by Ian Kershaw
42. Knox, Common Destiny, p. 96; Burgwyn, p. 120; John Whittam, Fascist Italy, Manchester, 1995, p. 113.
43. Knox, Common Destiny, p. 96.
44. R. J. B. Bosworth, Italy, the Least of the Great Powers. Italian Foreign Policy before the First World War, Cambridge, 1979, esp. chs. 1, 2, 4, emphasizes the the broad consensus among the social and political elites behind Italy’s pre-war great-power ambitions.
45. Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 255; Mack Smith, Mussolini as a Military Leader, p. 7.
46. Mack Smith, Mussolini as a Military Leader, pp. 5, 31.
47. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 10, 18.
48. Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 347.
49. See Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 246.
50. Burgwyn, pp. 145–6.
51. Mack Smith, Mussolini as a Military Leader, p. 5.
52. Ciano’s Diary, pp. 144–5.
53. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 55–6.
54. Ciano’s Diary, pp. 145–6, 151, 157 (quotation p. 157).
55. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 62.
56. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 79.
57. Ciano’s Diary, p. 163.
58. Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, ed. Malcolm Muggeridge, London, 1948, pp. 314–15 (quotation p. 314).
59. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 61.
60. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 68; DGFP, 8, doc. 504, pp. 608–9 (letter of Mussolini to Hitler, written on 3.1.40, but sent, with minor amendments, on 5.1.40). Ciano thought Mussolini’s letter ‘a fine document, full of wisdom and restraint’ (Ciano’s Diary, p. 194).
61. Ciano’s Diary, p. 164.
62. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 71, 75.
63. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 52–4, quotation p. 52.
64. Ciano’s Diary, pp. 222–3.
65. Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, pp. 364–5; Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler. Vertrauliche Aufzeichnungen über die Unterredungen mit Vertretern des Auslandes 1939–1941, ed. Andreas Hillgruber, paperback edn., Munich, 1969, pp. 52–3, 55, 57; DGFP, 9, doc. 1, pp. 1–16.
66. Ciano’s Diary, pp. 224–5.
67. Ciano’s Diary, pp. 225–6.
68. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 89; DDI, vol. 3, doc. 669, pp. 576–9; Burgwyn, p. 212. See also Ciano’s Diary, p. 232.
69. Ciano’s Diary, p. 231.
70. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 90–91, 93–4.
71. Ciano’s Diary, pp. 234, 235, 236 and 243, and see Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 108.
72. Ciano’s Diary, p. 221.
73. Ciano’s Diary, p. 253. For the changing climate of opinion regarding war, see Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini’s Roman Empire, London/New York, 1976, pp. 209–13.
74. Giuseppe Bottai, Diario 1935–1944, ed. Giordano Bruno Guerri, Milan, 1982, p. 192.
75. See Knox, Common Destiny, pp. 113–47, for a penetrating analysis of the elements of continuity and break in Mussolini’s foreign policy. See also R. J. B. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship. Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism, London, 1998, pp. 99–101; and Stephen Corrado Azzi, ‘The Historiography of Fascist Foreign Policy’, Historical Journal, 36 (1993), pp. 187–203, atpp. 196–7, 199–200.
76. Ciano’s Diary, pp. 249, 256.
77. Ciano’s Diary, p. 250.
78. Ciano’s Diary, p. 254.
79. Ciano’s Diary, pp. 249, 250, 261.
80. Ciano’s Diary, p. 261; Mack Smith, Mussolini’s Roman Empire, p. 214; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 104–5.
81. Ciano’s Diary, p. 258; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 104–5.
82. Ciano’s Diary, p. 257.
83. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 119, 121–3.
84. Moseley, p. 103.
85. Reynolds and Eleanor Packard, Balcony Empire. Fascist Italy at War, London, 1943, p. 82.
86. Quoted in Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 111–12.
87. Ciano’s Diary, p. 255.
88. Max Domarus (ed.), Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, Wiesbaden, 1973, p. 1518; Ciano’s Diary, p. 257. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 117, has Hitler meeting Alfieri on 31 May at Bad Godesberg, but a Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro report mentions the meeting at the Felsennest the previous day.
89. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 116.
90. Pietro Badoglio, Italy in the Second World War. Memories and Documents, London/New York/Toronto, 1948, pp. 14–15.
91. Badoglio, pp. 15–16.
92. Elizabeth Wiskemann, The Rome–Berlin Axis. A Study of the Relations between Hitler and Mussolini, London, 1966, p. 255.
93. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 116; DDI, vol. 4, doc. 642, pp. 495–7; Badoglio, pp. 15–17.
94. Ciano’s Diary, pp. 256–7.
95. Ciano’s Diary, p. 259.
96. Packard and Packard, pp. 85–6.
97. Bottai, p. 193.
98. Badoglio, p. 20.
99. Ciano’s Diary, p. 264. For the lack of enthusiasm of the crowd, see also Rintelen, p. 85.
100. Luigi Villari, Italian Foreign Policy under Mussolini, London, 1959, p. 255.
101. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2: Their Finest Hour, London, 1949, p. 106.
102. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 71–4.
103. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 82.
104. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 107.
105. See Rintelen, p. 93, who states that it would have been more expedient (for German war strategy) had Italy retained her ‘non-belligerent’ status and the Mediterranean remained out of the direct conflict.
106. Moseley, pp. 106–7.
107. Ciano’s Diary, p. 266.
108. Ciano’s Diary, p. 267. Ciano thought the Duce feared ‘that the hour of peace is growing near and sees that unattainable dream of his life, glory on the field of battle, fading once again’.
109. Ciano’s Diary, p. 268; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 129–30.
110. Ciano’s Diary, p. 269.
111. Ciano’s Diary, pp. 270–71.
112. Bottai, p. 204.
113. Ciano’s Diary, p. 278.
114. Mack Smith, Mussolini, p. 294.
115. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 138.
116. Mack Smith, Mussolini, p. 295.
117. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 134–7, 155–65; William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941, New York, 1953.
118. Ciano’s Diary, p. 87.
119. Mario Cervi, The Hollow Legions. Mussolini’s Blunder in Greece, 1940–1941, London, 1972, pp. 7–10; also Mack Smith, Mussolini, p. 271. Ciano had written in his diary on 12 September 1939 that Mussolini had given ‘instructions for an understanding with Greece, a country too poor for us to covet’ (Ciano’s Diary, p. 151).
120. Bottai, p. 191 (25.5.40).
121. Bottai, p. 224 (29.6.40).
122. Archivio Centrale, Rome, Carte Graziani, b. 42, Roatta Diary, 7.7.40.
123. Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, pp. 377–8; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 139–42; Cervi, pp. 14–17; Ehrengard Schramm-von Thadden, Griechenland und die Großmächte im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Wiesbaden, 1955, pp. 48–51.
124. DRZW, vol. 3, 1984, p. 360. Roatta had nevertheless somehow gleaned information of Hitler’s comment to Ciano that it was essential not to disturb the peace in the Balkans, from which the deduction was easily reached ‘that we should do nothing against Yugoslavia’ (Roatta Diary, 14.7.40).
125. Ciano’s Diary, p. 281.
126. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 166–7.
127. Ciano’s Diary, pp. 281–2.
128. Ciano’s Diary, p. 282.
129. Cervi, pp. 18–23; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 167–71.
130. Cervi, p. 34; Moseley, p. 114.
131. Ciano’s Diary, pp. 282–3.
132. Ciano’s Diary, p. 283.
133. The anti-Italian feeling intensified when an old Greek cruiser, the Helli, was torpedoed on 15 August by a submarine that everyone presumed–correctly, as it turned out–to be Italian
. The truth about the incident only emerged long after the war. It had been instigated, on his own initiative, by one of the Duce’s particularly wild underlings, the notably arrogant and impetuous Fascist veteran Cesare Maria De Vecchi di Val Cismon, governor of the Italian islands in the Aegean (Cervi, pp. 29–32).
134. Quoted in Cervi, pp. 22–3; varying trans. in DGFP, 10, doc. 333, pp. 471–2.
135. Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, p. 381.
136. DRZW, vol. 3, p. 361; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 174.
137. Cervi, p. 23.
138. Ciano’s Diary, p. 284.
139. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 175–6.
140. DDI, vol. 5, p. 436; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 176–7; DRZW, vol. 3, p. 365; Cervi, pp. 24, 42–3; Roatta Diary, 22.8.40.
141. Ciano’s Diary, p. 285.
142. Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, p. 385.
143. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 178–9.
144. Quoted in Cervi, p. 43; see also Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 181.
145. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 186.
146. Quoted in Cervi, p. 45.
147. Ciano’s phrase: Ciano’s Diary, p. 291.
148. Enno von Rintelen, the German military attaché in Rome, had already indicated in early August that, though the offensive against England was in full preparation, its realization presented ‘serious difficulties’ (Roatta Diary, 7.8.40).
149. Cited in Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 191.
150. Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, p. 391.
151. Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, p. 392; Schramm-von Thadden, p. 88; DGFP, 11, doc. 73, p. 121; DRZW, vol. 3, p. 369.
152. Moseley, p. 115, citing the comments of General Puntoni, the aide-de-camp to the King, that ‘Ciano showed an impatience to give a lesson to Greece for its conduct which, he says, is ambiguous’.
153. Schramm-von Thadden, pp. 88–90; DRZW, vol. 3, p. 370; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 190.
154. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 196–7.
155. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 197.
156. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 195.
157. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 193–4; Renzo De Felice, Mussolini l’alleato 1940–1945, vol. 1, Turin, 1990, pp. 295–6; Cervi, pp. 56–7; DRZW, vol. 3, p. 372.
158. Ciano’s Diary, p. 294.
159. The support lacked real warmth, however. When Ciano had presented, for a country that had scarcely been involved in any fighting, an embarrassingly long list of territorial demands at his meeting with Hitler on 7 July, Ribbentrop, no less, had told him that ‘one must be moderate and not have eyes bigger than one’s stomach’. Paul Schmidt, Statist auf diplomatischer Bühne 1923–45. Erlebnisse des Chefdolmetschers im Auswärtigen Amt mit den Staatsmännern Europas, Bonn, 1953, pp. 502–3; F. W. Deakin, The Brutal Friendship. Mussolini, Hitler and the Fall of Italian Fascism, London, 1962, p. 11.
160. Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, pp. 395–8; Ciano’s Diary, p. 296.
161. Ciano’s Diary, p. 296.
162. Schramm-von Thadden, pp. 88–9, 96. One tantalizing fragment of information passed from Soddu to Roatta suggests that Hitler and Mussolini might have agreed privately at the Brenner–though there is no mention in the official minutes of their meeting–that an Italian regiment should accompany the German military mission to Romania (Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 202; De Felice, p. 297). Knox surmises that the comment derived from a private téte-à-téte between Mussolini and Hitler. It seems unlikely, however, that Hitler gave any specific promise. And whether Soddu’s information related to a comment made, or an Italian presumption deriving from a misunderstanding, cannot be determined. Ciano denied to Bottai that there had been any discussion at the Brenner of the German move into Romania (Bottai, p. 227).
163. De Felice (p. 297) dismisses the notion that Mussolini could have been taken completely by surprise at the German intervention in Romania, since the Italian Foreign Ministry had been informed of the positive German response to the Romanian ‘request’ to send troops. He accepts, however, that Mussolini might have been taken by surprise at the speed of the German action. But surely not just that; the manner in which he learned of the arrival of the German detachment could only have infuriated him.
164. Ciano’s Diary, p. 297.
165. Bottai, p. 227.
166. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 187, 203, 205–7; DRZW, vol. 3, pp. 374–5.
167. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 207–8.
168. Ciano’s Diary, p. 297. He told Bottai, however, that the military task would be harder than it would have been in August, when he was urging action, though he was still certain of success (Bottai, p. 227).
169. Churchill, The Second World War, vol 2, pp. 383–4; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 152–3.
170. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 208–9. A secondary motive was, perhaps, as De Felice, pp. 300–305, suggests, that victory over Greece would ensure him the bargaining power he would need were his fellow dictator to attempt to discuss peace terms with Vichy France at the cost of Italy’s territorial claims, as seemed distinctly possible following Hitler’s meetings with Laval and Pétain.
171. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 202; Martin van Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy 1940–1941. The Balkan Clue, Cambridge, 1973, p. 34.
172. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 208.
173. Quoted in Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 209; see also Schramm-von Thadden, p. 101; DRZW, vol. 3, pp. 376–7; and on the earlier planning, Cervi, pp. 36–7.
174. Cervi, pp. 61–2. A note from Mussolini to Graziani, soon after the Brenner meeting on 4 October, had nevertheless given a first indication that the occupation of the whole of the Greek mainland, not just Ciamuria, would be the objective of an invasion (Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy, pp. 35–6).
175. Cervi, p. 62; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 210.
176. Schramm-von Thadden, p. 102; Cervi, p. 65; Mack Smith, Mussolini as a Military Leader, p. 31. Badoglio, p. 26, has Cavagnari and Pricolo in attendance, but this seems to be an error of memory.
177. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 211.
178. Text in DDI, vol. 5, doc. 728, pp. 699–705; reproduced in Schramm-von Thadden, pp. 209–17; quotations above from the English translation in Cervi, pp. 311–20. See also the summary in Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 211–14 and the caustic comments on the meeting by Mack Smith, Mussolini’s Roman Empire, pp. 232–3. The account by Sebastiano Visconti Prasca, Io ho aggredito la Grecia, 2nd edn., Milan, 1947, pp. 61–70, claimed that the stenograph of the meeting had been ‘doctored’ by Mussolini and was inaccurate (particularly regarding Visconti Prasca’s own contribution), though it confirms the substance and dilettante nature of the discussion.
179. Visconti Prasca, pp. 68–70. The minutes of the meeting on 15 October do not support the statement of Walter Rauscher, Hitler und Mussolini. Macht, Krieg und Terror, Graz, 2001, p. 413, that Badoglio spoke out against an operation against Greece, but Mussolini did not want to listen.
180. Ciano’s Diary, p. 298.
181. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 214–17.
182. The following based on Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 217–19.
183. Schramm-von Thadden, p. 108.
184. See Ciano’s Diary, p. 300; and Bottai, p. 229.
185. Quoted in Moseley, p. 117.
186. Quotations in Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 220–21.
187. Ciano’s Diary, p. 300.
188. Ciano’s Diary, p. 301.
189. Heeresadjutant bei Hitler 1938–1943. Aufzeichnungen des Majors Engel, ed. Hildegard von Kotze, Stuttgart, 1974, p. 88 (28.10.40); Schmidt, pp. 516–17. That Hitler was taken aback and angry about Mussolini’s unilateral action against Greece is disputed by Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy, pp. 39–51, and Martin van Creveld, ‘25 October 1940. A Historical Puzzle’, Journal of Contemporary History, 6 (1971), pp. 87–96. But Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 346 n. 84 and p. 350 n. 156, has some telling criticism of Creveld’s argument.
190. See Ernst von W
eizsäcker, Erinnerungen, Munich/Leipzig/Freiburg, 1950, pp. 302–3. According to Weizsäcker, State Secretary in the German Foreign Ministry, he had proposed sending an unequivocal warning to Mussolini not to widen the war without German agreement. Ribbentrop, wrote Weizsäcker, approved of this course of action, but Hitler had said that he did not want to restrain his fellow dictator and had indirectly, therefore, opened the way to Mussolini’s foolhardy move. Hitler’s later professed surprise was, in Weizsäcker’s view, feigned. Weizsäcker accepted that Hitler had possibly not been prepared to believe in Mussolini’s determination to carry out the attack.
191. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 222–30; Cervi, pp. 87–92. See also Rintelen, pp. 108–10.
192. Schramm-von Thadden, p. 113, quoting Hitler’s letter to Mussolini of 20 November 1940. Crete had been part of German strategic thinking on joint operations with Italy to force the British out of the eastern Mediterranean and north Africa. See Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy, p. 37.
193. Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, p. 400.
194. The Italian record of the meeting is in Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, pp. 399–404, the German version in Staatsmänner, pp. 150–65. Perhaps in tacit acknowledgement of Hitler’s acceptance of his Greek coup, Mussolini was less uncompromising about Vichy France than had been expected (De Felice, p. 307).
195. Mack Smith, Mussolini, p. 302; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 236; Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 375.
196. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, p. 481.
197. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, p. 544; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 256 (where the figure of captured Italians is given as 115,000); Lothar Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, Munich, 4th edn., 1975, p. 107, gives figures of 130,000 Italian prisoners and 470 tanks together with 1,300 artillery pieces lost between early December and early February. British losses were very small.
198. Before the Italian invasion, Britain had been very lukewarm about both the feasibility and the value of providing military aid to shore up Greece. See John S. Koliopoulos, Greece and the British Connection 1935–1941, Oxford, 1977, pp. 134–42. Once the attack had taken place, Britain was anxious to keep the Italo-Greek war going, but was keen to avoid Greece falling under German control. Greece and Crete were seen as important to the vital defence of Egypt. The British aid that could be spared from north Africa was, however, severely limited. See Martin van Creveld, ‘Prelude to Disaster. The British Decision to Aid Greece, 1940–41’, Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (1974), pp. 65–92. There was no major British military presence before a force was rushed from the Middle East at the end of March 1941 in the light of the crisis in Yugoslavia–a move later recognized as a strategic error which allowed the enemy to take the initiative in north Africa. The German attack on Yugoslavia and Greece began on 6 April. By the end of that month some 50,000 British and Commonwealth troops had been evacuated, and a further 7,000 were taken into captivity (Dear and Foot, pp. 102–6).