumbled heaps of lifebelts. I picked up a pocket Bible with a soldier’s name in it, and out it in my jacket. I carried it half a mile or so and then put it back down on the beach. I don’t know why I picked it up, or why I put it back down.
Soldiers carry strange things ashore with them. in every invasion, you’ll find at least one soldier hitting the beach at H-Hour with a banjo slung over his shoulder. The most ironic piece of equipment marking our beach – this beach of first despair, then victory – is a tennis racket that some soldier had brought along. It lies lonesomely on the sand, clamped in its rack, not a string broken.
Two of the most dominant items in the beach refuse are cigarettes and writing paper. Each soldier was issued a carton of cigarettes just before he started. Today these cartons by the thousands, watersoaked and spilled out, mark the line of our first savage blow.
Writing paper and airmail envelopes come second. The boys had intended to do a lot of writing in France. Letters that would have filled those blank, abandoned pages.
Always there are dogs in every invasion. There is a dog still on the beach today, still pitifully looking for his master.
He stays at the water’s edge, near a boat that lies twisted and half sunk at the waterline. He barks appealingly to every soldier who approaches, trots eagerly along with him for a few feet, and then, sensing himself unwanted in all this haste, runs back to wait in vain for his own people at his own empty boat.
Over and around this long thin line of personal anguish, fresh men today are rushing vast supplies to keep our armies pushing on into France. Other squads of men pick amidst the wreckage to salvage ammunition and equipment that are still usable.
Men worked and slept on the beach for days before the last D-Day victim was taken away for burial.
I stepped over the form of one youngster whom I thought dead. But when I looked down, I saw he was only sleeping. He was very young, and very tired. He lay on one elbow, his hand suspended in the air about six inches from the ground. And in the palm of his hand, he held a large, smooth rock.
I stood and looked at him a long time. He seemed in his sleep to hold that rock lovingly, as though it were his last link with a vanishing world. I have no idea at all why he went to sleep with the rock in his hand, or what kept him from dropping it once he was asleep. It was just one of those little things without explanation, that a person remembers for a long time.
The strong swirling tides of the Normandy coastline shift the contours of the sandy beach as they move in and out. They carry soldiers’ bodies out to sea, and later they return them. They cover the corpses of heroes with sand, and then in their whims they uncover them.
As I plowed out over the wet sand of the beach on that first day ashore, I walked around what seemed to be a couple of pieces of driftwood sticking out of the sand. But they weren’t driftwood.
They were a soldier’s two feet. He was completely covered by the shifting sands except for his feet. The toes of his G.I. shoes pointed toward the land he had come so far to see, and which he saw so briefly.
Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (June 17, 1944)
Special Communiqué No. 1
Since the 6th June, 1944, the Army of the French Forces of the Interior has increased both in size and in the scope of its activities. This army has undertaken a large plan of sabotage which includes in part the paralyzing of rail and road traffic and the interruption of telegraph and telephone communications.
In the majority of cases, their objectives have been attained.
The destruction of railways has been most effective. Bridges have been destroyed, derailment effected and at least 70 locomotives have been sabotaged.
It is reported that both road and rail traffic is completely stopped in the Valley of the RHÔNE.
Canals have not been spared. One has been damaged, one cut and another has been put out of action. Four consecutive locks of another have been destroyed.
Subterranean cables have been cut in many places, and, although some were well defended, they have been attacked and destroyed.
Many acts of sabotage have been carried out against transformer stations.
It is neither possible nor desirable to enumerate all of the many effective acts of destruction which have been carried out. However, these multiple and simultaneous acts of sabotage, coordinated with the Allied air effort, have delayed considerably the movement of German reserves to the combat zone.
Direct action also has been taken against the enemy. The Marquis are reported to have taken 300 prisoners. German garrisons have been attacked. In some areas, villages have been occupied. Street fighting has occurred elsewhere. Enemy detachments have been destroyed.
Guerrilla operations against the enemy are in full swing and in some areas the Army of the French Forces of the Interior are in full control.
At the end of the first week of operations on the shores of FRANCE, the Army of the French Forces of the Interior has, with its British and American comrades, played its assigned role in the Battle of Liberation.
Communiqué No. 24
Allied forces have pushed deeper into NORMANDY. Villages east and west of TILLY-SUR-SEULLES have been freed of the enemy.
Advancing two miles south of ISIGNY, our troops have reached the VIRE ET TAUTE Canal.
In the CHERBOURG peninsula, SAINT-SAUVEUR-LE-VICOMTE has been liberated.
Air operations were sharply curtailed from dawn to midday, when bad whether obscured much of the battle area. Nevertheless, fighter bombers and rocket-firing fighters attacked railway yards, motor convoys and bridges leading to the CHERBOURG peninsula. A convoy of horse-drawn vehicles was destroyed at LA TRAVERSERIE and enemy machine gun nests at FOLLIGNY were strafed. No enemy fighters were encountered during these operations.
Shortly after noon, medium forces of heavy bombers, with fighter escort, attacked seven enemy airfields in southern NORMANDY. Three enemy aircraft were destroyed. Two of our bombers and one fighter are missing.
Other fighters destroyed a railroad bridge across the SOMME Canal.
Early this morning, coastal aircraft attacked enemy shipping in the Channel.
Völkischer Beobachter (June 18, 1944)
12 Tage Missvergnügen
Führung der Westmächte aus Siegesträumen gerissen
vb. Berlin, 17. Juni –
Als am Morgen des 6. Juni 1944 die Führung der Westmächte über die kommende Entwicklung der nächsten Wochen nachdachte, ist sie gewiss auch von der Hoffnung getragen worden, die Öffentlichkeit der Welt werde in dieser Zeit beherrscht sein von der Schlacht auf dem Invasionskriegsschauplatz – und zwar von einer stetig und kräftig zugunsten der Westmächte fortschreitenden Schlacht. Es sind noch nicht vierzehn Tage seitdem vergangen, und sie muß bereits feststellen, um wieviel anders die Dinge wieder gelaufen sind.
Montgomery sieht seine Truppen verstrickt in einen heißen Kampf bei einem ständig wachsenden Gegendruck, und sieht dazu einen völlig neuen Kriegsschauplatz hinter sich: London. Hier aber ist man zur Stunde noch völlig ratlos. Die Führung der Westmächte würde daher, wenn sie offen wäre, der Auffassung nicht widersprechen, daß sie zwölf Tage des Missvergnügens hinter sich hat.
In der Normandie hat Montgomery in den letzten Tagen seine Angriffswucht noch verstärkt, gemäß dem strategischen Zwang, unter dem er steht. Die amerikanische 1. Armee, die im Westen der Normandie ficht, ist dabei vorgedrungen. Die Deutschen sind schon seit den letzten italienischen Kämpfen unbefangen genug festzustellen, daß die Nordamerikaner mit stärkerer Härte kämpfen als zu Beginn dieses Krieges, und daß sie manches gelernt haben. Die Amerikaner haben Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte erreicht, damit drei Fünftel des Weges bis zur Westküste der Halbinsel zurückgelegt und die westlichste Eisenbahn nach Cherbourg berührt. Hier sind zur Stunde harte Kämpfe noch im Gange. Dabei ist festzustellen, daß auch die Nordamerikaner noch weit entfernt sind von dem eigentlichen Festungsbereich von Cherbourg, dem am kräftigsten zur Verteidigung ausgerüsteten Teil des normannischen Atlantikwalls.
Dem Teilerfolg Montgomerys im Westen der Kampffront stehen Rückschläge in der Mitte und im Osten gegenüber. In dem Drang nach Süden ist die englische 2. Armee auf erbittere deutsche Gegenstöße getroffen und ihr Angriff ist völlig zerrieben worden. In den sackartigen Brückenkopf schließlich, den die 2. Armee zum Ostufer der Orne hin vorgetrieben hatte, sind die deutschen Panzer weiter hineingestoßen und haben den Keil noch mehr vorgetrieben. Hier haben Montgomerys Truppen Gelände preisgeben müssen. Er hat damit bis zur Stunde immer noch nicht die Gelegenheit gefunden, eine Operation im strategischen Sinne des Wortes zu beginnen. Noch immer muß er sich mit den Vorbereitungen aufhalten, und er weiß dabei nicht, welche Zielsetzung die deutschen Eingreifdivisionen haben, die hinter den deutschen Sicherungslinien aufmarschieren.
Währenddessen gehen in Italien die Rückzugsgefechte weiter, die begonnen haben, als der Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring die Schlacht südlich von Rom abbrach. Der deutschen Öffentlichkeit ist schon vor Monaten angedeutet worden, daß die deutsche Hauptwiderstandsstellung nicht bei Cassino, sondern weit nördlich von Rom liegt. Dieser Linie streben gegenwärtig die deutschen Divisionen zu. Die Nachhut aber wirft sich immer von neuem dem Gegner entgegen, um ihn aufzuhalten und ihn daran zu hindern, in die rückmarschierenden deutschen Kolonnen hineinzustoßen. Das ist ihr Ziel, und hier liegt auch die eigentliche Bedeutung der gegenwärtigen Kämpfe in Italien. Hier wird zurzeit keine große Schlacht ausgefochten. Diese wird erst beginnen, wenn die Deutschen die Hauptstellung erreicht haben und wenn dann der Gegner Zeit gehabt hat, zum Kampf aufzumarschieren.
Inzwischen ist die Londoner und die andere südenglische Bevölkerung jäh aus ihren Siegesträumen gerissen worden. Zu ihren Häuptern hört sie mit nur geringen Unterbrechungen das donnerähnliche Rauschen, das die Antwort auf so viel von Briten in Deutschland verübte Zerstörung bedeutet. Es kann kein Trost sein für die britische Führung, daß dies alles nur ein Anfang ist, daß Schläge von noch anderer Art, aber bestimmt nicht minderer Wirkung folgen werden. Das deutsche Volk aber schöpft gerade aus den Ereignissen der letzten achtundvierzig Stunden die Bestätigung seines Vertrauens zu der Führung. Es findet in diesem Vertrauen einen neuen Ansporn, die kommenden Kämpfe zu bestehen. Der Feind wird noch auf manche Überraschungen stoßen. Sein gefährlichster Gegner wird doch immer das leidenschaftliche, stolze und kampfesmutige Herz des deutschen Volkes und der deutschen Wehrmacht sein.