Alone, Italy would be unable to oppose the unloosed hordes of the Soviet Union, a fear that drove Benito Mussolini into a military alliance with Hitler’s Germany. The ‘Axis’ they created was supposed to be the center-post of opposition to the USSR around which other nations were invited to combine their armed forces in the event of war with Stalin. Such a confrontation seemed unavoidable, given recent events in Spain. Important allies like the Japanese, oil-rich Rumanians and tough Finns eventually became Axis partners, but Mussolini doubted anything could really stop the Red Army after it completed modernization, anticipated for sometime in the early 1940s.
It was his concern over this growing colossus in the east that made him strenuously oppose another European war. Relatively small, localized conflicts, such as the one he fought in Spain, or campaigns far removed from the continent, like his conquest of Ethiopia, offered little danger of sparking a general conflagration. But it seemed obvious to him that another serious confrontation between the European states would be just what Stalin was waiting and preparing for off-stage. In truth, the moustachioed Marshal had publicly predicted the inevitability of just such a golden opportunity on several occasions.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “Mussolini understood that peace was essential to Italy’s well-being, that a long war might prove disastrous.”1 As he himself explained, “In one of the many articles which I published at that time (during the mid-1920s) in the American Universal Service press, and devoted to the study of the various aspects of the European situation, I pointed out the dilemma: either a minimum of European solidarity, or else war, with the consequent crumbling of the common values of civilization.”3
He always had a soft spot for the Americans, who he looked to as the only potential mediators in Europe’s endless squabbles. Shortly after the East African Campaign’s conclusion, he told audiences in the U.S. via a Fox Movie-tone newsreel in clear English, “I will speak to you in a few, brief words of a serious problem which interests the whole of mankind; namely, peace or war. I know what war means. The terrible personal sacrifices of an entire generation of young people have not vanished from my memory. I have not forgotten, nor will I permit myself to forget it. I was myself severely wounded. Then and now, as man and Prime Minister, I have before my eyes an awful panorama of the political, economic, moral and the spiritual consequences of war. Italy will never make any policy in supporting war. On the contrary, we heartily welcome the prospect of our own disarmament in mutual accord with all others, as an international goal. Italy needs peace–a long, secure era of peace to be able to exploit and consolidate the concrete results of our Fascist government. Fascism wants to assure the cooperation of the Italian nation with all other peoples for a future of prosperity and peace.”4
On 27 August 1928, Mussolini enthusiastically endorsed the Kellogg Pact, the first article of which condemned “recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.”5 At the time, he was no doubt sincere in his desire to avoid another military confrontation, if only because the Italian armed forces were clearly unready for war against another European power, much less a combination of such powers. Mussolini’s often-stated position made him the matrix in summit talks over 1938’s Czech Crisis.
Of the four heads of state meeting at Munich, he only was conversant in every language spoken at the conferences, a fluency he skillfully employed to defuse an international situation that would have otherwise resulted in war. As he recalled six years later, “the question of the Sudeten peoples, that is, of the Germans incorporated into Czechoslovakia, seemed at one point as if it must prove the famous spark which fired the powder. To prevent an explosion, the Big Four met, for the first and last time in Munich. Italy’s action was recognized as of prime importance in the peaceful solution of the problem. When it was known that an agreement had been reached, the nations breathed again.”
“On leaving the room, a French journalist accosted me, and said, ‘You have given an oxygen tank to a sick man.” I replied, “It is the normal practice in serious cases.”
“Daladier, the President of the Council, who had been accorded friendly, popular demonstrations in Munich, was received in Paris by an enormous crowd and carried in triumph. The same happened to Chamberlain in London. Returning to Rome, I was received with perhaps the greatest popular demonstration in the whole twenty years of Fascism. The Via Nazionale was overflowing with crowds, hung with flags and strewn with laurels.”6
But Mussolini had not been impressed by the British statesmen he met at Munich. “These are the tired sons of a long line of rich men,” he confided to his son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano, “and they will lose their Empire.”7 Nor was he disillusioned by their real motives: “In reality, France and England wished simply to gain time. During 1938, the atmosphere was already extraordinarily lowering.”8
Indeed, both Western Allies needed the grace period conveniently extended by ‘appeasement’, as the newspapers called it, to complete their own rearmament programs, which would not be finalized for another two or three years. Had Hitler, in fact, gone to war over the Czech Crisis, as he wanted, he would have been better prepared than his opponents on the battlefield. Although long after excoriated for his ‘peace in our time’ agreement with the Nazis and Fascists, post-war reassessment of Neville Chamberlain’s ‘umbrella diplomacy’ at Munich reveals his negotiations were primarily aimed at delaying any military showdown–even by sacrificing the Czechs–to provide time for upgrading Britain’s armed forces.
Mussolini was not allowed a moment to relax. The same month in which the Spanish Civil War ended, he was informed that the Albanian parliament had voted a moratorium on its debt payments to Italy. The news could not have come at a worse time. The Italian economy had been stretched to the limit by two recent wars, and depended on the repayment of loans extended to King Zog. He was notified in March 1939 that payments would have to continue, according to agreements signed by the monarch himself fourteen years earlier. Relations had been traditionally good between the two nations, with a treaty of friendship and twenty-year defensive military alliance offered by Italy. Such protection was deeply appreciated by the Albanians, who would have been victimized by their neighbors in the same kind of the kind of ‘ethnic cleansing’ for which Yugoslavia is ill-famed.
Mussolini’s investment in the otherwise undeveloped Balkan backwater had been high. “What a prodigious work was achieved during a few years in Albania,” he exclaimed, “where the Albanians were given equal rights and the same duties as Italian citizens, in keeping with Roman tradition! Here, one may see the great motorway from Durazzo to Tirana, the new buildings in the capital, the reclamation of the Musachia … there, the almost completed plan for a main railway from Durazzo to Elbassan which, had it been continued from Lake Ochrida, would have put us into direct communication with Sofia and the Black Sea.”9
In exchange for fending off Albania’s enemies and bringing her into the modern world, he was granted access to “the petroleum wells of Devoli–Italy’s only source of this raw material–the iron mines near Elbassa, the bitumen, copper, and chromium mines”, all of which made up for Italian lack of these absolutely vital natural resources.10 Even so, he refrained from undermining the Albanian monarchy and seizing the country outright. Cooperation was cheaper than occupation.
But the man he was forced to deal with had the mentality of a local chieftain, who filtered foreign aid through his family and followers to become fabulously wealthy, while the rest of his country wallowed in traditional squalor. Radio Bari would later refer to the sycophants surrounding King Zog as part of a “court which can only recall the remote days of absolute kings and vampires battening on an unfortunate people.”11 In early 1939, the prefect of Durazzo, Marko Kodeli, spoke out publicly, wondering why nearly twenty years of Italian assistance had not improved the lives of ordinary Albanians. According to the King’s biographer, Jason Hunter Tomes, “unable and frankly unwilling to have much faith in any group of his people, Zog strove to keep all classes in unstable equilibrium. Through hours of hideously convoluted talk, he obsessively manipulated his assorted underlings (nearly all older than himself) in an effort to exercise personal control from seclusion.”12
None of this particularly bothered the Duce. But when he learned that Zog was meddling in Balkan affairs, intriguing with Greece to extricate himself from debt, Mussolini acted to prevent instability in that inherently combustible region, especially where Italy’s oil and mineral interests were at stake. Critics dismiss his move against Albania as nothing more than an act of international aggression to show Hitler that the Fascists could also gobble up little countries with impunity. But it is clear that Mussolini’s abiding concern for the constant importation of Albanian oil and metals, suddenly jeopardized by Zog’s tribal megalomania, was his chief motivation.
Accordingly, early Friday morning, 7 April 1939, Albanians living along the sea coast awoke to behold an armada of warships just offshore. The first Italian soldiers to step off in Durazzo were politely stopped by a local policemen, who asked to see the foreigners’ passports. “We have none,” the soldiers laughed. “We’ve come to occupy your country.”13 As more and more troops disembarked from their transports, the frantic gendarmes suddenly opened fire on them with a pair of machine-guns. The police were soon after joined by some 300 Albanian soldiers, who scattered after a brief, booming bombardment fired by the Italian battleships. Thereafter, General Guzzoni, in charge of operations, leisurely put ashore two divisions of four Bersaglieri regiments, backed up by a tank battalion.
Zog made impassioned appeals by radio for a patriotic uprising against the invaders, his former benefactors of almost two decades. His dramatic words were heard by more Americans than his own people, however, because few Albanians owned receivers. Instead, the plight of the besieged King was broadcast across the U.S. as a pitiful example of yet another, innocent, little nation swallowed by Fascist rapacity. In reality, “too many Tirana intellectuals spent Easter weekend not fighting for their country, but debating whether Zog was worth having,” Tomes writes. “Very few Albanians showed any willingness to fight for him. The majority apparently accepted the Italian occupation in a spirit of resignation which verged on indifference.”14
While Americans were still glued to their radio sets, listening to Zog’s defiant, if pre-recorded speeches, the King had already fled with his wife and son across the Greek border in a long caravan of limousines over-loaded with gold bars, furniture, crates of cigarettes, evening gowns, and assorted luxury items. Sporadic fighting lingered on for a few days, killing five Italians and three times as many defenders, until Albania was incorporated into the Italian Empire on 16 April.
Although mainstream historians continue to deprecate Mussolini’s seizure of that country as the victimization of yet another helpless people, events there had been very closely followed by British intelligence agents, who concluded that Italy’s timely, rapid conquest scotched an imminently explosive situation with consequences not unlike those that ignited World War One in the same region. As soon as Albania was pacified, Mussolini received a personal telegram from the British foreign secretary, Sir Anthony Eden, thanking him for his correct action and affirming Great Britain’s support in the matter.15
The Duce received no such telegrams from the French, whose relations with Italy had been in decline throughout the 1930s. They regarded the Albanian crisis with alarm, a move whereby the Regia Marina, the Italian Navy, had secured its rear in the east to threaten them in the west. By the end of the decade, Paris was more likely to make war on Mussolini than against Hitler. During the Spanish Civil War, Italians fighting too close to the Pyrenees had made the French nervous. They were jittery, too, about Italian military installations on the Libyan coast, where the French fleet was widely believed to be suddenly compromised. There was little Mussolini could say to assuage these objections.
“What do they want of me?” he asked an American reporter interviewing him for the Chicago Tribune, “Pack up our ships and get out of North Africa just to accommodate their navy? We would be happy to oblige them, if only they agreed to do the same. Disarmament, like universal peace, is a wonderful idea, but it must be mutual to work. I have been saying for years I will be happy to take the first step in that direction, but I can’t go it alone. In the meantime, the Mediterranean is a large body of water, big enough for several fleets. We are not challenging the French or anybody. We operate a fleet for the same reason as they; namely, to protect overseas’ colonies. We want nothing from the French, but to be left alone.” And, repeating an old theme, “They have their empire, which they think a glorious thing, but they object to Italy having one, and a very much smaller version, I might add, than theirs!”16
Recriminations such as these did not exactly soothe international feelings. On 22 May 1939 Germany and Italy cemented their alliance in the Pact of Steel, solidifying their alliance, although it did nothing to improve suspicions of military ambition nurtured by the Western Allies. The similar ideological forces driving both nations combined with either’s growing isolation from most of the outside world, resulting in closer ties. But throughout that long, hot summer, Italy’s relations with France continued to simmer, threatening to boil over.
“The Fascist loves his neighbor,” Mussolini told the world, “but the word ‘neighbor’ does not stand for some vague, amorphous conception. Love of one’s neighbor does not exclude necessary educational severity. Fascism will have nothing to do with groundless, universal embraces (an ill-concealed jibe at the still-despised League of Nations). As a member of the community of nations, it looks other peoples straight in the eye. It is vigilant, and on its guard. It follows the behavior of others in all their manifestations, and notes any changes in their interests. And it does not allow itself to be deceived by mutable or fallacious appearances.”17
The guarded, defensive tone of such language reflected the growing mutual mistrust of the times. But attention shifted suddenly from the Mediterranean to Eastern Europe on 1 September, when Hitler’s Wehrmacht stormed through Poland. To Mussolini, the invasion seemed like another localized conflict, but with potential for a broader conflagration, in view of the assurances that had been given the Poles by Britain and France. He immediately contacted diplomatic representatives in London and Paris, asking for a suspension of any war declarations until “the root causes as found in the Treaty of Versailles” had been re-examined.18 A four-power conference, such as the one that settled the Czech Crisis, should be convened at once. While opposed to a replay of Munich-1938, Hitler offered to withdraw his forces, save for the city of Danzig, which had been severed from Germany twenty-one years before by the victors at Versailles.
But the Western Allies would have none of it this time. Mussolini pointed out to them the futility of their position. No one could save Poland now. And according to their own sworn pledge, Britain and France were compelled to fight “any nation (without publicly specifying Germany) that violated Polish sovereignty”. Yet, they were obliged under the same agreement to declare war on Russia which occupied eastern Poland two weeks after the German invasion began. The Duce called for a moratorium on the fighting, “before the situation becomes yet more dangerous. During the last ten days of August,” he recalled five years later, “Italy made what might be called a desperate effort to try and avert the catastrophe. This was acknowledged by all parties in books and speeches, even by our present enemies.”19
By 10 September, Ciano had already made several attempts at intermediating peace, assuring the British ambassador, Percy Loraine, that Mussolini could persuade Hitler to suspend operations in Poland for the sake of negotiations regarding Danzig, over which the war had begun. “It seems ludicruous, macabre that an entire world must incinerate itself because of one, small, remote city,” the Count almost laughed.20 Loraine contacted Lord Halifax, who discussed the Italian offer at a war-cabinet meeting, where Winston Churchill, a new cabinet member, scotched all further diplomatic feelers: “If Ciano realises our inflexible purpose, he will be less likely to toy with the idea of an Italian mediation.”21
Mussolini was less inflexible. “I did not want war,” he stated. “I saw it approaching with the deepest anguish. I felt that it was a question-mark hovering over the whole future of the nation. Three military undertakings had ended successfully: the Abyssinian War, the Spanish Civil War, and the union of Albania with Italy. I thought that a pause was now necessary in order to develop and perfect the work. From the point of view of human loss, the figures were modest, but the financial and administrative strain had been enormous. Nor must one forget the nervous strain of a people which, save for short intervals, had been at war since 1911! It was therefore high time to give people’s nerves a rest; it was high time to apply the nation’s energy to works of peace.”22
The French deigned not to respond to Mussolini’s proposals for a ceasefire, while British diplomats maintained cordial, if cagey relations with Italy. As Germany’s uncommitted ally, Mussolini felt he was in the best position to broker an end to the fighting during the so-called ‘Sitzkrieg’ of inactivity that lasted from Poland’s defeat until the onset of the Western Campaign, the following spring. At first, Hitler gave the nod to Mussolini’s behind-the-scenes peace efforts, which fell on deaf French ears. The British were at least willing to listen, but the upshot of their diplomatic conversations was always the same. They invited Mussolini to change sides, promising him the Tyrol (long a contentious issue between Italy and Germany), Austria in its entirety, and portions of Bavaria, together with all previously neglected demands, after the Third Reich was destroyed.
“The Italy of 1940 is not the Italy of 1914,” he told them. “We’ve heard that story before, much to our regret. Why should we believe you now? Besides, these territories are not yours to give away. In any case, I doubt their inhabitants have been consulted about the matter, anymore than you asked the natives of India or Africa for permission to colonize them, for their own good, I am sure!”23
In March, he met with Hitler, symbolically enough, at the Italian frontier near the Brenner Pass, where the Führer urged him to join him against the Western Allies. But Mussolini was reluctant to fight an Anglo-French coalition. He confessed that his armed forces, still recuperating from military campaigns in East Africa, Spain and Albania, would not be ready for at least another two or three years. Meanwhile, he would continue diplomatic efforts to stop the war. Hitler respected his decision, and got on with his plans for an April offensive in the West. Before it exploded with the ferocity of a sudden spring storm, British attempts to sway Mussolini to their side with tempting morsels of Tyrolean, Austrian and Bavarian real estate had obviously failed. Alarmed at his meeting with Hitler, “Paris and London announced their intention of seizing all shipments of German coal intended for use in Italian industries in mid-Channel”.24 The news came as a shock to the Italians, who had managed to stay out of the fighting while preserving relations with both sides.
Threatening sanctions again was a provocation that particularly riled Mussolini. “Italy is a neutral nation,” he bristled, “and, as such, may trade with whomever she chooses. Seizing our goods on the high seas violates the very premise of international law. There is a word for such action. It is called ‘piracy’. As our own recent history shows, economic sanctions invariably constitute a prelude to war. From today on, the world recognizes the identity of the real aggressors.” He lamented the solemn pledge made just eleven years before by forty-five nations–including Italy, Germany, Britain and France–to abandon war as a means of settling international disputes. The Kellogg Pact had “found its way to the graveyard of sensible initiatives which have failed.”25
From the Allies’ point of view, immediate war with Italy was desirable before she had time to up-grade her armaments, now that British diplomats were convinced they could not tempt Mussolini with promised German territories. While strategists in both London and Paris correctly assessed the Italian Armed Forces’ condition of unreadiness, they wrongfully equated it with the Wehrmacht. They dismissed the Third Reich’s apparent strength as so much propaganda that would be swiftly debunked on the first day of battle. Since the early 1930s, Allied rearmament continued to outpace military production in ‘the totalitarian states’.
During 1939, the year the war began, the French government outspent Germany on armaments, while its large air force was more heavily funded than Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe. Beginning in February 1934, according to U.S. journalist, Doug Brinkley, Paris was spending a billion francs annually for its air force alone.26 Five years later, it fielded more than 3,000 aircraft, somewhat less than the Luftwaffe, but combined with the sizeable and modernized Polish, Dutch and British air forces, the Germans would be outnumbered in the air. Altogether, army reserves in Poland, the Netherlands, France and Britain totalled some ten million men, outnumbering German reserves by five to one.
At sea, the Allies had twenty times the warships possessed by the German Navy, the Kriegsmarine. But a resurgent Italy combined with German technological advances might constitute a serious challenge in the next decade. The French Army and British Navy were the mightiest organizations of their kind on Earth. Better to use them now, while their ascendency was still unquestioned.
The Duce hurriedly convened his military chiefs of staff for an assessment of Italy’s ability to wage a prolonged war against the British and French Empires. On paper, Italian prospects looked good. 1,630,000 men served in seventy-three Army divisions comprising 166 infantry regiments, a dozen Bersaglieri, or light infantry regiments, another dozen cavalry, ten Alpini mountain regiments, nineteen of engineers, thirty-two artillery and five tank. Mussolini was not told, however, that just twenty divisions–less than a third–were fully equipped and manned. Generals in the Commando Supremo, the Italian High Command, assured him that upgrading of the armed forces was far ahead of schedule. The Esercito, Regia Marina and Regia Aeronautica were quite capable or undertaking anything asked of them, they stated confidently. Their splendid performance during the recently concluded Spanish Civil War was held up as proof of their efficacy.
This rosy portrayal was mostly a deception, however. Only the navy, with five new or modernized battleships protected by numerous cruisers, and 122 destroyers was in a relatively satisfactory state of preparedness, although these vessels would be badly outnumbered by the combined fleets of Britain and France.