Benito Mussolini did more than witness history’s last grand display of cavalry. He ordered it. On 26 June 1941, more than 10,000 mounted troops, their bright sabers glinting in early morning sunlight, thundered across the vast parade grounds of northern Italy’s garrison, where the Duce received their salute from a high reviewing pavilion. It took them nearly two hours to pass before his outstretched hand. As massed brass bands of the Savoia Household Cavalry blared forth familiar strains of traditional and Fascist march music, the horse regiments were followed by an additional 50,000 infantry, their officers resplendent in dress uniform, unit colors stirred by an early summer breeze.
The immense military pageant was not mere pomp and ceremony, but an official send-off to Italian armed forces committed just four days earlier in Operation Barbarossa. This was Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, a campaign in which Mussolini was determined that his country would play an important role. He must come to Hitler’s aid in Russia, just as the Führer had helped him in North Africa, a reciprocity necessary for the psychological cohesion of the Axis. Beyond such obvious and immediate political considerations, the Duce relished a military confrontation with Marxism.
“The unity sought by Europe since the fall of the Classical World has been an elusive ideal,” he declared to the tens of thousands of officers and men assembled before the garrison. “You are the most privileged generation in the last sixteen centuries, because that longing will be fulfilled in the mission you are about to undertake. The greatest threat to civilization has generated the greatest social fusion our continent has known since the Roman Epoch, from which you are directly descended. Warriors from Scandinavia, the Germanic nations, the Latin, Slavic and Iberian peoples have put aside their local, relatively petty and self-destructive quarrels of yesterday in a single effort for their common survival. The campaign in Russia is a fundamental struggle for our existence and shared European identity. It is a fight of life or death against the dead-weight triumph of a debased sub-humanity, as exemplified in Marxism. We know this enemy of all mankind. Twenty years ago, we scoured him from our peninsula. Now we will purge him from the planet! Long live our continental civilization! Long live Italy!”2
Years before this oration, Mussolini often referred to Fascism as “the Third Alternative; the wave of the future”, an ideological way of life more than a political system, that, in time, would be naturally adopted by other nations after democracy everywhere collapsed of its own myopic materialism and endemic corruption. He regarded Communism as essentially no different than liberalism, but rather a dynamic extreme of the same degenerate spirit and its logical development. It seemed to him a more dangerous phenomenon, however, because Marxism had been elevated to a kind of evangelical religion for fools, dilettanti, common criminals, and genetic inferiors by skillful propagandists, beginning with Lenin.
To Mussolini, democracy was a fading chimera, “the pimping little sister of bolshevism”, which Stalin used to unite the masses of his people through an irresistible combination of emotional engineering and murderous terror.3 The Soviets had shown their hand during the Spanish Civil War, and they were obviously waiting in the wings, off-stage in the east, for the optimum moment to take advantage of any perceived Axis weakness. Mussolini also shared Hitler’s demographic dream of a radically reconstituted Russia, where European population pressures could be vented in a new kind of ‘folkish colonialism’. Fascism’s famous ‘Battle for Wheat’ in the early 1930s, when only emergency agricultural measures prevented Italy from experiencing severe food shortages, aroused in him special concern for the delicate balance between his country’s available productive soil and its burgeoning population. Replacing the Soviet colossus with a Fascist New Order would at once expunge the perennial Eastern threat to Europe–from Genghis Kahn to Stalin–and provide vast expanses of ‘living space’ with new soil for the over-crowded continent.
While they concede his economic motives for invading Russia were not without worth, some critics of the Duce’s decision to participate in Operation Barbarossa fault his timing, since the North African Campaign was far from won at the moment he unhesitatingly declared war on the USSR. They argue that the 62,000 troops and their equipment in the CSI (Corpo di Spedizione Italiano, the Italian armed forces fighting on the Eastern Front), would have been put to better use in the Libyan Desert, where such numbers might have prevailed against the battered but unvanquished British 8th Army.
Aside from the political impossibility of standing aside while Hitler’s armies, together with volunteer forces from most other European countries, took the plunge into Russia, Mussolini believed that Stalin’s swift defeat would deprive Churchill of his last hope for establishing a second front, and provide much needed mineral resources, particularly fuel-oil, for the under-supplied Axis war-machine. Moreover, Italy’s situation in the Mediterranean had dramatically improved with the conquest of Crete just a month before, while Rommel, from all accounts, seemed well on the way to an inevitable triumph in North Africa.
Following Mussolini’s garrison review, the CSI’s eastward-bound cavalry and infantry traveled by troop-train from northern Italy into Rumania, where they began their long march through the Steppe Region. “These included three very sound and courageous divisions,” he explained, “the Torino, the Pasubio, and the Celere, plus the Blackshirt formation.”4 By July, they reached the southern sector of Operation Barbarossa’s advance into the Ukraine, where they wasted no time in taking several cities and towns, making “a favourable impression” on their German allies, according to Italian Army historian, Phillip Jowett.5 The Axis juggernaut seemed unstoppable, and the Italians participated in countless engagements alongside Panzergruppe Kleist throughout middle and late summer.
On 26 August, Mussolini visited his troops in the Ukraine and met with their 57-year old leader, Giovanni Messe, formerly a corps commander during the Greek campaign. Messe reported that morale was high, but some important shortages, especially in quality anti-tank rounds, were apparent. The Duce promised to send him improved ammunition, but was particularly struck by sympathy ordinary soldiers commonly expressed for the Russian people, “the first and most long-suffering victims of Communist despotism”.6
Many individual Italians requisitioned Wehrmacht food and medical supplies for the suffering civilians. “The relations of the Italian soldiers with the local population were, as a rule, excellent,” Neulen documented, “and, in some cases, exceptionally cordial, and no Italian thought of treating the Russians and the Ukrainians as ‘second class’ human beings, as the Germans did.”7 Through all the towns and villages they passed the Italians re-opened Christian churches closed for more than twenty years by the Soviet state, thereby winning widespread support from local people. Mussolini returned to Rome more convinced than ever that the war against Stalin was a ‘holy crusade’.
In September 1941, his CSI rounded up 8,000 enemy troops during an encirclement undertaken in tandem with the Wehrmacht east of the Dneipr River. Crossing early the following month, the Italians pursued retreating Soviets into the big, strategic city of Stalino, which was first reached and occupied by two columns of the Savoia cavalry. Mussolini telegraphed Messe, “Convey my congratulations to the officers and men of the CSIR, also for the difficulties faced with Roman calm and Fascist fortitude.”8 The Marshall replied, “the victorious troops of the CSIR received your praise with pride and exultation, and showed their great joy by shouting after the fleeing enemy that name which for us is a symbol of victory–‘Duce!’”9
By year’s end, a battalion of Black Shirt Fascist Militia was in the easternmost vanguard of Axis forces, celebrating Christmas Eve in the village of Krestovka, when they were driven from their stronghold by overwhelming numbers of infantry and waves of fighter-bombers. The Italian response was swift, however, and, after two days of counter-attacks launched by foot soldiers, with mounted artillery in support, Krestovka was recaptured, and the advance resumed.
As the Campaign progressed, the number of foreigners volunteering to fight for Italy swelled sufficiently to merit their own units. Among these were Cossacks of the Gruppo Savoia, identified by their white-blue-red chevrons of the old Imperial Russian tricolor. The Cossacks so distinguished themselves in battle they were permitted to wear a style a national dress known as the tcherkesska, a heel-length black coat, as part of their uniform. They were later transferred to lancers of the Novaria Regiment, and eventually joined German Cossack units, fighting to the very end of the war, after the Italians withdrew from Russia.
Other Corpo volunteers on the Eastern Front included Croats, who formed a mortar company, one anti-tank company, and an infantry battalion. Like their Cossack comrades, they were allowed to carry their national colors, in this case, a silver shield emblazoned with the Croatian red and white checker-board surmounted by the title, Hrvatska. While some Albanian units were not entirely reliable, the Camicia nera, First Albanian Legion MVSN, according to Jowett, “came out of the fighting with credit”.10
The CSIR’s air arm was originally composed of the 22nd Gruppo Caccia flying fifty-one Macchi 200s, and the 61st Gruppo Osservazione Aerea equipped with three squadrons of the versatile Caproni Ca.311, a twin-engine light-bomber additionally pressed into reconnaissance, patrol, ambulance, ground-attack, transport, trainer, and torpedo-bomber roles. From 27 August 1941, they operated from the small airfield of Krivoi-Rog, just south of the Dniepr River. Within days after their arrival, the Italian airmen shot down six Soviet SB-2 bombers and two I-16 fighters–the same types encountered in the Spanish Civil War–with no losses to themselves.
Three months later, following the Axis advance into Russia, all squadriglie relocated further east of the Dneipr to Saporoshje, from which they supported ground forces and escorted reconnaissance planes or bombers. Eastern Front markings for the Saettas were the most distinctive of their career: a broad fuselage band, wing-tip undersides, and cowling, all painted bright yellow, with white triangles on the wing’s leading edge, and a white cross on the tail. Pilots in the 21st Gruppo would eventually be credited with seventy-four Soviet ‘kills’, losing fifteen of their own, and these mostly through accidents, rather than to the enemy. Among their outstanding flyers was Giuseppe Biron, who became an ace on the Eastern Front, thereafter returning to the defense of southern Italy in August 1943, when he shot down four more American aircraft–a B-17 Flying Fortress and three P-38 Lightnings.
Members of both Groups presented the Black Shirt Legion Tagliamento with a special Yuletide gift when they flew intensive, low-level bomb- and strafing-runs against Soviet hordes threatening Italian positions at Novo Orlovka in the Burlova sector. While Caproni crews slaughtered massed enemy formations on the ground, Saetta fighters downed five Russian aircraft, minus casualties.
“At Christmastime 1941,” Mussolini recalled, “using forces and weapons far superior to the effective strength and material forces of the Italian divisions, the Russians launched a violent attack. They counted on taking the Italians by surprise, morally, at least. They thought they would find them in a moment of depression and homesickness, owing to the recurrence of the great feast of the Nativity, which the men of sunny Italy had to spend far from their family and country. But the Bolsheviks’ calculations were shown to be false. In a bloody battle lasting a week, the Italian troops defeated the Bolshevik forces, and put them to flight.”11
Three days later, the 369a Squadriglia destroyed six I-16 ‘Little Donkey’ Ishaks along with three Red Air Force bombers in the Timofeyevka and Polskaya areas, again without loss to themselves. But the flying ‘Rats’ of Spanish Civil War infamy had their revenge on 29 December, when they overwhelmed a single pilot in a terribly lop-sided aerial combat. Captain Gorgio Iannicelli was the 369a Squadriglia’s 29-year-old commanding officer, falling against ten-to-one odds to posthumously receive Italy’s highest decoration for bravery, the Medaglia d’Oro.
On 4 January 1942, the CSIR soldiers had their first real encounter with ‘General Winter’, when temperatures plummeted to minus 47 degrees Celsius. Winds and snowstorms were the worst in memory, and ground all operations to a halt. Freezing oil disabled machine-guns, vehicles and most artillery, whose shock absorbers on their carriers froze. Luckily for Axis soldiers, the Russians were no less immobilized by the extreme cold. Taking advantage of otherwise paralyzing conditions, Italian mechanics somehow got the 14-cylinder radial piston engines of their Macchi fighters to turn over for a surprise raid against the Red Air Force base at Krasnjy Liman. In low-level strafing runs, the Saettas shredded twenty-one Soviet aircraft parked in the open, then shot down another five Yak-9 interceptors. On the 24th and 28th that same month, they surprised a flight of I-16 fighters, destroying four without loss to themselves. Another twenty-one aerial victories were scored by the Italians before March was over.
In spring, Mussolini responded to Commander Messe’s pleas for additional aid. “No longer three,” he later recalled, “but ten divisions were to take part. The glorious CSIR became part of the ARMIR–that is, the Armata Italiana Russia, the Italian Army in Russia.”12 Part of the expanded reorganization included combining gruppi into the Comando Aeronautica Fronte Orientale. It immediately moved further east, setting up headquarters at Stalino, then just south of the Donetz River, at Voroshilovgrad. From here, its air crews mostly carried out ground attacks against massed Soviet troops and armor, as the Red Air Force had been expunged from the sky, at least in the Italian sector, for most of 1942.
With the spring thaw appeared the first naval units of the Regia Marina in the Black Sea. They arrived in response to a request by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, commander of the German Navy, on 14 January. He knew that the Wehrmacht’s developing attempt to capture the southern coasts of the Crimean peninsula and the Azov Sea would be imperiled by the Red Navy’s mighty Black Seas’ fleet, against which his Kriegsmarine could offer no opposition. These enemy units included the battleship Pariskaja Kommuna, four heavy cruisers, and ten destroyers, together with numerous destroyer escorts, torpedo-boats, mine-sweepers, and gun-boats. Its twenty-nine submarines had already destroyed several Axis tankers transporting oil from Rumanian ports. Admiral Raeder had been particularly impressed by the spectacular successes won by Italian human-torpedoes at Alexandria, and hoped they might be able to achieve similar results in the Black Sea.
In response, the Supermarina dispatched an assault motor-boat group, or MAS, the 101st Flotilla, by rail from La Spezia across Eastern Europe to Simferopolis, where the craft made the rest of their long journey in trucks as far as Faos, which became the flotilla headquarters. Eventually, other bases were set up at Eupatoria, Yalta, Feodosia and Anapa, from which some 200 operations were carried out until May 1943. The Black Sea motor-boats had actually been preceded in April by six 35-ton CB pocket-submarines sent to Costanza via rail from the Xth MAS. They targeted enemy submersibles endangering Italian oil tankers with decisive success, sinking two of them in the first week of operations. After the Soviets lost S-32 and SHCH-306, the remaining Russian submarines were withdrawn. Italian CBs were still on duty into late summer 1943, claiming a final Red Navy submarine on 26 August.
The assault motor-boats made their debut by sinking a 5,000-ton steam-boat, followed forty-eight hours later with a crippled freighter finished off by a Stuka dive-bomber. In addition to their anti-submarine duties, the 16 motor-boats commonly attacked large barges jammed with Red Army troops, strafing them with machine-gun fire. A typical instance occurred on 18 June, when two assault motor-boats attacked an entire column of transport barges escorted by six gun-boats to Sevastopol. One barge was sunk, and all the others suffered such extensive damages and loss of life their relief operation was cancelled. The Italians suffered one fatality. During the battle for that city alone, the 101st Flotilla carried out 145 missions.
Between the Italian vessels and German bombers, the Soviets were reluctant to risk their powerful Black Seas’ Fleet in open combat. The only such occasion took place in the night between 2 and 3 August 1942, as a heavy cruiser, the Molotov, and the Kharkov, a destroyer, attempted to intercept a German transport operation southwest of Kerch. They were attacked by three Italian motor-boats, but only one torpedo launched by Captain Legnani’s MAS 568 found its target, crippling the Molotov with a nineteen-meter-long gash in her after-hull. The thunder of the direct hit had hardly died away when the speedy Kharkov bore down on the Italian motor-boat. 13cm shells began to fall in near-misses around MAS 568, which was able to neither out-maneuver nor out-run the destroyer, closing fast. In desperation, Legnani set all ten depth-charges at their minimal detonation times and depths, then dumped them over-board during a random series into the wake of his motor-boat. The Kharkov ran into a trio of exploding depth-charges that so badly damaged her she was no longer able to continue pursuit.
The 101st Flotilla lost a pair of torpedo-boats and one pocket-submarine, not in action, but at anchor, when their bases were damaged during air raids. The assault motor-boats were extremely busy, because they did not confine themselves to attacking other vessels, but supported numerous coastal operations, some of them the largest in the Campaign. These included forcing the passage at the Isthmus of Kerch; the victorious blockade of Sevastopol, among the Soviet Union’s most important manufacturing centers; and conquest of the Crimea, for which they were singled out for high praise by German field commanders.
Frequent targets were enemy coastal installations, which were knocked out by demolition teams set ashore, or raked with heavy machine-gun fire. The 101st Flotilla also took part in the blockade of Leningrad, operating from the Finnish waters of Lake Ladoga, which lost its ice-cap for hardly more than two months each year. It was during this break that the besieged Russians sent out transport vessels. But their supply runs were called to a halt by the four torpedo-boats, which additionally accounted for a Bira class gun-boat, sunk by MAS 527. On 28 August 1942, a 1,000-ton Manoa troop-transport was sunk by MAS 528 with heavy loss of life.
On land, Axis forces continued to push the Soviets further east, depriving them of their most important industrial cities and harbors, while capturing mineral-rich regions of the Russian southwest. In March 1942, the AMIR was joined by another seven divisions, necessitating the reorganization of all Italian forces on the Eastern Front as the 8th Army, made up of the II and XXXV Army Corps. These reinforcements contributed significantly to an overall deeper advance into Soviet territory. In May, Saetta pilots of the 22nd Gruppo Caccia were singled out for special praise by the commander of the German 17th Army for having so effectively protected Luftwaffe bombers during the battle for Kharkov and their successful ground attacks against Red Army armor in the Slavyansk area.
The huge factory center of Rostov fell to Axis forces on 23 July, followed by another, Voroshilovsk, on 5 August, the Maikop oil fields four days later, and the strategic port of Novorossiysk on 6 September. By the time the Swastika banner was raised atop Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in the Caucasus Mountains, on 23 August, virtually all that was needed to end the Campaign was the capture of Stalingrad.
Sitting on the Volga, it played a pivotal role in arms’ production and distribution, and was a vast collecting center and clearing house for raw materials. Without it, all that would be left to the Soviets was retreat to and long-term recuperation behind the distant Ural Mountains. As such, the city represented the last major obstacle to victory on the Eastern Front. For Hitler, the real goal of the campaign was taking the Baku oil fields in the Caucasus, as part of the Stalingrad operation. With their capture, much of the Red Army would grind to a halt.
Keenly aware of Stalingrad’s vital role in the campaign, the Soviets threw massive resistance across the banks of the Don River, a last-ditch effort to protect the city, 186 kilometers away to the southeast. In early August, from the town of Serafirmovitch, they launched a surprise attack on Italian units at the very head of the enemy advance, intending not only to stop the invaders, but turn them back. The entire Axis offensive was suddenly in crisis. As the Time-Life historian, Henry Adams, writes, “The out-manned and out-gunned Italians were ordered to stand and fight to the death. And they did, beating back Soviet heavy tanks with the homemade incendiary bombs that the Russians (who also used them) called Molotov cocktails. In the fighting at Serafirmovitch, the Italians lost 1,700 men, but they captured 1,600 prisoners and a huge cache of Soviet arms”.13
As described by the Italian historical writer, Salvatore Vasta, “On the night of the 23rd (August), the most forward position of the AMIR, led by Colonel Lombardi and held by Val Tagliamento, 18th Battaglione/3rd Bersaglieri, a horse artillery group of 75/27s, and a Savoia cavalry squadron, received the order to get ready to hold positions against an impending attack to the last man. The vital importance of the AMIR’s position was underscored by the fact that failing to hold would allow the Russians to break into the Ukraine and behind the Germans. During the ‘Christmas Battle’, under extreme weather conditions, and against determined Russian forces, the Italian line held.”14
Three days later, the 3rd Cavalry Division Amedeo Duca d’Aosta, comprising 600 horse-soldiers, together with a few German units, charged 2,000 Soviets defending themselves with mortars and artillery on the Isbuschenski Steppe. The lead squadron achieved complete surprise by attacking head-on, while the other, armed with sabers, rode down the Reds from behind their positions. These were overrun in history’s last significant cavalry charge. It destroyed two Soviet battalions, forcing another battalion to withdraw, while capturing 500 prisoners, four heavy artillery pieces, ten mortars and fifty machine-guns.
“During this counterattack,” Vasta continues, “the Tagliamento advanced furthest, to Woroshilowa, which was a Russian supply depot taken and held against repeated enemy counterattacks. It is said that when the survivors of the Legion marched back past Iwanoka, a German major ordered his detachment to present arms, commenting to Consul Nicchiarelli that ‘a new term should be invented to describe the legionnaires of Woroshilowa: Panzer Soldaten’.”15
In the midst of the related battle of Krassny-Lutsk, Messe telegraphed excitedly to Mussolini, “For twelve days these same troops, deployed on the Don in contact with the German 6th Army, have been fighting heroically and bloodily to bar the way against the Bolshevik hordes which, to the tune of three divisions of twenty-seven battalions, have hurled themselves savagely on the sector held by only one of our divisions, of six battalions, seriously threatening the supply lines of the 6th Army itself, extending towards Stalingrad. But they have not broken through! And they shall not! The extremely fierce battle is still in progress, but it will end inevitably with a new and splendid Italian achievement.”16
The Axis offensive was saved, and the last obstacle before Stalingrad collapsed. By this time, Russian soldiers found the Western Allied portrayal of their Italian opponents as inept cowards increasingly difficult to accept. Even the Soviets’ redoubtable T-34 and fearsome KV-1 tanks, which had run rough-shod over the Italians for practically the first year of the Campaign, were being knocked out at an alarming rate.
By the end of April 1942, the first examples of a 90/53 flak-gun mounted on an armored carriage arrived at the Eastern Front from Italy. It fired Effecto Pronto, or ‘HEAT rounds’ which could pierce 70mm armor plating at an incredible kill-range of 2,200 meters. Anti-tank gunners became so highly skilled, Red Army tankers were advised by their commanders to avoid anything which so much as resembled an Italian Semovente. Albano Castelletto, a gunner assigned to the elite Voloire cavalry, recalled that his regiment operated “with the German infantry, where our mounted battery so distinguished itself with its promptness and accuracy that the German commander exclaimed to me that ‘Italian artillery is fantastic!’”17
The Soviets’ surprise Don offensive struck the Italian Eighth Army on 16 December, seizing the Comando Aeronautica Fronte Orientale’s airfield at Kanamirovka two days later, and surrounded 11,000 Italians at Scertkovo. Enrico Pezzi, the C.A.F.O. commander, personally flew into the pocket where his besieged troops were grateful for the provisions and medical supplies brought in a Savoia-Marchetti Pipistrello from the 246a Squadriglia Transporto. For the return flight, his capacious tri-motor was filled with some of the most seriously wounded servicemen and carried to hospital facilities at Voroshilovgrad, but the aircraft vanished en route, a victim, like five other SM.81s, of compromised Axis codes.
Wehrmacht forces led by General Erich von Manstein attempted a breakthrough to Axis troops trapped at Stalingrad. Aimed at crushing the relief effort, an immense Soviet counter-blow fell on the 8th Army occupying positions northwest side of the city, near the Chir River. The Voloire was overwhelmed, and two fellow officers took their own lives, rather than surrender. Suicide was often preferable to being taken by an enemy for whom torturing prisoners of war was standard policy. Castelletto was among the wounded artillerymen taken by regular Red Army troops before being handed over to partisans, then force-marched toward a detention center. During the three-day ordeal, he and his comrades received no food, while some of them were stripped naked in the sub-zero temperatures, then doused with freezing water for the amusement of the camp and left behind.18 Among the Russians’ booty were crates of oranges inscribed with the words, “Sunshine from Italy. Benito Mussolini.”
Pilots of the 21st Gruppo Autonomo C.T.’s last twenty-five Saettas flew their final missions on 17 January, blasting Soviet armor and strafing Red Army infantry to support German troops in the Millerovo area. They also successfully defended Junkers Ju.52 transports ferrying wounded veterans of the fighting at Stalingrad to the rear against overwhelming numbers of Soviet interceptors. The Macchi fighters were now impossibly outnumbered by hordes of Red Air Force warplanes.
On the ground, the situation was no less desperate for Italian foot-soldiers. Just before reaching internment and at the end of his strength, Castelletto, together with other Voloire survivors, was rescued in an attack launched by the Alpini Corps. In so doing, however, its men had risked their own annihilation, and found themselves trapped near Nikolayevka. The Germans, also in headlong retreat, could offer no assistance, so the Alpini fought a series of ferocious engagements with the outnumbering enemy, eventually punching through encirclement on 26 January. Four days later, Axis forces at Stalingrad surrendered, and Radio Moscow announced, “only the Italian Alpini Corps is to be considered unbeaten on the Russian Front.”
On the 22nd, remnants of the Comando Aeronautica Fronte Orientale fell back to their former base at Stalino, where its crews abandoned fifteen Saettas damaged beyond repair before evacuating with the rest of the Armata Italiana in Russia. Its soldiers had fought well on the Eastern Front, as borne out by their staggering losses. 229,000 Italians marched into Russia, leaving behind 85,000 dead, and retreated with 30,000 wounded. Material losses were likewise disastrous. Of the Corpo’s 22,000 trucks, armored vehicles and tanks, only 3,800 escaped destruction. Casualties in artillery were even more severe, with 1,200 field pieces lost from an original 1,340.
With the loss of North Africa in spring and an Allied invasion threatening southern Europe, Hitler agreed with the Duce that AMIR survivors should be returned to Italy for the defense of their homeland. But the Führer was not entirely conciliatory. On 6 April 1943, while General Messe’s East Front veterans were being re-stationed throughout the Italian peninsula, Mussolini convened with the Führer in Austria to discuss the possibility of a separate peace with Russia. Just before their meeting, members of the Esercito’s high command, led by General Ambrosio, urged the Duce to argue Italy’s inability to defend herself without German assistance. The Axis should extricate its forces from the East and concentrate them in the Mediterranean, where the future of the whole war would be determined.
But Hitler had by then already written off North Africa as untenable. Far from being decisive, the entire Mediterranean World, including Italy, was useful only in so far as the fighting there continued to delay the Allies, waste their resources, and sidetrack them from interfering with “this war’s center of gravity in the East”.19 Hitler reminded Mussolini of the “catastrophic losses” incurred by the Soviets since the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, while the Wehrmacht was gearing up with an array of futuristic arms that would utterly out-class anything dreamt of by Stalin, who had, after all, sued for a secret peace behind Anglo-American backs, and would doubtless do so again, once the Axis resumed the offensive. “For now,” he confidently assured the Duce, “all we have to do is hold out long enough to allow an opportunity for our reconstituted armies and new weapons technologies to be brought into the field.”20
His friend’s self-assurance was infectious, and Mussolini returned to Rome bubbling with fresh plans for a future that included victory in the East, as well as in the Mediterranean. But after he informed the Italian high command that the war against Russia would go on, General Ambrosia discretely assigned his top aides with discovering ways and means of overthrowing the Duce.