Mussolini and the Origins of the Second World War, 1933-1940 (review)

Robert Mallett's new survey of Fascist foreign policy from 1933 to the outbreak of the war offers one more piece of evidence to show that Mussolini willingly aligned with Nazi Germany and closed the door to any option of balancing between the western democracies and Hitler. A decisive moment came at the time of the Ethiopian war, when Mussolini hoped to win British acquiescence for the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. When this consent was not forthcoming, the Duce turned deeply hostile to Britain. But the irreparable break came, as Mallett shows convincingly, during the Spanish Civil War. Italy was drawn in by ideological and strategic ambitions. The conflict became a running sore. Mussolini refused any British overtures to reduce his commitment to Franco's victory. In fact, as the war went on, the Duce seemed to grow more and more contemptuous of the British and more determined to assert his will in the Mediterranean. For his part, Neville Chamberlain, if not Anthony Eden, consistently overestimated Italian military strength.

Mallett ably documents each step of the process by which Spain destroyed any hope of an understanding between Italy and the western democracies. Mallett does not necessarily break new ground in his analysis of the Hitler-Mussolini relationship. The Italian leader allied with Nazi Germany as the only means by which an anti-British and anti-French Mediterranean policy could be carried out. Italian preoccupations about this alliance, especially from Marshal Pietro Badoglio and Italo Balbo, were brushed aside, as Nazi foreign policy successes created a sense of euphoria in the Duce. By 1937 and 1938 Mussolini was convinced that history favored the fascist powers and that alignment with Germany was a winning card. To stoke Italian fervor, the Nazis shrewdly played on Italian fears that the British would reach an accommodation with Germany to freeze out Italy.

Far from acting as a restraint on Hitler's policy, Mussolini supported Nazi aggression from the remilitarization of the Rhineland to the annexation of Austria. Mallett offers an interesting interpretation of the Munich crisis. No innocent bystander, the Duce hoped to use the outbreak of war over Czechoslovakia to launch his own strike against Britain and France in the Mediterranean. Only when the Italian military chiefs convinced him that war would be disastrous, did the Duce respond to British overtures for mediation. If this somewhat speculative interpretation is true, it reveals an even more reckless side to Mussolinian diplomacy. Even in the summer of 1939 Hitler dangled before Mussolini the possibility of a strike against Yugoslavia to coincide with a general war in Europe. Only total Italian unreadiness for war held him back.

Mallett's work and the recent On the Fiery March: Mussolini Prepares for War (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003) by G. Bruce Strang confirm our picture of Mussolini, bloated by artificial success and driven by ideological fantasies of a new Mediterranean empire for Italy, lurching toward disaster.