TURKEY DECLARES MARTIAL LAW. Just one more sign that the Balkans is about to explode -- the Turks have proclaimed martial law in the four districts of European Turkey and two districts on the Asiatic side of the Dardanelles straits. Ankara officially says it’s necessary "in view of the general political situation," i.e., Hitler’s anticipated ultimatum that the Turks join his "new European order," and fast. The Associated Press says that towns along the Bulgarian border and the Dardanelles have been ordered to black out, and gasoline is being rationed. The New York Times reports Saturday that districts covered by martial law are also under a state of siege. Finally, the Turkish government is considering evacuating civilians from Istanbul, the city most vulnerable in the nation to air attacks.
The Turks have reason to worry. Germany has already signed up Hungary as an Axis partner, and according to Sigrid Schultz in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune, the Rumanian dictator General Antonescu went to Berlin Friday for talks which German spokesmen said were of even "greater importance" that the recent visit of Hungarian diplomats. In the meantime, an Associated Press dispatch reports that Bulgaria is expected to join the Axis, despite a warning from Soviet Russia to "her little Slavic friend" not to do so. But King Boris reportedly believes his nation is too weak, even with Soviet backing, to resist Nazi demands. Bulgaria could provide a strategic route for Germans troops to use in attacking Turkey and eastern Greece.
HOW WOULD A NEAR EAST OFFENSIVE UNFOLD? Drew Middleton, Associated Press staff writer, reports that Britain’s military leaders believe that an Axis attack on the Near East is "at hand." It would take the form of "a grand-scale pincers campaign striking at the Suez Canal and Egypt from two directions, designed to end Britain’s dominance in the eastern Mediterranean and Iraq’s oil fields, one of the war’s rich prizes." This is how one British informant told the A.P. the offensive might unfold --
"While Italy engages the bulk of the Greek Army, still weak in modern equipment and aircraft, German troops led by famed Panzer (armored) divisions will boil through Bulgaria into Northern Greece, first occupying Salonika and the Athens....Turkey will be asked by [Nazi ambassador] Von Papen to allow German and Italian troops to proceed through her territory to Syria and Palestine. Germany’s demand will be backed by Russian pressure go as far as a threat of war....Marshall Rodolfo Graziani of Italy will attack Gen. Sir Archibald P. Wavell’s Middle Eastern army from Libya in North Africa, simultaneously with the first contact between the Axis and the British troops in Palestine. The Italian general’s main stroke will be at Cairo and Alexandria, his secondary attack at Khartoum on the upper Nile. River in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, seeking to cut the Nile and intercept possible British reinforcements from South Africa. Great Britain will be forced to send a large part of her already outnumbered army into Palestine to protect the Suez Canal and halt the Axis flanking movement toward the oilfields of Iraq. Graziani’s blow must be met west of Matruh on the north coast of Egypt."
Mr. Middleton’s informant says that Turkey is the "only strong military power between the Axis and Palestine," but that the Turks would likely be cowed by pressure from Russia to cooperate with Hitler. The Russians would receive a huge reward for taking part in such a plan -- possession of Athens, annexation of a portion of western Turkey including Istanbul and the Dardanelles, long coveted by the Russians, and control over Iran.
GREEKS SEIZE KORITZA... Could it really be possible that the Greek Army might run the invading Italians not only out of Greece, but all the way out of Albania? C.L. Sulzberger of the New York Times seems to raise that tantalizing prospect in his Saturday story on the Greek seizure of Koritza, the biggest Italian military base in eastern Albania. The Times reports the Greeks have taken 28,000 Italian prisoners in the battle for the city, and that Greek troops are now "advancing rapidly on all fronts." At least 72,000 of Italy’s troops fought in the debacle, and in their hasty retreat "have abandoned enormous quantities of equipment -- so much, said the Greek spokesman, that ‘it is delaying our advance by being all over the roads.’"
...WHILE THE ITALIANS BEAT THEIR CHESTS. Privately, the Italian response, according to another New York Times story, has been to fire between fifty and sixty high ranking Fascist military officers in a "frantic" effort to reorganize Italy’s armed forces. Publicly, Italy’s response has been a form of boasting that borders on lunacy -- according to the official Rome radio, "The temporary Greek entry into Koritza means absolutely nothing, because once [Italian] Gen. Cubaldo Soddu’s troops are organized they will occupy all of Greece, literally flying through the entire country." Apparently, it’s taking them a long, long time to get organized.
WILL HITLER INTERVENE? MAYBE NOT. I’m still of a mind that the severity of Italy’s setback in Greece will cause Hitler to intervene and crush the Greeks sooner, not later. But a Saturday New York Herald Tribune editorial says optimistically that even Nazi intervention might not be of much help in retaking Koritza -- "There seems to be but one way in which the dangerous defeat at Koritza could be quickly undone. That would be by some great stroke of Hitler’s mailed fist. But how is it to be delivered? If through Italy, it would mean the virtual abdication of Il Duce. If through Yugoslavia it might mean a dangerous and exhausting winter war. And through Bulgaria the roads do not serve, while the Russian enigma remains enigmatic. The spectacle of Hitler allowing the days and weeks to slip by, while he frantically goes on summoning puppet statesmen to expand a paper Axis, at least hints that there may be less striking power in the mailed fist than had been supposed."
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