Book contents
5 - Italy
from Part I - The National Armies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2017
Summary
It was Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano who awakened Benito Mussolini with a telephone call in the early morning hours of 22 June 1941 to tell his father-in-law, then at his seaside retreat, that Hitler had officially informed his alliance partner that the Wehrmacht had launched an attack on the Soviet Union. No consultations had taken place between the two Axis powers; the German Reich presented Italy with a fait accompli, although this line of action was blatantly contrary to ‘the spirit and the letter of the “Pact of Steel” of 22 May 1939’.
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- Joining Hitler's CrusadeEuropean Nations and the Invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941, pp. 134 - 157Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2017