Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941
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The Brenner meeting had left its mark on Mussolini. A few days later, Ciano noted that the Duce was ‘in good humour these days’ and ‘is growing every day more definitively pro-German’. Mussolini was now speaking openly about entering the war on Germany’s side, and he outlined for Ciano what he saw as Italy’s course of action. He would not operate alongside the Wehrmacht on the southern French front, but instead maintain a defensive position in the Alpine regions. He would do the same in Libya, but take the offensive from Abyssinia against the important port of Djibouti (in the tiny French Somaliland that abutted it) and the British possession of Kenya, to the south. In the Mediterranean, the crucial theatre from an Italian point of view, he would engage in an air and naval offensive against the British and French. Ciano pointed out that Mussolini’s bellicosity was starting to tell in bringing other Fascist leaders into line behind intervention. Some, however, remained opposed to what Ciano called ‘the adventure’. This was Ciano’s own position, though he himself was starting to weaken. As he noted, the mass of the Italian people still wanted nothing to do with war.67 For Mussolini, their views were irrelevant.
On 31 March Mussolini presented his thoughts in a written memorandum for the King, Ciano and his military leaders. Though Italy would have an important role in any compromise peace, he thought this outcome could be excluded. The war would continue. Germany, he thought, would not engage in a major land offensive in the west until victory was certain. In the meantime, she would continue the ‘phoney war’, but with intensified air and naval operations. He turned, in a crucial passage, to the choices facing Italy. The only option for Italy, he stated, was to intervene on Germany’s side. It was absurd to imagine that she could keep out of the war. Neutrality, in other words, could not be entertained. Nor was a change of policy and shift to the side of the western Allies viable. This, said Mussolini, would bring immediate conflict with Germany, in which Italy would be left to fight alone. Italy’s current position had been built upon the alliance with Germany. Her own objectives could only be attained by maintaining this alliance, by fighting a parallel war to gain supremacy in the Mediterranean. The main issue was, therefore, not whether, but when, to fight. He would delay entry as long as possible, aware as he was of the weakness of the armed forces. A long war could not be waged, on economic grounds. But intervention offered opportunities not to be spurned. He then sketched Italian strategy on intervention, much as he had described it privately to Ciano, though with some elaboration.68
Addressing the Council of Ministers three days later, Mussolini kept up his rhetorical barrage in favour of war. He thought a German offensive could begin at any moment. Again, he rehearsed the options. Any change of course towards Britain and France would make Italy ‘appear servile to the democracies’ and bring her into conflict with Germany. By remaining neutral, Italy would ‘lose prestige among the nations of the world for a century as a Great Power and for eternity as a Fascist regime’. So the only choice was to ‘move with the Germans to advance our own ends’. He went on, in time-honoured fashion, to outline those ends: a Mediterranean empire and access to the ocean. Mussolini, noted Ciano, believed blindly in German victory, and in Hitler’s word as to Italy’s share of the booty. He himself doubted both.69
The military leaders also still needed convincing. The outcome of the meeting of the service chiefs with Badoglio on 9 April was anything but encouraging. They were pessimistic even about a limited offensive, insisted on avoiding close military cooperation with the Germans even in the event of a French collapse, agreed that no offensive from Libya was possible, were sceptical about the prospects of combined air and naval operations in the Mediterranean and expressed anxieties about Italy’s position in Abyssinia. Summarizing for Mussolini, Badoglio adjudged that only in the event of the outright demolition of enemy forces by the Germans could Italian intervention be worthwhile.70 The division between Mussolini’s thirst for action and the passivity of the military leadership of the country still ran deep. But it was at this point that the German invasion of Denmark and Norway began to cause a reconsideration of Italian perspectives, a process that would be completed by the Wehrmacht’s astonishing successes in the western offensive in May and June.
Mussolini’s immediate response to the news of the German occupation of Denmark and Norway was outright approval. ‘This is the way to win wars,’ he declared. Alone with Ciano, the talk was of Croatia. ‘His hands fairly itch,’ commented the Foreign Minister. The Duce was keen to quicken the tempo to take advantage of the current disorder in Europe. He was more warlike and more pro-German than ever, in Ciano’s estimation, though he said he would not move before the end of August (and a few days later changed this date to spring 1941). He was irritated, however, by an audience with the King, who was still unenthusiastic about intervention. ‘It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history,’ Ciano recorded him saying. ‘To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. This is what I shall do.’ But as late as May not just the King, but the Italian military leadership remained for the most part opposed to Italy joining the war. And, though Hitler’s successes in Scandinavia had made an impression on public opinion–Mussolini contemptuously remarked that the Italian people were ‘like a whore…always on the side of the winner’–there was as yet no marked upswing in pro-German or pro-war feeling among the masses.71
On the eve of the German western offensive, which began on 10 May 1940, Italian intervention was still not a certainty. Mussolini, to be sure, had become sharply and unremittingly belligerent, as Ciano’s diary entries record. Some Fascist leaders had followed his lead. Massive pro-war propaganda had left its mark and doubtless swayed some faint-hearts to support early intervention. The forces supporting war had, in other words, become stronger, particularly after the successful German operations in Scandinavia. But the forces opposed to war were not without weight. They included Count Ciano, even though his resolve was less firm than it had been, the military leadership and not least the King. The decision for war, despite Mussolini’s powerful and insistent advocacy, was still in the balance, and by no means a formality. Had the German victory over France been less conclusive, it is even imaginable that intervention could have been postponed, perhaps even to a point where the impetus to join the war faded and non-belligerence or neutrality became seen as less than a temporary status. Caution might have prevailed. Without that comprehensive and calamitous defeat for the Allies, Mussolini would at any rate have been taking a risk to force into war a country whose military elite as well as the broad masses of the population were so lukewarm if not outrightly hostile to fighting a major war on Germany’s side. Ciano had received a hint in March that ‘the King feels that it may become necessary for him to intervene at any moment to give things a different direction; he is prepared to do this and to do it quickly’.72 It is not even beyond contemplation that such a move in circumstances seen as less than outrightly favourable might have prompted resistance within the power-elite, possibly even a military coup, backed if not directly initiated by the royal house.
In the event, however, the German victory in the west was swifter, the French collapse more dramatic, than anyone had foreseen. The balance of power in Europe was completely refashioned. Whatever the position before Hitler launched his attack on the Low Countries and France, the devastating advance of the Wehrmacht had now totally altered the picture. Just as the Japanese rulers, as we saw, rapidly reshaped their strategy in the wake of the astonishing German triumph, so did the power-elite in Italy. As in Japan, the feeling was that Germany was certain to be victorious. With France laid prostrate within a matter of weeks, and the defeat of Britain surely only a matter of time, few in the Italian leadership now doubted that Hitler would win the war. This radically changed attitudes towards Italy’s intervention.
In the light of the altered circumstances following the collapse of France, any notion that Mussolini alone pushed an u
nwilling nation into war and subsequent disaster would be misplaced. The chance of profiting from the destruction of the western democracies was widely seen as too good to miss. During the second half of May, therefore, the arguments in favour of intervention markedly gained in force. Opposition to participation in the war, conversely, became increasingly difficult to articulate. Impressed by the German advances, Dino Grandi, the Fascist boss of Bologna and until now an opponent of intervention, told Ciano: ‘We should admit that we were wrong in everything and prepare ourselves for the new times ahead.’73 Ultra-caution seemed completely misplaced, a recipe only for missing a unique opportunity to make cheap gains. Waverers and doubters now fell into line. For the first and only time, the Italian population became vociferously pro-war. Buoyed by his enthusiastic reception in some of the poorer districts of Rome, Mussolini had no doubt at the beginning of June that ordinary people had become ‘accustomed to the idea that his war needs to happen’.74 The leadership of the armed forces–and with it, the King himself–was won over by the prospect of gain without pain, glory at little or no cost. Significant parts of the Italian ruling establishment had, as we noted, even before the First World War wanted expansion to establish and cement great-power status. Fear of the consequences, not lack of ambition, had held it back. But the traditional expansionist aspirations easily slotted into the far more aggressive and dynamic Fascist version.75 Now the opportunity that presented itself was as if godsent. When the moment of decision arrived, therefore, Mussolini found himself far from an isolated figure pressing for intervention against a reluctant people. He was by now surfing the tide, if on the foremost wave.
From the first days of the German offensive, Mussolini was certain that the Allies had lost the war. There was no time to waste, he told Ciano on 13 May. ‘Within a month I shall declare war. I shall attack France and Great Britain in the air and on the sea. I am no longer thinking of taking up arms against Yugoslavia because it would be a humiliating expedient.’ The prospect of action in the Balkans had, therefore, faded temporarily. A bigger prize was at stake. After all, as Ciano reminded him later in the month, ‘after the war is won we can obtain what we want anyway’. Ciano’s own opposition was now giving way. He offered no response to Mussolini’s belligerence. ‘Today, for the first time, I did not answer,’ he noted in his diary. ‘Unfortunately, I can do nothing now to hold the Duce back. He has decided to act, and act he will. Only a new turn in military events can induce him to revise his decision, but for the time being things are going so badly for the Allies that there is no hope.’76 The next day Mussolini told the German ambassador in Rome, Hans Georg von Mackensen, that he would enter the struggle soon, no longer within months, but weeks or even days. Ciano was now resigned to intervention, though he hoped it would not be too soon, since Italy was still not ready for war. ‘A mistake in timing would be fatal to us,’ he added.77 A week or so later, Ciano was mainly concerned with what Italy would get out of intervention. ‘If we really have to leap headlong into war,’ he wrote, ‘we must make a definite deal.’ He envisaged meeting Ribbentrop early the following month with a statement of what Italy’s share of the war booty should be.78
The King, however, was still distinctly anti-German. And he continued to drag his feet about Italian intervention. It did not endear him to the Duce. Mussolini’s hatred of the royal house was palpable. He was ready ‘to blow’ the monarchy–and the papacy with it–‘up to the skies’ at the end of the war.79 Mussolini’s ire was provoked not least by the King’s refusal to grant him the sole command of the armed forces in the war. In a nebulous arrangement, Victor Emmanuel conceded the political and military conduct of the war while retaining the supreme command in his own hands, a distinction which would come to matter in July 1943.80 Nevertheless, the King, too, felt compelled to bow to the new circumstances of the German triumph in the west. By 1 June he was resigned to Italy entering the war. But, despite the propaganda barrage that had helped prompt the first demonstrations in favour of intervention in Rome’s streets, he thought the country was going to war without enthusiasm. And he envisaged a long war, whose outcome would perhaps ultimately be determined by the entry of the United States into the arena.81
The Italian military leaders, who had imagined that much stiffer French resistance would have been offered to the German attack, were also bowing to the inevitable. By the end of May, according to Ciano, Badoglio ‘now seems to accept a bad game with good grace, and prepares for war’. Badoglio was still cautious. The war had to be brief. Italy’s supplies of vital raw materials were desperately low.82 The army’s chief of staff, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, advised in late May that the army was in no fit state for offensive action, even against Yugoslavia. The head of the navy, Admiral Domenico Cavagnari, also envisaged only defensive operations, other than a limited effort by submarines in the Mediterranean. And the air force’s suggestion of bombing French bases in Corsica was ruled out by Badoglio, since Mussolini himself did not want an air offensive against France at that time.83 It was hardly a ringing endorsement of war. Such military effort as Italy would make was intended to be brief and in a minor key. The aim was to make the minimal contribution to attain maximum gains at the peace conference that would surely follow hard on the heels of German victory. But if the stance of the military was characterized by resigned acceptance rather than enthusiasm, there was nonetheless no opposition to the decision to go to war.
The same was true of big business. Here, too, the astounding German advances in May had dissipated an earlier preference for non-intervention. Business leaders naturally wanted what they saw as best for business. The fruits of intervention in a short and successful campaign appeared to provide it. And public opinion, so far as it is possible to judge it with accuracy, had now also largely fallen into line. Relentless state-orchestrated pro-war propaganda, greatly intensified over recent weeks, had not been without effect. Steps were taken to acclimatize the population to the onset of war. The glass in the windows of Milan cathedral was taken out and canvas covers put up. Schools closed at the end of May for the summer. Dance halls were shut. Foreign music was discouraged or Italianized: ‘St Louis Blues’ was to be sung as ‘Tristezze di San Luigi’.84 As the German offensive swept through Belgium and into France student demonstrators in Rome burned French and British flags. Similar demonstrations took place in Milan, Naples and other big cities.85 One police report from Florence in early June recorded that ‘the doubters have fallen silent, and the anti-Fascists are ultracautious…the expectation of a swift, easy and bloodless war against a France bled white and an England disorganized and with a decimated fleet, is rapidly maturing’.86 Mussolini had no need to fear popular opposition to his decision to intervene.
Desperate appeals in May by Britain and the United States not to go to war were predictably rejected out of hand. Personal letters to Mussolini by Churchill and Roosevelt (who was offering, as we saw in Chapter 1, to act as a mediator between Italy and the Allies) met a peremptory rebuff. The time when appeasement stood any chance was long past. In the last days of May Mussolini took the decision. Badoglio, according to his postwar account, learned of it on 26 May. He had been in the ante-room, waiting along with Italo Balbo (one of the most prominent and dynamic early Fascist leaders, former air force chief, strongly anti-German and well aware of his country’s unreadiness to enter the war, briefly home from his position as Governor of Libya) for an audience with Mussolini. As soon as he entered the Duce’s enormous study, Badoglio realized that the meeting would not be routine. Mussolini was ‘standing behind his writing-table, his hands on his hips, looking intensely serious, almost solemn’. When he spoke, it was to announce that he had sent a message to Hitler the previous day, stating that he was ready to declare war on Britain after 5 June. Badoglio’s memory was playing tricks on him about the timing of Mussolini’s letter to Hitler, and also the precise date. Ciano noted in his diary entry for 26 May that Mussolini was planning to write to Hitler announcing Italy’s intervention fo
r the latter part of June.87 The message was, in fact, only sent to the Italian ambassador, Dino Alfieri, on 30 May and delivered to Hitler in his western field headquarters that day.88 Mussolini had subsequently brought the date of entry forward to 5 June following the capitulation of Belgium.89 Badoglio went on to recall that he and Balbo were dumbfounded at the news, and Mussolini taken aback at the cold reception. Badoglio, so he said, pointed out in forceful terms that Italy was absolutely unprepared for war. ‘It is suicide,’ he claimed he remarked.90
Whether Badoglio really expressed such vehement opposition might be doubted. His memoirs were self-serving, meant to highlight Mussolini’s sole responsibility for an act of lunacy. Badoglio stated that he stayed at his post out of a sense of duty, aware that his resignation would have changed nothing and would have been unpopular among the population, and also out of a conviction that he would be able to prevent mistakes which Mussolini was certain to make out of his ignorance of military affairs.91 But the record of Mussolini’s meeting with his military leaders on 29 May, when he formally announced that Italy would enter the war any time after 5 June, contains no reference to any protest from Badoglio or the others present. Even the King now reluctantly acquiesced.92 Mussolini told his military chiefs–partially recouching what he had said at the end of March–that war was impossible to avoid, and that Italy could only fight on the side of Germany, not of the Allies. He had advanced the date of entry in accordance with the rapidly changing circumstances. He was certain of German victory, and postponing entry would run greater risks than premature intervention. It was important to be in the war before the Germans had won so that Italy would have a bargaining position at the peace negotiations.93
The following day Ciano noted: ‘The die is cast. Today Mussolini gave me the communication he has sent to Hitler about our entry into the war. The date chosen is June 5th, unless Hitler himself considers it convenient to postpone it for some days.’94 In fact, the date did not suit Hitler. It might, he thought, by prompting the removal of some aircraft to the south of France, interfere with German plans for an all-out assault on French airfields. Mussolini grumbled, but rescheduled Italy’s big day to 11 June.95 The previous evening, 10 June, he addressed the crowd from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia. An American journalist present painted the scene, as Mussolini ‘bounced up like a jack-in-the-box on the balcony’ to bellow his war declaration to the hundred thousand or so crammed into the square: ‘He was greeted with probably the greatest applause he had ever received since he announced the end of the Abyssinian War…It looked as though Mussolini was making a "smart move” to realise his revindications upon France with a minimum spilling of blood. They thought France was already beaten and England left in a hopeless position. It was money for jam.’96 The speech was, of course, no more than an organized propaganda show. Giuseppe Bottai, the Minister of Education, recorded the difficulty organized Fascist cheer-leaders had in rousing the crowd from its ‘almost stupefied discipline’.97 ‘It was a pitiable spectacle,’ Badoglio later recalled. ‘Herded like sheep between the officials and the riff-raff of the Fascist Party, the crowd had orders to applaud every word of the speech. But when it was over, the people dispersed of their own accord in complete silence.’98 Ciano’s contemporary account was less expressive, though also pointed to a lukewarm reception by those other than Fascist diehards. ‘The news of the war does not surprise anyone,’ remarked Ciano, ‘and does not arouse very much enthusiasm.’99