Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941

by Ian Kershaw

  Within days of Italy’s entry the temperature rose again amid rumours–denied outright by Ioannis Metaxas, Greece’s dull dictator, who looked more like a small-town mayor than a head of state, and who was ironically an admirer of Italy, where he had lived for some years–that the British were abusing Greek neutrality and basing warships in Greece’s waters. Ciano stirred the pot. He had outlined to Bottai some weeks earlier his vision of Italian dominance in the Balkans. It included the establishment of protectorates in Croatia and Greece (also taking in Crete), as well as a north African protectorate embracing Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco and possession of Corsica.120 But Mussolini recognized that the realization of these grandiose plans would have to wait. The Germans, he knew, wanted no expansion of the war at this juncture.121 He had Grazzi tell Metaxas that Italian policy towards Greece was unchanged. Military contingency planning nevertheless continued to include action against Greece and Yugoslavia, as well as possible moves to secure the Ticino, the Italian-speaking enclave of Switzerland, if, as was rumoured, the Germans were soon to invade that country. It was little wonder that a frustrated Badoglio was heard to say: ‘The enemy changes every day. I expect the order to attack Iraq!’122

  As regards the Balkans, however, Yugoslavia rather than Greece remained the priority. Mussolini contemplated taking action in August. Hitler, when he met Ciano on 7 July, seemed to encourage Italy’s aggressive intentions in that direction. But whatever Hitler had meant to imply, it was not an Italian invasion of Yugoslavia in the immediate future, which he judged likely to set the whole of the Balkans ablaze at a highly delicate moment, provoking Russian intervention. While Hitler conceded that the fate of Yugoslavia was Italy’s to determine when the time was ripe, now was expressly not that time. But he repeated that ‘everything concerning the Mediterranean, including the Adriatic, is a purely Italian matter, in which he does not intend to interfere’ and also indicated his approval for Italian action to prevent the British gaining a foothold in the Greek islands.123

  Italian military plans for an assault on Yugoslavia continued throughout July despite Hitler’s warning against precipitate action (which had not been passed on by Ciano to Mussolini in its full vigour).124 In early August Mussolini was still talking about an attack in the second half of September.125 A few days later, on 11 August, he ordered the foot-dragging Badoglio, who only a short time earlier had issued a directive stipulating that it was not the intention to take military action in the Balkans, to be ready to move by 20 September.126 That same day, Mussolini set his sights on Greece.

  Ciano was the main instigator. He knew how angry Mussolini was about Graziani’s tardiness in starting the offensive in north Africa. Graziani had just been in Rome and given Mussolini the impression that the attack on Egypt would start within a few days. He had told Ciano, however, that preparations were far from complete. Ciano’s own impression was that the attack would not start for two or three months, if at all. He reported this to Mussolini, who was predictably livid.127 Adeptly spotting the moment, and shrewdly manipulating the Duce’s psychology, Ciano seized the chance to press for an attack on Greece. Mussolini, as we have noted, already favoured moving against Yugoslavia. Ciano now persuaded him without difficulty that Greece, too, should be included in the plans for expansion in the Balkans. Deprived of the chance of glory in France, and now facing the prospect of delays in north Africa, Mussolini saw the attractions of an easy triumph over the Greeks, a nation he held in contempt.

  Ciano, for his part, saw in the enterprise the potential to magnify his own power-base. Albania already served effectively as a personal fiefdom for him, run by his minion, Francesco Jacomoni. The prospect of enlargement of his domain, and of easy glory, beckoned. On 10 August Ciano stirred Mussolini’s easily aroused antagonism towards Greece. Jacomoni had fed Ciano the story of the treacherous assassination by Greek agents of an Albanian freedom fighter, Daut Hodja, which was now relayed to Mussolini as an indication of Greek untrustworthiness. Hodja was in fact no more than a local bandit and cattle-thief, with a long history of extreme violence and criminality, who had been caught and beheaded by rival criminals–Albanians, not Greeks–two months earlier. But Mussolini needed no persuading. ‘The Duce is considering an "act of force, because since 1923 [the short-lived Corfu incident] he has some accounts to settle, and the Greeks deceive themselves if they think that he has forgotten”,’ noted Ciano, following their meeting.128 Immediately, the Italian propaganda machine surged into action, eulogizing Hodja’s patriotic virtues and castigating the treatment of Albanians by the Greek minority of the border area of Epirus, abutting Albania in northern Greece.129

  On 11 August, the day after he had set Mussolini on the path to aggression against Greece, Ciano noted that the Duce wanted information on ‘Ciamuria’ (the contemporary Italian name for Epirus, derived from the Albanian word for the region). He had started agitation on the issue, and had called Jacomoni and General Count Sebastiano Visconti Prasca–Guzzoni’s incompetent successor as military commander of Albania, proud of his manly physique, though actually, with his monocle and dyed eyebrows, slightly eccentric in appearance130–to Rome for discussions. Mussolini ‘speaks of a surprise attack against Greece towards the end of September’, Ciano recorded.131 Ciano was party to the discussions the next day. Mussolini laid down the guidelines for action against Greece. ‘If Ciamuria and Corfu are yielded without striking a blow, we shall not ask for anything more. If, on the other hand, any resistance is attempted, we shall go to the limit,’ the Duce declared. Jacomoni and Visconti Prasca thought the operation would be easy, and pressed for it to be undertaken immediately. Mussolini preferred to wait until the end of September.132

  The German Foreign Ministry was, meanwhile, hearing from its representative in Athens, Prince Viktor zu Erbach-Schönberg, that Greece would resist all aggression and refuse to be humiliated by Italy, ‘even if that involves the risk of being destroyed’. Popular feeling was running high against Italy.133 There would be strong support for resistance to Italian intervention. The conclusion was that ‘if Italy believes that this is the right moment to realise its territorial claims in relation to Greece, it is mistaken’.134

  For the Germans, keeping the lid on the simmering tensions in the Balkans was a high priority. Hitler had told Ciano on 20 July that he attached ‘the greatest importance to the maintenance of peace in the Danube and Balkan regions’.135 Soviet interest in the Danube region had been pointedly indicated at the end of June with the annexation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina–the former a region of Romania which had at one time been part of Tsarist Russia. Hungary, too, had acute border disputes with Romania. These were settled only in late August by German and Italian forced ‘arbitration’ which truncated large parts of Transylvania, awarding the lion’s share to Hungary. The Germans were anxious to prevent disturbance in the region, both to retain their hold on oil from the Romanian oil wells in Ploesti, and to prevent further Soviet encroachment. Keeping the Russians (whose traditional sphere of defensive interests stretched as far as the Bosporus) and the British (guarantors of Greek independence since April 1939, seen as ready to exploit any upheaval in Greece and the Aegean) out of the Balkans was vital to the Germans. Impulsive Italian action against Yugoslavia could lead to Soviet intervention. Action against Greece could let in the British by the back door. By mid-August, therefore, the message was being diplomatically imparted from Berlin to Rome that Italian action in the Balkans was undesirable at this stage. ‘Peace in the Balkans’, as Hitler had told Ciano on 20 July in unmistakable terms, remained the outright priority. As he had made plain to the Italian Foreign Minister a few days earlier, the key Italian military aim had to remain Egypt and the Suez Canal.136

  Ribbentrop repeated the need to keep the Balkans quiet when he met the Italian ambassador, Alfieri, on 16 August. It was crucial, the German Foreign Minister stated, to avoid action that would disturb the status quo there. The Russians should be given no pretext for intervention. The defe
at of Britain was the absolute priority.137 Ciano noted the outcome of Ribbentrop’s talks with Alfieri in his diary the following day. It was ‘necessary to abandon any plan to attack Yugoslavia’, and ‘an eventual action against Greece is not at all welcome in Berlin’. He summed up: ‘It is a complete order to halt all along the line.’138

  Mussolini bowed to the pressure, though Ciano ensured that anti-Greek propaganda continued in the Italian press and three army divisions were put on stand-by for dispatch to Albania.139 Following a reassertion of German anxiety to avoid trouble in the region, stated in plain terms by Ribbentrop to Alfieri at a further meeting on 19 August, Mussolini gave orders three days later to slow down preparations for Yugoslavia and Greece. North Africa again had military priority–though Mussolini continued to give out directives, quite incompatible with Italy’s limited resources, for preparations in different possible theatres of war.140 Ciano recorded that ‘the actions against Yugoslavia and Greece are indefinitely postponed’.141 In the case of Yugoslavia, this was accurate. The operation was effectively abandoned. Hopes had to rest on what Italy could gain in the eventual peace settlement, once Britain had been defeated. Greece, however, was a somewhat different matter. Ciano duly passed on to Jacomoni in Albania the orders from ‘higher authorities’ to ‘slow down the pace of our moves against Greece’. He instructed him, nonetheless, to take the necessary steps to maintain ‘in a state of potential efficiency all the dispositions made’, avoiding crisis but ‘keeping the question alive’.142 Military plans for an attack on Greece were also continued and refined.143

  Badoglio evidently thought, even so, that the planners were going through the motions. Word was passed from Supreme Command headquarters to the air force chief of staff, Francesco Pricolo, on 10 September that ‘Greece is off’.144 Mussolini did not, however, see it like that. Though he had given up on Yugoslavia (which could only have been attacked with help from the north from Germany, if serious losses were to be avoided), he was not ready to discard the option to attack Greece as soon as it was feasible. This would be an Italian triumph without hanging on to German coat-tails. More than that: it would ensure that the Balkans did remain Italy’s sphere of influence, heading off the possibility, starting to be rumoured, that despite all assurances the Germans intended to stamp their own imprint on the region.145 However, Mussolini’s views changed with his moods. Consistency was not his strong point. On the last day of August, Quirino Armellini, Badoglio’s deputy at Supreme Command headquarters, commented in his diary: ‘Ciano wants war on Greece to enlarge the boundaries of his grand duchy; Badoglio sees how great a mistake it would be to set the Balkans alight (that is the German position) and wishes to avoid it; and the Duce agrees now with one and now with the other.’146 There, for an uneasy month of September, the matter rested.

  By the time Ribbentrop visited Rome between 19 and 22 September, bringing a new ‘surprise’147–a military alliance with Japan which he wanted Italy to sign alongside Germany within the next few days–the prospects of an imminent German invasion of England were fading.148 A long-drawn-out war seemed increasingly likely. Mussolini was not displeased. He still thought a rapid end would be ‘catastrophic’, as he told Badoglio on the day of Ribbentrop’s departure.149 He was in a buoyant mood. He thought that, with the Germans bogged down in the conflict with Britain, Italy had a chance over the winter to advance through Egypt to Suez, without German aid, and destroy the basis of British strength in the Middle East. Badoglio was just as anxious to prevent the Germans from becoming involved in Italy’s ‘parallel war’. Ribbentrop had again indicated that Germany wanted no disturbance in the Balkans in the foreseeable future, though he once more acknowledged that Greece and Yugoslavia were a matter of exclusively Italian interest.150 Mussolini said he would not move against either for the time being, though he took the opportunity to remind Ribbentrop that in the Mediterranean Greece played much the same role in support for Britain as Norway had earlier done in the north.151

  Ciano did his best to ensure that the question of Greece should not drop from sight. He was still impatient for action.152 He doctored the Italian version of the minutes of his meeting with Ribbentrop to ensure that they mentioned the necessity of proceeding to ‘the liquidation of Greece’–a phrase which did not appear in the German version.153 And he mentioned to the papal nuncio shortly afterwards that Italy soon, though not immediately, intended to occupy all of Greece because of the untrustworthiness of the Greeks.154 He seems to have had in mind a rapid military conquest at little cost to acquire Greece as a bargaining counter in a compromise peace settlement, the most likely outcome, he envisaged, of a deteriorating war situation.155

  Meanwhile, army contingency planning continued. But Badoglio reminded army staff in early October that there was no early likelihood of action.156 With priority given to north Africa, and more than half of the army in Italy demobilized to help with the harvest, the resources of manpower, limited in any case, were already stretched to the limit and would remain so over the winter.157 Plans for an attack on Greece were shelved.

  They remained dormant during the first days of October. While Ciano had been in Berlin for the signing of the Tripartite Pact on 27 September, Hitler had suggested a meeting with Mussolini at the Brenner Pass. He wanted to review the overall situation in the war, and in particular the position in the Mediterranean, notably the question of Spanish intervention in the war and relations with France. The meeting took place on 4 October. Mussolini was in fine form. He had been in good humour for some days. He was anticipating ‘that Italy could score in Egypt a success which affords her the glory she has sought in vain for three centuries’ (though he was irritated with Badoglio, whom he blamed for holding back the offensive).158 The meeting went well. Mussolini received renewed German backing for Italy’s territorial claims against France: Nice, Corsica, Tunis and Djibouti.159 He expressed his confidence in Italian success in Egypt. He had no need, he said, to avail himself of Hitler’s offer of specialist forces for the attack.160 Mussolini returned to Rome in a sunny mood, irritated only by the sluggishness of Badoglio and Graziani over north Africa and voicing his detestation of the King, ‘the only defeatist in the country’.161

  Within days, however, an issue was to arise which would cast a dark shadow over Mussolini’s sunny demeanour, and over relations between the Axis partners: the stationing of German troops in Romania. The Germans had engineered an ‘invitation’ from the new Romanian dictator, General Ion Antonescu, in early September to send a ‘military mission’ to his country. Crucial from the German point of view was the safeguarding of the Ploesti oilfields. By mid-September, before Ribbentrop visited Rome, the Italians had known of the plans to send German troops to the Ploesti area. Ribbentrop had expressly referred to them when he met Ciano on 19 September, but Ciano had evidently not passed on this important fact to Mussolini.162 The Ploesti oil was also vital to Italy. Moreover, Mussolini had always regarded the Danube as an area of specific Italian interests. So there was particular sensitivity on the issue; and also on the way Italy was handled by her Axis partner. The sensitivity exploded when Mussolini heard from press reports (which actually anticipated the event) that 15,000 German troops had arrived in Romania. For Mussolini this was a highly unwelcome reminder of the way Hitler had repeatedly informed him of significant German actions only after they had taken place.163 He was absolutely incensed. He immediately sought, in vain, to attain a similar ‘invitation’ to have Italian troops sent to the area. ‘He is very angry,’ Ciano remarked, ‘because only German forces are present in the Romanian oil regions.’164 Ciano told Bottai that it was necessary ‘for us to counterbalance their occupation of Romania by invading Greece’.165 Ribbentrop tried to placate Ciano by telephone on 10 October, and reminded him that he had spoken about the issue in Rome on 19 September. Ciano made no comment. The damage was done.166

  Within two days Mussolini had taken the decision to attack Greece as soon as preparations could be made. On 12 October, on ret
urn to Rome from a few days in the north of the country inspecting Fascist organizations, he was angered by news of further delay before Graziani would begin the long-awaited offensive in north Africa. What he heard from Romania was guaranteed to make him even more irascible. German troops had begun arriving in Bucharest. Not only that: officials in Ribbentrop’s ministry had high-handedly wanted to block any reportage of this in the Italian press; and Antonescu would probably only permit the stationing of Italian troops in Romania if the Germans agreed.167 Mussolini’s fury boiled over. Incensed at the slight on his and his country’s prestige, he was anxious to retaliate. ‘Hitler always faces me with a fait accompli,’ he fumed to Ciano. ‘This time I am going to pay him back in his own coin. He will find out from the papers that I have occupied Greece. In this way the equilibrium will be re-established.’ Mussolini admitted that he had not yet reached agreement with Badoglio about military operations against Greece. ‘But I shall send in my resignation as an Italian if anyone objects to our fighting the Greeks,’ he added. ‘The Duce seems determined to act now,’ noted Ciano, delighted that what he had long advocated would at long last happen. The Foreign Minister thought the military operation would be ‘useful and easy’.168

  In this extreme fit of pique and wounded pride, the fateful decision to attack Greece was taken. Not just a sense of personal humiliation, but his standing among the Italian population propelled Mussolini to action. Up to now he had little more than the insignificant conquest in August of the barren outpost of British Somaliland to preen himself about to the Italian people as the spoils of war.169 He was concerned about the impact on public opinion in Italy of yet another German unilateral move. It would be seen as a further, and wounding, example of the inexorable subordination of Italy to the German juggernaut. A quick victory in Greece would restore the balance, boost his own prestige and bring, at last, a share of the spoils for Italy.170