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

by Ian Kershaw

  Though Mussolini’s power was not absolute, it nonetheless expanded massively between 1925 and 1940, to the point where it approached that of an ‘absolutist prince’ whose decisions were subject to no effective control.36 Crucial to this development were the gradually increased centralization of control over the party, the growth and elaboration of the extravagant Duce cult, and the impact of the Abyssinian war on Mussolini’s standing.

  From 1925 onwards, the residual independence of the provincial Fascist bosses, the ras, was undermined by the relentless bureaucratic centralization of the party’s organization. By the early 1930s, even the most autonomous regional chieftains, such as Roberto Farinacci, the hardline boss of Cremona and party secretary for a brief time in the mid-1920s, had seen their wings clipped. Two general secretaries, ultra-loyal to Mussolini, Augusto Turati and Achille Starace, successfully purged the most unruly elements in the early Fascist movement then converted the party into a huge, enormously bloated organization largely devoted to the attempt to mobilize the masses behind the regime, and especially its leader, and to indoctrinate them in the aims and tenets of Fascism. In these years, the aesthetics of power were carefully honed and orchestrated. By the end of the 1930s the party was vast in size. On the eve of the European war, almost half of the population had formal membership of the party or one of its sub-organizations.37 But doctrinally, the impact of Fascism was shallow. Ideological commitment to the regime and the ‘fighting spirit’ of Fascism that Mussolini was anxious to inculcate into the population remained limited–certainly far less profound than the impact of Nazism on the German population.38

  The Fascist Party had been turned by the 1930s largely into an enormous vehicle of Duce adulation. The full-blown excrescence of the Duce cult accompanied this development. The pseudo-religious strains in the belief that the Duce ‘was always right’, as Fascist propaganda repeatedly told the population, need no emphasis. And such belief could easily coexist–as did the quasi-deification of Hitler in Germany–with limited allegiance either to the Fascist Party, or its doctrines.39 But, plainly, the manufacture of the Duce cult produced a level of popular acclamation that enormously strengthened Mussolini’s position of power. By the early 1930s he felt strong enough to remove from major office almost all of the earlier prominent figures in the Fascist movement who might have posed some check to his mounting domination. Some bore grudges which would become apparent when Mussolini was later at his most vulnerable, at the Fascist Grand Council’s fateful meeting in July 1943. But, for the foreseeable future, the former Fascist potentates, divided and without collective voice, saw their power reduced to personal dependence upon Mussolini.40 The Duce had bolstered his own position at the expense of his once mighty Fascist comrades. Their replacements were largely mediocrities, outright Mussolini acolytes.

  Mussolini himself took back in hand some of the most important ministries, including, in 1933, foreign affairs (seen as too emollient in the hands of the former Foreign Minister and Fascist boss of Bologna, Dino Grandi) and the military ministries.41 It was a sign that foreign policy was soon to become more assertive. In relation to the other ‘big battalions’ in the regime–such as big business, the state bureaucracy, the military leadership and, not least, the King himself–Mussolini’s popular standing now meant that he was less easy to challenge, that the scope of his domination had increased. The ‘power cartel’, in other words, though continuing to exist, saw the actual balance of power tip sharply in Mussolini’s favour as the 1930s wore on. This meant that the aggressive expansionism to which Mussolini was wedded, especially once he had himself fallen victim to the Duce cult and swallowed the myth of his own infallibility, became a more prominent part of Fascist politics, and was less easy to block by those fearful of its consequences for the country.

  A major boost to the inflated domination of the Duce was provided by the Abyssinian war. This was in a real sense Mussolini’s war. He had planned for it since 1932. He had pressed resolutely for it and engineered the way to it, despite the attempts by the League of Nations to find a diplomatic solution that would favour Italy. He pushed through the decision for war against alarmist warnings by Badoglio that it would result in war with Britain; against the caution of the conservative establishment that hated risk and also feared embroilment in a wider conflagration; and, not least, against the anxieties of the King, who, Mussolini later claimed, had to be forced to go to war.42 Once victory was attained the following spring, Mussolini’s triumph, trumpeted ceaselessly in a huge outpouring of adulatory propaganda, was complete. His own position had received another massive boost. His ‘heroic’ image had been burnished still more brightly. The Duce cult reached its apogee. In matters of war and peace, especially, Mussolini towered above all other figures in the regime. His dominance of foreign affairs was not diminished when Ciano, before the war ultra-loyal to Mussolini, took over the Foreign Ministry in 1936. The Abyssinian war had another important consequence for the power-structure in Italy. The old elites, including the King, had not wanted to go to war. But they rejoiced in the glory it brought (even if Mussolini later complained that the King deserved none).43 More than that, they had favoured the expansionist goals, which had their roots in the pre-1914 imperialist dreams of the conservative establishment and the Liberal governments,44 even while fearing the repercussions of conflict with the western democracies. And they had become complicit in the savagery of the war in Abyssinia once it had started. The barbarous initiatives in the conduct of the war came as a rule from the military elite rather than from Mussolini himself, though the Duce certainly gave the orders for measures of gross inhumanity.45

  Following the war in Abyssinia, the commitment to Germany through the formation of the Axis, Italy’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War, the part played by Mussolini in brokering the Munich Agreement and the annexation of Albania were all indicators that policy-making in foreign affairs had increasingly become the direct and personal province of the Duce, aided and abetted by Ciano. In matters of war and peace, decision-making was by now highly personalized. Discussion was, it was said, not a part of the ‘Fascist style’. Sudden decisions reflected ‘Napoleonic’ qualities.46 By March 1938 Mussolini was claiming equal status with that of the King as supreme commander of the armed forces.47 The supposed representative bodies of the Fascist state, the Fascist Grand Council, the Senate (long since confined to Mussolini’s appointees) and the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations (the eventual successor, in 1939, to the long moribund remnants of the Chamber of Deputies, the old parliament), had no input into decisions.48 No institutional gathering or corporate body existed where decisions were collectively reached. The Council of Ministers bore only the most superficial resemblance to the Cabinet of a democratic system of government. It met only when Mussolini summoned it, invariably merely to hear his pronouncements, and was wholly under his dominance; a receptacle for decisions already taken, rather than an agency for helping to shape policy. Mussolini himself decided. In this, the position was directly analogous to that of Hitler’s Germany, with the qualification that in the latter case there was no ultimate source of possible constraint on action, whereas Mussolini still had to reckon with the approval of the King, as head of state and focus of army loyalty.

  There were only two vehicles within the Fascist state with the potential to influence Mussolini’s power of decision on the crucial issues of war and peace. One was the Foreign Ministry, where Ciano’s line began in 1939 to veer sharply away from that of his father-in-law in an anxiety to avoid a war that he thought would prove disastrous. However, this was no more than tactical opposition, born out of fear of the consequences of Mussolini’s gung-ho wish to embroil Italy in war. Ciano, who harboured private hopes of succeeding Mussolini one day, was equally wedded to notions of expansion, quite especially in the Balkans. And the dilettante exercise of his position as Foreign Minister meant that the advice he gave to Mussolini was often personalized, rather than emanating from the expertise of the ministry’s
professionals. Fascist appointees to higher civil service positions had to some extent radicalized the personnel of a ministry in any case traditionally predisposed to expansion.49 Beyond that, Ciano had instituted a top tier of the ministry, staffed by favourites and yes-men, which reduced the influence of the traditional apparatus.50

  The other sphere of possible influence on Mussolini, as we have already noted, was that of his military advisers (and behind them, the King). They had somewhat reluctantly backed Mussolini in the decision to attack Abyssinia in 1935. But Mussolini had been proved right, which strengthened his own position. A practised servility gradually set in even among his senior military advisers. Generals and admirals, admitted to an audience with the Duce, would run twenty yards across his enormous room in the Palazzo Venezia before stopping to raise their arms in the Fascist salute.51 What the military leaders were nonetheless able to convey to Mussolini in 1939 was the lack of readiness of the armed forces for conflict with the western democracies. With extreme reluctance, Mussolini had at the last minute bowed to the pressure from Ciano and his military advisers, and finally conceded when the King had made known his opposition to war.

  Mussolini took the decision not to march alongside Germany as a major blow to his (and Italy’s) prestige. The next months would see him smarting under the tension between his instinct for war and his acceptance that his armed forces were in no fit state to fight one. He could do no more than hope for opportunities. They would soon present themselves.

  III

  On 4 September 1939, the day after Great Britain and France had declared war on Germany, Mussolini made plain to Ciano his full solidarity with Hitler’s Reich. He was convinced that the French did not want to fight. (He said nothing of Britain, though Ciano’s own view was that British involvement ensured that the war would be ‘long, uncertain and relentless’.) The Duce went on to indicate, according to Ciano, that ‘he is still dreaming of heroic undertakings against Yugoslavia which would bring him to the Romanian oil’. In more sober mood, Ciano implied, the Duce was reconciled to neutrality in order to build up the economic and military strength to intervene ‘at the proper moment’. But then he would suddenly revert to the idea, still attractive to him, of joining Germany in the conflict. Ciano felt he had to continue to dissuade Mussolini from this course. ‘Otherwise’, he prophetically added, ‘it will mean the ruin of the country, the ruin of Fascism, and the ruin of the Duce himself.’52

  German successes in Poland convinced Mussolini that he would soon be able to act as mediator in a new peace settlement. But, despite reminders of Italy’s lamentable state of military preparedness–owing in no small measure to the endemic, irremediable inefficiency within the bureaucracy of the armed forces; only ten of the country’s sixty-seven divisions were fit for combat in mid-September and the shortage of basic supplies was extraordinary53–and the strength of anti-German feeling among the Italian population, his regrets were plainly that he could not fight on Germany’s side. A ‘great nation’, he thought, could not sustain a position of neutrality for long ‘without losing face’. It must prepare to intervene.54 Yet preparing –and waiting–were all that the frustrated Mussolini could do. He also fluctuated in his confidence of ultimate German victory. He even intimated that a bloody stalemate between Germany and the western powers, leaving Italy to mop up the pieces, would suit him best.55 As late as spring 1940 he was envisaging any German attack on France as likely to prove both bloody and indecisive.56 Jealous of Hitler’s successes, he would not have been unhappy to see the German dictator ‘slowed down’.57

  But what if the opposite were to happen? Hitler had made plain, when he met Ciano in Berlin on 1 October, that the fates of Germany and Italy were inextricably tied together. Defeat for Germany would mean the end of Italy’s dreams of becoming masters of the Mediterranean. And, though showing understanding for the stance of non-belligerence, Hitler intimated that ‘at a certain moment, Italy will have to profit from the favourable possibilities which will present themselves in order to join resolutely in the fray’.58 Mussolini was tormented that a German triumph would come too soon; that Italy would still not be in a position to profit from the opportunity. He knew that Italy could not be ready before 1942 at the earliest.59 And Italy, as he told Hitler, could not commit herself to a long war.60 But he ‘would like to do something that would get us into the game’, Ciano noted that autumn. ‘He feels left out, and this pains him.’61

  Soon after the war had started, Mussolini had spoken of Italy’s intervention any time after May 1940. But this optimism soon evaporated. Reports reaching him by the end of the year on the state of military preparations were depressing in the extreme. The army and navy would not be completely ready before 1943–4, the air force earlier, though not before mid-1941. Even such estimates drew on hope more than experience. Mussolini had to abandon hopes of fighting in 1940. He rescheduled the likely date for intervention to the second half of 1941.62

  Intervention, even if earlier than desirable in terms of military preparations, would still give Italy a unique chance, not to be missed, to attain the goals that Mussolini had held for many years: end British and French dominance in the Mediterranean, turning it into an ‘Italian lake’; in so doing, open Italy’s access to the oceans, the platform needed for any great power; and bring the Balkans under Italian sway. The concept was of a parallel war–a war within a war. Already in autumn 1939, Mussolini, backed by Ciano, was eyeing up Yugoslavia as a likely target of Italian attack in the foreseeable future, with the aim of turning Croatia into a puppet state. Italy’s military planners thought this project one within the capabilities even of the Italian armed forces, and sought to be ready for action in this sphere as early as the following spring. Greece, however, backed by the British guarantee, was another matter. ‘Greece is not on our path,’ Mussolini had declared.63 He meant: not for the time being. In the event, no move could be undertaken against Yugoslavia either. Any major disturbance in the Balkans was simply too risky at this stage. It would have to wait until Italy’s intervention in a wider conflict offered more propitious circumstances to strike in the Balkans.

  By spring 1940 Mussolini was presuming that a German offensive against France would not be long delayed. In mid-March 1940, just prior to meeting Hitler at the Brenner Pass, Mussolini was anticipating that his co-dictator would ‘set off the powder keg’ before long, and attack in the west. In this event, Italy would retain solidarity with Germany, but still not enter the war until the moment was ripe. He was not thinking of throwing Italian troops into the heat of a front-line battle alongside the Wehrmacht against the seasoned French army. Treading a fine line between non-belligerence and participation in the conflict, he told Ciano that Italian forces would ‘tie up an equal number of enemy troops without fighting, but ready, none the less, to go into action at a convenient moment’.64

  Speaking to Hitler at their Brenner meeting on 18 March, Mussolini declared Italy’s entry into the war to be ‘inevitable’. This was not on the grounds of military aid for the German war effort–Germany, he said, could manage on her own–but ‘because the honour and the interest of Italy demand her intervention in the war’. However, Mussolini was compelled to add that the earliest Italy could intervene would be in around four months’ time, when four new battleships would be ready and the air force also prepared. Nor would Italy’s financial situation (the country, as he knew, was almost bankrupt, though he did not of course tell Hitler this) allow her to fight a long war. Hitler pointed out that, with France beaten, Britain would be forced to sue for peace and Italy would be master of the Mediterranean. In the attack on France, he envisaged Italian troops advancing alongside the Wehrmacht into the Rhóne valley. The Italian air force, he added, if a decisive breakthrough should be dependent upon Italy’s contribution, ought in coordination with the Luftwaffe to attack French aerodromes from the south. Mussolini did not respond directly to the points on military tactics. But Hitler had succeeded in his psychological pressure on Mu
ssolini. He had prodded him in the direction that the Duce was in any case temperamentally inclined to go. Mussolini now effectively confirmed to his fellow dictator that Italy would enter the war on Germany’s side. He went on to state that he would intervene ‘as soon as Germany had advanced victoriously’, and would lose no time, if the Allies had been so shattered by the German attack, in delivering the second knockout blow. Should the advance of the German troops be slow, he would wait, and time Italy’s intervention to be of maximum use to Germany.65

  The meeting can only have reinforced Mussolini’s sense of inferiority towards Hitler. He hated having to play second fiddle, keeping quiet most of the time while Hitler did the talking. But at least his fears that Hitler was immediately going to fall on France were assuaged. He returned from the Brenner persuaded that, contrary to what he had assumed before the meeting, the German offensive was not imminent.66 But whenever it came, he had now committed Italy to intervention outright.