European Front

ON THE WORLD TODAY

How susceptible is monarchy to the infection of Fascism? In this question is bound up the future of royalty on the European continent.

Monarchy lost its key positions on the Continent in World War I when the powerful Hohenzollern and Hapsburg thrones crumbled. This war will further reduce the number of surviving dynasties — for one of the notable characteristics of the struggle is the deep revolt of the peoples against royal regimes tarred with Fascist association and compromised by Fascist sympathies.

Agitation against monarchy is not rampant in Northwestern Europe. King Haakon of Norway, like the prisoner-king of Denmark, has been identified throughout his reign with a policy liberal in inspiration and democratic in purpose.

Nor does the House of Orange face much uncertainty in the Netherlands. Every group of the Dutch underground agrees that swift restoration of the royal government is the course best calculated to ensure speedy reconstruction of Holland. This attitude is the result, largely, of the wisdom of Queen Wilhelmina, who has encouraged discussion of reforms tending to broaden democratic processes at home.

Abolition of the dynasty in Belgium does not appear likely, despite the Allies’ distrust of King Leopold and some disaffection among patriot groups. The King’s incarceration by the Germans wall create sympathy for him among his own people.

The stability of royal regimes along the Atlantic seaboard of Europe is not found inland. Russia’s pledge to allow Rumania to go her own way as an independent state after the war is no guarantee to the German-supported throne of that nation. It is unlikely that the roles played by the fugitive Carol, and by his incompetent son at Bucharest, will endear either one to the disillusioned Rumanian people.

The status of royalty in Bulgaria is even worse. There the throne is directly compromised by its link, through the marriage of the late King Boris to an Italian princess, with the Fascist regime of Mussolini’s Italy. The regency under Prince Cyril has continued to play ball with the Axis despite the overwhelming pro-Allied sentiment of the people.

The sore spots

Royal dynasts in Southern Europe on the side of the Allies are in almost as bad state as their relatives among the satellites of the Axis. In every instance, the cleavage between the people and the throne originates in the Fascist leanings of royalty and its supporting class.

King George of Greece, already compromised by his sponsoring of dictatorship by a minority government under the late General Metaxas, has not improved his position since he and his Cabinet set up shop at Cairo. In spite of the disasters which have involved his dynasty for a generation because of his stubborn hankering for absolutism, George II continues to disregard the voice and spirit of his people.

Protected by British policy and censorship, George II persistently intrigues at Cairo to patch up a successor to the small, ruthless power bloc he helped to devise in 1936. That despotism destroyed the Greek constitution, suppressed municipal government, inaugurated a murderous Fascist police terror, and went to the fantastic extreme of banning the works of classical Greek dramatists, historians, and philosophers, including Plato. Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” is banned from Greek schools as “subversive.”

One consequence of the policies pursued by the Greek government-in-exile has been civil war in Greece among guerrillas who earlier had been united against the invaders. Another is the split among Greeks in exile in Egypt. A third, lately in evidence, is the mutiny of the Greek Army and Navy brought on by the King’s effort to displace competent officers and replace them with stooges.

The imprisonment in the Sudan, because of their liberal views, of nearly two hundred Greek officers who proved their patriotic loyalty in the Italian war has not improved prospects for the return of King George to his throne. The new Cabinet, with its broader base, may restore the unity essential for full Grecian participation in the war; but restoration of the King is unlikely unless he is imposed upon Greece by British policy. In that case, a new Pandora’s box of troubles will be opened.

The future of King Peter of Yugoslavia is also in question. The revolt of the Yugoslavs in 1941 against the “appeasement deal” rigged by the Regent, Prince Paul, with Hitler was a spontaneous explosion of patriotism. On the surge of that public protest young Peter was swept to the throne.

But the compromised officials who had led the nation so far toward disaster then executed an adroit aboutface and took posts in the boy king’s Cabinet-inexile. Thus Peter became the prisoner of policies stemming from the Serbian reaction. The political break between the exiled royal government, whose military commander is General Mikhailovitch, and Tito Broz and his Partisans is deep and wide. To the former, Tito’s movement represents a threat to Serbian ascendancy and to the throne itself.

To the Partisans, the King’s group typifies forces responsible for the wrecking of Yugoslavia’s peace between wars, and a Fascist preference which almost cost Yugoslavia her soul. Again the struggle is between spokesmen for yesterday and champions of tomorrow; between cliques unmistakably sympathetic with repression and Fascism, and the masses, who want to be done with the old round of Balkan dynastic politics with its everlasting attendant intervention of Great Power influences.

Britain, whose position in the Mediterranean is now unchallenged, shows little sympathy with popular movements against thrones in that area. Mr. Churchill’s support of King George of Greece, like his carefully maneuvered backing of King Peter of Yugoslavia, fits into a pattern of British policy.

Whether this policy will succeed in Italy in the long run is open to question. Thus far it has conspicuously failed to rescue King Victor Emmanuel from his dilemma: he has been forced to pledge “retirement” when Rome is liberated, naming Prince Umberto as his “lieutenant.” But Umberto is even less popular in Italy than the former royal partner of Mussolini. The dynastic issue is merely postponed. No settlement of the question will be possible until the industrialized and politically energetic North has its say.

Russia’s supply lines

The spirit of Hitler’s Eastern forces is sagging. The attempts by the Wehrmacht to throw the Red Army off balance, and to destroy its springboards for the great offensive, show that the Nazis have lost heavily, in terms of morale, during months of retreat and defeat. At Narva, where quantities of armor and swarms of troops were thrown into an assault calculated to disable the Russian First Baltic Army’s offensive plans, the effort ended in dismal failure. The same weakness appears in the attempt of the Germans to checkmate Marshal Zhukov’s gathering strength in Eastern Poland and the Carpathians.

The Wehrmacht will need more morale than it can muster in the massive struggles now getting under way along the eastern front. Quarrels between Wehrmacht generals and the Party generals of the Elite Guard do not improve the situation.

Supply lines provide the Nazis with some advantage. These shorten as the Wehrmacht backs toward the inner Nazi citadel. Russia’s lines of supply are enormously long and every mile of advance extends them farther. But the German supply system experiences a hazard from which Russia is immune: swarms of Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Polish, and Ruthenian guerrillas harry the German rear.

In Poland and the Carpathians these patriot forces have already established contact with the Red Army. The Russians are performing prodigies of reconstruction on their feeder lines to the front. Demolitions expected by German engineers to delay the Russian armies’ advance as much as three months are being repaired in as many weeks.

Russia’s supply system is free of harassment from the German Luftwaffe also. The Nazis simply have not the bombers. This aspect of the war in the East will bear watching. It suggests that a revolution in air power is in the making on that front, comparable with the change brought about by the gigantic dimensions of British and American air power in the West.

Russia’s heavy-bomber production has been expanding rapidly since midwinter. Her light-bomber output is swelling faster. Bombing raids in force highlight the new Russian offensive from the Baltic to the Danube. The Russian air arm achieved close coördination with sea and land power at Sevastopol and at Odessa. This is something new. It may presage amphibious assault on the Rumanian coast below Germany’s anchor position there.

Meantime, Russia is not waiting for the end of the war to tackle problems of reconstruction. Her industrial sinews multiply at an amazing rate. Reports show a 12 per cent increase in factory food production during the first third of the present year over the last third of 1943; a rise of 34 per cent in pig iron output, 38 per cent in steel smelting, 36 per cent in rolled steel, 39 per cent in coke enterprises, 19 per cent in volume of iron ore mined. Gigantic new plants in Central Russia are now in full production. Stalingrad’s foundries are once again turning out weapons of war.

Turkey on the tightrope

The tightrope performance of the wily Turks is not yet ended. Consummate diplomatists, the Turks waited until Russian capture of Odessa and clearance of the Crimea threatened all cargo carriers in the eastern waters of the Black Sea. Then Ankara began to reconsider Allied demands that Turkish chrome shipments to Germany be halted.

Half a dozen heavy Allied bombing raids on the alternative rail route through Sofia and Bucharest clinched the matter. None of these realities was permitted to appear in the announcement that shipments of chrome to Germany have stopped. Making virtue of necessity is an old Turkish custom.

But the Turks are not actually aboard yet. Resumption of staff discussions with the British provides further opportunity for delay. Germany ponders the possibility that there may be a last-minute renewal of the war in the Eastern Aegean as Russia rips through the Galati gap.

The air blockade on German-garrisoned isles in the Aegean is tightening, but Hitler shows no sign yet of withdrawing from them. He cannot risk it unless he is ready to concede the British Ninth and Tenth Armies in the Middle East an open route to Salonika — which would spell his finish in the Balkans in short order. Turkey’s role in the Balkan war is tangled with Russian Balkan policy as well as with British intentions. Should Bulgaria be pried out of the fight, the Turks will jump for their bandwagon seat with alacrity.

Spring on the Riviera

The showdowm in Western Europe will revitalize operations at the other end of the Mediterranean. Germany’s problem all this year is to guess “where and when.” The only certainty is renewal of the Allied offensive in Southern Italy. With the reconstituted French Army ready and plenty of American supplements in North Africa, events cast these shadows over the Western Mediterranean: —

Across the Adriatic. Allied naval and air power coördinates more and more with Marshal Tito Broz’s Partisans. One by one the islands off the Dalmatian coast have been snatched from the Germans. These control possible landing areas.

A special treaty negotiated between Marshal Tito and the Badoglio regime in Italy wipes out all Italian claims to both the islands and the Dalmatian coast itself, and makes provision against problems which would normally rise only after an invasion operation. General Mikhailovitch’s hasty effort to set up a popular government with a reform program, to compete with the one already devised by the Partisans, suggests that he too expects a sudden change in the tempo of the Balkan war.

Northern Italy. Allied concentrations on Sardinia and Corsica can move easily by sea. Blows at Germancontrolled shipping along the Ligurian Sea and an insistent air attack on Genoa and other coastal cities there look very much like a softening-up assault. A drive into Northern Italy in force is feasible. It would disrupt Germany’s Italian arrangements completely, threaten every division in the center and south of the peninsula, resolve the long debate about Rome by forcing the Germans to evacuate that city or face isolation and capture, and might be expected to multiply Rundstedt’s difficulties in protecting Southern France.

France. Undoubtedly the eager French Army would prefer to go to the southern coast of France. The redoubling of air blows in Northern Italy was matched by similar treatment of Marseilles, Toulon, and the French Riviera. The German High Command itself is firmly convinced that an assault on the French Mediterranean coast is in the cards. British and American statements, apropos of the latest agreement wrung from Francisco Franco on the question of Spanish trade, say openly that Spain will be “isolated” from the Nazis shortly.

WHAT TO WATCH

1. The progress of the general underground revolt in Western Europe — one of the invasion’s most important aids.

2. Moves indicating a possible German retreat from Southern Italy.

3. Marshal Zhukov’s First Ukrainian Army, W’hich appears to be assigned to the stillest job in the East.