"The illusions of the Duce" by Simone Pelizza
The rash declaration of war against France and the “parallel war”
conducted from Italy in the second world war. The loss of the colonial empire
and the ruinous war of Greece.
The morning on June 10 1940 Galeazzo Ciano, son-in law of Mussolini as well
as Foreign Minister of the fascist government, delivered the declaration of war
to the ambassadors of France and Great Britain. At 6 PM of the same day, from
the balcony of the Venice Palace, in front of an enthusiastic crowd, the Duce
himself officially announced what was already decided:
“…Men and women of Italy, of the empire and of the Kingdom of
Albania! Listen! An hour marked by the destiny beats in the sky of our country.
The time of the irreversible decisions. The declaration of war has been already
delivered to the ambassadors of Great Britain and France… The password is
only one, categorical and binding for everybody. It flies over and turns on the
hearts from the Alps to the Indian Ocean: WIn! And we will win, to finally give
a long period of peace with the justice to Italy, to Europe, to the world. Italian
People! Took the weapons, and show your tenacity, your courage, your value!”
The meaning of such words was clear to everybody: Italy entered the war to
side of Hitler's Germany, against France and England. The war in the previous
September, with the Nazi invasion of Poland, was widening. Many had been the doubts
and the torments of the Italian managing class; strong also the perplexities of
the military high ranks. Mussolini himself lived long and painful lacerations,
but at the end he decided. He chose the war option: to push him, not only the
most veiled threats of the allied Hitler, but also the triumphs of the German
war machine, able in few weeks to occupy Poland, Norway and Denmark, and to attack
unstoppable on the western front; attack that was quickly bringing France to the
disaster. The Duce was convinced that the war was already at the end and that
it would have brought, in short time, to a generalized peace. This calculation
strengthened his conviction of the necessity of an Italian contribution to the
conflict or Italy would have been vassal in the Europe redrawn by the winning
Nazis. In a memo, Mussolini stretched and planned such decisive conviction, introducing
the concept of “parallel war”: Italy would have fought with the Germans,
but pursuing autonomous objectives. The purpose was to create a sphere of power
in Africa and in the Mediterranean; sphere then to let recognize at the future
table of negotiation.
Really, this whole thought was only a dream, built absolutely on nonexistent
bases. The war was not at all at the end; the Hitler's successes, though wonderful,
were anything else other than decisive. The scanty and wrong calculation of the
Duce to get great advantages sacrificing some poor soldiers, would have brought
the fascist regime to the violent and total collapse; Italy to the disaster and
the civil war; half million Italians to the death.
But it would be a mistake to believe that it was the dull ambition of an only
man, Mussolini, to conduct the country to the tragedy; the responsibilities of
King Vittorio Emanuele III, of Ciano, of almost all the fascist heads and of the
military men were in fact serious. They were aware of the reality; they knew the
lacks of the army and the other armed forces, their unpreparedness to the war.
But they avoided saying that to the Duce; they were also convinced of the brief
war, of the German victory and of the need of some “necessary sacrifice”
to get glory and material advantages. Their utilitarian silence contributed to
make even more dramatic the following circumstances.
The disastrous attack in France
After the declaration of war, Italian armed forces held a prudent attitude
and waited, substantially following the first Mussolini's directives. On the western
front, this is to say the borderline with France on the Alps, the initiative was
taken with great delay: only on June 21, in fact, confiding in the total defeat
of the transalpine state, Mussolini ordered to the divisions present in Piedmont
and Liguria to attack the Cote Azure. The objective was to occupy a long strip
of territory near Nice. But the scanty conviction of the Duce of “a comfortable
walk” was resolved in a tragic and embarrassing action; the French army,
in fact, was weak but still able to be lethal, especially against the grungy and
unprepared Italian army.
However, on June 21 the offensive started; as already said, on the paper the
victory seemed rapid and sure, but the attack of the Italian divisions, badly
directed and without good supply lines, was slow and scatter-brained: this way,
also in numerical inferiority, French had good game to defend. Only after many
efforts, Italian troops succeeded in passing the frontier of S.Louis and to reach
Mentone. In only four days of real fight, the Italian soldiers suffered serious
losses (over 600 casualties and more than 2000 wounded), getting least results.
The military effect of the offensive against France was therefore scarce and bloody;
it was still worse the political one. Having attacked French in the moment in
which they were collapsing under the assault of Hitler's Panzers it was seen as
a dishonorable gesture, straight cowardly. Besides, also Mussolini's illusion
to get strong territorial advantages imposing a punitive peace to the transalpine
government disappeared well soon: Hitler, in fact, had other intentions; he didn't
intend to humiliate the defeated enemy at all, since he hoped to be able to bring
it in his own anti-English war (thing that in effects partially happened with
the collaborationist government of Vichy).
With the armistice on June 24, Italy got only from France the gain of a narrow
territory in Europe and in Africa, in addition to the possibility to use the port
of Gibuti in the French Somalia. The easy adventure had been transformed in a
scorching humiliation and, little by little, in a dangerous game from which was
impossible to detach. The plan of “parallel war” started to show its
cracks. Following tragedies would have let it totally collapse.
The Navy under fire. The difficulties in Libya. The loss of Ethiopia
Taking advantage of the uncertainties of the Italian political and military
high ranks, English took the initiative. Already on June 14, sporadic air bombardments
on different cities took place, between which Genoa and Turin. There were so the
first victims among the civil population, terrorized and amazed in front of these
unexpected actions. These raids showed the serious lacks of the Italian anti-aircraft
system, antiquated and unorganized. Meanwhile on July 9, the Italian Royal Navy
suffered a scorching defeat near Point Stylus: after such battle, the British
fleet was able to come near the Italian coasts and to bomb them without any difficulty.
In few months, Naples was submitted to heavy raids becoming a martyr city and
unequivocal symbol of the abstruse ambitions of the Duce and the fascist managing
class. To try to stop these difficulties, Mussolini ordered to Marshal Graziani,
governor of Libya (note: the great aviator Italo Balbo had been replaced, because
of his death in a mysterious accident on June 28 1940 in front of the military
fortress of Tobruch), to pass to the offensive and to invade Egypt. After a lot
of hesitancies, Graziani obeyed, but his advance was stopped at Sidi El Barrani,
small village a little further the Libyan-Egyptian border. English, busy on other
fronts (the Battle of England was in full progress, with the threat of a German
invasion of the island), waited to react to that timid attempt; but when they
did it, the situation for the Italian forces immediately became unbearable.
On December 9 1940 a violent attack swept away Graziani from Sidi El Barrani
and, in few weeks, the whole Cyrenaic was lost. The whole 10th Italian army ran
into a disaster of huge proportions: in the precipitous retreat, it lost large
quantities of materials; besides, 130.000 men were imprisoned from the soldiers
of His British Majesty. Mussolini liquidated Graziani giving the power to the
as much unfit Italo Gariboldi, and he was forced to ask help to the German ally.
In the February 1941 the arrival to Tripoli of General Erwin Rommel and two German
armored divisions marked the birth of the Afrika Korps. And the death of another
geographical scenery for the Mussolini's dreams: Germany made its bossy entry
in the Mediterranean, and it would have not go out from there if not with the
monumental English-American offensive of 1943. Italy saw shrinking its own space
of autonomous hegemony, becoming more and more slave of the Nazi ally.
The February 1941 also saw another Italian defeat, with the definitive loss
of the colonies in the Horn of Africa: in few weeks, the English army occupied
Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia freed also thanks to the conclusive help of the
native resistance. Hailé Selassié gained the throne and he immediately
showed great magnanimity, protecting the Italian farmers from the revenge of his
fellow citizens, stricken in the previous years from violence and blames. The
last royal troops to surrender in oriental Africa were those of the fortress of
Amba Alagi, commanded by the duke Amedeo of Aosta, on May 17 1941, after weeks
of brave and brave resistance. English, struck by so much military value, conceded
to the duke to surrender with the military honors: in an inhuman and cruel scenery
as that of the Second World War, it was one of the few, great actions of chivalry
and nobility between hostile forces.
The Libyan defeat and the loss of the African colonies were authentic boulders
and they started to break the trust of Italians in the regime. The insane ambitions
of the Duce and the selfish vainglory of Fascists and Royal House were bringing
Italy to the blackest drama. But a little before, an ulterior catastrophe had
happened; this catastrophe buried the abstraction of the “parallel war”
and condemned Italy and the fascism to a sad destiny. This catastrophe was the
attack to Greece.
The war of Greece
In fact, the coarsest and pregnant of consequences error of Mussolini in the
disastrous two years 1940-41 was really the decision to attack Greece: it was
a decision taken with unbelievable lightness, taken not for strategic or military
motivations, but for simple yearning of personal prestige. Also here the Duce,
as in the case of France, thought about a “simple affair” that would
have gotten easy glory and large loot. The facts would have tragically denied
his conceitedness.
Albania would have been the base of departure for the offensive of the Royal Army
and for this reason Galeazzo Ciano would have had a great importance. He considered
the country of the eagles as a personal feud and he warmly supported the project
of his father-in-law, convinced that it would have brought new worth and new wealth
to him. The egoism and the opportunism of Ciano did more damage than the ambitions
of the Duce: in fact, even the logistic and strategic preparation of the action
was done with a dreadful ingenuousness, minding the purely propagandist aspects
of it only. They were not appraised the zones where the attack would have been
launched; the military high ranks trusted the abstruse and without sense chatters
of Ciano who chattered about a corrupt and unstable Greek government, easy therefore
to demolish; the information about the defensive abilities of the Hellenic state
was not controlled.
esides, every decision was accelerated to prevent decisive interventions of
Hitler who had already let know to be contrary to any military operation in the
Balkans that would have offered the occasion to English to intervene in the area,
thickly putting in danger the oil fields of Rumania necessary to the imminent
attack to USSR. But the Duce wanted to proceed anyway because Hitler had started
WW2 without consulting the Italian government and therefore he did on his mind,
completely changing the general scenario of the conflict. The Italian aggression
to Greece provoked, in fact, a whole series of chain events: it put in movement
the whole situation of south-oriental Europe, it allowed English to install at
Crete and in others important places of the Aegean Sea (from which they were outcast
with great effort) it contributed to an important change in the Yugoslav politics
that forced Germany to a violent and undesired intervention. Above all, it let
postpone for five decisive weeks the operation "Redbeard" against the
Soviet Union. But, besides the historical situation, it is not to forget that
Italian poor soldiers paid the worse consequence of the scatter-brained behavior
of Mussolini.
On October 28 1940 officially started the military campaign: the Italian troops
slowly advanced, concentrating then on defensive positions in the hinterland of
Epiro. At this point, the unexpected and effective Greek reaction went off: in
the first days of November the Hellenic army overwhelmed and revolved the greatest
part of the Italian divisions succeeding in penetrating in Albanian territory.
The situation subsequently fell in December when the Greek inflicted serious losses
to the alpine troops of the Julia division, succeeding also occupying Argyrocastros.
Italians now risked being even chased away again in sea, losing whole Albania;
and, even more serious thing, they put in danger the metropolitan territory itself.
The Greek and English commands, in fact, always maintaining a prudent and balanced
attitude, started also to think about landing in Puglia; not fanciful idea in
that moment.
The crash of the Royal Army had heavy repercussions either on the inside plan
either on the international one. Indeed, as already said previously, it enacted
the definitive end of the “parallel war”: fascist Italy saw inexorably
falling every imperial illusion and it became practically enslaved of Nazi Germany.
Hitler, furious for the disasters of the ally, imposed to the Duce a more and
more humiliating political-military dependence. German troops started to be sent
in Italy, officially as support to the home military operations in the Mediterranean
and in the Balkans; really, to check the “untrustworthy and incompetents”
Italians. By now, Italy was fully embarked on the Hitler's funereal caravan; and
it would not have had the opportunity anymore to avoid it, with the catastrophic
tragedies that we know. Mussolini had looked for, with his own deceptive and arrogant
ambitions, magnifying the Italian power and to let recognize it on world level;
he had ended up instead, paradoxically, diminishing it and to condemn it to the
inevitable collapse.
ith the Greek disaster, the fascist regime also created the bases of its downfall:
the population, in front of the defeat, started to understand the lies of the
propaganda and to appraise in autonomous way the situation. First criticisms to
the Duce and the government started. In a couple of years that first phenomenon
of protest would have become a river in flood, able to let collapse the political-institutional
order of the country with serious consequences. In the 1940-41 winter the fascism
began the ruinous parable of the decadence. It's worthy, for chronicle, to tell
the conclusion of the war of Greece.
At the price of heavy sacrifices, the Italian troops succeeded in stabilizing
the front. It began a wearing and bloody war of trench that was extended until
the first days of March 1941.Then, the Italian Head Quarter launched a counteroffensive
in the zone of the river Vojussa, however with scarce results. In April, Germany
attacked and overwhelmed Yugoslavia, turning its own war power in help of the
ally in difficulty. In few weeks, also Athens had to capitulate to the Nazi armies,
master of the whole Balkan Peninsula. But it was a new victory of Hitler; the
letdown for the government of Rome, by now imprisoned of the German dictator and
of his fate, was total. The Italian empire didn't exist anymore, and the fascist
star had started a terrible euthanasia dragging with itself whole Italy.
It is this the true prologue of September 8 1943.
Simone Pelizza
[email protected]
Sources: “History of contemporary Italy. From the crisis of the fascism
to the crisis of the Republic, 1939-1998.”, edited by Giorgio Vecchio, Monduzzi
Publishing, Bologna 1999 (pag. 7-28)
The author quotes as reference texts of his own job the followings books:
G.Bocca, “History of Italy in the fascist war.1940-43”, Mondadori, Milan
1996
G. Ciano, “Diary 1937-1943”, edited by Renzo De Felice, Rizzoli, Milan
1980
Renzo De Felice, “Mussolini the ally. Italy in war 1940-43. From the brief
war to the long war”, Einaudi, Turin 1990
A. Del Boca, “Italians in Oriental Africa. The fall of the empire”,
Laterza, Rome-Bari 1986
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