Word: graziani
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...week's end Marshal Rodolfo Graziani reviewed the joint Nazi-Fascist force. A German officer shouted: "At the beginning of Italian-German cooperation on African soil, we swear to make the greatest effort for a joint victory for Great Germany and Great Italy. Long live Great Italy! Long live Great Germany...
...Correspondents Frank Smothers and Richard Mowrer got their walking papers it "made one final effort to cover Italy by assigning to Rome one of its most experienced and tactful correspondents. . . . Whitaker had won the friendship of Count Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law and Italian Foreign Minister, Marshals Graziani and Badoglio and other Italian notables. . . . Although Whitaker was strongly democratic in his personal convictions, he was at great pains in his dispatches to reflect Fascist policies and views accurately. . . . Whitaker was frequently denounced as a pro-Fascist in letters from Daily News readers...
Beyond it, the R. A. F. strafed retreating troops, bombed tents, trucks, hangars, grounded planes. One day they ranged all the way to Tripoli to hit at shipping and transport planes that might slip supplies across to Bengasi. At that port the British expected to catch Rodolfo Graziani's men in a final trap, and they did not want it strenghtened by last-minute reinforcement...
...Italians were estimated to have only 50,000 troops left in easters Libya, and about the same number near Tripoli, 600 miles farther west. From Tripoli to Bengasi was too long a haul over the desert either for reinforcement to come up by land or for Marshal Graziani to try to run for it. The main British worry was whether they could wipe Bengasi out before German serial assistance should become really effective. The presence of German planes in Sicily and Libya had effected the whole Mediterranean situation. Late in the week German planes bombed the entire British-held section...
With Dérna such a cinch, the British prepared to press for Bengasi, in hope of catching the other half of Graziani's ragged army. Patrols worked along the coast and also cut straight across the hump (see map). With luck, General Sir Archibald Percival Wavell and his merry men might pull off the most surprising total victory in this war of many surprises...