Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of maps
- Introduction
- 1 “There has been much bluff”
- 2 Bellicose nonbelligerent
- 3 “The most impatient of all Italians”
- 4 June–September 1940: Duce strategy in the shadow of Sea Lion
- 5 The attack on Greece
- 6 To the Berghof: Italy's end as a great power
- Conclusion: The meaning of Fascist Italy's last war
- Appendix 1 The diaries of Count Galeazzo Ciano
- Appendix 2 Military expenditure: Italy and the powers compared
- Abbreviations
- Notes
- A note on sources
- Frequently cited works
- Index
3 - “The most impatient of all Italians”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of maps
- Introduction
- 1 “There has been much bluff”
- 2 Bellicose nonbelligerent
- 3 “The most impatient of all Italians”
- 4 June–September 1940: Duce strategy in the shadow of Sea Lion
- 5 The attack on Greece
- 6 To the Berghof: Italy's end as a great power
- Conclusion: The meaning of Fascist Italy's last war
- Appendix 1 The diaries of Count Galeazzo Ciano
- Appendix 2 Military expenditure: Italy and the powers compared
- Abbreviations
- Notes
- A note on sources
- Frequently cited works
- Index
Summary
What can you say to someone who doesn't dare risk a single soldier while his ally is winning a crushing victory, and that victory can give Italy back the remainder of its national territory and establish its supremacy in the Mediterranean? Is it a pipe-dream? We'll see if it is. In any case, there are Italians who believe in it, myself first of all. It does not matter if some general or other doesn't believe; perhaps it is better that way …
Mussolini, to Ciano and Anfuso, late May 1940Under restraint
A war “parallel” to that of Germany. It was snowing at the Brenner on the morning of 18 March, as Mussolini waited “with a feeling of impatient pleasure” for Hitler's arrival. In the night, he told Ciano, a dream “had rent the veil of the future.” But Mussolini did not confide the details of that very personal revelation to his son-in-law. At the Brenner, Hitler opened with his usual prolix harangue, deriding the clumsiness of the British and the “defeatist, pacifist” fortifications of the French. He then came to the point. Either the coming offensive would so shake the West that “one last push” would bring collapse – Mussolini could then strike that blow at Germany's side – or the offensive might lead to a struggle of attrition that would gradually wear down the Allies: “for once Germany attacked, it would never let go.” In a protracted struggle, Italian intervention at the right moment could be “the last kilogram, that would cause the scales to tip irrevocably in favor of Germany and Italy.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Mussolini Unleashed, 1939–1941Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy's Last War, pp. 87 - 133Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1982