The News of the Week in Review
Italy Becomes a Battleground (map and photos) – 11
Twenty News Questions – 12
On the Battle for Italy Depends the Strategical Pattern of Europe (map) – 13
Hitler’s Europe Shaken by Surrender of Italy (Baldwin) – 14
Vast Job is Left in Italy (Bracker) – 15
The Red Army Rolls Ahead (map) – 16
Ukraine Battle Sapping Nazis’ Dnieper Defense (Werth) – 17
Answers to Twenty News Questions – 17
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1943/sep1943/f12sep43.htm
Mussolini freed by German paratroopers
Sunday, September 12, 1943 www.onwar.com
The rescue of Mussolini [photo at link]
In Italy... On the Salerno beachhead, German forces mount their first major counterattack. Forces of the British 5th Corps are pushed out of Battipaglia, again. To the north of the beachhead, Allied forces holding the Molina Pass are under pressure from the German “Hermann Goring” Panzer Division. To the south, the British 8th Army captures Crotone and continues to make progress. Meanwhile, in a daring raid by a German parachute detachment led by Otto Skorzeny, Mussolini is freed from Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi Mountains and flown to Germany.
On the Eastern Front... Soviet forces near Bryansk renew their attack. In the Donets basin Soviet forces capture Stary Kermenchik. In the Caucasus, the Germans begin evacuating the 17th Army from the Kuban Peninsula.
In New Guinea... Troops of the Australian 5th Division capture Salamaua. To the north, the Japanese forces at Lae are being isolated.