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>To guard the whole Mediterranean frontier of Europe Hitler will have to draw anew on his military strength in Europe. He may be able to postpone the actual diversions, but he must now face the prospect. How far he will have to weaken his defenses in Western Europe, and whether he will have to draw from his Russia armies—for more planes, at least, he may have to turn to his Russian front where most of his strength and his main effort are now concentrated—are still matters of conjecture. Whatever his strength now, it will have to be spread thinner, thereby opening new opportunities for attack by the Allies.
The Problems. Such are the strategic possibilities of the Allies' move into Vichy Africa. Realizing the possibilities may not be so easy as it looked the morning of the invasion. The Axis must still be cleaned out of the almost 1,000 miles of Libyan coast line.
To do so the Allies may have to sacrifice an air campaign of the size and vigor which otherwise could have been waged against continental Germany this winter. The African show must already have drawn many British and U.S. planes from Britain. Raids from Britain into Germany have not stepped up at the rate that might have been expected this fall. If the African campaign proves difficult, a real air front against Germany may be postponed indefinitely.
But the Allies' biggest problem now is that Africa is a base for an Allied invasion of Southern Europe—but no more than a base—one which the Allies must now man and equip for offensive operations more difficult and probably more costly than any of their operations to date in Egypt, Morocco or Algiers. Alexandria is only 350 miles on the map from Crete; Algiers is only 350 miles from Italy's Sardinia, 525 miles from Sicily, 700 from Italy's southern toe. But, in military and naval miles, the Axis' shore is many times farther from Allied Africa than Casablanca or Algiers was from Britain. The Allies must assume that even Italy's coasts are or will be far more strongly defended, and that the Balkans and Crete will fall only to the heaviest air, land and sea assaults. The Allies' campaign in Africa may develop into a real second front. But the Allies cannot assume that it will be a cheap second front.