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pride of place in the Valletta War Museum.)
By 1941 the Nazi Luftwaffe became frustrated
with the ltalians' failure to break the will of Malta,
and took over the attack. For the next two years
they turned the full force of their fury on the little
island-963 raids in 1941 - more than
2,000
in
1942. As their bornes and cities were smashed into
heaps of rubble, the
Maltese people took to
the caves and catacombs
1
tbat abound in their
homeland. Even so,
many were killed, and
thousands more were
injured or buried alive in
the debris.
But they did
not give in.
Then Hitler decided
that if he qould not blast
the Maltese into
surrender he would
starve them out. The
Maltese islands haYe few
natural resources. Then,
as now, much food and
fuel had to be imported. But as the supply convoys
from Britain struggled across the hostile seas, they
were systematically sunk by Nazi dive-bombers and
U-boats. The few ships that did penetrate the
blockade had to endure further punishment after
they had limped into harbor. Many were sunk at
their moorings before they had time to unload their
precious cargoes. During 1942, Malta carne close to
starving. By night the people huddled s1eep1ess in
dank shelters. By day, their ears aching, their senses
numbed by the constant crash of bombs and
antiaircraft fire and their bodies weakened by
malnutrition, they struggled to find the necessities to
stay al ive a little longer.
But sti/1 they didn't give in.
They and the British t roops stationed with them
defended their island for three desperate years. Their
courage and determination in the face of sustained
onslaught won the respect of peop1e throughout the
world. Even their enemies began to admire them.
And King George VI, acknowledging not j ust
individual acts of heroism, but a whole nation's
collective gallantry, awarded the Maltese peop1e the
George Cross.
The tide turned in 1943, and Malta went on to
become an important staging post for the invasion of
Sicily and North Africa. Maltese courage had played
a decisive part in winning the war on the
Mediterranean front.
It
had not been the first time that the Maltese
had stood in the path of an invader. Indeed, located
as they are at the heart of the Middle Sea, it is hard
for them to get out of the way. In thei r long history
the Maltese have been caught up in the ebb and
flow of empires. They were occupied successively by
the Romans and Byzantines, and then the Arabs. In
A.D. 1090 the Arabs were d riven out by Normans
who had established a kingdom in Sicily. For the
30
next 400 years, Malta was sold and resold to various
feudal barons, until in 1530 Charles V of Spain gave
the islands to the powerful mi litary-religious order of
the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. Thirty-five
years later, the Knights and the Maltese together
held off the besieging forces of the Turkish leader
Suleiman the Magnificent, thus halting the advance
of a new l slamic Empire in Europe. And so it
remained for 150 years.
Napoleon invaded and occupied Malta in 1798 on
bis way to Egypt. But almost immediately, the
people rose in rebellion, and with the help of British
troops evicted the French garrison. And then, in
1814, the Maltese peop1e decided to become a part
of the British Empire.
Malta remained a colony longer than most other
British possessions when the Empire disintegrated
after the Second World War. Many Maltese
resented this, arguing that whereas barely viable
African colonies were given independence, they, the
only remaining European colony--of proven ability,
loyalty and stability- were not. But in the anxious
years of quasi-peace after the war, Britain and her
allies did not feel that they cou1d afford to Jet
Malta's vital harbors and dockyards slip from thei r
control.
There was even talk of making Malta an integral
part of the United Kingdom, but that plan carne to
nothing. It probab1y wouldn't have worked-Malta's
Mediterranean culture and religion (the islands are
98 percent Roman Catho1ic) were j ust too different
Malta's harbors and shipyards-stiU an important
source of income.
from predominantly Anglo-Saxon Protestant Britain.
lndependence did come, on September 21, 1964.
The Maltese quickly let everyone-friends and the
not-so-friendly- know that independence meant just
that. Initially Malta negotiated a defense agreement
that al lowed British air and land forces and the
Royal Navy continued use of the military
facilities-for a price. Malta remained an important
base for NATO, although the new nation itself was
nota member.
But in 1971, Prime Minister Dom Mintoff-a
man that the foreign press
(Continued on page 44)
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PLAIN TRUTH