Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period: 1918-1940 (Praeger Studies of Foreign Policies of the Great Powers)

ITALIAN FOREIGN POLICY IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD

ITALIAN FOREIGN POLICY IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD 1918–1940 H. James Burgwyn

Praeger Studies of Foreign Policies of the Great Powers B.J.C. McKercher and Keith Neilson, Series Editors

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Burgwyn, H. James, 1936– Italian foreign policy in the interwar period 1918–1940 / H. James Burgwyn. p. cm. — (Praeger studies of foreign policies of the great powers, ISSN 1090–8226) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–275–94877–3 (alk. paper) 1. Italy—Foreign relations—1914–1945. I. Title. II. Series. DG568.5.B87 1997 327.45—dc20 96–43874 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright 䉷 1997 by H. James Burgwyn All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96–43874 ISBN: 0–275–94877–3 ISSN: 1090–8226 First published in 1997 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Printed in the United States of America TM

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Phil Cannistraro, to my son Ted, second baseman, and to baseball coach and friend, Barclay Reynolds

Contents Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

xi

Abbreviations

xix

1.

Italy at the Paris Peace Conference

1

2.

Mussolini in Power

17

3.

Italian Revisionism

35

4.

The Grandi Era

57

5.

1933: Annus Diabolicus

71

6.

Mussolini’s Danubian Strategy

87

7.

Italy’s Imperialist Adventure

101

8.

The Italian Empire: A Hollow Triumph

125

9.

The Dictators Converge

145

viii

Contents

10.

Consolidation of the Axis

173

11.

War

199

Conclusion

221

Bibliography

231

Index

237

Acknowledgments My book rests on both original sources and secondary works. I could never have written this study without the insights and analytical power of the true masters of Italian diplomatic history, most notably Renzo De Felice, Denis Mack Smith, Alan Cassels, Jens Petersen, Ennio Di Nolfo, and George Baer. I also owe incalculable gratitude to a number of people who kindly read drafts of my manuscript. Philip V. Cannistraro was not only indefatigable in reading—and rereading—chapters but allowed his phone to hum endlessly with talk on the intricacies of Benito Mussolini’s foreign policy and his puzzling character. Carole Fink saved me from embarrassing mistakes in fact and interpretation by her meticulous reading; Diana Burgwyn purged the text of its worst grammatical errors and awkward phraseology; and Alex De Grand lent helpful suggestions on how to make better linkages and achieve a clearer interpretation of Mussolini’s diplomacy. Finally, I want to thank Brian McKercher and Keith Neilson, the editors of this series on Great Power diplomacy between the wars, for asking me to write the contribution on Italy. Needless to say, I take full responsibility for whatever errors and shortcomings remain.

Introduction This book will review Italian diplomacy from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 to Italy’s entrance into the war on the side of Nazi Germany on 10 June 1940. From the cataclysm of the Great War, Italy passed through a rancorous peace conference tangled in controversies with its wartime allies, Britain, France, and the United States. Although it had benefited immensely from the dissolution of the Habsburg empire, its hereditary enemy, Italy faced the peace unhappily. Its other longtime enemy, France, strengthened by victory over Germany, now seemed poised to bar Italy from its rightful spheres of influence in the Balkans, along the Danube, and in Africa. Italian nationalists emerged from the Paris Peace Conference with the feeling that ungrateful allies had denied their valorous nation its rewards. Such nationalists articulated these feelings of resentment in terms of Italy’s ‘‘mutilated victory,’’ and they prepared to seek revenge against these erstwhile allies. The wartime alliance was in tatters, the coalition partners afflicted by clashing interests and different perspectives. In the immediate postwar era, Italy inclined toward a policy of equidistance among the Great Powers. The resentful mood gripping Italy after 1919 deeply affected the psyche of Benito Mussolini. When the Duce of Italian Fascism came to power in 1922, he challenged the status quo established by the Paris Peace Conference, which he saw as a French hegemony, and oriented his country toward the defeated powers of the war. Mussolini aimed to restore Italy’s pride and prestige in two major ways: first, by carving out spheres of influence in the Balkans and along the Danube under the guise of treaty revision and,

xii

Introduction

second, by founding an empire in Africa. There was nothing particularly Fascist about these ambitions, for liberal statesmen in earlier eras, such as Francesco Crispi and Sidney Sonnino, had pursued similar imperialist objectives. Moreover, many of Mussolini’s ideas regarding behavior among states were not invented by himself or by Fascist theoreticians but were instead appropriated from the nationalists’ creed. In a world of struggle dominated by the law of the jungle, Italy must be among the fittest in the wars that were bound to be fought over the world’s diminishing resources. As an up-and-coming ‘‘proletarian’’ nation, Italy must assert its rights to a fairer distribution of territory and resources with the ‘‘plutocratic’’ Western Powers. Demography provided Mussolini with a potent argument for expansion. ‘‘Virile’’ and ‘‘prolific’’ Italy, in search of overseas colonies to absorb its surplus population, would prevail over the democratic ‘‘dying nations.’’ Permanent struggle among imperialists and war as the supreme test of the national will to power were inescapable characteristics of the Social Darwinist notion that a nation must either ‘‘expand or die.’’ The desire to generate a warlike spirit in order to raise the morale of a people dishonored for centuries lay behind the evocation, widely heard during the Risorgimento, of the military glory of the ancient Romans. Mussolini was certainly not the first to preach that Italians should be the teachers of war to the world. Impressed by the brutal Realpolitik of Otto von Bismarck, leading Italian statesmen of the liberal era summoned the ‘‘nobler’’ passions as a remedy for the moral diseases produced by centuries of servitude and a recent past of shameful military defeats, such as those at Custoza and Lissa, inflicted on the newly forged nation by a vengeful Austria in 1866. Nonetheless, fragility and persistent regionalism haunted those who aspired to greatness. Many conservative Italian statesmen were gripped by the fear that Italy would never survive, let alone be fused into a nation, and that the prestige of authority would never truly be grounded on a solid basis, except by means of a victorious and heroic war. This was a visible thread that ran through Italian diplomacy from the Risorgimento to Fascism’s final overthrow.1 To this legacy of Italian nationalism Mussolini applied his own idiosyncratic personality. He strutted, bluffed, and constantly talked of war and conquest. But, unlike Adolf Hitler, who single-mindedly pursued his utopian vision of Lebensraum and Blood and Soil (the conquest of territory cleansed of inferior peoples), Mussolini wrote no handbook like Mein Kampf as his blueprint for action. Italy was simply too weak and the Duce too much a believer in action based on expediency and day-to-day interests for any preordained doctrine or fixed program to dictate his diplomacy. Mussolini’s foreign policy was not driven by ideology. Rather, now and then, depending on circumstances and the particular issue (i.e., Austria), ideological predispositions influenced his decisions. Instead of being guided by a Hitler-like Weltanschauung, the Duce would write his own chapters

Introduction

xiii

on revisionism and imperialism as he went along. Fascist foreign policy was never static but underwent changes over time as Mussolini’s personality and the nature of the regime evolved. Now and then, Mussolini abided by the customary canons of the balance of power and pursued national interests within the limits of Italian power: traditional Realpolitik. But this was a static concept that the Duce ultimately rejected in favor of a ‘‘dynamic’’ policy. If Mussolini lacked a clearly defined strategy, he did have expansionist goals that remained constant and were never forgotten. Time and circumstances would inform him when to headline and pursue them—or when to back off. He might even avoid war in the hope that intimidation would suffice to cause territorial gain to fall into his lap. During the 1920s, the major theme in Mussolini’s foreign policy was revisionism. By resorting to covert operations and to support of selective treaty revision for the benefit of the defeated powers—and he regarded Italy in their camp—the Duce hoped to shake up the status quo in Southeastern Europe for the expansion of Italian power and influence. But various constraints caused Mussolini’s revisionism to be halting and relatively innocuous: his newness on the job, preoccupation with domestic concerns, reliance on the international economy for the stability of the lira, and a lack of military power to supplant France as the predominant force in the Balkans and along the Danube. In fact, thanks to Mussolini’s antiBolshevism, many European conservative circles during the 1920s viewed him as a ‘‘good European’’ rather than as a saboteur of the existing order. After a short interlude between 1929 and 1932, when Dino Grandi presided over the Italian foreign ministry, during which time Italy ostensibly practiced a ‘‘peace’’ policy, Mussolini broke new ground. Straying from the canons of Realpolitik, he launched a crusade against Austrian Social Democracy, which marked the first instance when ideology began to harm national interests. Undoubtedly, Mussolini was a stalwart opponent of Anschluss, the prevention of which was key to Italy’s security in Europe. Yet, since his policy was highly biased in favor of authoritarian government in Vienna, he eventually undermined Austria’s ability to escape the magnet of Pan-Germanism and Nazi Germany’s relentless Anschluss pressure by cooperating with rightist forces in the country to destroy the Social Democratic party, a strong pillar supporting Austrian independence after the rise of Hitler. Meanwhile, imperialism lay hidden under the cover of European cooperation within the framework of a Four Power Pact and disarmament. In December 1934, Mussolini sensed that the timing was right for Italy to begin full mobilization for a massive strike in Africa. When Mussolini launched the invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935, the Western Powers censured him for violating the territorial integrity of a fellow member of the League of Nations, but they did nothing to halt Italian aggression except to apply meaningless sanctions. With foreign oil freely flowing to replenish Italy’s reserve stocks and the British navy steer-

xiv

Introduction

ing clear of Italian supply lines, Mussolini was able to mount a crushing victory over the hapless forces of Emperor Haile Selassie. Braggadocio had been followed by solid achievement. Mussolini prided himself on having successfully defied the West but felt insulted when his newly established Roman empire did not receive immediate recognition from London and Paris. Instead of affording him respect, the Western Powers dismissed the Duce as an irresponsible warmonger who was picking on a defenseless people and neglecting his duty as sentinel of the Brenner Pass against a Nazi-orchestrated Anschluss. Here the morality becomes blurred, with conservative statesmen portraying Mussolini’s aggression against Ethiopia as setting a dangerous precedent for Hitler while overlooking their own imperialist conquests in earlier centuries. Did not Italy have a right to an empire? And what were the Western Powers doing to help Mussolini defend Austria? The Duce did not overlook such double standards, and neither did the Italian people. After the creation of the Italian empire in May 1936, Mussolini stood at the crossroads. He could choose an anti-German front with the Western Powers, an alliance with the Third Reich, or the role of balancer between them. The latter had long been Mussolini’s preference—his much-vaunted ‘‘decisive weight’’ (peso determinante) strategy—by which he would threaten alignment with Berlin in order to extract colonial concessions from the Western Powers. To be successful in pursuing this strategy, however, Mussolini needed maneuverability and power. He never really had either, but, by 1936, ironically at the peak of his domestic popularity and military success, his maneuverability was severely cramped when the Third Reich took a giant step toward Anschluss by signing a ‘‘Gentleman’s Agreement’’ with Austria on 11 July. Mussolini’s acquiescence in Hitler’s deed marked the beginning of Italian appeasement of Germany. Morever, after Mussolini launched the invasion of Ethiopia, certain themes that can be described as quintessentially ‘‘Fascist’’ began to affect his diplomacy: a hatred of democracy, Free Masonry, Marxism, and the growing belief that the Western Powers—the ‘‘plutocratic’’ imperialists—were fatally afflicted by corruption and falling populations. When fused with the earlier resentments about Italy’s mutilated victory, these Fascist themes distorted and perverted Mussolini’s understanding of Italian national interest and undermined his own policy of equidistance. During the latter part of July 1936, Mussolini undertook an ill-advised intervention on the side of the insurgent general, Francisco Franco, against the Republican government in Madrid. Instead of the expected speedy campaign, Italy got bogged down in the quicksand of civil war. Rather than assume a low profile and buy time for Italy to recuperate from the long and exhausting campaigns in Ethiopia and Spain, the Duce grew ever more belligerent. Confident that he was marching from victory to victory, he fell victim to his own propaganda that the Western Powers, having become

Introduction

xv

decadent and supine, would not be able to stand up to the totalitarian powers. While Mussolini contemplated further aggressive moves in the Mediterranean in February 1938, Hitler marched unopposed into Austria the following month. What else could Mussolini do but put the best face on Hitler’s daring fait accompli? From that point on, Italy was trapped in Germany’s military iron cage. This reality was concealed from view when Mussolini postured as an impartial mediator who was ‘‘saving the peace’’ by chairing the Munich Conference in September 1938, which allowed Hitler to annex the Sudetenland at the expense of the ill-fated Czechoslovaks, left in the lurch by their ally France and by appeasement-minded Britain. Thanks to the Italian aggression in Ethiopia and Spain, London and Paris became ever more estranged from Fascist Italy. Mussolini attempted to recapture a balancing role in Europe and parity with Germany by signing the Pact of Steel with Hitler on 22 May 1939. But parity in the Axis was the Duce’s own peculiar myth. What had been a strictly tactical gambit to restrain Hitler and achieve Italy’s decisive weight went completely awry when France refused to be intimidated into yielding him concessions in the colonial realm. When Hitler launched World War II in September 1939 by marching into Poland without prior consultation with Rome, Mussolini had to face the bitter truth that Italy was in no position to fight. The best he could do was to eschew neutrality in favor of nonbelligerency, a formula devised to convince Hitler that Italy, though standing on the sidelines, had not broken with the Axis. But there was opportunism too. Mussolini intended to bide his time in order to see who would win or, in the event of a stalemate (in his mind, the best of all worlds), to step in as a mediator. The exhaustion of the combatants would leave Italy as the real peso determinante, positioned to demand large territory as a reward for negotiating a cessation of hostilities. Only after the Germans unexpectedly mauled the French armies in May 1940 did Mussolini, finally convinced that the Fu¨hrer was well on his way to victory, descend into war on 10 June on the side of the Third Reich. Rather than being ideologically attracted to Nazi Germany, Mussolini threw in his lot with Hitler out of lust for glory and a determination not to be cut out of the spoils of victory. Haunted by the distasteful memory of 1914, when Italy ‘‘betrayed’’ its Triple Alliance partners by declaring neutrality, Mussolini would honor his word to the Fu¨hrer while escaping German retribution. Once having intervened, the Duce undertook a ‘‘parallel war’’ in the Balkans and Mediterranean to counter Germany’s domination of Europe, a strategy destined to fail given Italy’s glaring military weakness. Indeed, throughout the Fascist era, the Duce played over his head; his will to expand and wage war caused him to overlook the reality that Italy’s industrial base was far too narrow and technologically deficient to produce modern armaments on the mass scale needed for warfare against any other Euro-

xvi

Introduction

pean Great Power. Furthermore, Mussolini was unable to overcome the power voids with clever diplomacy. Instead, he turned a blind eye toward Germany, indulged in an illusory peso determinante strategy, and unrealistically carried out a parallel war to preserve a separate identity from Hitler. A spirited historical debate still rages among leading scholars over the nature of Mussolini’s foreign policy. Among his severest critics is MacGregor Knox, who has described an aggressively ideological Duce, bent on imperialism and war against the Western Powers as a prelude to a Fascist revolution at home by the elimination of the monarchy, Church, and Italy’s traditional elites.2 Along the lines originally delineated by Gaetano Salvemini,3 Knox has argued that the particular character of Fascism imparted an aggressive dynamism to Mussolini’s foreign policy that in the long run created a qualitative difference between the foreign policies of Fascist Italy and the Western Powers. Unlike the Realpolitik of Britain and France, Mussolini’s Italy, especially after Hitler came to power, proceeded along a predetermined course toward imperialist goals and eventually war, propelled by the rigorous and inexorable logic of the Fascist creed. Along these same lines, Denis Mack Smith has ascribed to Mussolini a preponderant role in Italian foreign policy and dismissed him as a buffoon, a reckless adventurer playing out of his league.4 As opposed to Knox’s essentially deterministic view of Fascist foreign policy, Renzo De Felice has argued that Mussolini was essentially a pragmatist and that therefore Italy’s choice of allies and enemies was still open as late as the spring of 1940.5 There is perhaps middle ground between these two radically different schools of thought. Mussolini was indeed bent on imperialism, but he was galvanized not so much by clearly defined ideological precepts as by ambition. When he popped off about waging war, this action reflected less missionary faith than a desire to intimidate or impress. Mussolini’s ability to win the admiration of people like Winston Churchill and Austen Chamberlain attests to his adroit posturing rather than buffoonery and downright silliness. De Felice, who has written perhaps the most nuanced and balanced, if sometimes contradictory, study of Mussolini, has gone too far in the other direction by emphasizing Mussolini’s ultimate intention of gaining redress of Italy’s historic grievances by dragooning Britain and France to the negotiating table for an across-the-board and binding settlement, particularly in the years leading up to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Furthermore, De Felice’s interpretation that Mussolini kept his options open by practicing a shrewd ‘‘decisive weight’’ and ‘‘equidistance’’ strategy is questionable. This interpretation has been carried to an extreme by one of his students, who has argued that the Duce was thwarted in his balancing act by ‘‘Perfidious Albion,’’ which, in refusing to cut an equitable deal with Fascist Italy, bears joint responsibility for pushing Mussolini into Hitler’s camp.6

Introduction

xvii

The view presented here is somewhat different. Rather than being grounded on cleverly implemented Realpolitik, Mussolini’s endeavor to act as the decisive weight in Europe was at once beyond Italy’s means and carried out by a third-rate Machiavellian. Moreover, Mussolini’s ‘‘equidistance’’ was never even-handed and impartial. The Duce was capable of intimate ties with Nazi Germany but never of rapprochement with the Western Powers. Drawn toward authoritarian regimes, he was repelled by democratic states. In this broader sense, Knox had a point, although he overstated his case: Ideological prejudice did affect the conduct of Mussolini’s diplomacy, although not as consistently as he would have us believe. De Felice had it right when he questioned whether Mussolini was driven by an ideological imperative to wage war against the Western Powers. If Fascist ideology had always been the master over Realpolitik—or the incompetent diplomacy that stood for it—the Duce might well have taken the field against Britain and France alone after his conquest of Ethiopia or against them on the side of Nazi Germany in September 1939. Although never ceasing to bear old grudges against the Western Powers or relinquishing his contempt for their democratic systems, the Duce descended into the conflict on 10 June 1940 not out of ideological motives but because he had been overtaken by events. Mussolini’s ‘‘Fascist ideology’’ in the realm of foreign policy was anything but a tightly defined catechism; it was rather a loose and shifting combination of biases and historical resentments that were exacerbated by his volcanic and contradictory personality. His expansionist foreign policy objectives were originally set not by Fascists but by nationalists. Mussolini, to be sure, applied his own tono fascista and couched his imperialism in Fascist terms. Within these fuzzy parameters of ideological influence, Mussolini’s foreign policy often revealed decided inconsistency and improvisation. He was given to oscillation between a realistic assessment of the balance of forces and gusts of passion triggered by ambition and fear. Sometimes he believed his own propaganda—or ideology—and sometimes he was stricken by doubts. Much depended on the behavior and reactions of other governments toward Italy. De Felice, in his seven weighty volumes of biography, has made a major contribution by telling us what made Mussolini tick. Minutely dissecting the Duce’s mind and policies, De Felice has described a decision maker who was often insecure. Behind a veil of imperturbability, Mussolini constantly backslid, temporized, or swaggered—behavior hardly dictated by fundamental ideological principles, beyond the desire to achieve glory through war. Ultimately, Mussolini found himself painted into the same uncomfortable corner as Hitler, thanks to an ideological predisposition informed by historical resentments and prompted to activism by a megalomaniacal drive to be the modern-day Caesar. What follows is a description of the tortuous Italian odyssey from disgruntled victor in the Great War to reluctant ally of Hitler’s Germany in World War II. During that odyssey, Mus-

xviii

Introduction

solini’s diplomacy was punctuated by opportunism, occasionally astute calculation, contradiction, overblown aims, impetuosity, and a growing flight from reality caused by the habit of viewing problems through the distorting lens of ideological stereotypes. NOTES 1. For a brilliant discussion of this theme, see Federico Chabod, Italian Foreign Policy: The Statecraft of the Founders (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966). 2. MacGregor Knox, ‘‘Conquest, Foreign and Domestic, in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany,’’ Journal of Modern History 56 (1984): 1–57; MacGregor Knox, ‘‘Foreign Policy and its Wars: An ‘Anti-Anti-Fascist’ Orthodoxy?’’ Contemporary European History 4: 1 (1995): 347–65; MacGregor Knox, ‘‘Il fascismo e la politica estera italiana,’’ in Richard Bosworth and Sergio Romano, eds., La politica estera italiana (1860–1985) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991): 293–99; MacGregor Knox, Mussolini Unleashed 1939–1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 3. Gaetano Salvemini, Mussolini diplomatico, 1922–1932 (Bari: Laterza, 1952); Gaetano Salvemini, Prelude to World War II (London: Victor Gollancz, 1953). 4. Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini’s Roman Empire (London and New York: Longman, 1976). 5. Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il duce, vol. 1, Gli anni del consenso 1929–1936 (Turin: Einaudi, 1974). Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il duce, vol. 2, Lo Stato totalitario 1936–1940 (Turin: Einaudi, 1981). 6. Rosaria Quartararo, Roma tra Londra e Berlino: La politica estera fascista dal 1930 al 1940 (Rome: Bonacci, 1980).

Abbreviations ADAP AMAE

AMAE FN

Akten zur Deutschen Auswa¨rtigen Politik, 1918–1945, followed by series, volume, and document number Archives du Ministe`re des Affaires E´trange`res, Se´rie Europe 1918–1929, Paris. Unpublished documents from various subseries identified by name of country. France, Archives du Ministe`re des Affaires E´trange`res. Fonds Nominatifs. Unpublished private papers.

ARR

Archives repatrie´es de Rome, located in the Archives du Ministe`re des Affaires E´trange`res, Paris

ASMAE

Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Italy, followed by the file AA (Ambasciata Austriaca), by the file AP:A (Affari Politici), or by the microfilm file FL (Fondo Lacellotti), Rome

DBFP

Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939, followed by series, volume, and document number

DDF

Documents diplomatiques franc¸ais, followed by series, volume, and document number

DDI

Documenti Diplomatici Italiani, followed by series, volume, and document number

DGFP

Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, followed by series, volume, and document number

FO

Foreign Office, Public Records Office, London

xx

Abbreviations

FRUS

Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States

GD

Grandi Diary, 1929–1932, on microfilm, Georgetown University

GFM

German Documents, World War II collection of seized enemy records, T–120, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

KU¨M

Hungarian National Archives

NPA

Neues Politisches Archiv (Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv), Vienna

OO

Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini, Edoardo and Duilio Susmel, eds., 37 vols. (Florence: La Fenice, 1952).

WW

The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Arthur S. Link, ed., 63 vols., ongoing (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press).

CHAPTER 1

Italy at the Paris Peace Conference THE END OF THE WAR When the Great War broke out in 1914, only a few foresaw that Europe had launched itself into a catastrophe. Most of the participants had anticipated a brief war and a quickly negotiated peace. Instead, stalemate and a war of attrition ensued. As casualties mounted, the nations of Europe blamed their suffering on the inherent evil of their adversaries. The old cabinet diplomacy with its concepts of limited war aims gave way to patriotic zealotry. Compromise could bring no real peace; the enemy now had to be crushed. No thought was given to the consequences of a war fought to utter exhaustion. At the outset of the war, Italy, formally a member of the Triple Alliance, declared its neutrality. Fragmented from within and torn by the conflicting aims of irredentism and overseas empire, Italy was sure of only one imperative. Because of the vulnerability of its extensive coastline, the country should never descend into a war against Britain. Hence, Italy’s decision was either to remain neutral or enter the war on the side of the Entente. After prolonged negotiations with both sides, Italy signed the Pact of London on 26 April 1915, bringing the country into the war on the side of the Triple Entente. By adroitly playing the Entente and their erstwhile Alliance partners off against one another, the Italians secured the fulfillment of their irredentist demands, including Trentino, Trieste, Gorizia, Pola, Zara, and Italianpopulated towns along the central Dalmatian coast. Beyond Italia

2

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

irredenta, the Italians were promised the Brenner frontier, the eastern Istrian peninsula, the central Dalmatian coastal lands and hinterland, control over the Albanian nucleus, sovereignty over Valona, and the Dodecanese Islands, which Italy had occupied since 1911. Approximately 230,000 German-speaking peoples and over 600,000 Slavs would thus be incorporated into the expanded homeland in order to secure its strategic frontiers and to turn the Adriatic into an Italian lake. If the European provisions were clear-cut, however, ambiguities abounded in the colonial provisions. Determined to reserve the Middle East as their own imperialist preserve, the Western Powers wished to direct Italy’s attention to Anatolia, where Rome would be able to claim territory adjacent to Adalia should the Ottoman Empire collapse. As a bonus, Italy would gain the right to claim some equitable compensation if the Western Powers increased their colonial territories in Africa at the expense of Germany, France, Britain, and Russia. Britain and France were unhappy over paying such a high price for Italian military assistance, while Russia, having its own aims in the Adriatic, strongly resisted ceding so many Slav areas, particularly along the Dalmatian coast, to its unwanted Italian ally. But, since the Western Powers were convinced that the Italians would be able to end the debilitating stalemate on the Western Front by tilting the military advantage in their favor, as well as to cause a slide of the remaining Balkan neutrals into their camp, they overcame Russian opposition by holding out the bait of Constantinople. Despite Italian expectations of a short conflict, its initial offensives fizzled, and the country was almost knocked out of the war in October 1917 by the crushing defeat at Caporetto. But the Italian armies made a miraculous recovery. After a disorganized retreat to the Piave, they held the line. A year later, on the anniversary of Caporetto, the Italian troops leapt from their trenches and charged the enemy. After a few days of hard fighting, the Austrian lines crumbled, and Italy had its conquest at Vittorio Veneto. Nevertheless, the cost was fearful: a battered economy, social turmoil, and more than 600,000 dead. Italy thus arrived at the Paris Peace Conference determined to claim all the booty promised by the Pact of London. Neither praise nor full satisfaction of the Pact of London was forthcoming. After much acrimony and bungling, Italy left the peace table resentful, believing that its role in the victory had been ‘‘mutilated’’ by its ungrateful and grasping allies. Critics of the Italian position have argued that the mutilated victory was pure myth invented by frustrated nationalists who, deprived of imperialist gain, refused to acknowledge the real gains in Italian security resulting from the defeat and collapse of the Habsburg Empire. Why should the Italians have found fault with the final peace settlement? It was the French who were left with a united, revanchist, and potentially powerful Germany, while Italy faced an array of newly forged and weak states that had risen

Italy at the Paris Peace Conference

3

from the Habsburg ruins and offered no military threat. The blowup at Paris between Italy and its allies has been attributed to a conflict between Italian Realpolitik and American idealism. On closer examination, however, the notion of a mutilated victory appears to have been a half-truth that grew out of the stresses and strains of Italy’s wartime diplomacy. The story behind the falling out of Italy and the Allies at the Paris Peace Conference cannot be reduced solely to differences between Italy and America. Italy’s troubles in the postwar era had their origin in the country’s wartime disputes with Britain and France.1 For any sound comprehension of the ‘‘mutilated victory,’’ three related themes must be kept in mind. First, once Italy entered the conflict, the Entente suffered from rancorous controversy, for Italy’s war aims were quite different from those of France, Britain, and especially Russia. For the Western Powers, Germany was the principal enemy; they had no serious quarrel with the Dual Monarchy (Austria-Hungary). Conversely, Italy had no basic conflict with Germany; Rome’s enemy was the Austrian part of the Habsburg Empire, in which lay the irredentist lands and the challenge to Adriatic hegemony. Thus Italy’s motive for joining the Entente was opportunistic, though surely no more so than the Entente’s motives for inviting Rome to its side. The bargaining and subsequent terms of the Pact of London make this clear. The second theme of the ‘‘mutilated victory’’ reflects the conflict of interests between Italy and the Allies over the Balkans. Italy aimed to establish a protectorate in Albania and felt threatened by Allied support for the expansionist politicians in Greece. The third theme derives from the clash between President Woodrow Wilson of the United States and Italy over the Pact of London. The end result was a paradox. Italy emerged from the war triumphant but ostracized from the community of victors at the Paris Peace Conference. Out of these events developed the notion in Italy that a war had been won but a peace lost. For those who view the postwar era from a Wilsonian perspective, Sidney Sonnino, who served as Italian foreign minister from October 1914 until late in June 1919, is the archvillain in the piece for being the principal architect of the imperialistic Pact of London, for fighting a self-serving war, and for being out of sync with the democratic spirit exemplified by the American president. In defiance of Wilsonian precepts, he clung to an outmoded ‘‘sacred treaty’’ and attempted to impose a draconian peace at the expense of a newly forged Yugoslavia, which, supposedly, had come into existence on the strength of the principle of national self-determination. Sonnino’s tenure was so marred by miscalculation and narrowness of vision that one is tempted to agree with the judgment that he was ‘‘Italy’s worst-ever Foreign Minister.’’2 Yet his record was not one of unbroken failures and defeats. During the first years of the war, Sonnino succeeded in defending Italy’s treaty rights and in maintaining a rough parity in the alliance. Sonnino’s contribution to the Allied cause—his firm stand for war

4

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

to the bitter end against the temptations of defeatism, peace talks, and exhaustion—cannot be questioned. But after the staggering military defeat at Caporetto in 1917, Sonnino refused to revise his objectives to fit the reality of Italy’s loss of power. His former Realpolitik gave way to imperialistic delusions, and he failed to adapt to the new diplomacy and the looming reality of emancipated peoples. Ironically, the change in the power balances in Eastern Europe, produced by the Italian victory at Vittorio Veneto, upset his strategy to preserve a reduced Habsburg patrimony as a bulwark against Pan-Slavism. Sonnino fought the war not so much for Italian irredentism as to assure Italy’s predominance in the Balkans and the Adriatic. As things worked out, Italian irredentism was satisfied, but Sonnino’s pursuit of strategic objectives in Dalmatia, as defined in the Pact of London, involved him in a serious contradiction. The London Pact rested on the premise that the Habsburg Empire would survive its amputations, but Vittorio Veneto precipitated its breakup. Italy’s security seemed to have been achieved, while the Allies faced a still formidable Germany. CONTROVERSIES WITH THE ALLIES President Wilson stepped into Europe’s seething controversies at the end of the war armed with the tools of self-determination, democracy, and internationalism. A League of Nations was to usher in a new era. No longer would states be embroiled in power politics, rivalry, and arms races; instead, they would resolve their differences by discussion in a spirit of equality. The old balance of power and the global law of the jungle would give way to collective security and international law as the only civilized means to safeguard frontiers and discourage aggression. But after arriving in Europe, Wilson began to back away from his own principles. The maxim that there would be no difference in treatment between victors and vanquished, if the latter substituted democracy for autocracy, was increasingly brushed aside. No matter that Germany’s Kaiser William II had been chased into exile and a republic set up in Berlin two days before the armistice; the president came to accept the Allied view that Germans were warlike and should be punished. Wilson endorsed a punitive peace not to weaken Germany permanently but to serve as an example for would-be aggressors. The American president applied comprehensively neither his principles, to assure justice for Germany, nor his Fourteen Points, to deny Britain and France what they considered to be their deserved rewards for a victorious and costly war. At the same time, he held fast to Point IX, which stood to deprive Italy of what it considered its just deserts: ‘‘A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.’’ In theory, Point IX was an equitable guideline, but, when fitted to the Adriatic, there were problems. The Italians insisted that they deserved preferential treatment in the business of making frontiers for the

Italy at the Paris Peace Conference

5

new state, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes—eventually called Yugoslavia—for having been a major comrade-in-arms of the victors and on the strength of the London Pact. Why, they asked, should Slovenes and Croatians, ferocious enemies of Italy who had fought tenaciously against them in the Habsburg armies, be accorded territorial benefits at Italy’s expense? These differing American and Italian perspectives on the ultimate disposition of the Habsburg Empire came out in the open just before the end of the war. Should Italy sign an armistice with Austria-Hungary based on the Fourteen Points, or should the Pact of London be the guiding principle? The Italian prime minister, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, explained to Colonel Edward House, Wilson’s confidante, that the line of the Pact of London should define the Allied (mainly Italian) military occupation of Austria-Hungary. Since the amiable American representative made no objection, the Italian prime minister was left with the impression that the Fourteen Points could be disregarded insofar as Austria-Hungary was concerned. Accuracy was thrown to the winds when House informed Wilson that the Italians were four-square behind his principles. Since the president acted under the assumption that Orlando would sign an armistice with Austria-Hungary based on the Fourteen Points, he neither protested nor opposed what had transpired in Paris. Not surprisingly, after the armistice of Villa Giusti between Italy and Austria-Hungary was signed on 3 November without explicit mention of the Pact of London, Sonnino took Wilson’s silence to mean American acquiescence to Italy’s ‘‘sacred’’ treaty. It was not Italian machination but House’s misrepresentation of the Italian position that was responsible for this misunderstanding, a fact acknowledged by Wilson when he admitted the following April that Italy was not bound by the Fourteen Points in making peace with Austria. Italy reacted rashly to America’s misstep. To gain political capital in his country, Orlando abruptly informed the Allied Supreme Council on 15 November that the city of Fiume, which the Pact of London had assigned to Croatia, was ‘‘more Italian than Rome.’’ A cry went up in Italy for immediate annexation. Shocked by this assertion, the Allies observed the Italians ensnared in a hopeless contradiction of claiming the Istrian Peninsula and Central Dalmatia on strategic grounds and Fiume on the nationality principle while simultaneously denying the Yugoslavs the benefit of either consideration. The Italians did not rely solely on rhetoric. Following the armistice of Villa Giusti, the Supreme Command, hardly pausing to celebrate its heroic victory, rushed troops into Dalmatia to occupy territory inhabited mainly by South Slavs. Working hand-in-glove with the military, the Italian government instituted an economic blockade to crush the fledgling Yugoslav economy and fostered separatism by supporting the deposed King Nicholas of Montenegro. Both Sonnino and Orlando seemed indifferent to the con-

6

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

sequences of these measures, which placed Italy on a collision course with Wilson. Echoing the Supreme Command’s bellicosity, Sonnino pursued his old-school diplomacy rather than Wilson’s New Morality: Italy would base its military security on geographical imperatives rather than on abstract principle. He dismissed a guaranty of protection by the League of Nations as utopian nonsense. The most persuasive deterrent to aggression was defensible frontiers, not collective security. The amour propre of great powers rested on self-reliance, not on questionable help from the world community. In Sonnino’s Hobbesian world, Italy was surrounded by enemies. It had no natural friends, neither its wartime allies nor its former enemies. France, a longtime colonial rival and serious Balkan contestant during the war, was bound to be Italy’s most tenacious adversary once ‘‘peace’’ had been restored. The French plan to cripple Germany did not clash with Italy’s immediate interests. Nonetheless, when the French moved to arrest the spread of Bolshevism and to contain any future Drang nach Osten by building up a system of alliances with the newly formed states of Eastern Europe, the cordon sanitaire, they immediately aroused the suspicion of Italy, whose chief war aim was to secure its own primacy in the Balkans, the Adriatic, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Would the two ‘‘Latin Sisters’’ be able to compose their rivalries for the higher purpose of forging a common front to contain a resurgent Germany? The difficulty lay in their different perspectives. The Italians were most concerned with the Adriatic problem, which was magnified by their insistence on the slogan, ‘‘Pact of London plus Fiume.’’ The French placed a settlement with Germany ahead of the crumbled empires of AustriaHungary and Turkey, thereby subordinating the fulfillment of Italy’s claims until Allied interests had first been served. In an agenda drawn up by the Quai d’Orsay (the French foreign ministry) for the upcoming conference, which was presented to the Italians on 28 November 1918, the French emphasized Wilson’s Point IX; Italy’s treaty rights were not mentioned. Moreover, German and Ottoman colonies would be divided up between Britain and France, leaving Italy out in the cold. The plan called for a selective suspension of previous Allied wartime treaties, particularly those to which Italy was a signatory, in favor of a comprehensive review at the peace conference. France seemed determined to treat Italy as a second-rate power. Resenting their unequal treatment in Paris, the Italians decided to play their own hand. Given Italy’s ambiguous attitude toward Germany, it remained a ‘‘provisionary ally,’’ pursuing its own ends. However much French policy in the Balkans and along the Danube was dictated by military necessity on the hard-pressed Salonika front, which the Western Powers had opened up in 1915, Italy considered any maneuvers in its key areas of interest as groundwork for French hegemony in Southeastern Europe. So

Italy at the Paris Peace Conference

7

long as the French Orient Army ranged from Budapest to Constantinople as agents of France, rather than of an Allied force faithfully carrying out jointly agreed-upon Allied policy, the prospects for a Franco-Italian meeting of minds would not be bright. Italy’s dealings with Great Britain were less rancorous than those with France. Still, while the British did speak eloquently of the need for cordial Anglo-Italian relations, their actions belied their words. Ever since Italy’s entry into the war, the Foreign Office had been determined to revise the Pact of London. The Italian delay in declaring war against Germany and Turkey, its ‘‘lateral war’’ in Albania, and its seeming indifference to the fate of Allied armies everywhere else convinced the Foreign Office that Italy’s aspirations did not deserve to be realized. Since Italy had violated its own ‘‘sacred treaty’’ by refusing to renounce Fiume, the British no longer felt morally bound to honor all their wartime treaty obligations toward Italy; they would do so only selectively. On the eve of the peace conference, London made efforts to squirm free of Italy’s claims under the London Pact where these impinged on British interests or embarrassed Britain before the maxims of the ‘‘New Diplomacy.’’ To divert Wilson’s attention from British ambitions, Britain’s foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, agreed with the president’s critique that the Pact of London violated the principle of self-determination, thus incurring Italian suspicion. Balfour repeatedly assured Italy that Britain would stand by the London Pact and warned that Wilson would dispute Rome’s claims. Italy retorted with a reminder that, for the better part of four years, the Allies had fought to teach Germany that ‘‘scraps of paper’’ could not be torn up with impunity. Reluctantly, the British agreed—but only for the record. Like Italy and France, Britain had fixed objectives at the Paris Peace Conference: the acquisition of former German colonies and Ottoman territories and the elimination of the German fleet as a threat to British supremacy on the high seas. Would the British find room to accommodate Italy’s claims at the Conference? Britain remained largely passive in the Adriatic conflict, letting Wilson act as a brake on Italian claims. But, in spite of the many treaty obligations to Italy, Britain stoutly resisted Rome’s colonial ambitions in Asia Minor and Africa. The British were determined to arrange Ottoman affairs to suit their own interests. In a note sent to Rome in November 1918, after reiterating the validity of the Pact of London, Whitehall declared null and void the Saint Jean de Maurienne agreement of April 1917, which had granted Italy the city of Smyrna, as well as the ‘‘clarification’’ of the following August (which had incorporated Italy’s claims to large coastal sections of Asia Minor, including the port city of Smyrna), by pointing out the lack of Russian consent. The French needed no persuasion to take up the same position. The technical argument of

8

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

Russian non-compliance was contrived by the British to keep the Italians from poaching on Britain’s Middle Eastern spheres of influence. SONNINO AND ORLANDO AT CROSS-PURPOSES During the Paris Peace Conference, Orlando repeatedly admitted that the Pact of London was a diplomatic liability, a ‘‘double-edged weapon which we cannot use without wounding ourselves.’’3 In holding out for Fiume and feigning cooperation with Wilson, he created a breach between himself and Sonnino. Orlando made Fiume a question of Italian honor over the strongest objections of his foreign minister who, correctly anticipating Allied anger over a claim that clearly lay outside the Pact of London, cared not a whit for the city’s widely publicized italianita`. Sonnino’s punctilious attention to the letter of Italy’s treaty rights, however, got lost in the ‘‘passione adriatica’’ stoked up by Orlando’s claim to Fiume. While Orlando spoke too much in confidence to too many people, Sonnino hurt his cause through excessive reticence. Rather than promote compromise in the plenary sessions of the Italian delegation, Sonnino clung to the London Pact and ignored Fiume, despite the fact that his compatriots believed the city to be of critical importance. Moreover, Orlando was willing to make concessions in Dalmatia, except for Zara, Sebenico, and several nearby islands, but Sonnino was not. The deadlock was complete. Instead of resolving differences and hammering out a viable set of proposals, the delegation merely combined the programs of Orlando and Sonnino, which resulted, according to French premier Georges Clemenceau, in ‘‘shooting for the moon’’—the Pact of London plus Fiume. While Orlando was bargaining to save his own political skin without a program, Sonnino resorted to irresponsible journalism to save his country’s honor. But such press polemics made Orlando’s task more complicated by heightening expectations in Italy, which set the government up for defeat over the failure to cash in on front-page demands. RIVALRIES ALONG THE DANUBE According to the terms of the Armistice of Villa Giusti, which brought the war to a close on the Italian front, the major responsibility for the occupation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was vested in the Italian Supreme Command. The Italian military, however, had not the strength either to do the job alone or to stop the French Army of the Orient from making its presence felt in many former Habsburg territories. To keep France and Italy out of each other’s way, Sonnino proposed that the Italians occupy Austria and the French Hungary. By controlling Vienna, the hub of the old Habsburg transportation system, Italy could obtain a stranglehold over

Italy at the Paris Peace Conference

9

Danubian commerce. Unfortunately for his plans, Sonnino’s neat delineation of spheres broke down over the French determination to treat the former empire as a common Allied concern. In no position to compete on an equal footing with the French, Italy, which had neither a strong military force to send across the Pact of London line into the Danubian area nor the financial means to woo friends in Vienna, Prague, or Budapest, was thrown on the defensive. A sense of powerlessness in Rome gave rise to dark suspicions of a French plan to dominate the Danube by establishing a Slav corridor linking Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, cutting Hungary off from Austria and barring Italy from the Danube. Austria did indeed pose hard questions for the peacemakers. Could it survive the loss of empire? Significant numbers of people in both Austria and Germany did not think so and demanded union between them as an indispensable economic solution. Pan-Germanism was certainly not a solution for the French, who were appalled by the notion that the Reich could pick up in Austria what it had just been deprived of by the war. To preclude any Grossdeutsch solution, the French were determined to include a prohibition against Anschluss in the peace treaties, notwithstanding the Wilsonian principle of national self-determination. A starving Vienna would be saved instead through economic cooperation with the successor states. Of the victorious powers, Italy was most directly concerned over the ultimate fate of Austria. The gateway to Italian influence in the Danube region, Austria also formed the linchpin to Italian security in Europe. If Germany were to annex the little rump state, an enlarged Reich would be able to exercise an inexorable irredentist pressure on the South Tyrol and unleash a drive toward Trieste and the Adriatic. Italy would be confronted by a Teutonic Colossus on its northern border instead of two weak buffer states in Switzerland and Austria. The alternative, which was bruited about in Paris and which haunted Rome, was a ‘‘Danubian Confederation.’’ Led by the famous Milanese newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, many Italians preferred Anschluss to a French-inspired Danubian confederation grafted onto the successor states of the Habsburg Empire. But not Sonnino, who avoided francophobia and held firmly to Realpolitik, knowing that if Germany were allowed to swallow Austria, it would become Italy’s new nemesis in the Adriatic. On 18 May, 1919, Sonnino prevailed when the Italian cabinet formally came out in opposition to an Anschluss. This stand, however, was hedged with the provision that the Big Three, France, Britain, and the United States, honor Italy’s claims to both the South Tyrol and Fiume. Without the military resources to establish an unassailable presence in Vienna, Budapest, or Bucharest, the Italians had been checked on the Danube. Whatever territorial gains it achieved, Italy had failed to establish its mastery over the region.

10

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

ITALY’S FIXATION ON THE ADRIATIC Speed the peace treaty and lift the Adriatic blockade—these were the pressures bearing down on Italy as the Allies became ever more impatient to settle up with Germany. Having failed to move Wilson, who now had come out in the open against Italian annexation of Fiume, the Italians brought their case before the Council of Four on 19 April. In an impassioned session, they demanded the Brenner frontier with Austria, as well as Fiume, Dalmatia, and the Adriatic islands. Orlando defended the claim to Fiume, while Sonnino reflected that the abandonment of Dalmatia would result in the ‘‘ruin of my country.’’4 The Allies refused to budge. Disagreement remained three-sided: Italy demanded more than the Pact of London had promised it; Britain and France were prepared to go only as far as they were bound by that treaty; and Wilson was not prepared to accept the validity of either position. Stung by Italian journalists, who blamed the United States for the deadlock in the Adriatic, Wilson released to the press his famous manifesto of 24 April. Eloquently phrased and high-minded, the manifesto was an explanation of Wilson’s principles, not a recrimination. In making the appeal to the Italian people’s sense of justice over the heads of their government, however, the president misjudged the temper of Italian nationalism, which had been aroused by Orlando and Sonnino on the issues of Fiume and the Adriatic. While the president appealed to reason in impassioned times, the Italians rested their case on the argument of national honor. Provoked by Wilson’s manifesto, Orlando left Paris on 24 April in a dramatic, if somewhat prearranged, display of indignation. Sonnino followed the next day. The Italian peace delegates received a victor’s welcome in Rome and a solid parliamentary vote of confidence. But instead of returning to Paris at once to negotiate with a strengthened diplomatic hand, Orlando waited in Rome for the Peace Conference to extend him an olive branch. It was a vain hope. On his return to Paris on 7 May, after the Germans had arrived, Orlando and Sonnino received an icy reception at the Council of Four, which indicated that their absence had accomplished nothing. Once again refusing to take the initiative, they languished in selfpity, unwilling to recognize how dependent they were on the Allies. Although Germany held center-stage, the peacemakers could not neglect the Danube, for there were new states to be carved out of the former Habsburg Empire. Orlando and Sonnino had a particular interest in delineating the boundaries between Italy, Austria, and Yugoslavia. Which criterion should be decisive: the ethnic principle, economic necessity, or the strategic axiom? For the Italians, strategic issues were paramount, especially the question of railroad access from the Danubian plain to Trieste with a line running outside Yugoslav territory. Sonnino, in clear violation of the na-

Italy at the Paris Peace Conference

11

tionality principle, aimed to extend Austria’s frontier over the mountains into Yugoslavia but was thwarted by the Big Three. Italy’s withdrawal from the Peace Conference in April also left its claims in Asia Minor wide open to assault. Sonnino did not help his cause by ordering a landing at Smyrna on 2 May to forestall a Greek move; other sites on the Anatolian coast were occupied three days later. In general, the Allies took seriously reports of Italian misdeeds at Smyrna, and the British prime minister, David Lloyd George, took steps to remove Italian troops by advocating a Greek landing at the seaport. Wilson quickly fell in behind Lloyd George’s determination to bar a ‘‘people as turbulent as the Italians’’ from Asia Minor; moreover, he favored a Greek landing at Smyrna in spite of the contrary advice proffered by his own consular and military representatives. Turkish rights of self-determination did not cross the mind of anyone on the Council of Three; what mattered to them was the establishment of a greater Greece. Only Clemenceau betrayed a flicker of doubt. When the Greek leader Eleutherios Venizelos initiated a landing at Smyrna on 16 May ‘‘to restore law and order,’’ Sonnino retaliated by sending troops to a neighboring port, without consulting the other powers or anyone else in the Italian delegation. The Big Three were scandalized. A clash between the Greeks and Italians now loomed as a distinct possibility. If the Big Three were given to frequent changes over the ultimate disposition of the Ottoman Empire, they at least were agreed on the twin propositions that Greece have a zone around Smyrna and that Italy be kept completely out of Asia Minor. Undoubtedly, these sentiments were directly connected to their annoyance over Italy’s claims in the Adriatic. Italian imperialism also suffered a sharp setback in Africa when Britain and France, in the absence of the Italian delegates, helped themselves to mandates over the former German colonies. Their action constituted a violation of Article XIII of the Pact of London, which promised Italy equitable compensation if the Western Powers assumed title to any German colonies. The Italians did not challenge the Allied claim to the former German colonies by right of conquest, but they did hold that their country should be compensated in East Africa. The Italian minister of colonies, Gaspare Colosimo, who feared that the application of Wilson’s ‘‘mandates’’ might deprive Italy of its rights of colonial compensation under the London Pact, went on record as demanding Giarabub in Cyrenaica, Kassala, Djibouti, British Somaliland, and Jubaland—plus recognition of Italy’s sole influence in Ethiopia. He received no support from Orlando, however, whose gaze was fixed on the Adriatic.5 Orlando’s indifference was perhaps fortunate, for the British and French argued that Italy’s colonial demands went far beyond the frontier rectifications envisaged in the Pact of London. The British would agree to cede only Giarabub and Jubaland, and the French offered only minute adjustments of the Libyan-Tunisian frontier; nothing would be given away in

12

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

East Africa. Since France refused to give up the port of Djibouti, the Italians were deprived of the only viable outlet for Ethiopia, their chief African claim. Embroiled in the Fiume controversy, they were in no position to apply pressure on the Allies in the colonial sphere, nor could they count on American support for a program patently antithetical to Wilson’s principles. The best that could be done was to stall for time. On 6 June, after acknowledging the divergent views of the member states, the Committee for the Application of Article XIII suspended its debates, leaving Italy’s African claims unfulfilled. While the Big Three were casting Italy as the odd man out in Asia Minor and Africa, Colonel House and Andre´ Tardieu, a member of the French peace delegation, made last-ditch efforts in mid-May to resolve the Adriatic question. To force the Italians to negotiate, House came up with the bizarre procedure of closeting Orlando in a salon and Ante Trumbic´ , a leader of the Yugoslav delegation, in a reception room, while House himself passed back and forth negotiating between them. The upshot of this ambulatory diplomacy was that both the Italians and Yugoslavs came to accept the principle of an independent Fiume under some form of League control— provided that ultimate sovereignty would not be assigned to the opposing party. The other sensitive issue was the boundary of eastern Istria. The Italians insisted on a land link between Fiume and Italy; the Wilson line in Istria would therefore have to be shifted to the east. Unwilling to hear of an Italian Fiume, Clemenceau implored Orlando to make fresh proposals. On 28 May, Orlando declared that he would accept the following, which came to be called the Tardieu plan, as a basis for discussion: Fiume would be declared an independent state under the League pending a plebiscite to be held by communes; Italy would gain the Valosca line and be allowed to annex Zara, Sebenico, and all but one of the islands. These proposals, however, did not sit well with Sonnino, who felt that Orlando had yielded too much in Dalmatia under the illusion of coming to an agreement with the Yugoslavs. But, since the latter had finally, grudgingly, yielded their claims to Gorizia, Trieste, western Istria, and parts of Carniola, as well as conceding the loss of Fiume—provided it did not go to Italy—a compromise seemed possible. When Wilson saw Orlando the next day, the president embraced him for his conciliatory mood. He agreed, in the Austrian peace treaty, to give Italy not only the Brenner frontier but also a wedge of Slovene-inhabited territory around Tarvisio, beyond the Pact of London line, which gave Italy control of one of the main railways from Trieste to the Austrian frontier. But on the Dalmatian provisions of the Tardieu plan, Wilson dashed Italian hopes. Convinced that Orlando had misunderstood his position on Fiume, he sent a note on 6 June, which reiterated his conviction that the principle of self-determination would be violated by establishing a separate city of

Italy at the Paris Peace Conference

13

Fiume; he further denied Italy anything in Dalmatia as well as the Valosca line. The Allies were not more helpful. Lloyd George limited himself to offering free-city status to Zara and Sebenico, while Clemenceau would cede only Zara to Italy. With the Tardieu plan thus ‘‘amended,’’ the Italians lost interest in further negotiations. Whatever hope the Allies held in meeting the Italians halfway was squelched by Wilson, who simply would not compromise. Ray Stannard Baker, a confidante of Wilson, wrote: ‘‘He [Wilson] will agree to no arrangement which gives any people to Italy without their consent.’’6 Many have concluded that Orlando and Sonnino were ready all along for a bargain based on one of two alternatives: first, trading various treaty rights in Dalmatia for Fiume or, failing this, forswearing annexation of Fiume in favor of free city status, provided they got the whole of eastern Istria. But apart from the question of what Sonnino was actually prepared to give up in Dalmatia, it was clear that the United States and the Allies were determined to frame a compromise assuring that Fiume would eventually go to Yugoslavia, and this was unacceptable to Orlando; nor would Wilson give way on ‘‘his’’ line in Istria. Under the best of circumstances, Wilson might not have proved amenable to any compromise, but Sonnino worsened the president’s image of Italy by his outspoken aversion to Wilsonian principles and an uncompromising negotiating position that made him appear anti-American. By June, it was too late to repair the damage of countless inconsistencies. Italy ended up with a bungled peace. Unable to sway Wilson, Orlando returned to Rome to deal with a prolonged political crisis. Faced with a rebellious parliament and burdened by their apparent failures in Paris, Orlando and Sonnino resigned on 19 June. The fall of the cabinet removed them from the peace conference less than ten days before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany. At the Paris Peace Conference, the Allies concealed their own imperialistic ambitions under the cover of indignation that Italy had violated the U.S. president’s principles. Underlying this hypocrisy was contempt, based on their low valuation of their ally’s military performance and the odd blend of opportunism and chauvinistic posturing that they perceived in Italian diplomacy. Overlooking the fact that they had bribed Italy into the war, the Western Powers met the demand for the promised payoff with illdisguised scorn. Still, Allied promises to honor their treaty obligations toward Italy were genuine; they certainly did not want to emulate the Germans by tearing up treaties with impunity. But they would not consider Italy as a member of the Council of Four holding equal rank. Italy’s fiasco at Versailles was the result of Sonnino’s inflexibility, Orlando’s opportunism, and the inability of the two to work out a common program. Forgotten in the humiliation that Italy suffered for being treated as an adolescent nation that was addicted to egoistic, petty intrigue were the nation’s substantial gains. Its hereditary enemy had been destroyed,

14

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

Italia irredenta was completely fulfilled, and predominance, if not outright hegemony, had advanced in the Adriatic region. Italy had also secured a share of German reparations and a permanent seat on the Council of the League of Nations. The future prime minister, Francesco Nitti, was one who recognized Italy’s strengthened position: ‘‘No European nation, not even France, has today such security of frontiers as Italy. Let us not forget . . . that after many centuries Italy has gained the boundary that renders her secure from German invasions.’’7 Many Socialists, more than a handful of Democrats, and influential conservative Catholics agreed with this view. The bulk of the Italian middle classes, however, resented the Allied refusal to recognize Italy as a heroic war victor and a Great Power of equal rank. Had the Italian delegation not overreached itself at the Paris Peace Conference, Italy’s sacrifices and notable military contributions might not have been so caustically belittled; and had Sonnino and Orlando taken on a full share of responsibility in the German question instead of pursuing a peace settlement in the spirit of ‘‘Italy’s war,’’ the Italian claim to equality in the alliance might not have encountered such derision. This lack of Allied respect exacerbated the disparity in Italian minds between what had been promised and what was gained. Denied gratitude and huge rewards for its considerable economic sacrifices and the heavy loss of life sustained in a long and bloody war, the country as a whole surrendered to the legend of the mutilated victory. TYING UP LOOSE ENDS When Sonnino and Orlando left office on 19 June 1919, many provisions of the London Pact remained unfulfilled. The prospects for expansion in Africa were at an end. Thanks to Italian military weakness, the Allies had been able to thwart a frankly imperialist Italian policy. Matters in Asia Minor remained unresolved until, faced by the nationalist fury of Mustapha Kemal, the Italians were forced to withdraw their last troops in June 1921. The Danube was left in disarray. The aim of bringing about a rapprochement between Romania and Hungary under Italian auspices remained a chimera, as did Sonnino’s plan of using this tripartite bloc to pry Croatia and Slovenia loose from Yugoslavia. Romania was the principal spoiler with its protracted occupation of Budapest. The statesmen who replaced the Orlando cabinet did better in the art of peacemaking. They were neither the ‘‘Triplists’’ raised by Allied-inspired polemics nor the weak-kneed Adriatic renouncers of nationalist hyperbole. The new cabinet, headed by Nitti with Tommaso Tittoni as his foreign minister, faced the daunting task of economic reconstruction. In order to infuse new life in the beleaguered Italian economy, Nitti wanted to resume negotiations with the United States for new credits and favorable trade agreements that had been stalled by the diplomatic deadlock over the Adri-

Italy at the Paris Peace Conference

15

atic. When measured against the threat of economic disaster, Fiume mattered little. But Tittoni’s efforts to assume a more moderate demeanor in Paris were stymied by the seizure of Fiume on 11 September 1919 by Italy’s poet laureate, Gabriele D’Annunzio, which set off wild enthusiasm among nationalists throughout Italy and heightened a mutinous spirit in the army. Tittoni had only limited success in convincing the Peace Conference that the government, rendered helpless by a rising crescendo of nationalist frenzy and faced by persistent examples of military insubordination, was able to do little either to discipline D’Annunzio or to resolve the Adriatic dispute with Yugoslavia. He was more successful in bringing Sonnino’s protracted quarrel with Greece to a temporary end in the Tittoni-Venizelos Agreement of 20 July 1919, whereby the Dodecanese Islands, with the exception of Rhodes, were given to Greece, Smyrna was recognized as Greek, and Italian influence was confined to the coastal strip from Scalanuova to Mersina. In return, Italy accepted the partition of Albania as recognized in the 1915 Pact of London, which left Northern Epirus in Greek hands. Greece reciprocated by supporting an Italian mandate for central Albania. Likewise, Nitti was prepared to come to an accommodation with the revolutionary Kemalist dictatorship in Turkey. Renouncing political annexation and permanent military occupation of Anatolia, Nitti acquiesced in Italy’s eventual military evacuation of all claimed territories. But in the colonial realm, it was a different matter. The Allies continued to reject Italy’s interpretation of the ‘‘equitable compensations’’ promised in the Pact of London. Confronted by the Socialists’ refusal to collaborate and the mounting subversion on the right, encouraged by Mussolini and D’Annunzio, Nitti was forced to resign on 9 June 1920. Giovanni Giolitti, Nitti’s old rival among the traditional liberals, formed a new cabinet. Carlo Sforza headed the Consulta, which guaranteed that the democratic program would become the basis of Italian foreign policy. Sforza hoped to forge a friendship with Yugoslavia, to give Italy influence in the Balkans, and with the new Turkey, to do the same in the eastern Mediterranean. Albania was a first order of business. Faced with mutiny on the part of Italian troops in Valona and the soaring costs of occupation, Giolitti and Sforza decided to abandon the claim to a mandate and to preserve Italian influence by the acceptance of an independent Albania rather than by occupation or partition. On 22 July, Sforza renounced the Tittoni-Venizelos Agreement, and, on 2 August, he authorized an agreement in Tirana with the Albanian provisional government, which guaranteed Albania’s independence within the 1913 frontiers. Since Sforza was also prepared to sacrifice Dalmatia—Italian claims there had severely cramped Italy’s diplomatic maneuverability—he succeeded in gaining British and French support in pressuring Yugoslavia to make concessions on Istria. Abandoned by the Western Powers, the Yugoslavs could no longer count on Wilson alone, which forced them to bilateral negotiations with

16

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

Italy. On 12 November 1920, the Treaty of Rapallo was signed. Italy obtained a strategic frontier at the Monte Nevoso line, territorial contiguity with a small free state of Fiume, four islands, and sovereignty over Zara. Later in the year, Albania was given its independence, free from encroachments by either Greece or Yugoslavia. This cut the ground from under D’Annunzio, who skulked away from Fiume on 18 January castigating the Italian people for their failure to throw out the ‘‘renouncers’’ in Rome. Reconciliation in the Danube region and friendship with the small and weak emergent successor states of the Habsburg Empire did not escape Sforza’s attention either, for he tolerated the formation of the Little Entente—an alignment consisting of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Romania, sponsored by France—and signed a commercial treaty with Czechoslovakia in February 1921. When the former emperor Charles landed in Hungary to carry out a Habsburg restoration, Sforza joined the Western Powers in having him ejected from Budapest. NOTES 1. For an expanded discussion of the themes of this chapter and the documentation therein, see H. James Burgwyn, The Legend of the Mutilated Victory: Italy, the Great War, and the Paris Peace Conference 1915–1919 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993). 2. Richard Bosworth, Italy and the Approach of the First World War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 134. 3. Olindo Malagodi, Conversazioni della guerra, 1914–1919, 2 vols. (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1960), 2: 540–41. 4. Rene´ Albrecht-Carrie´ , Italy at the Paris Peace Conference (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1966), Document 41, Luigi Aldrovandi’s Diary, 466. 5. DDI, 6, II, 206, 2 February 1919. 6. WW, 59, From the Diary of Ray Stannard Baker, 27 May 1919. 7. Cited in R. W. Seton-Watson, ed., The New Europe 12 (1919): 92–94.

CHAPTER 2

Mussolini in Power THE NOVICE DIPLOMAT Mussolini came to power on 28 October 1922 promising to make Italy a respected nation and to institute a Fascist revolution. As Duce of the Fascist movement, Mussolini imagined, and wanted Italians to believe, that destiny bestowed on him the unique opportunity to articulate the innnermost longings of his people and to bring about a new order and a revitalized and expanded empire. He was to be the quintessentially populist leader. But throughout the Fascist era, Mussolini did not walk a straight line toward these radical goals; instead, he zig-zagged, reversed himself, and applied half-measures. He ignored the radical Fascist promise of a clean sweep in favor of the cooptation of the monarchy, the army, the Church, and big business into his own personal dictatorship. Rather than totalitarian party rule, Mussolinianismo. The squadristi were neutralized as a revolutionary force by their enrollment into a militia, while the radical Fascist writers were permitted to propound their utopian theories in journals and books far from the streets and citadels of power. While it was not outright terrorism, Mussolini’s rule was nonetheless arbitrary, oppressive, and intolerant of dissenting and democratic views. For the people at large, authority was wielded by the same old familiar institutions—the changeless and arrogant bureaucracy, the national police, and a team of loyal and obedient prefects, many of whom were carryovers from the liberal era. The Italian people were trapped in an atmosphere of intimidation that was nonthreatening so long as they minded their own business and stayed out of

18

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

politics. When they woke up on the morning of 29 October, nothing much seemed to have changed; after the disorderly and bungled march on Rome, the Duce donned tails and a stiff white collar to accept his portfolio as prime minister from the king. But that faithful adherence to ritual did not stop the Blackshirts, who had formerly been considered criminal outlaws, from freely roaming the streets and byways of the country settling old scores and randomly beating up leftist enemies under the benign eye of the sympathetic police. To many perceptive Italian observers, a new era had begun. In the field of foreign policy, Mussolini liked to portray Fascist Italy as ‘‘new and dynamic.’’ But he encountered a perennial dilemma. How could Italy become a great power when it lacked the raw materials and industrial base essential for modernized and mass-produced military armaments? A prudent diplomacy, as practiced by Carlo Sforza, was in order; it behooved Italy to lower its sights. The Duce, however, was not prudent. In allying himself with the Italian nationalists, he took over their whole repertoire of hyperbolic claims and carefully nurtured grievances, which imparted a restlessness and provocation to his diplomacy. Whereas Sonnino had placed limits on Italian expansion, as defined by the Pact of London, Mussolini had no set program, only boundless ambition decoded as revisionism and imperialism. Unencumbered by any standard of diplomatic behavior, he had an unfettered imagination in pursuing Italian interests. Mussolini was a master in the techniques of propaganda, and he knew how to identify and exploit the weaknesses of others. National grandeur, for Mussolini, rested on two ‘‘mare nostrums’’—the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. Here he differed not at all from the objectives of Sonnino, Orlando, and the conservative liberals and nationalists of the Italian foreign ministry. But Mussolini, bearing a wholly new world view, introduced novel methods and an inimitable style. Prior to the Fascist era, Italy’s foreign policy had been rooted in the European diplomatic tradition and conducted through traditional channels. Although prior to the Great War, ‘‘the Lesser of the Great Powers’’ was constantly faulted for opportunism and for straddling the fence between the alliance camps, liberal Italy pursued limited expansion within the framework of the European balance of power and generally played according to its rules. Mussolini, on the other hand, substituting the cult of war and ‘‘dynamism’’ for Realpolitik, willfully defied the constraints imposed by superior force and Great Power comity. In artfully composed phrases of a violent tone, he articulated the resentments of his nation. Like Sonnino and Orlando, Mussolini played on the mutilated victory theme to justify Italy’s grudge against the Allies for their failure to honor all the provisions of the London Pact. But Mussolini added his own variations. Italy, he maintained, had been cheated out of its just rewards because of timid diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference, a consequence of Italy’s domestic feebleness and weakling lib-

Mussolini in Power

19

eral governments. In keeping with the vitalism then fashionable in nationalist circles, Mussolini fostered hatred against the so-called leftist war saboteurs and liberal rinunciatari (renouncers). Borrowing the language of the Italian nationalist Enrico Corradini, he attempted to overcome an unmistakable national inferiority complex by making invidious comparisons between the ‘‘decadent’’ financial capitalism of the ‘‘avaricious’’ Western Powers and Italy’s ‘‘proletarian’’ movement of workers and farmers who were destined to carry civilization into dark Africa and the Middle East. Mussolini attempted to reduce Italy’s dependency on France and Britain. His conception of ‘‘intransigent autonomy’’ for Italy was characterized by a highly opportunistic style. Cramped by the Paris Peace Conference settlement, Fascist Italy demanded a revision of the peace treaties, especially when such changes would diminish French power. Mussolini’s revisionism was highly selective; there would be no tampering with the peace treaty clauses that granted Italy the South Tyrol and major portions of the Istrian peninsula, nor with the provisions that guaranteed the independence of Austria. Mussolini did, however, aim to redeem ‘‘sacred’’ Fiume and Dalmatia and to fulfill the colonial clauses of the Pact of London that the British and French had denied Italy at the Paris Peace Conference. As leader of a ‘‘dissatisfied power,’’ Mussolini was an extreme chauvinist who had no compunction about upsetting the status quo to achieve his aims. Although Italy had been weakened and exhausted by war, Mussolini had room to maneuver in the 1920s. The world of postwar Europe was rich in unrealized opportunities for a restless and opportunistic foreign policy. The fall of the monarchical order in 1918 produced a score of fragile successor states in Eastern Europe that simmered with ethnic discontent and revanchism. Their volatility, when fused with their inherent feebleness, made for power voids and political fluidities that inevitably drew the attention, eager or grudging, of the Great Powers. Political vacuums in power politics invite intervention, for passivity on the part of one nation merely encourages others to act without fear of retaliation. At the end of the Great War, the collapse of four empires—the Dual Monarchy, Germany, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire—created an extraordinary power vacuum in Eastern Europe that gave rise to a situation bristling with danger and mutual fear. Of the four, the Habsburg Empire had disintegrated, Germany had been temporarily reduced to impotence by military disarmament, Russia had withdrawn into diplomatic isolation in the wake of its domestic revolution, and Turkey, shorn of its Middle Eastern possessions, waited to be carved up by the victors. The pendulum of power had clearly swung westward. As a result, the enforcement of the peace treaties fell to the Atlantic Powers. In principle, the victorious allies maintained that Germany should never again be allowed to renew expansion, and all, save Italy, strove in the 1920s to implement more or less coherent policies toward that end.

20

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

But Allied consensus by no means reflected equal degrees of commitment. By 1921, the U.S. Congress had repudiated Wilson’s European promises by rejecting his treaties and refusing to join the League of Nations. Only a little less hurriedly, the British reverted to their classic policy of hovering on the periphery, freely dispensing advice on the balance of power while shunning firm obligations where imperial interests were not at stake. By default, responsibility for the maintenance of the peace fell to France. If the treaties, as applied to the Continent, represented compromises among France, Britain, and the United States, the French army, in the last resort, would have to uphold them. No doubt, this was a heavy burden, for this army had suffered shattering losses during the war. True, when compared to a militarily prostrate Germany, France did appear formidable in the immediate postwar period, but its position would be increasingly undermined by the hesitation of the other victorious powers regarding the Paris Peace settlement. Not everyone agreed with France that a stringent application of the peace treaties would deter German aggression most successfully. Almost as soon as the ink was dry, revisionist sentiment appeared in all the allied countries, as well as among the neutrals, bolstered by German and Soviet propaganda. Paris was practically alone in equating French security with European peace. Fascist Italy, for one, interpreted this Gallic reasoning as sophistry intended to divert attention from what it perceived to be an unmistakable French hegemony on the European continent. Nowhere was the peace settlement so fragile as in the Danubian-Balkan region. Two refashioned states, Hungary and Bulgaria, remained unreconciled to their recent territorial amputations, while Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia suffered from increasing ethnic tensions that seemed likely to dissolve their newly forged unity. A hugely enlarged Romania was ringed by states eager to whittle down its size by half, while the economic survival of Austria and Albania remained dubious. Beyond these specific considerations, there remained the virulent rivalries and fears that characterized the European system of sovereign states. These had been in no wise mitigated by the horrors of war, the establishment of the League, or the newly instituted ‘‘Wilsonian democracies.’’ On the contrary, under the influence of ‘‘vitalist’’ postwar movements like Fascism and Bolshevism, power politics emerged more nakedly than before while being less inhibited by traditional restraints. At the conclusion of the war, Great Britain, no less than France, seemed committed to the network of peace treaties designed to preserve the Allied victory by perpetuating German weakness. This determination soon wavered, however. The narrowness of the Allied victory, the disaffection of the United States, the Bolshevik threat, and the monetary and financial fragility of the Allies combined to persuade Britain, in particular, that the punitive measures in the treaties were retarding the revival of international trade that was so essential to British, and European, economic recovery.

Mussolini in Power

21

After 1924, with the coming of the Cartel des gauches, the French followed suit. Economic opportunism was soon reinforced by moral rectitude: In removing the patent injustices inflicted by the victorious allies, treaty revisions would make for a more just, and thus more lasting, peace. This type of revisionist sentiment, with its inchoate undercurrent of appeasement, bore only a superficial resemblance to Mussolini’s revisionismo, which was aggressive, saturated with grievance, and hungry for conflict. In this view, a healthy organism (the state) marched from strength to strength. In this system, justice was an illusion and lasting peace a pipe dream. Notwithstanding the Fascist boast that it had no like or equal, however, Mussolini’s new stile fascista remained merely a posture during the first years, save for the Corfu incident of 1923, which many contemporaries dismissed as an aberration in Italian policy. The secretary general at the foreign ministry, Salvatore Contarini, applied a steady hand by pursuing Italian interests along the traditional lines of the prefascist era—a moderate, nationalist policy aiming at spheres of influence in the Balkans and Danube region and a careful expansion into the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East, and Africa. Italy would enhance its prestige, dignity, and autonomy with the other Great Powers by a gradualist approach, and Mussolini would thus remain on acceptable terms with the Allies. Strings were attached, however: parity for Italy in the alliance, redress of the inequitable distribution of colonial mandates, and Italy’s full share of reparations. Given the country’s military weakness, Mussolini could at the outset do no more than plead and cajole. Much homework had to be done before war, or the threat of war, could be seriously contemplated, not only as a means of redressing past grievances but also of opening up new avenues of expansion. Italy had first to be transformed through the creation of a new generation physically toughened and morally steeled by Fascist discipline before the nation could achieve the totalitarian unity and iron will that would enable Mussolini to pass from words to territorial acquisition. THE OUTSIDER On taking office, Mussolini encountered a number of interrelated issues: Italy’s right to a mandate in the Middle East, its claim to African Jubaland, and legal title to the Dodecanese Islands, all of which rested on unfulfilled clauses of existing treaty rights. Under Article VIII of the London Pact, Italy claimed the British colony of Jubaland, a stretch of land sandwiched between Italian Somaliland and Kenya. Italy was also a signatory to the Treaty of Se`vres of 1920, which transformed the more remote regions of the Turkish empire into either independent Arab states or British and French mandates; a Tripartite Agreement signed the same year delineated areas in Anatolia as spheres of French and Italian economic influence under the blessing of Great Britain. Turkey’s resurgence under Mustapha Kemal,

22

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

however, made a shambles of these imperialist deals with regard to Anatolia. By abandoning the Middle Eastern territories of the old Ottoman Empire, Kemal enabled Britain and France to keep their mandates in the Middle East, but Italy lost its spheres of influence when Kemal restored full Turkish sovereignty in Anatolia. To make up for the lapsed Tripartite Agreement, Mussolini cast his eye on the British mandate over Iraq and demanded a share of the economic privileges in both the French and British spheres throughout the Middle East. Since Italy was left with nothing but its unfulfilled claims under the Pact of London, Mussolini further demanded that Britain cede Jubaland to Italy. On that basis, he was also ready to negotiate the cession of the Dodecanese Islands to Greece, which the British strongly urged out of loyalty to ancient Athens. But the British were determined to force Italy to turn over the Dodecanese in return for Jubaland alone. Britain’s treaty obligations toward Italy would thus be fully discharged. Mussolini was totally dissatisfied with this solution. A conference at Lausanne was convened in 1922 to provide a new settlement in the Middle East. Mustafa Kemal’s sovereignty over Anatolia was recognized, and the British and French kept their mandates in the Middle East. Mussolini emerged with a half-victory. The British gave him short shrift on an Iraq mandate, but eventual Italian title to the Dodecanese Islands was assured. Jubaland remained in abeyance, since the British continued using that portion of British Africa as a lever to force Italy to cede at least some of the Dodecanese Islands to Greece. Only after Ramsay MacDonald came to power at the head of a Labor government in Britain the following year was Jubaland handed over to Italy. While Mussolini presented a bold front on Asia Minor, he appeared hesitant and uncertain in the tangled reparations question. During the interAllied conference on that matter in December 1922, the Duce presented a comprehensive proposal stressing the connection between reparations and inter-Allied debts. But he was stepping into a tenacious feud. Britain, to revive its own economy, wanted to reincorporate Germany into Europe’s economic revival by revising reparations downward, while France wanted to punish German noncompliance with its Versailles Treaty obligations by a military occupation of the Ruhr. Initially, Mussolini supported the French position on reparations. German payment to France in full meant that Italy would receive its full share too. This was a risky stance to take because Italy needed German coal. Berlin was in a position to retaliate by withdrawing German funds from Italian banks, a move that could have caused severe financial hardship for Italy. When the French prime minister, Raymond Poincare´ , ordered French troops into the Ruhr, Mussolini disassociated himself from France’s military action and put himself forward as an arbitrator. The French, however, wanted not compromise but punishment, and the British would have no

Mussolini in Power

23

part of Italian mediation. Rejected on all sides, the Duce lost interest. Eventually, having incurred British and American displeasure, France chose to evacuate the Ruhr, but Mussolini was rewarded with an assurance of his country’s quota of German reparations. Since Mussolini had sent none of his soldiers into the Ruhr, he kept on Britain’s good side, which meant that there would be no letup in much-needed British coal shipments to Italy.1 Italy’s invasion of Corfu in 1923 proved to be Mussolini’s most aggressive move of the 1920s. This crisis grew out of the long-standing ItaloGreek quarrel over Albania. The Conference of Ambassadors of 1921, composed of Britain, France, and Italy, had the task of delineating Albania’s boundaries. Under the directive of the Boundary Commission, an organ of the inter-Allied Ambassadors’ Conference, Italian General Enrico Tellini and four companions were sent out to draw up the Greek-Albanian frontier. While discharging their duty, they were murdered on 27 August 1923 near Janina in Greece. Leaping to the conclusion that the Greeks were responsible, Mussolini first requested that Britain and France join Italy in expressing outrage and called for reparations from Greece. Britain held back while France expressed sympathy. In spite of French support, Mussolini decided to act unilaterally by demanding of the Greeks an apology, a funeral service for the victims, naval salutes for the Italian flag, a 50 million lire penalty, and a strict inquiry, to be carried out quickly with the assistance of the Italian military attache´ . Greece accepted all but the last two parts of the ultimatum, which appeared to violate its national sovereignty. Since nothing short of capitulation would satisfy the Duce, his response was to bombard and occupy the Greek island of Corfu. By acting with complete disdain for diplomatic convention and the League of Nations, Mussolini gave the world his first blatantly aggressive move. There is some question regarding his ulterior motive. Did Mussolini undertake the occupation to strengthen Italy’s demands for compensation from Greece? Or did the Duce use General Tellini’s murder as a convenient pretext to occupy permanently the strategic island guarding the south entrance of the Adriatic? Since the British had expressed horror when, in November 1922, the constitutional authorities in Athens were assassinated by a military junta bent on seizing power, Mussolini expected, if not active support, at least acquiescence in his aggressive move. But here he was let down. Britain favored referring the Corfu matter to the League of Nations. The French, on the other hand, opposed such a course of action, fearing that it would provide a precedent for the League to become involved in the French occupation of the Ruhr. France much preferred that the adjudication of the Corfu matter rest with the Conference of Ambassadors, where British opposition could be neutralized by the French and Italian delegates. Mussolini strengthened this French resolve by threatening to walk out of Geneva should the Corfu incident be placed on the League agenda. Deprived of

24

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

French support, the British dropped their demand that Italy be hauled before the League. A compromise was worked out. The Italian demands for reparations and an inquiry were now to be extended and conducted on behalf of the Conference. Italy’s prestige was safeguarded, and the French were relieved from any embarrassing linkage between Corfu and the Ruhr at the League of Nations. Nonetheless, Mussolini refused to evacuate Corfu, where his occupation began to take on an appearance of permanency, but after the Italian navy presented him with the information that it was no match for the British fleet, Mussolini capitulated. On 27 September, the Italians pulled out of Corfu.2 Greece paid reparations, and the League was successfully defied. Mussolini had created an atmosphere of defiance that offered good arguments to those, especially in France and Britain, who tended to see relations with Italy not so much as an oldfashioned power struggle among states but as a confrontation between Fascism and democracy. Improvised and incoherent, Mussolini’s gunboat diplomacy failed to add Corfu to Italy’s possessions, but it did successfully fulfill demagogic and propagandistic aims within the country. SWORDPLAY IN THE BALKANS Ever since unification, Italy had been deeply involved in the thicket of Balkan politics and rivalries. With the demise or retreat of the four Eastern European empires, Mussolini saw a great opportunity to advance Italian influence and prestige in the resultant void in the Balkans at the expense of the newly created small and vulnerable states there. The ceding of areas that had previously been granted to Italy in the Pact of London to the new state of Yugoslavia made Belgrade into an enemy of Fascist Italy. Aligning Italy with Bulgaria, a defeated power in the Great War and an inveterate foe of Yugoslavia, would facilitate Mussolini’s task of encircling Belgrade. To gain a foothold in the lower Balkans for further expansion, Mussolini aimed to turn Albania into an Italian protectorate, which, coincidentally, would also enable Italy to control access into the Adriatic. But Albania constantly strove to elude Italian tutelage, and the French thrust themselves forward as protectors of Yugoslavia. Faced with these obstacles and unable to challenge French influence in Belgrade by means of war, Mussolini resorted to subversion and the use of the carrot and the stick in dealing with Belgrade and Tirana. These schemes constantly involved him in contradiction and inconsistency. When Mussolini first came to power, he gave his blessing to Sforza’s Rapallo Treaty of 1920, which established Fiume as a free state. But soon the Duce reversed himself by taking up the nationalist viewpoint that Rapallo was a treaty of renunciation. In 1923, he proposed to the Yugoslavs that they accept Italy’s annexation of Fiume in exchange for the Delta region of that city and Port Baros. The government of Nikola Pasˇ ic´ in Bel-

Mussolini in Power

25

grade was slow to respond. Although amenable to a bargain—the Yugoslav foreign minister Momcˇ ilo Nincˇ ic´ admitted in July that the independence of Fiume was not ‘‘an immutable principle’’3—the Yugoslavs hoped to extract far-reaching concessions for allowing the Duce undivided proprietorship over the city. Impatient over Yugoslav hesitation, the Duce abruptly precipitated a decision on 16 September 1923 by appointing General Gaetano Giardino military governor of Fiume. In a single day, the Italian commander had the city under firm control with hardly a whimper from the Yugoslavs, who were too weak to challenge the Italian coup. Disappointed over the lack of French diplomatic support, the Yugoslavs, on 5 January, signaled their readiness to accept the Duce’s terms on Fiume.4 On 27 January 1924, Mussolini concluded the Pact of Rome with Yugoslavia. Long in gestation but short in life, this pact included neutrality and friendship clauses: The two signatories would collaborate on the maintenance of the peace treaties, remain neutral in case of unprovoked aggression against either one, and consult and give diplomatic support if their interests or security should be threatened by a third power. The Yugoslavs were pleased that Italy had finally closed the books on the Adriatic statutes of the 1915 Pact of London; the signs seemed propitious for an era of friendlier relations between Rome and Belgrade. During 1925 and 1926, diplomatic relations among Italy, Yugoslavia, and France revealed important discrepancies in Italy’s policies in the Balkans and on the Danube between the Duce and his secretary general at the foreign ministry. Whereas Contarini was hopeful that the Rome treaty with Yugoslavia would stabilize the Adriatic and open the way to good relations with Czechoslovakia and Romania, the Duce’s purpose was rather to shatter the Little Entente’s unity. Since Contarini sought to thwart French hegemony in Eastern Europe, he intended to restore equilibrium by making Italy responsible for a judicious reconciliation between vanquished and successor states. Central to this vision were rapprochement with Yugoslavia and an understanding with Belgrade over Albania. The Duce had other ideas, born from a different set of assumptions. Catering to the rabid antiSlavism of his party following, he toyed with revisionist strategies to project Italian expansion beyond the outer limits of irredentism through Yugoslavia to points undefined—a natural concomitant of the ruthless Fascist italianization of Slovenes and Croatians inhabiting the acquired provinces in the Julian Alps. The Duce and his minister shared a fundamental concordance of views only with regard to France. Both desired the reduction of French influence in Eastern Europe, but while Contarini recognized that Czech foreign minister Eduard Benesˇ valued a certain independence from Paris and therefore courted Little Entente friendship, Mussolini supposed that Paris and Prague were conspiring to keep Italy out of the Danube region. As the Duce moved to alienate Yugoslavia from Benesˇ , he looked

26

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

forward to a changed Danubian atmosphere and to placing the Czech leader in impotent isolation.5 Albania was at the heart of the many failed efforts for Italo-Yugoslav rapprochement. Strategically located at the mouth of the Adriatic, Albania was plainly a long-standing bone of contention among the powers claiming supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean. Paralyzed by disparate, feuding clans that resisted integration into the body politic, the country lacked the internal cohesion to ward off outside interference. Its two major factions were headed by Fan Noli, an Orthodox priest, and Ahmed Zogu, a leader of the Muslim landowner’s party. From 1920 to 1924, Zogu held power, establishing a tenuous stability, but then Fan Noli staged a successful coup d’e´ tat. Zogu sought refuge in Yugoslavia to regroup for a comeback. With the connivance of the Yugoslav military, he swept back into power, chasing Fan Noli into exile. Once ensconced in Tirana, Zogu threw over his Yugoslav confederates and asked Italy for protection against the revenge of his erstwhile benefactors. In view of a nonintervention agreement toward Albania that Mussolini and Yugoslav King Alexander signed on 9 June 1924, it was not surprising that the Duce resented Belgrade’s abetment of Zogu’s coup d’e´ tat. From December 1924 onward, Mussolini brushed aside every Yugoslav effort to reopen a dialogue over Albania—even the suggestion to partition the country—citing Yugoslav perfidy. Yet he did not want to burn all his bridges to Belgrade. On 20 July 1925, he rekindled the spirit of the Pact of Rome by signing the Nettuno Conventions with Yugoslavia, which regulated the rights of Italians living in Dalmatia. In August 1925, the Duce seemed to chart a new course by concluding a series of agreements with Zogu. At the same time, he embarked on a grand scale of aid and investment in Albania. Droves of agents descended upon Tirana aiming to ‘‘mortgage the entire Albanian economy’’ and bind Zogu to Italy through loans bailing him out of personal bankruptcy. Dismayed by this frenetic Italian activity, Yugoslavia underwent an important internal transformation. The notoriously anti-Italian Croatians managed to break into the upper crust of Serb-dominated government with the appointment to the cabinet of their outstanding leader, Stepan Radic´ , in the autumn of 1925. Yugoslav foreign minister Nincˇ ic´ tried to arrest the gathering momentum toward a breach with Italy generated by Croat influence. Although partially successful in preventing Croat encroachment on foreign policy, he was unable to stem the rising Yugoslav criticism of Italy’s penetration into Albania. As the year ended, Mussolini seemed to be anxiously looking for an opportunity to turn Albania into an Italian satellite. There was nothing new in this, for Italy had had designs on Albania ever since that nation’s founding in 1912, though pressure from the Western Powers had persuaded Mussolini’s predecessors to exercise caution. Could he break free from the old dependencies and fulfill Italy’s destiny in the Balkans?

Mussolini in Power

27

The battle lines were being drawn; Sforza’s Adriatic reconciliation hung by a thread. MUSSOLINI AND LOCARNO In the period following the Corfu incident, the June 1924 murder of the Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti by Fascist thugs helped shape an unflattering image of Fascism abroad and rekindled the distrust that arose over Corfu. The Matteotti outrage further polarized opinion between democratic leaders in Paris and Prague, who denigrated Fascism as inherently destabilizing, and conservative Realpolitikers, who welcomed Fascism as a bulwark against Communism. On the diplomatic front in 1924, in spite of the swordplay in the Balkans, Mussolini behaved prudently. He signed a friendship pact with Czechoslovakia, and, in a move that surprised political pundits who believed that Fascism would never come to terms with a Communist state, the Duce recognized the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, he surreptitiously stirred troubled waters in Germany. Through many contacts with Germany’s para-military right, especially in Bavaria, as well as with military figures outside normal channels, he encouraged extreme nationalism as well as the secret rearmament of the Reichswehr.6 On 20 January 1925, the German foreign minister, Gustav Stresemann, launched a trial balloon in London. In return for the voluntary renunciation of Alsace-Lorraine, Germany would accede to a multilateral regional security pact in the Rhineland area, whereby five powers—Britain, Italy, France, Belgium, and Germany—would guarantee the existing borders of the latter three against aggression. The British and French initially responded to Stresemann’s proposal with reserve and suspicion, but gradually whiffs of optimism blew through the council rooms where the ‘‘open diplomacy’’ of three men (British foreign secretary Austen Chamberlain, French foreign minister Aristide Briand, and Stresemann), created an atmosphere of reconciliation. A major flaw in these preliminary exchanges quickly became manifest: the exclusion of Eastern Europe from the scope of mutual guarantees. Germany flatly refused to be bound to any regional pacts in the east or to sign nonaggression pacts with Poland and Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain, his hands tied by the British Dominions and a tradition of insularity in his own country, was unable to engage Britain in commitments beyond the Rhine. Mussolini’s reaction to the German proposal for a Rhineland pact was governed by the Anschluss question and his mixed feelings about the Germans. If German nationalism turned on France, so much the better for Italy; but if pacification on the Rhine should enable Germany to focus on Austria and the South Tyrol, then Italy’s security would be imperiled. Mussolini was therefore stoutly opposed to Anschluss and would tolerate no Teutonic criticism over his brutal italianization program of the German-

28

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

speaking population in the South Tyrol. But instead of negotiating new safeguards, he rested Italian security on the existing peace treaty system. Whatever the ambiguities introduced into the Austrian situation by the Rhineland discussions, the French position remained clear: Anschluss ‘‘would signify the complete disorganization and disequilibrium of Central Europe.’’7 But when the French made discreet inquiries on the ‘‘lacunae’’ of the German note, Stresemann tartly refused to admit Austria as a fit subject of diplomatic parley. This left the French no other choice but to thrash out the Anschluss problem directly with the Italians. The time was not auspicious for serious negotiations. France and Italy had already arrived at a stalemate in the ongoing negotiations over colonies. Some of the areas of contention, such as Tunis, were left over from prewar diplomacy; the rest arose from differing interpretations over the London Pact of April 1915, which had outlined the terms of Italy’s entry into the war. Mussolini presented a large bill to France that included concessions in Tunis, Tangier, Libya, and Ethiopia. The French replied with platitudes. Ideological antagonism fueled the prevailing tension. Having advanced Fascism as a durable and timely replacement for ‘‘outmoded’’ liberalism, Mussolini took umbrage at the slightest phrase in the French press against his regime or country. The Italian anti-Fascist refugees (fuorusciti) residing in France in particular annoyed the Duce, who stridently demanded that the Quai d’Orsay curb their diatribes. Despite France’s inability to establish a fruitful interchange with the Italians on colonial matters, President Gaston Doumergue, worried over Stresemann’s loopholes, passed on a direct proposal to Italy in March that would regard the line running from the Rhine to the Adriatic as a single frontier.8 Buoyed by Contarini’s reflection that an Anschluss would be a ‘‘disaster’’ for Italy,9 the French proposed constructive programs to rehabilitate Austria’s tottering economy, lest Vienna seek a union with Germany as the only promising economic bailout. But this provoked the usual train of Italian objections: Austria’s resentment of outside supervision and the hobgoblin of ‘‘Danubian confederation’’ that continued to haunt Italy.10 While French plans for Austria were reduced to a simple inquiry to be conducted by private individuals—a watered-down solution favored in Rome, insofar as Italy’s voice was not in the ascendant—the Italians were deciding how best to ambush the Rhineland pact talks. In eschewing close consultation with France and Austria, however, Mussolini had reduced himself to dependency on Chamberlain. This was, alas, a weak reed, for Italy had already been told that Britain could only participate in a treaty limited to the Rhine. The word Anschluss caused different reactions in Mussolini depending on the circumstances. If Paris sought concerted action with Rome to prevent a merger of Germany and Austria, Italy replied either evasively, or with an African agenda, or with the specious argument that an Anschluss

Mussolini in Power

29

represented a greater threat to France than to Italy. But when Stresemann uttered the forbidden word, Rome froze. In an interview with Alessandro De Bosdari, the Italian ambassador in Berlin, on 8 May, Stresemann reflected on the developing groundswell of German opinion that favored union with Austria. Not all the other powers shared Italy’s intransigent position opposing union, he added, a menacing observation scarcely mitigated by his recognition of the difficulties of implementation. It seemed to Italy that Stresemann had seriously begun to consider Anschluss and to substitute Germany for Austria as the spokesman for minority rights in the South Tyrol. On 14 May, Mussolini lashed back by informing Berlin that he would consider the ‘‘war lost and the victory totally annulled the day in which Germany were allowed to realize her annexationist program.’’11 Before the Italian Senate on 20 May, he repeated his determination to prevent Anschluss and declared the Brenner frontier to be inviolate by the key phrase, ‘‘not only must the Rhine frontier be guaranteed, but that of the Brenner also.’’12 In spite of this flare-up, Mussolini was mollified by Stresemann’s disavowals of Anschluss following the Senate outbursts. An uneasy standoff ensued. Stresemann in the future would refrain from broaching union with Austria for fear that Mussolini would counter with a call for an additional treaty endorsement of both Italy’s Brenner frontier and of possession of the Alto Adige. But Mussolini hesitated to push for this additional guarantee lest it provide a signal to Germany that, once existing frontiers had received an international guarantee, Italy would worry less about a future Anschluss. Moreover, Mussolini sought no help from the Little Entente on the Brenner and Anschluss questions. No less than Stresemann, Mussolini was determined to deny Benesˇ guarantee privileges and treaty advantages that might accrue from any extension of Rhineland security to Eastern Europe. Implicit in the Duce’s view was his desire to prevent stabilization in the Danube. Mussolini was upset with the French for allowing themselves to be drawn into the Rhineland talks after Whitehall had clearly stated that Britain would guarantee neither Austria’s independence nor the Brenner frontier. France, Mussolini pointed out, was destroying the indivisibility of the peace by separating its security problems from those of Eastern Europe. He added an ominous warning to this sensible critique. Italy, he stated, was not vitally concerned with the fate of the Rhine. If the plan for mutual security should pass without commensurate safeguards for Austria, he would ponder a strictly Italian ‘‘specific arrangement’’ for the Brenner, the defense of which, he blithely argued, posed much less of a military problem for Italy than the Rhine did for France.13 Plainly, Mussolini hoped that the Rhineland talks would fail so that Pan-German attention would stay riveted on AlsaceLorraine rather than shift to Austria and the South Tyrol.14 Since Mussolini

30

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

refused to cooperate with France to safeguard Austria’s independence and was unwilling to follow Contarini’s advice to attenuate his ruthless denationalization programs in the South Tyrol, Italy’s German policy amounted to periodic tongue lashings to lay the ghost of Anschluss. Only so long as Germany remained weak could such bombast suffice as a surrogate for diplomacy. Concerned over flagging Italian interest, Chamberlain wanted to mitigate Mussolini’s intransigence that there would be ‘‘no solution without Italy, and above all no solution against Italy’’ by convincing him that Britain, too, would stand against Anschluss.15 Though unable to engage in commitments beyond the Rhine, Chamberlain hoped to win Mussolini’s adherence to the Rhineland negotiations by offering Italy ‘‘a special authority in the Balkan affairs.’’16 This offer vouchsafed in Italy the authority to act in the Balkans on behalf of the Entente. Briand was quickly won over to Chamberlain’s idea, in spite of the Quai d’Orsay’s consternation over the abandonment of vital French interests in the Balkans. He sent Mussolini a letter on 8 June, suggesting ‘‘reciprocal security of respective frontiers’’ and promising to regard any Anschluss attempt as a casus belli. Mussolini was not responsive. He regarded a unilateral French guarantee as a dubious antidote to the ‘‘two different categories of treaty’’ and denied having received Chamberlain’s communique´ of Italy’s ‘‘special authority in the Balkan affairs.’’17 While Briand continued to emphasize alternative possibilities, he was receiving unsettling information. Based on a series of articles on Austria published in Italy, the Quai d’Orsay detected a mood of incipient appeasement toward Germany and vacillation regarding various anti-Anschluss proposals. If not a bilateral agreement with Berlin, then perhaps Italy would cooperate with Vienna to short-circuit French Danubian confederation schemes designed to brace up the Austrian economy. In spite of Mussolini’s cold shoulder, Briand once again in September urged him to join with France to fill the voids in the Rhineland security talks. But the Duce was determined to pursue his own course, which, in turn, did not persuade the French to soften their uncompromising position on Tunisia and Tangier— the touchstones to rapprochement in Italian eyes. The Italians wanted the French to give their African demands a respectful and judicious review before committing themselves to a bilateral accord on the Brenner and Austria, while the French continued to avoid substantive talks regarding Italy’s colonial claims. Although Mussolini saw little value in a Rhine security pact, particularly one lacking a Brenner guarantee, he finally decided to join up on 18 September. Italy could not be absent from a pact that promised to include France, Britain, and Germany. Once Italian signature was assured, Briand drifted into even vaguer promises in the colonial sphere and a polite offer to exchange declarations on Austria.

Mussolini in Power

31

Italy played only an insignificant role in the final drafting of the Locarno agreements, despite Mussolini’s dramatic entry at the final ceremony. Traveling by special train to Milan, he drove a racing car at breakneck speed to Stresa and then took the wheel of his speedboat for the final dash across Lake Maggiore to Locarno in Switzerland. Shoulders square, chin defiant, the Duce drove into the quay, splashing astonished onlookers, to the hilarity of his company of boisterous Blackshirts. But the experience was not a happy one. Anti-Fascists greeted him with hisses and catcalls and he was snubbed at diplomatic parties. Frustrated over his inability to silence demonstrative critics on foreign soil, Mussolini left Locarno vowing never again to appear abroad at an international conference. The Rhineland agreements signed on 16 October 1925 brought the wartime coalition to an end. By eliminating the distinction between victors and vanquished, Locarno modified the structure of European politics. Germany was no longer a pariah but a member of the European Concert in good standing. Although left out of the Locarno meetings, the Soviet Union, too, had emerged from isolation by having signed the secret Pact of Rapallo with Germany in 1922; furthermore, Italy and Britain had afforded the Leninist regime diplomatic recognition in 1924. France had satisfied its own immediate security preoccupations by receiving a voluntary German renunciation of Alsace-Lorraine and a nonaggression pact, backed up by Britain and Italy, that safeguarded its northern frontiers. From the Italian standpoint, the diplomatic accomplishment was ambiguous. Unwilling to be involved in the Locarno agreement because of its failure to cover the Brenner and Austria, Mussolini did not want to be excluded either, because of the advantages in acting as an arbitrator between France and Germany on the Rhine. In addition, he grudgingly went along in order to keep in step with Britain. As a guarantor of the frontiers along the Rhine, which had never before been identified with Italian national security, Mussolini finally achieved parity and recognition as a Great Power. Franco-Italian relations, however, remained in a state of chronic tension and distrust. Although Mussolini recognized the Anschluss threat and the need of French cooperation, he preferred to avoid a bilateral Franco-Italian guarantee for Austria separate from Rhineland mutual security. Unless he gained all of his colonial satisfactions in advance, he would reject France’s offer of a guarantee on the Brenner in exchange for an Italian guarantee on the Rhine. The French did not help matters. Briand played Mussolini along until his signature on the Rhineland treaty was assured but then lost interest in Italy’s colonial claims. The opportunity of clinching an agreement over common interests—reinforcement of both the Rhineland and Austrian independence—was thereby lost because of French stinginess, Fascist pride, and Mussolini’s indecision. Moreover, the Rhineland agreements threw into doubt Mussolini’s as-

32

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

sumption of an enduring Franco-German hostility. Lessened pressure on the Rhine enabled France to improve relations with Berlin and to shore up the Balkans and the Danube region against Italian revisionism. In spite of Fascist presuppositions, it did not much matter whether Italy was faced by a France of the conservative Poincare´ or one led by the Cartel des Gauches under the leadership of Briand. The former used punitive measures and the latter sweet words, but their goal was the same: to impede German resurgence and uphold the status quo in Eastern Europe. This was unacceptable to Mussolini. If Briand’s Franco-German rapprochement held, revisionismo would be denied maneuverability and Italy would be condemned to be a second-class power. Likewise Italy’s position toward Germany deteriorated when the latter entered the League of Nations and ceased being a pariah nation. This dashed Mussolini’s hope that a rightist regime in Berlin would join with him in snubbing the League and hatching revisionist projects in Eastern Europe. In a typical example of Italy’s ‘‘intransigent autonomy,’’ Mussolini played off France against Germany in the expectation that the Locarno talks would die. He ended up the victim of his own tortured maneuvers while Stresemann emerged as the main beneficiary; the postwar treaties designed to protect Austrian independence and the inviolability of the Brenner were reduced to second rank below the Rhineland guarantees. If few in Italy realized that Briand had imperiled French security by weakening Eastern European defenses, it was obvious to Mussolini that guarantees confined to the Rhineland had further exposed Austria to Anschluss pressures. NOTES 1. Sally Marks, ‘‘Mussolini and the Ruhr Crisis,’’ International History Review 8, no. 1 (February 1986): 60. 2. The major work on the Corfu incident is James Barros, The Corfu Incident of 1923 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965). 3. DDI, 7, II, 126, 11 July 1923. 4. Franc¸ ois Charles-Roux, Souvenirs diplomatiques: Une grande ambassade a` Rome (Paris: Fayard, 1961), 257–59; DDI, 7, II, 446, 457, and 554, 23 October and 11 January 1924. 5. Charles-Roux, Une grande ambassade, 256–63; Giampiero Carocci, La politica estera dell’Italia fascista (Bari: Laterza, 1969), 49–50; Dennison I. Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage 1919–1946 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 179. 6. Professor Alan Cassels is the first historian to shed light on Mussolini’s connections with the German far Right during the 1920s. See Alan Cassels, ‘‘Mussolini and German Nationalism 1922–1925,’’ Journal of Modern History 35, no. 2 (June 1963): 137–57, and Alan Cassels, Mussolini’s Early Diplomacy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970), 146–74. See also Renzo De Felice, Mussolini e Hitler: I rapporti segreti, 1922–1933 (Florence: Le Monnier, 1975), 1–124.

Mussolini in Power

33

7. AMAE, Se´ rie Europe 1918–1929, Gran Bretagna, 74, 16 March 1925. 8. DDI, 7, III, 743, 4 March 1925. 9. AMAE, Se´ rie Europe 1918–1929, Autriche, 74, 7 March 1925, and Italie, 83–84, 8 April 1925. 10. For a further discussion of France’s proposals for Austria’s economic rehabilitation and supporting documentation, see H. James Burgwyn, Il revisionismo fascista. La sfida di Mussolini alle grandi potenze nei Balcani e sul Danubio 1925– 1933 (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1979), 48–49. 11. Quoted in Mario Toscano, Storia diplomatica della questione dell’Alto Adige (Bari: Laterza, 1967), 97–98. 12. OO, XXI: 319–20. 13. DDI, 7, IV, 21, 8 June 1925. 14. DDI, 7, IV, 21 and 24, 8 and 9 June 1925. 15. FO, C 6680/241/3, 15 May 1925, Chamberlain minute. 16. FO, C 7815/251/62, 10 June 1925. 17. AMAE, Se´ rie Europe 1918–1929, Grande Bretagne, 77 and 80, 19 June and 23 July 1925.

CHAPTER 3

Italian Revisionism RIVALRIES IN THE BALKANS AND DANUBE REGION After signing the Locarno Pact, Mussolini opened up a new phase in his foreign policy by seeking to revise the peace treaties to the advantage of Italy. To accomplish this end, he never ruled out the use of force. In the inevitable European war to come, he was wont to say, Italy would place itself at Germany’s side in order to crush France jointly; if not a war against France, then perhaps he would settle accounts with Yugoslavia.1 Both impulsive and frustrated, Mussolini frequently expressed such violent feelings to conservative generals and figures in the foreign service. He took pleasure in hearing his own sweet martial music and relished the shock experienced by the staid minions surrounding him when they were challenged by Fascist boldness. There was warning too. Fascism’s supporters must shed their uptight bourgeois lifestyle in favor of Mussolini’s own speed and dash as the futurist man of action. Then back to the everyday business of government. But if none of Mussolini’s war talk in the 1920s was followed up by fine-tuned operational plans and military mobilization, one can still perceive a decided aggressiveness in his revisionism: a predilection for Germany, an enduring hostility toward France, and a determination to tear up those portions of the peace treaties that limited Italy’s room to maneuver in the Danube and Balkan regions. Lacking the military and economic wherewithal, he would resort to finesse and subversion. Mussolini’s restraint from war in Europe was not, however, observed in Italy’s colony in North Africa, Libya, where Fascist Italy revealed its barbaric side by a

36

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

ruthless suppression of native opposition that was finally concluded in 1931. In the meantime, greatly dependent on London’s financial markets for the stabilization of the lira, Mussolini made sure to remain on good terms with Great Britain. That congenial attitude played nicely with the British foreign minister, Austen Chamberlain. Immensely pleased over Mussolini’s adherence to the Locarno pact, he developed a friendship with the Duce that endured until the end of his own tenure in 1929. Hoping that Mussolini would cooperate in the extension of the Locarno principles to Eastern Europe, Chamberlain showed understanding over Italian ambitions in Albania and in the colonial sphere. At the end of 1925, Chamberlain ceded Jarabub to Italy on the border between Libya and Egypt in 1929 and revived the Anglo-FrancoItalian agreement of 1906 on Ethiopia. Since this treaty defined the spheres of influence of the three powers in Ethiopia, its revival laid the basis for Italy’s future pretensions over the central nucleus of Ethiopia, the Amharicdominated kingdom. Mussolini was glad to have Chamberlain’s support to avoid the isolation implicit in a forward policy in the Balkans and Danube region that was bound to bring Italy into conflict with France. Moreover, Mussolini was aware that the assistance of the Anglo-American financial world was indispensable for the consolidation of the economic and financial foundations of his regime. Such collaboration was needed to facilitate the stabilization of the Italian economy by a policy of deflation and a return of the lira to the gold standard. Otherwise, there was no hope that Italy would gain relief from its immense wartime debt and chronic balance of payments deficits. But the bond between Mussolini and Chamberlain, though solidified by numerous personal encounters, was strained by the Italian dictator’s unpredictability. Mussolini’s envy of the British empire was hardly mitigated by his warm response to Chamberlain and to Conservative praise of his regime; moreover, British tolerance over the long run was to be placed under severe strain by Mussolini’s support of Hungarian revisionism, his incursions into the Balkans beyond Albania, and his continued interest in mandates and spheres of influence in the Near East and Africa. Emerging from the Locarno talks with an Anglo-Italian entente, Mussolini contrived a Quadruplice that would link Italy with Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria—nations he deemed to be either dissatisfied or led by authoritarians sympathetic to Italian Fascism. The ultimate objective was nothing less than to unhinge the Little Entente and to encircle and possibly break up Yugoslavia. Bulgaria, with its deep resentment of Yugoslavia, seemed a likely candidate to form the southern link of Mussolini’s Quadruplice chain. Certainly that nation, since its founding as an independent state in 1878, had suffered catastrophic losses resulting from ill-advised aggression against its neighbors during the Balkan wars and from its choice to join the Central

Italian Revisionism

37

Powers in the Great War. Having lost large portions of Macedonia to Serbia as a result of the treaty of Bucharest in 1913, the Bulgarians were further exasperated by the treaty of Neuilly of 1919, which delivered Bulgarian-inhabited areas of the north in the Dobrudja to Romania as the price of defeat. Mussolini posed as Bulgaria’s only steadfast ally. To facilitate coherency in the Quadruplice, he hoped to expedite a solution for Bulgaria’s squabble with Romania over the Dobrudja region. The Duce echoed Bulgarian outrage over alleged Serbian mistreatment of its Macedonian population, which Sofia claimed to be ethnically Bulgarian. He funneled money to a Macedonian terrorist group called the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), which had close ties to the Sofia government, and he demanded the removal of the Control Commission set up by the Allies in Sofia to administer the disarmament and reparations clauses of Neuilly. For Mussolini, alignment with the government of the Pan-Bulgar Andrei Liapcˇ ev held out the prospect of collaboration with an authoritarian regime and the separation of Macedonia from Yugoslavia. But if the Bulgarians were ever to be won over, they would have to be convinced that Mussolini would move beyond sympathy to a redress of the country’s grievances. Mussolini, however, was not able to prevent changes in British policy in Sofia over IMRO outrages committed in Yugoslav Macedonia; the Bulgarians resolutely refused to give up their demand for the retrocession of the Dobrudja region. This spelt finis to the Duce’s essay in reconciliation between Sofia and Bucharest.2 If Bulgaria was on the periphery of the Quadruplice, Romania was the linchpin. Romania represented an odd candidate for Mussolini’s revisionist front precisely because it was a thoroughly ‘‘satisfied’’ power and therefore a natural ally of France; further, as a member of the Little Entente, it was a defender of the status quo in Eastern Europe. Indeed, it was mainly thanks to France that Romania, issuing from the war only questionably as a ‘‘victor,’’ was able to annex large tracts of land crowded with hostile ethnic minorities. Nonetheless, when General Alexander Averescu—who was reputed to be pro-Italian and a Fascist sympathizer—formed a government in Bucharest in early April 1926, the Duce saw an opportunity to woo Romania. His hopes of gaining an ideological satellite in Averescu were, however, quickly shaken when he learned that on 10 June Romania had signed a friendship treaty with France. Despite this and many additional obstacles (the principal ones being Transylvania and the Dobrudja), Mussolini persisted with his courtship of the would-be Romanian dictator. There is no doubt that Averescu wished to explore ties with Mussolini despite his country’s dependency on France. Though Averescu had no interest in the Duce as an ideological mentor, he saw value in an Italian ratification of the Bessarabian protocol of 1920, by which Romania had secured that province from Soviet Russia. Lacking an Italian signature, the

38

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

legal nature of the protocol remained in question. This posed problems for Mussolini, who did not happily contemplate a rupture with Moscow over Bessarabia. But balanced against this was the Duce’s desire to associate Italy and Romania with Hungary and Bulgaria. The Duce was confronted with a choice: either alienate the Soviet Union by ratifying the Bessarabian protocol in favor of the Quadruplice or preserve a workable relationship with Moscow and the Little Entente. Mussolini favored the former, while the Palazzo Chigi continued to stand by Contarini’s old caveat to keep on good terms with the Soviet Union as a counter to the German threat.3 Additional obstacles blocked Mussolini’s path to Bucharest. Before the Quadruplice could move from vagueness to reality, Romania would have to return Magyar-dominated portions of Transylvania to the Hungarian homeland, as well as to compensate those Magyars whose homes and property had been expropriated and who had opted to move to Hungary after the war. By interposing Italy in these tangled Hungarian-Romanian disputes, Mussolini was inviting such heavy criticism from both sides that he was persuaded to defer decision on Bessarabia. Negotiations on other subjects were continued, however, culminating in the signing of the Italo-Romanian pact on 16 September 1926. This appeared to be yet another innocuous friendship treaty that would be relegated to obscurity, the same fate that had befallen the Italo-Czech treaty of 1924. But here appearances were deceiving, for its ‘‘platonic character’’ concealed a secret passage containing reciprocal guarantees of assistance in case of unprovoked aggression against either signatory—a clause that, however, became a dead letter after Averescu’s fall. It is apparent that at first neither Mussolini nor Averescu was clear over the advantages accruing from this treaty. The Duce, for the moment, left Romania in a weakened relationship with its Entente allies while he commenced negotiations with Albania; Averescu was content with having established credit on his Italian account, which he hoped to put to future use over Bessarabia. Mussolini proposed to ratify the Bessarabian protocol—pointing out the inevitable sacrifice of Soviet friendship—on condition that Averescu join his Quadruplice by reaching agreements with Bulgaria and Hungary on their claims against his country.4 Averescu, however, quickly engendered widespread domestic discontent and his own king’s disgust over his ‘‘vibrant relationship’’ with Italy; they would tolerate no loosening of ties with France. Mussolini moved to ease Averescu’s plight. Dropping membership in the Quadruplice as a precondition, he ratified the Bessarabian protocol on 7 March 1927. The Duce’s generosity was prompted by the delicate nature of the negotiations he was preparing to conduct with Hungary. Before he could succeed in bringing Budapest and Bucharest together within the Quadruplice framework, he had to oversee a settlement of their outstanding differences—a daunting task given the undying enmity that divided Magyar from Romanian.5

Italian Revisionism

39

Mussolini persisted as a self-styled mediator in this hopeless endeavor out of ambition and naı¨vete´ . If Italy should succeed in brokering a new Eastern European bloc pivoted on a Hungarian-Romanian axis, the existence of the Little Entente and the presence of France in the Danube region would be consigned to memory, and Britain would be won over to an Italian Danubian hegemony by the implicit anti-Slavism of such an axis.6 Mussolini was, however, brought back to earth when Averescu placated the French by his conspicuous participation at the Little Entente’s Jachimov conference on 12–15 May 1927. That gesture was too belated to save Averescu’s political career, and the next month he was driven from the government. Mussolini’s major aspiration of weaning Romania from France and the Little Entente therefore miscarried. He had overestimated Averescu’s Fascist proclivities and his ability to establish a dictatorship in Bucharest. Of all the countries that Mussolini courted, Hungary was the one destined to become Italy’s staunchest revisionist ally. That the Magyars hastened to grasp Mussolini’s proffered revisionist hand can be explained by the sorry state in which they found themselves at the end of World War I. The Treaty of Trianon had inflicted devastating losses on Hungary in territory, resources, and population. Shorn of approximately seventy percent of its territory and large numbers of Magyars, Hungary was also divested of extensive areas of forestry and essential industries. The ‘‘cruel and unjust’’ treaty, in which Hungary was not invited to participate, united all Magyars in outright hatred of the countries of the Little Entente—Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia—which, by means of the peace treaties, had been able to help themselves to large tracts of Magyar-inhabited territory. The Hungarian premier, Istva´ n Bethlen, wishing to explore Italy’s willingness to strike out against the Little Entente, met with Mussolini in Rome in early April 1927. Mussolini’s task was a ticklish one. Basic to the Quadruplice was the participation of both Hungary and Romania, but he was discovering that friendship proffered to one would automatically trigger suspicion on the part of the other. Nothing concrete was therefore put to paper on the resolution of Hungarian-Romanian differences, but the talks were not devoid of results on the ideological front. Both leaders heartily agreed that authoritarian regimes were far preferable to democratically slanted social-agrarian governments in protecting Eastern Europe from the Bolshevik menace; more to the point, they fixed wholesale treaty revision in the Danube region as a common diplomatic objective. As far as the rest of Europe was concerned, the meeting had an innocuous outcome in the form of a treaty of amity, conciliation, and arbitration between the two countries, signed on 5 April 1927. Concealed from public view and in violation of the Trianon treaty was a secret agreement on the delivery of Italian weapons to Hungary.7 Bethlen, who before his arrival in Rome the

40

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

previous April had been characterized by Mussolini as ‘‘feudal,’’ had turned into a ‘‘cultivated, polished, prudent, precise and sincere friend of Italy and of the regime.’’8 Mussolini had little to show for his tortured diplomatic perambulations. The Quadruplice represented an unsuccessful foray back across the Great War’s sharply delineated line separating victor from vanquished. What Mussolini had originally envisaged as a ‘‘Schlieffen plan,’’ to envelop Yugoslavia with an end-run around the tip of Albania, past Greece, through Bulgaria, and thence to Romania and Hungary, had failed because of insurmountable obstacles. The key country, Romania, refused to be pulled over to the side of the revisionists. As had been the case with Yugoslavia, Italy lacked sufficient strength and credibility to prevail on Romania to sever its ties with Paris and the Little Entente. Compounding this failure was Mussolini’s inability to mediate the Bulgarian-Romanian dispute over the Dobrudja, to keep Greece in tow, or to untangle Italo-Hungarian revisionist aims scrambled by the problem of Germany. Stripped of Bulgaria and Romania, the Quadruplice collapsed into a bilateral relationship between Italy and Hungary, whose major focus moved from encirclement of Yugoslavia to a revamped revisionist front in the Danube region which, if the Magyars had their way, would include Germany in an effort to break up the Little Entente. Mussolini had not forgotten Albania. Chamberlain had given him a strong card to play by granting Italy the authority to act as the League’s agent at Tirana, as outlined by the Conference of Ambassadors in 1921. Could the Duce respect Chamberlain’s exhortation that he formally respect Albania’s independence in a way satisfactory to the Yugoslavs? Under Chamberlain’s umbrella, Mussolini weighed two diplomatic alternatives in 1925: a tripartite agreement with France and Yugoslavia and a bilateral agreement with Belgrade that would exclude Paris. To escape from complete dependency on Italy, Albania’s king Ahmed Zogu tried to use Britain as a countervailing influence,9 yet he would accept no arrangement that would subordinate Albania to the League’s jurisdiction. Since Zogu himself needed assistance not only to remain in power but also to fulfill certain expansionist objectives, he was ready to turn to the Italians, but only on the condition that they provide him substantial aid and support for Albania’s irredentist claims on the Kosovo region in southern Yugoslavia. Zogu was confident that he could weave his way through the more outspoken Italian imperialists, his own domestic opposition, and Yugoslav intrigue, while minimizing his dependency on Mussolini. As Zogu blew hot and cold over the advisability of associating with the Italians, Mussolini’s advisers were waging a spirited debate over what to do in Albania. Many professionals of the Contarinian school opposed any mutually exclusive treaty with Zogu in order to placate the Yugoslavs; others, of a more expansionist bent, wanted an outright Italian colony ir-

Italian Revisionism

41

respective of regime. Mussolini adopted a middle position; he would work with Zogu. By enticing him with money and hints, Mussolini promised to regard as operative the secret Italo-Albanian military agreement of August 1925.10 He adopted a compromise position that on the surface recognized parity between Albania and Italy but left him an opening for further advances. A treaty of Tirana was drawn up and signed in November 1926. The key provision reads, ‘‘Italy and Albania recognize that any disturbance directed against the political, juridical, and territorial status quo of Albania is contrary to their reciprocal political interests.’’11 This vagueness left Italy ample room to assert a right of interference in Albanian domestic affairs on the pretext of protecting Zogu. Conversely, the treaty conferred on the Albanian chieftain the option of inviting Italian intervention in support of his irredentist claims on Kosovo. The elastic phraseology even provided Zogu leverage to ask Mussolini’s help in putting down domestic uprisings against his own regime. Defeating hopes of ItaloYugoslav reconciliation, which had been engendered by the Rome accords of 1924, the Tirana pact inaugurated a period of growing contentiousness in the Balkans. Stepping up the pressure, Mussolini railed against France as ‘‘the most militaristic nation in the world’’ and stimulated a crisis by inflammatory charges that accused Yugoslavia of stirring insurgency against the Zogu regime. Capitalizing on Chamberlain’s reluctance to serve as the Balkan ‘‘Honest Broker,’’ Mussolini pursued an Albanian policy with an ever more pronounced anti-Yugoslav slant. Receiving only moral support from the Little Entente, the Yugoslavs pressed the French to activate their dormant treaty to deter Italy from further intrigues in Albania.12 For a while, the French brushed aside the Yugoslav request out of fear of annoying the British. Moreover, since Briand held Italian power in no high esteem, he initially did not think that Yugoslavia needed a treaty with France to offset the Tirana pact or as military security against bellicose Italian behavior in Albania, which he dismissed as bluff. Like the Italians, Briand was worried about Yugoslav militarism and the Serb army’s hubris. The Yugoslav press never ceased denigrating Italy’s military performance during the Great War, which invariably provoked retaliatory insults about ‘‘uncouth’’ Slavs in the Italian press. Paris and Belgrade had different perspectives. Briand intended to include Yugoslavia as part of his cordon sanitaire to contain both the Soviet Union and Germany, whereas Yugoslavia wanted an alliance with France to deter Italian aggression in Albania, where no direct French interests were at stake. Like the Italians, the French were worried about Yugoslav rashness and diplomatic immaturity. But Briand finally succumbed to Belgrade’s pressure and, on 11 November 1927, signed a treaty with Yugoslavia. The French intended to use the treaty as much to control Yugoslav impetuosity as to deter Italian aggression.13 By incorporating an arbitration provision, the French wanted to prevent em-

42

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

broilment in obscure Balkan quarrels and to promote peace between Italy and Yugoslavia.14 The Italians decried this treaty as a provocation, a foil to their legitimate expansionist aspirations, and as proof of the Quai d’Orsay’s unshakable determination to reinforce French hegemony in Europe. Normality had returned: estrangement between the ‘‘Latin Sisters.’’ The Italians proceeded to sign another pact with Albania on 22 November 1927. In contrast with the first Tirana pact of 27 November 1926, which had conferred on Italy unilateral responsibility to sustain the Zogu regime in power against both domestic foes and external threats, the second one was a defensive military alliance. It contained reciprocal obligations between the two states to afford one another armed assistance in the event of attack by a third party. Since the two treaties with Zogu succeeded in reinforcing Italy’s hold over Albania, they antagonized both France and Britain for their provocation of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav parliament answered by refusing to ratify the Conventions of Nettuno, signed on 20 July 1925, which guaranteed the rights of Italians living in Dalmatia. Mussolini angrily observed that the situation between Italy and Yugoslavia was irreconcilable. While lambasting the Franco-Yugoslav treaty, Mussolini made overtures to Greece and Turkey in order to chip away at Yugoslavia from the south. This stratagem faltered over Italy’s inability to resolve the interminable Greco-Turk feud exacerbated by the forced postwar population transfers between the two countries. Soviet pressure on Turkey to eschew alignments with anti-Bolshevik connotations also stymied the Duce. Nonetheless, Mussolini was able to lay two corners of the triangle through separate treaties with Turkey and Greece, dated August and September 1928 respectively, but the indispensable line connecting Athens and Ankara had not been gained. By 1928, the escalation of tension between Italy and Yugoslavia convinced Chamberlain that Mussolini was quite uninterested in stability. Likewise, he was not pleased by the Duce’s support of Hungarian revisionism by word and weapon. The drifting apart of the two men was accentuated over Albania when the Duce stage-managed the proclamation of Zogu as king of all Albanians in late summer of 1928. A brazen boost to Albania’s irredentist claims on Kosovo, this ceremony symbolized an affront to Chamberlain’s Balkan mediation.15 More than a concrete gain, Mussolini’s Balkan policy was conceived out of fear and aggressiveness. Behind the Duce’s unremitting hostility to Yugoslavia and his predisposition to exaggerate Serb militarism was an abiding insecurity over Zogu’s loyalty and staying power. When the Yugoslavs expressed their concern over Italy’s inroads in Albania, Mussolini perceived an ulterior motive to supplant Italian influence in Tirana with their own. And when Belgrade, in a spasm of unwonted friendliness, professed a desire

Italian Revisionism

43

for a return to the spirit of the Rome treaty of 1924, Mussolini perceived weakness—a confirmation of the efficacy of strong-armed diplomacy. A not entirely misplaced suspicion gripped Mussolini that the Serb army was preparing for assaults against both Albania and Bulgaria, further proof that the Yugoslav regime was inimical to Italy. In his mind, the French were the abettors who manipulated Belgrade like a puppet. As was his habit, the Duce overlooked an essentially defensive Franco-Yugoslav alliance by describing it as a ‘‘masonic-democratic’’ conspiracy to strangle Fascism and thwart Italian aspirations in the Balkans. In a fit of rage, he ordered General Pietro Badoglio on 2 October 1926 to mobilize twenty divisions to assault Yugoslavia, a country overflowing with enemies of Italy and the Fascist regime.16 The Duce’s irrational responses and excessive belligerency revealed a man who suspected in others his own aggressiveness. Mussolini’s proclivity to misjudge was exaggerated by subjective reports on Yugoslavia from Italy’s representatives in the field. Fascist language and anti-Slav prejudices crept into the writing not only of Mussolini’s personal emissaries but also the old-guard diplomats. Peppering their reports were such phrases as the ‘‘atavistic impulses’’ of Serbs, the ‘‘social-democratic, masonic, Jewish internationalist plot’’ underlying the Franco-Yugoslav pact, and the occult influence of ‘‘Grand Orient masonry and its funds’’ stimulating Serbia’s italophobia.17 Still, Mussolini was neither goaded into activism by radical Fascists nor restrained by careerists; nor was his Albanian policy galvanized by capitalists urging imperialist expansion. Italian foreign policy in the Balkans and the Danube region bore his unique stamp. Regardless of Belgrade’s motives, Mussolini aimed to dominate Albania and either to neutralize or break up Yugoslavia. He succeeded only in tightening a certain measure of control over the slippery King Zogu. Armed with the Franco-Yugoslav treaty, Briand informed Rome that he was ready to open negotiations aiming at Italian support for the French security system in Europe. Mussolini responded by listing Italy’s objectives in Africa: the continuation of the 1896 convention on Tunis for another five years; the delineation of the southern and western boundaries of Libya; and the recognition by France that Italy had a prior claim on mandates. In March 1928, negotiations were commenced by the French ambassador in Rome, Maurice Beaumarchais.18 But Mussolini confused the talks on colonial issues, where he appeared to be less intractable, insisting that France acquiesce in his Balkan schemes and grant Italy a free hand in the Danube region by means of a friendship pact. Since the French were not prepared to make such concessions, the negotiations petered out in 1929.19 It is difficult to ascertain whether Mussolini misunderstood or willfully misconstrued the French alliance system. Having no sympathy for France’s chief concern over the containment of Germany, he mocked the French preoccupation with security. Mussolini supposed that France was using the Versailles treaty system as much to thwart Italy as to shackle Germany. In

44

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

truth, the first was only the consequence of the second. In the view of the Quai d’Orsay, Italy could not replace France as the stabilizing factor in the Balkan-Danubian region for two reasons: Italy was simply not strong enough, and Italian revisionism plainly implied a disruption of the Eastern European alliance system. Germany would be free to advance down the Danube and into the Balkans—areas fragmented and weakened by Italy. Indeed, Mussolini’s emphasis on dynamism and action was difficult to reconcile with France’s interest in stability. A corrosive ambivalence also left its mark. Ideology beguiled Mussolini into overestimating Italian capabilities. According to Fascist dogma, a virile and disciplined Italy was destined to replace a hostile France that was debilitated by liberalism and a falling birthrate. When the French acted to restrain Serb bellicosity, Mussolini perceived weakness. Still, he often behaved as if he believed that French power on the Continent would be unassailable for decades. Failing to take into account that France had emerged from the Great War a fragile victor and that, after Locarno, French policy was increasingly reactive and defensive, Mussolini thundered against the evangelistic dedication with which the Quai d’Orsay was supposedly deploying the Little Entente and France’s Mediterranean fleet to stifle Italy’s ‘‘legitimate’’ expansion. The Duce’s habit of ascribing mean and unconscionable motives to French policy not only resulted in oversimplification but detracted from his credibility. The spuriousness of the professed Italian desire to sort out colonial claims with the French is confirmed by the Duce’s open admission to the German ambassador in Italy, Constantin von Neurath, that he had made unreasonable demands.20 The French continued to see in Fascist Italy an expansionist force determined to exact fulfillment of its variegated program at their expense and in neglect of the German problem. Mussolini, on the other hand, viewed France as a socialistic country bent on extinguishing Fascism by means fair or foul. To think that effective diplomatic dialogue between Rome and Paris could ensue against this background of irreconcilable perceptions presupposes the existence of an immediate and overwhelming threat to them both. But the disarmed Germany of Stresemann was not yet the Nazi dynamo of Hitler. TERRORIST CONNECTIONS In June 1927, Mussolini wrote a memorandum that called for Italian support of rightist revolutionary movements in the Balkans and the Danube region whose major aim was the breakup of Yugoslavia. But he was careful to admonish that precipitous action be avoided, lest it result in quick and bloody suppression and expose Italy’s embarrassing connivance. Only after local insurrectionary forces had laid the groundwork on their own and given proof of their e´ lan would Italy contribute arms and money. Orchestrated with a diplomatic offensive, Mussolini’s abetment of terrorism was

Italian Revisionism

45

intended to propel putschist authoritarian movements into power and to pull their Fascist-oriented regimes into the Italian orbit. A group of troublemakers in the Balkans that caught Mussolini’s eye was the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). Supported by key figures in the Bulgarian government, the IMRO carried on insurrectionary activities in Yugoslav Macedonia and was therefore a prize candidate for recruitment into the Italian fold. In 1924, the IMRO issued a federalist manifesto calling for the liberation and unification of Macedonia. Against this group stood pro-Bulgarian supremacists. After a gruesome bloodbath in which many federalists and Communist sympathizers fell victim, an uneasy truce commenced among the emergent three chiefs of the IMRO command—Alexanduˇ r Protogerov, Ivan Mihailov, and Georgi pop Christov. Whereas Protogerov continued to explore peaceful avenues for a federalist solution and was said to have approached the Yugoslav government, the organization as a whole became increasingly an aggregate of unprincipled and vicious personalities addicted to violence and devoid of any real commitment to the idea of a Macedonian nation. During the summer of 1927, Protogerov journeyed to Rome in search of Italian gold. This placed the Duce on the spot. Chamberlain’s exhortation that Mussolini join him in urging Sofia to put an end to IMRO terrorism arrived at the moment when he was about to sign the second Tirana pact. Mussolini’s choice was either to estrange the Bulgarian prime minister Liapcˇ ev or to anger Chamberlain. Since sustaining Zogu had become fundamental to Italy’s Balkan policy, he dared not unnecessarily irritate Chamberlain, and thus he fell in with the British request. This was a holding action to stay Chamberlain’s hand until he had concluded the treaty with Albania. There was therefore a need for quiet in Macedonia. But the IMRO’s fresh outrages in December 1927 upset Mussolini’s delicate balancing act. Like everyone else, the Italians were hapless witnesses to the brutality of the IMRO’s fratricidal quarrels, which were often fought out in both Yugoslav Macedonia and Albania. Despite continuing terrorism that he could not restrain, Mussolini was determined to keep in touch with the IMRO, though he could not decide whether to support the Protogerovist or Mihailovist faction. Sometimes the Italians underwrote both simultaneously, and sometimes they shelved the IMRO in an attempt to buffer Liapcˇ ev from Chamberlain’s representations. Mussolini created unnecessary confusion by acting through secret agents and regular diplomatic channels that often worked at cross-purposes; breakdowns of communication were commonplace. All along, Mussolini was subjected to conflicting advice. Which faction should be supported, and against whom? Was terrorism weakening the Yugoslav state or creating problems between Italian prote´ ge´ s in Sofia and Mussolini’s trusted friend Chamberlain? The Duce was unable to make the right choices. After a year of relative quiet, in 1929 he once again took up the IMRO cause,

46

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

but he placed his bets on the faction that lost out in an internal power struggle. That the IMRO as a whole was a dying movement escaped his notice. A major Italian defeat was signaled on 14 February 1930 when Bulgaria signed with Yugoslavia the heretofore hotly disputed Pirot protocols, prescribing measures for the maintenance of security along the frontier. With the help of France, Yugoslavia had scored a significant victory. The sane political figures in the Bulgarian government were free at last to stamp out the IMRO as an effective guerrilla force, a task eased after a vicious settling of accounts had decimated its ranks. In an unfamiliar mood of reconciliation, Yugoslavia and Greece resolved their differences over the Salonika railroad on 27 March 1929. Then Greece settled its outstanding differences with Turkey over population transfers in a convention signed during the spring of 1930, laying the foundation for a future Balkan federation. The whole point of Italy’s subsidization of the IMRO—keeping Bulgaria and Greece out of the Yugoslav orbit and the Balkans in turmoil—had therefore gone amiss. Italy’s flirtation with Liapcˇ ev finally came to an inglorious and inconclusive end with the latter’s political eclipse in June 1931. The IMRO expired in 1934.21 In the game of political speculation in the Balkans, the wheel of fortune had turned against the Duce. Acquiescent in Mussolini’s penetration of Albania, Chamberlain drew the line at Italian abetment of IMRO terrorism. The Englishman’s remonstrances in Sofia ultimately coerced Liapcˇ ev into preventing the organized brigandage in his country from regularly spilling over into Yugoslavia; Mussolini’s subsidization of the IMRO, on the other hand, hurt his friends in Sofia, deepened Bulgaria’s internal fissures, and needlessly complicated its diplomacy all around. Strained feelings between Mussolini and Chamberlain, embittered relations between Italy and Bulgaria, and a strengthened Yugoslavia were the net results. In his campaign to disrupt the Yugoslav state by means of subversion, Mussolini exercised visibly more restraint toward the Croatian separatists than he did toward the IMRO. This approach derived from an Italian inclination to contrast Croatian timidity, born of an unfamiliarity with subversion, unfavorably with Macedonian audacity and proven expertise with the weapons of terrorism. Because of their revolutionary immaturity, the Croatians during the 1920s were deemed poorly prepared to force fundamental changes in the structure of the Yugoslav state. Mussolini’s halfhearted connivance in Croatian separatism revealed many of the same shortcomings that dogged his undercover Balkan operations: a confusing overlap between agents and diplomats and insuperable diplomatic obstacles. What made Mussolini’s support for Croatian separatism utterly selfdefeating were Italian irredentist claims on Croatian-populated Dalmatia. The Roman Catholic Croatians, having cultivated a strong sense of self-

Italian Revisionism

47

identity, considered themselves more civilized and advanced than the ‘‘primitive’’ Greek Orthodox Serbs and were dissatisfied with the Serbdominated regime in Belgrade. Some sought autonomy, while others dreamed of independence. Overall, the Croatians were badly split. It was the obstreperous separatist current, which also contained many quarreling factions, that Mussolini hoped to enroll in his campaign to break up Yugoslavia. Since only a handful of Croatians were disposed to cast their lot with Italy, Mussolini’s task was a formidable one. Even the matter of coordination was taxing, for the disparate factions were widely scattered in and around Croatia. Dr. Ivo Frank, who had been living in exile in Hungary since 1922, maintained contacts with the Magyars; the celebrated Fascist sympathizer Ante Pavelic´ presided over covert operations in Zagreb; and General von Lovcen Stjepan Sarkotic´ , another rightist with pronounced monarchist leanings, preached independence from his home in Vienna. The most successful among the disaffected Croatians was Pavelic´ , who, with the help of Italian agents, was able to forge links with the IMRO and receive the bulk of Italian money. To consolidate these anti-Serb terrorists, the Italians brought them together with agents of the Albanian Committee of Kosovo. On the whole, Mussolini kept aloof from the Croatians and urged both his agents and diplomats to be discreet while culling information on Croatian affairs and personalities. But even this restricted task of observation was made difficult by the Duce’s changing and contradictory commands. In 1925, the agent Vittorio Mazzotti was assigned to coordinate all contacts with the expatriate Croatians; later he was supplanted by the newspaperman Italo Zingarelli. Yet Colonel Carlo Vecchiarelli, the military attache´ in Vienna, and Eugeneo Morreale, a correspondent for Il Popolo d’Italia, continued to receive various Croatian representatives with no apparent disapproval from the Palazzo Chigi. Vladko Macˇ ek, who played a leading Hungarian role in the drama, simultaneously was beseeching the Duce to receive one of his men. Mussolini bought him off with pocket money and placed him under the supervision of Ubaldo Rochira, the Italian consul in Zagreb. Within Croatia, Mussolini moved to bring order by giving Rochira sole responsibility for conferring with Croatian dissidents. Zingarelli would have been a wiser choice, but he was shunted off to Austria on another assignment. The less level-headed Rochira took to harping on the imminence of civil war in Yugoslavia, the reliability of Pavelic´ , and the rebellious potential of Croatian soldiers, should Italy intervene militarily. Rochira’s monopoly on Croatian affairs was contested by the Italian minister in Belgrade, Carlo Galli, who felt that he should be the one to coordinate the flow of information in Croatia. Rochira was not Galli’s only headache; he

48

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

found himself surrounded by Fascist panderers and agents operating on their own, a dispersion of authority bound to reduce his effectiveness. How much did Mussolini’s embroilment in internal Yugoslav affairs advance or impair Italian interests? On the surface, it would seem that the droves of newspapermen, undercover agents, military attache´ s, and diplomats who fanned out in Eastern Europe searching for Croatian separatists had no impact other than to irritate Belgrade. There were only a handful of separatist terrorists to work with, and Italy lacked the funds to bankroll a more broadly based movement. The long-range consequences, however, were more far-reaching. France was afforded yet additional proof of Italian perfidy with which to justify its alliance with Yugoslavia. Even from the Italian standpoint, Mussolini was pursuing a self-defeating policy. His commanding objective, the promotion of Yugoslavia’s internal disintegration with the help of friendly Croatians, suffered from a widening discrepancy between the activity of his agents and the Fascist press. While his personal emissaries sought to enlist Croatians in the terrorist ranks, the press persisted in lumping together all of Yugoslavia’s ethnic groups as Italy’s implacable enemies. The Duce also was unable to resist adorning his news columns with strident irredentist claims on Dalmatia, an area populated mainly by Croatians. It is small wonder that these assaults, coupled with Mussolini’s ruthless italianization of the Istrian peninsula, should have failed to seduce many of the Croatians beyond Pavelic´ ’s sparse cohort. Following King Alexander’s imposition of a military dictatorship in 1929, further dissidence was squelched in Zagreb. Mussolini’s only recourse was to provide terrorist camps on Italian soil for training and waiting. Pavelic´ was given run of a villa located near Pesaro, and his henchman Gustav Percˇ ec´ received money for recruitment and armaments procurement.22 The Austrian Heimwehr was another beneficiary of Mussolini’s largess; support for this grew out of the cordial relations that Italy had established with Hungary in 1927. Mussolini was driven by a missionary zeal to destroy the Austrian Socialist party and to overturn the Austrian constitution as a prelude to the installation of a rightist, Heimwehr-dominated government in Vienna. Such a regime, presumably, would tilt toward Rome and tailor its needs to suit Italian national interests. Wedded to the same authoritarian principles, Italy and especially Hungary would supposedly attract revanchist Germany, induce the formation of a rightist regime in Berlin and together proceed toward the inevitable showdown with France and the Little Entente for supremacy in Eastern Europe. What was this Heimwehr of which the Italians and Hungarians expected great deeds? Like the Fascist movement in Italy, the Austrian Heimwehr surfaced in the postwar atmosphere of disillusionment and economic crisis. To protect their lands from the so-called menace of Reds, Slavs, and Italians, demobilized soldiers flocked into voluntary home guards. These formed the core of the Heimwehr movement. But in spite of a certain e´ lan,

Italian Revisionism

49

during the 1920s, the Heimwehr was destined to remain on the periphery of Austrian politics, its Fascism stillborn. Although inspired by the authoritarian idea, the Heimwehr was never able to forge the inner unity required to evolve into a full-fledged movement capable of seizing power. Instead, it remained a collection of provincial military leagues with strong regional loyalty whose only cohesiveness lay in a ‘‘community of trenches’’ spirit, a hatred of Austrian Socialists, and nostalgic memories of the Habsburg monarchy. Moreover, since Austria’s government was clerical-conservative during the 1920s, the Heimwehr’s appeal among rightist circles and ‘‘respectable people’’ was attenuated. Insofar as the Heimwehr nourished PanGermanism and South Tyrolean irredentism, it would actually represent a specific danger to Italy’s national interests. Yet this provincial, unwieldy, and potentially anti-Italian movement became Mussolini’s collaborator in the art of subversion. Mussolini’s hatred of Austrian Marxism derived from his identity as a Socialist renegade. Especially infuriating to him was the biting criticism of his erstwhile Austrian comrades over the Matteotti incident and the comfort they gave to the Italian fuorusciti. Moreover, in 1927, the Austrian Socialist party still strongly advocated Anschluss. Mussolini not only equated the Austrian Marxists with Bolshevism but also regarded the Austrian Socialists as agents of France and the Little Entente. To offset what he feared to be an impending Socialist seizure of power in Vienna, Mussolini intended to support a Heimwehr coup d’e´ tat. Given Mussolini’s ideological proclivities, the Hungarian premier, Istva´ n Bethlen, was able to persuade him in April 1928 to contribute a million lire to the Heimwehr war chest. After subduing proletarian agitation, the Heimwehr planned to seize power. Mussolini left most of the practical arrangements to the Hungarians. A mass rally in Wiener Neustadt was planned for 7 October 1928, and Rome hoped that this action would at once prove that the Socialists no longer had a monopoly on the streets and would trigger a ‘‘march on Vienna.’’ But the clever Prelate Ignaz Seipel defused the putsch and thus prevented the Heimwehr from charting its way to power through insurrection. In 1929, more money passed from Rome into the Heimwehr’s coffers. In a change of strategy, the Heimwehr pondered legal methods to attain their main goals of debilitating the Socialist party and strengthening the authority of the state. Mussolini and Bethlen agreed to substituting this strategy for armed intervention. With great fanfare, the Heimwehr prepared for the leap to power by scheduling a mass demonstration for 29 September. Ironically, just when it appeared that the movement was peaking in popularity, it began to lose the confidence of the Austrian bourgeoisie and the rank and file of the Christian Social party. The air laden with violence, the Heimwehr’s bourgeois paymasters lost their desire to settle accounts with Marxism, preferring instead to employ the movement as a shield

50

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

against their feared leftist rivals. Deprived of popular support, the Heimwehr lost its nerve, and the great demonstration fizzled out. After Seipel’s resignation in April 1929, the Christian Social party pinned its hopes on Johannes Schober, a man of law and order. In his capacity as Vienna’s police chief, had he not smashed the Socialist ‘‘uprising’’ in July 1927? Since Schober was known to have close Heimwehr connections and was unimpeachably anti-Marxist, the Italians decided to switch their allegiance from the discredited Heimwehr to the newly formed government in the belief that Schober intended to strengthen the executive. Schober proceeded to outfox both the Italians and the Heimwehr. He made a visit to Rome and signed a treaty of friendship and arbitration with Mussolini on 6 February 1930. The Duce promised to end his resistance to an international loan to Austria and supported Schober’s decision to disarm both the Heimwehr and the Schutzbund. But Schober refused to budge from a strictly defined neutrality by associating with any Danubian alignment sponsored by Italy. The man who has often been described as mediocre, a colorless, pedantic, if hard-working policeman of provincial mentality, had proved himself more than equal to Mussolini. Schober had induced a change in Italian policy: the abandonment of Heimwehr subversion in favor of a legally waged war on Socialism through support for his legitimate government, despite his former assurances to Rome that he would direct an arbitrary police/Heimwehr clean-up of Austrian Marxism. In July 1930, Count Ernest Ru¨ diger Starhemberg, a man of aristocratic lineage and wealth but an undisciplined Freikorps lifestyle, visited Mussolini in Rome. The Duce urged him to seize leadership of the badly fragmented Heimwehr. This he did. In accordance with Italian wishes, Starhemberg set aside Fascism for the moment as a model for Austria in favor of participation in Schober’s government; the hope was that he would give that government a decidedly authoritarian, anti-Socialist slant. But Starhemberg failed to live up to Italian expectations either by infusing his somnolent organization with vigor or by establishing his sway over Schober. And Schober more than measured up to Italian guile. Keeping Starhemberg at arm’s length, Schober also turned his back on his defense minister, Karl Vaugoin (whom the Italians had figured as the essential link between the army and Heimwehr), traveled to France, and struck up a dialogue with the Austrian Socialists. Offended by Schober’s ideological apostasy, the Italians urged Vaugoin to plot an army-Heimwehr show of force with Starhemberg to take place before the elections, hoping that Schober would be dragged along. But, alas, the fall elections in 1930 went off without incident; nobody lifted a finger against the Socialists, who emerged as the strongest party. Consternation reigned in Rome. Although Starhemberg bragged in his memoirs, ‘‘I frankly admit that I entered the cabinet with the object of bringing about a coup d’e´ tat,’’23 this fledgling prote´ ge´ of Mussolini, left in the lurch by his friend Vaugoin, proceeded to invest in respectability through the formation of a political party,

Italian Revisionism

51

the Heimatbloc. Starhemberg’s transition from movement to party alienated the revolutionary fanatics, and Schober’s able intrigue, during the time he was in office, contributed to the fracturing of Heimwehr unity. In spite of the questionable wisdom of trafficking with Heimwehr figures, Mussolini, in contrast with his closest advisers, held out hopes for a Heimwehr march on Vienna. The evidence against the movement was conclusive and should have prompted him to break off completely. Eugenio Morreale, the Duce’s agent in Vienna, criticized the Heimwehr for its unreliability, and the Italian minister in Vienna, Giacinto Auriti, cited a divisiveness that sapped the Heimwehr’s will and the failure of any strong leader to overcome this. Giulio Ricciardi, the Italian consul at Innsbruck, pointed out the obvious: A movement whose cradle was located in the Tyrolean capital could not help but have strong irredentist aims on the South Tyrol. Notwithstanding these assessments, Mussolini persisted in the belief that he could use the Heimwehr to crush the particularly virulent form of Anschluss that he perceived to have reached epidemic proportions in the Austrian Socialist party. He took no notice of (or placed little faith in) the Socialists’ drift from their anti-Anschluss position of the 1920s after Hitler’s first stunning electoral success in 1930. Mussolini’s chronic hatred of Socialism obscured his awareness of the no less virulent Pan-Germanism permeating Heimwehr ranks, as well as the movement’s financiers and moral supporters on the far right. Although it is clear that Mussolini’s own emissaries and the Palazzo Chigi’s representatives at home and in Austria were wary of the Heimwehr, it was because of its Pan-German bent and its lack of will to crush AustroMarxism by means of a coup d’e´ tat. On the other hand, having no scruples against illegal or underhanded actions, they were at one with the Duce in working actively to install an authoritarian regime in Austria. When the Heimwehr fell short of their expectations, they plotted with those party figures of high standing who, sympathetic toward Fascism, would, aided by the Heimwehr, usurp power, impose dictatorship, and declare—even tongue in cheek—a disinterest in the South Tyrol.24 Between 1927 and 1930, the Duce did not noticeably compromise his country’s security by his dalliance with the Heimwehr. But rather than learn from his errors, he continued in the same vein with far more harmful results. Mussolini could get away with plotting with the Heimwehr as long as German foreign policy remained in the hands of Stresemann and his successors; after Hitler came to power, the Italian-Heimwehr saga would have a far different outcome. REVISIONIST AMBIGUITIES On 21 March 1928, the powerful British press mogul Lord Rothermere published a sensational interview with Mussolini on Hungary and the Treaty of Trianon in the Daily Mail. He quoted the Duce as saying:

52

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

The sanctity of treaties must be preserved but that principle does not prevent the modification of the details of a treaty, where that is found, after careful examination, to be desirable. A treaty is not a tomb. In all history there has never been one that was eternal. . . . Unlike Italy . . . Hungary cannot have a geographic frontier, but she could, and should, have a racial frontier.25

This interview scandalized Europe. Mussolini seemed to be breaking new ground with his public support of a comprehensive revision of peace treaties in behalf of a country other than Italy. But Mussolini only made explicit what had been a strong undercurrent in Italian diplomacy ever since he came to power, especially as regarded Germany. Single-mindedly, Mussolini had sought to puzzle out with the Wilhelmstrasse a compromise between Pan-Germanism and revisionismo that would satisfy both Gleichschaltung (political coordination between Austria and Germany) and Italian security. His persistence in exhorting Germany to engage in secret parley with Italy did have credibility insofar as he intended to prevent any Franco-German rapprochement and to scare France into making concessions to Italy. But this strategy was too filled with resentment to prosper. Convinced that in 1919 Italy had won the war and lost the peace, the Duce threatened to upset the delicate balances involved in manipulating a power potentially stronger than Italy. Driven by unsatisfied nationalist aspiration into a risky and gambling diplomacy, Mussolini believed that Italy would be in a far better position to claim fulfillment of the 1915 London Pact if the Versailles bonds pinning Germany to the status quo were dissolved. Hence, Mussolini’s support for the German demand for equality. Italian policy during the 1920s, therefore, tended to take on a German orientation, implying that Italy felt a stronger kinship with its former adversaries than with its ungrateful allies. Italy and Germany, two countries that had been similarly ill-treated, would stand shoulder to shoulder against the iniquitous Allies by sponsoring treaty revision and a realignment of power on the European continent. This, however, produced contradictions and conflicts of purpose. While the Duce advocated general treaty revision, he denied any thought of a retrocession to Austria of the German-speaking South Tyrol by declaring the finality in the Brenner frontier. Moreover, Mussolini’s determination to uphold Austria’s independence and Stresemann’s obvious wish to undermine it stymied his efforts at Italo-German collaboration in treaty revision. During the 1920s, the Realpolitiker in Mussolini enabled him to fathom Italy’s inability to sustain forceful expansion. Often he backed down at the penultimate moment when vulnerable key areas in Italy’s defense had been carelessly neglected and were dangerously exposed by risky revisionist probes. But Mussolini’s natural disposition to make enemies of the countries that had emerged from World War I on the victorious side and that had benefited from the Allied-dictated treaties impaired his realism; con-

Italian Revisionism

53

versely, the Duce preferred to recruit allies from among the injured, insulted, and vanquished. Within these latter countries, he befriended outraged nationalists and terrorists who were gaining increasing attention in societies buffeted by social conflict and the Bolshevik menace. Antagonistic to liberal democracy and the stringent application of discriminatory peace treaties by the Western Powers, these, surmised the Duce, were natural clients of Italy that would identify with Fascism and look to Rome for their cues. Mussolini’s attempts to encircle Yugoslavia and his penetration of Albania were based on the premise that the satisfaction of Italy’s demands could be achieved only in a shake-up of existing power alignments and territorial changes—Italy’s revisionismo. Only in Albania did he reap benefits. He was, however, unable to use this little imperial dependent territory—an unearned benefit of his friendship with Chamberlain—as a springboard for further penetration due to the alignment that sprang up to oppose him. Mussolini had either to admit failure and meekly acquiesce in the Locarno system or escalate his revisionism with attacks on the Trianon and Neuilly treaties in defiance of the Western Powers. In choosing the latter course, Mussolini invited many perils. In challenging the Eastern European peace settlement, he would be hard pressed to gain Western support for preferential treatment of the Paris Peace Conference treaties dealing with Austria. Either the treaties were indivisible, or they were not. For Mussolini to insist that he could arbitrarily decide on exceptions while holding everybody else accountable for the rest was to invite Germany to make similarly expedient distinctions. If the Duce had restricted Italy’s demands to the fulfillment of irredentist claims, he might have called on Britain and France to discharge their treaty obligations to uphold Austria’s independence in return for strong Italian support on the Rhine. Instead, he took up the cause of Magyar irredentism, which made a shambles of his former critique that Locarno had established two distinct and unequal categories of treaties, West and East. Furthermore, he had exposed himself to the charge of inconsistency in denying the South Tyrol self-determination while elevating irredentism to high principle in the case of Hungary. Such behavior provides prime examples of the Duce’s essentially incoherent diplomacy. Although he would, as always, vacillate and draw back whenever he accidentally tripped over the Anschluss question, he introduced a new recklessness in Italian policy by public support of Hungary’s revisionism. Since Mussolini refrained from military aggression—out of military weakness rather than by choice—Italy’s standing in Europe did not seem to suffer appreciably from what was tantamount to melodramatic and harmless gestures. Furthermore, by signing the Lateran Treaty with the Vatican in February 1929, Mussolini enhanced his reputation in conservative Catholic circles as ‘‘a Fascist of the golden twenties.’’ But if Mus-

54

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

solini acted superficially like a ‘‘responsible European’’ or if his policy often seemed aimless and improvised, his biases slowly crept into Italian policy, creating habits and patterns that hampered a steady and unprejudiced pursuit of Realpolitik. We are not talking here of any uniquely Fascist intrusion into Italian foreign policy. Mussolini’s revisionism was no Fascist invention, and it was not so much Fascist as it was the Duce’s own inimitable spin on the vittoria mutilata theme. This sentiment was fully shared by most careerists in the Italian foreign ministry during the 1920s who, incidentally, like the Fascists, had no high esteem for democracy and certainly none for the new nations of Eastern Europe. Similarly, Mussolini did not undertake any systematic fascistization of the foreign ministry’s personnel. During the 1920s, with the notable exception of Sforza’s tenure, there was no marked departure from a conventional Italian diplomacy. Italy under Sonnino had characteristically pursued expansion and employed decidedly underhanded methods; he had promoted subversion and the breakup of Yugoslavia just as assiduously as Mussolini. Aside from the temperamental differences that divided the upstart Fascist plebeians from the aristocratic old guard, the Duce found many devoted followers among careerists as well as his own personal emissaries. Linked together by their support of Mussolini’s program for national aggrandizement, both groups performed their tasks loyally, if sometimes incompetently, be these the execution of traditional diplomacy, the promotion of subversion, or the recruitment of terrorists. Whatever shake-ups took place in the foreign ministry did not have the primary purpose of purging moderates and replacing the hidebound old-guard with ‘‘activist’’ Fascists. Rather, they were intended to concentrate power in the hands of the Duce so as to facilitate the implementation of his own diplomatic priorities. If the Balkans held center stage in 1929, a further reorganization in 1932 enabled Mussolini to focus on Africa. Sometimes the careerists would try to temper both the volatility in Mussolini’s foreign policy and his crass diplomatic manners; some even resigned in despair over the recklessness in Italian diplomacy introduced by the inexperienced Duce. Yet, while pursuing a revisionist policy whose specific aim was to challenge the French legalistic interpretation of the Versailles Treaty, Mussolini adhered to a very prudent and conservative economic policy. Having revalued the lira in 1926–1927, a measure undertaken as part of a European currency and economic stabilization funded by the American and British governments and banks, he could not escape dependency in an international economy dominated by Anglo-American finance and capital. It was a Fascist of the first hour, Dino Grandi, who would faithfully obey the old Italian diplomatic axiom of entente with Britain and goodwill toward the United States. Moreover, the Duce’s pinprick revisionism did not loosen Italy from an essential continuity with the diplomacy of the liberal regimes that preceded the Fascists in power.

Italian Revisionism

55

Although there was an unmistakable tono fascista introduced by the Duce, this was originally a question of style rather than substance. The style, however, especially when manifested in boastful propaganda, eventually affected the substance by creating a Fascist aura around Italian foreign policy. This aura informed the statesmen in Europe that Mussolini preferred collaboration with authoritarian states and intimacy with dictators over coexistence with democracies. And, in breaking new ground by his public support for Hungarian revisionism, Mussolini unleashed a change of power alignments in the Danube region that during the 1930s took a far different turn from the one originally anticipated in a Europe still blessedly free of Adolf Hitler.

NOTES 1. Mussolini abruptly ordered mobilization of twenty divisions in October 1926, but there seems to have been no follow up. DDI, 7, IV, 446, 2 October 1926. 2. DDI, 7, IV, 425, 15 September 1926; V, 40 and 86, 3 and 21 March 1927, 135 and 165, 11 and 27 April 1927; FO C 9552/1402/7 and C 7022/42/7, 25 November and 1 October 1928. 3. DDI, 7, V, 54, between 23 February and 7 March 1927; Carocci, La diplomatica estera dell’Italia fascista, 37. 4. DDI, 7, IV, 378, 401, 412, and 580, 20 July, 31 August, 8 September 1926, and 16 January 1927. 5. For the difficulties that Mussolini was encountering from Hungary, see GFM, 2809/5594H/E441828–31 and E441869–71, 29 May 1928 and 10 June 1928. 6. ADAP, B, V, 59, 5 April 1927, n. 6; GFM, K350/K113750, 9 March 1927; ibid., 2826/6037H/E4494349, 2 May 1928. 7. DDI, 7, IV, 579, 582, and 584, 16, 17, and 20 January 1927; ADAP, B, IV, 71, 27 June 1927; Magda A´ da´ m, Gyula Juha´ sz, and Lajos Kerekes, Allianz HitlerHorthy-Mussolini: Dokumente zur Ungarischen Aussenpolitik 1933–1934 (Budapest: Akade´ miai Kiado´ , 1966), 15, n. 3; Carocci, La politica estera dell’Italia fascista, 82–83. 8. DDI, 7, V, 123, 4 April 1927, 321 and 333; ibid., 11 and 21 July 1927; GFM, 2829/6057H/E446712, 21 July 1927; ibid., 1388/2784/D538850–51, 9 November 1927. 9. DBFP, 1A, II, 157, 18 August 1926. 10. DDI, 7, IV, 70, 13 July 1926. 11. FO, C 3891/474/90, 15 June 1931. 12. DDI, 7, IV, 535, 11 December 1926; ibid., V, 82, 19 March 1927, 192; ibid., 9 May 1927; AMAE, Se´ rie Europe, Yougoslavie, 80, 3 May 1927; GFM, 2803/5972/E438907, 28 February 1927. 13. AMAE, Se´ rie Europe 1918–1929, 80, 21 May 1927; DBFP, 1A, III, 156, 19 April 1927, IV, 5, 12 September 1927. 14. Nicole Jordan, The Popular Front and Central Europe: The Dilemmas of French Impotence, 1918–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 15.

56

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

15. DDI, 7, VI, 41, 22 January 1928; DBFP, 1A, V, 295, 18 December 1928. 16. DDI, 7, IV, 446, 2 October 1926. 17. DDI, 7, V, 27 and 535, 20 February and 12 November 1927; ibid., VII, 3, 111, 129, 285, 349, 25 September, 14 and 27 December 1928, 26 February and 2 April 1929. 18. DDI, 7, VI, 167, 19 March 1928; FO, C 2214/8/22, 19 March 1928. 19. DDI, 7, VI, 6, 208; Raffaele Guariglia, Ricordi 1922–1946 (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1950), 144–63. 20. GFM, 2342/4575H/E171173–80, 11 April 1929. 21. The major work on the IMRO and its connections with Italian agents is Stefan Troebst, Mussolini, Macedonien und die Ma¨ chte 1922–1930 (Cologne and Vienna: Bo¨ hlau Verlag, 1987). A brief survey of the same subject and supporting documentation can be found in Burgwyn, Il revisionismo fascista, 168–84. 22. The leading study on Italy and the Croatian separatists is James J. Sadkovich, Italian Support for Croatian Separatism (New York: Garland, 1987). Supporting evidence and commentary can be found in Burgwyn, Il revisionismo fascista, 184– 91. 23. Ernst Ru¨ diger Starhemberg, Between Hitler and Mussolini (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1942), 21–27. 24. For an expanded discussion and supporting documentation on Italy’s connections with the Heimwehr, see Burgwyn, Il revisionismo fascista, 191–207. 25. FO, C2520/182/21, 29 March 1928.

CHAPTER 4

The Grandi Era THE PEACE OFFENSIVE Frustrated by the bankruptcy of his revisionist policies, Mussolini in May 1929 handed over the portfolio of foreign minister to his undersecretary, Dino Grandi, who would have the task of giving Fascist Italy a more temperate image. Aware of Italy’s glaring military weakness, Grandi shifted into a peace mode to gain the same objectives that Mussolini had failed to achieve by truculence and insurrection. At first, however, the choice of Grandi seemed to indicate a new Fascist militancy in Italian foreign policy. As the party leader of Bologna and a participant in the March on Rome, Grandi had established a reputation for toughness—a Fascist of the first wave. But here appearances were deceiving. Contarini had appointed Grandi undersecretary in 1925 in the belief that he was malleable, a man whose rough edges could be smoothed by an education in the sophisticated ways of high diplomacy. This turned out to be an adroit calculation, for Grandi was an eager and apt student who became fluent in English and French, penetrated the mysteries of the Palazzo Chigi, and developed into a worldly figure who participated easily in cocktail party banter and diplomatic repartee. He cultivated the reputation of a hard-headed realist and an astute practitioner of the balance of power. What Italy was unable to do because of a lack of finances and armaments, the new foreign minister hoped to achieve through diplomacy and guile. By pursuing Realpolitik free of Fascist hyperbole, Grandi hoped to open up new diplomatic vistas. Unfettered by alliances and ideological allies,

58

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

Italy would be able to pursue a policy of the decisive weight (peso determinante) as Europe’s ultimate arbiter of war and diplomacy. Italy would be tied to no country’s apron strings. Rather, it would be the pendulum in the European balance, a policy described by De Felice as having a ‘‘machiavellian lack of scruple and. . . . realism.’’1 Grandi’s highest priority was to force or cajole France to pay off the imperialist debts that it had carried over from the war. But since Italy was too weak by itself to accomplish this feat, Grandi intended to use Britain and eventually the United States as leverage by posing as a peacemaker. When Grandi took office, his hopes for fruitful Anglo-Italian cooperation were not great, for, in his view, the arrival in office of Ramsay MacDonald’s Labor government in Great Britain had set in motion a powerful antiFascist backlash on the European left.2 How could a supposedly stalwart Fascist ever establish a meaningful dialogue with a government dedicated to peace, collective security, and international conciliation? Nevertheless, the many years served as an apprentice in the Palazzo Chigi had freed Grandi from the limited ideological horizons of the squadristi. Now more pragmatic and diplomatically supple, Grandi shrewdly realized that the rise of a Labor government in Britain would enable him publicly to ‘‘pose as a pacifist, a supporter of the League, in full measure.’’3 Such a pose was necessitated by the need to make cuts in the Italian budget and to ease military expenditures during the depression years. Grandi revealed to Mussolini his true intention of exploiting the fissure in the Entente Cordiale by applying pressure on the Quai d’Orsay to concede to Italy parity in military armaments as well as colonial concessions. To sell his ‘‘peace’’ program at home, Grandi delivered a glowing tribute to the League and its principles before the Chamber of Deputies in May 1930. In this speech, he called for the removal of the most onerous and burdensome legacy of the war: the peace treaties that maintained the inequitable division between victors and vanquished. Reaffirming the Duce’s axiom that ‘‘treaties are not eternal,’’ Grandi exhorted that they be adapted to new needs and changing times. To reduce tensions and avoid war, Italy would willingly disarm to ‘‘any figure whatever, even the lowest, provided it was not surpassed by any other European power.’’4 Mussolini’s outlook was simpler still: ‘‘parity or death.’’5 While propagating parity, naval disarmament, and peace, Grandi made the invidious comparison between French militarism, disguised as security mania, and Italy’s readiness to disarm. This message was warmly received in London—and in the United States. While playing the peace card, Grandi downplayed Fascist ideology in foreign policy. The propensity of the British Labor government to take his lip-service to world peace and harmony as gospel prompted Grandi to cooperate with ‘‘Socialist’’ governments. That the British foreign secretary, Arthur Henderson, who one year earlier had branded Mussolini as an as-

The Grandi Era

59

sassin, would travel to the Duce’s citadel in Rome in early March 1931 to pay his respects showed Grandi that European Social Democracy was neither cohesive nor an inveterate foe of Fascism. In his view, Socialist-tinged governments, as well as the Italian Fascist regime, answered to supreme national interests rather than to transcendent ideology.6 But Grandi made little headway at Geneva—or with Mussolini. Impatient over the interminable debates on disarmament, the Duce threatened to throw Italy, ‘‘armed to the teeth’’ and ‘‘aroused to fever pitch,’’ against the rest of the world.7 To offset Grandi’s mawkish imitation of the British Labourites, Mussolini shouted to the Blackshirts of Florence on 17 May 1930: ‘‘Words are beautiful things, but rifles, guns, ships, and airplanes are more beautiful still. . . . When tomorrow dawns, the world will be witness to the spectacle of our armed forces which will reveal the calm and warlike countenance of Fascist Italy.’’8 France was the main obstacle to peace, Mussolini told the British ambassador Sir Ronald Graham; unless the French disarmed, another European war would be unavoidable.9 Italy’s ‘‘disarmament’’ policy thus fluctuated between the Duce’s condemnations of France and the ‘‘peace offensive’’ of Grandi, between a strident bellicosity toward liberal Europe and a reasoned advocacy of treaty readjustment in accordance with the liberal credo of abstract justice and international morality. Supported by Italian high finance and capitalist enterprise, Grandi became a stalwart supporter of the classical economic remedies advanced by the financial circles in the Anglo-American world to restore financial stability and capitalist enterprise in a Europe engulfed in economic depression.10 AMBIVALENCE OVER FRANCE Mussolini’s brinkmanship, Grandi knew, was a dangerous strategy for a country that lacked military credibility. Scarcely less harmful, the Duce’s provocative speeches enabled the militarists in France who were anxious for a preventive war against Italy to gain the upper hand over Briand and his socialist following. ‘‘No doubt about it,’’ Grandi admitted, ‘‘we have pushed our polemical campaign too hard.’’11 To avoid war against France and Yugoslavia, Grandi hastened to reopen a dialogue with Paris. A naval accord with France that recognized Italy’s parity on the high seas took precedence over other areas of Franco-Italian dispute: Tunisia, boundary adjustments in Libya, Ethiopia, and Yugoslavia and the Balkans. Mussolini agreed, so long as such an accord did not include the word ‘‘friendship,’’ which stuck in his throat like a bone: ‘‘These people have forgotten too quickly that perhaps without me in 1915 the Germans would have been in Paris. And I did that disinterestedly. Within me stirs a profound rancor for their ingratitude.’’12 Grandi himself battened on francophobia throughout 1930 and yearned to settle old scores. ‘‘We must make

60

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

war, and on France, but we must prepare it in diplomacy, in weaponry, in the spirit.’’13 Thanks to mutual Franco-Italian intransigence, the naval negotiations quickly stalled. Grandi therefore contemplated playing the Yugoslav card, but this required a reversal of gears. On 5 February 1929, Grandi delivered a speech before the Fascist Grand Council, dwelling on the Yugoslav yearning for a war of revenge against Italy. To neutralize the Yugoslav threat, Grandi promised to block Belgrade from obtaining an outlet on the Otranto Canal. Italy must remain master in the Adriatic to safeguard the Latin race against Slav expansionism. Coexisting with insecurity was overweening ambition. Grandi conceived the Illyrian mountains to be the outposts of Rome’s security. Caesar’s Balkan domain would be resurrected by a forced breakup of the Yugoslav state.14 Posturing as a warmonger, Grandi wrote to the Duce on 8 January 1930 that ‘‘war with Yugoslavia is inevitable,’’ but, in the next breath, he suggested that glory should be deferred until Italy rearmed and Fascism’s enemies were immobilized.15 When gripped by fear of imminent war, Grandi frequently employed the term ‘‘chloroform’’ as a ruse to trick the French, or the Yugoslavs, into believing that Italy had a sincere interest in an enduring rapprochement. Grandi claimed—and recent writers have maintained—that his ultimate objective was agreement with France and Yugoslavia by means of graduated pressure and threats to obtain satisfaction of long-standing Italian grievances on Italian terms.16 But whenever the French showed a disposition to make concessions, Grandi was inclined to pass beyond the standard claims by demanding Nice, Savoy, Tunisia, Dalmatia, Valona, and Ethiopia.17 In short, Grandi’s moderation was a hoax. Unquestionably, Grandi measured his words to suit his audience. His diary contains verbatim records of his talks with Mussolini that are filled with sharp repartee, and his own almost daily reflections are frequently incisive and revealing. His letters to Mussolini, however, are quite a different matter; they are marked by ingratiating flattery and a tendency to express what he thought the Duce wanted to hear. To conceal his own independent action, Grandi frequently couched his conciliatory policy in tough language to satisfy Mussolini’s preference for the mailed fist. Rather than diplomacy’s tortuous compromises and stuffy atmosphere, the Duce preferred shouting down his enemies before mass audiences flanked by obedient Fascist sycophants. While Italy’s talks with the Yugoslavs sputtered on inconclusively, negotiations with France suddenly reached a breakthrough when the two countries signed ‘‘Bases of Agreement’’ on 1 March 1931. Under British prodding, the French seemed to grant Italy theoretical parity in ship construction, while the Italians agreed that France could retain its actual margin of superiority. Grandi boasted to Mussolini: ‘‘with the naval accord, we have caused French militarism to retreat.’’ Now that France was ‘‘fe-

The Grandi Era

61

verishly trying to reach an agreement with us . . . we can be harder and more intransigent in the essential matters.’’18 The Germans were also rallying to Italy. Inspired by Fascist boldness, Grandi told the Duce, they were finally ‘‘daring’’ to challenge France on disarmament issues at the League of Nations.19 Grandi’s employment of his country as the peso determinante appeared to result in a solid diplomatic triumph: naval parity with France. But the triumph turned out to be short-lived. THE CUSTOMS UNION CRISIS Two shocking developments occurred to mar Grandi’s handiwork: France’s unilateral changes on 19 March of key clauses of the ‘‘Bases of Agreement,’’ which seemed to negate even the appearance of naval parity with Italy, and a customs union agreement concluded secretly by Germany and Austria that was announced two days later. An ominous prelude to Anschluss, the customs union project posed a serious threat to Italy’s security in Europe. The unexpected eruption of the ongoing dispute with France on naval parity, however, provoked Grandi’s embarrassment and gallophobia, which contributed to the incoherence in Italy’s response to the Austro-German move: After my declarations before the Senate, after the address by Briand and the one by Henderson—as well as the telegrams exchanged between Paris, London, and Rome—what will happen if the [naval] agreement should suddenly fall through? Europe is passing through such a period of madness that I would not be surprised if this happens. France, France, the most brilliant and dangerous nation of Europe! . . . The French have one hope: that the Germans are worse than they are. The former are hysterically insane, the latter are elephants who crush and break everything. War has taught them nothing. They are, as before, uncouth, devoid of every sense of timeliness, wisdom, ability, and balance.20

On 28 March, Grandi told the Duce: ‘‘we must not tolerate French blackmail.’’21 Ironically, it was the Duce who cautioned Grandi to refrain from retaliation. Involved in a risky financial transaction with the French, Mussolini wanted diplomatic peace—for the moment.22 Although tempted to ‘‘kick both [France and Germany] in the shins,’’23 Grandi in a calmer moment let Paris know that he was prepared to offer Italian support on the customs union issue in return for French compliance with the ‘‘Bases of Agreement’’ of 1 March.24 Meanwhile, a number of Italians, interested in promoting trade, explored the possibility of a Franco-Italian customs union, which they favored over similar ties with Germany.25 The Quai d’Orsay was, however, only lukewarm to this idea. Rather than bilateral ties with Italy, it preferred Franco-Italian sponsorship of a Danubian alignment as the most effective rejoinder to the Austro-German initiative.26 Since

62

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

for Grandi such a proposal smacked of the old ‘‘Danubian Confederation,’’ he let the idea of better economic relations with France drop. Mussolini’s original reaction to the customs union project was ambiguous. Instead of sensing the immediate peril of Anschluss, he was anxious to explore the economic feasibility of associating Italy with the AustroGerman plan.27 The Duce seemed not to notice that German competition would ruin the fragile munitions enterprises necessary to Italy’s armaments program. Grandi, on the other hand, was well aware that Italy’s munitions industry could hardly survive a flood of German-made products and that the customs union project represented a major step toward Anschluss. Instead of immediately telling the Germans to renounce the customs union project, however, he only expressed regret over the bad timing and the failure to consult Italy beforehand.28 The Wilhelmstrasse wishfully concluded that Grandi, like Mussolini, aimed to extort economic advantages as Italy’s price for acquiescence in the customs union.29 Still, the Germans expected the Italians to come to them; running to Rome to save the project was something that no German still burning from Italy’s apostasy in the Great War would deign to contemplate. Grandi did not openly chastise the Austrians either. But privately, he wrote: ‘‘These Austrians have been falsifiers. One must say it. They have toyed with us.’’30 Grandi did not follow the French as they attacked the weaker customs union conspirator because he had his own plan: the inclusion of Austria in a Vienna-Budapest-Rome triangle aimed at thwarting both Germany and France.31 Though thoroughly disabused of the Pan-German Schober (‘‘he is a swine’’),32 Grandi refrained from intrigues to bring him down in favor of the preferred Italian candidate, the shrewd but distrusted leader of the Austrian Christian Social party, prelate Ignaz Seipel.33 While Grandi was exercising caution toward both Germany and Austria, as well as keeping his distance from Paris, Mussolini unleashed a particularly savage diatribe against the French: ‘‘The Italo-French problem will not be resolved by a naval accord. This problem will be resolved only on the field of battle.’’34 Grandi panicked. Sure that the Duce’s truculence would provoke the French military to war, the Italian foreign minister admonished: ‘‘We must have the courage to wait, chloroforming, applying morphine, to our situation.’’35 Meanwhile, until Italy was stronger, the Locarno stratagem of alignment with Britain to hold France and Germany in check would have to suffice. In spite of Grandi’s fear of France—his essential gallophobia—he regarded Germany’s Drang nach Su¨ dosten as the greatest threat facing Italy: What we have not succeeded in doing for eight years—to weaken the prestige and power of France in Eastern Europe—Germany has succeeded in doing in a day. Czechoslovakia has been gripped by terror, Hungary has not resisted the tempta-

The Grandi Era

63

tion, and Romania declares its will to treat with Berlin. Yugoslavia has declared that Anschluss is better than a return of the Habsburgs to Vienna.36

If French influence in Eastern Europe was an irritant, Germany’s was a blow. To salvage the Balkans as an Italian sphere of influence, Grandi concluded that, ‘‘We must arrive at an agreement with France; we must compel France to recognize our rights in Albania.’’37 Worse still, Germany’s customs union project, by deepening the divisions among the former Allies, had further weakened the ailing Franco-Italian naval agreement. To prevent any decisive Italian move into Berlin’s camp, Grandi hoped that the statistics on trade marshaled by his technicians would eventually persuade the Duce to drop economic talks with Germany. If Grandi often gave way to resentment, it was usually privately expressed. Not so the Duce. His pugnacious outbursts made banner headlines, prompting Europe to raise its guard against Fascist volatility. Grandi took note of the problems: Italy needed calm, yet Mussolini publicly displayed his hostility toward France; Italy needed first to rearm, yet the Duce was prepared to risk Italy’s war-making capability by exposing industrial development to ruinous German competition. Equally worrisome, Mussolini’s pro-German orientation threatened to upset the much-vaunted peso determinante strategy.38 Only on 26 April did Mussolini come around to Grandi’s view that the customs union project represented a misfortune for Italy: ‘‘We can neither go it alone in order to spite the French nor can we accept the grave damage of an Anschluss.’’39 After a round of talks among the Great Powers, in which Italy played no important part, the customs union question was referred, at the end of May, to the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague for an advisory opinion. Since Grandi doubted that the Permanent Court would deliver a decision against the customs union, he did not want to burn all his bridges to Berlin. In an apt maneuver, Grandi allowed France to assume the lead against the customs union while titillating the German foreign minister, Julius Curtius, with talk of Italian friendship.40 It was only belatedly that Grandi came straight to the point with Curtius by challenging the German sham that the customs union was an innocent economic arrangement contrived solely to enlarge the markets of two independent countries that both happened to be in desperate financial straits. Expressing regret that Italy appeared to be in alignment with France, he nonetheless reminded Curtius that ‘‘one cannot always practice a policy which disadvantages others.’’ The German minister gave his game away by callously asking: ‘‘what causes your irreducible opposition to an Anschluss . . . [?]’’ Rather than point out the obvious—that a Germany engorged with Austria would inevitably bear down on the South Tyrol and Trieste—Grandi broke off the meeting.41 On 5 September, the Hague Tribunal ruled by a majority of one that the

64

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

customs union was incompatible with the Geneva Protocols of 1922. The threat having subsided, there was great relief in Rome, for others would bear the brunt of the fighting. It was nonetheless a flawed victory, since Grandi had conveyed the impression that Italy was not resolute enough to act swiftly in defense of its interests in Europe. Italy’s resolve to stand up to future Anschluss threats, therefore, remained in doubt. Instead of acting as the decisive influence in the European balance of power, Grandi left behind a trail of ambiguity and opportunism. If he had wanted to ingrain in the Teutonic mind that Italy would not tolerate any move toward Anschluss, he should have swallowed his disappointment over Italy’s failure to obtain naval parity (which would have amounted only to a paper advantage in any case) and aligned openly with France in forcing Germany and Austria to renounce their project well before it reached the League. CONTRASTING VIEWS OF GERMANY Germany posed a perplexing problem for Italy during the early 1930s. Grandi and Mussolini certainly had differing views on how to cope with Drang nach Su¨ dosten, and the dangerous figure who had emerged from the deepening depression onto Germany’s center-stage, Adolf Hitler, threatened to drive a wedge permanently between the two Italian leaders. Notwithstanding his youthful admiration of German culture, Grandi had developed an abiding distrust of German expansion into territories he deemed to be part of Italy’s natural domain: the Alto Adige, Trieste, the Balkans, and the Adriatic. Before the wounded giant recovered its strength, Grandi intended to support German claims to parity and Gleichberechtigung (equality of rights) as a way of intimidating France into a comprehensive settlement on his terms. But there was a constant threat hovering over Italy of a Franco-German rapprochement advanced by a Berlin that had been weakened by the Versailles diktat, a rapprochement that Grandi was wont to describe as ‘‘fornicazione.’’ But this judgment never deterred him from engaging in similar depravity with each of the Rhineland opponents in order to win advantages for his own country at the expense of the other. Still, when Grandi experienced difficulties in coaxing concessions from the French, he blamed Mussolini for his excessive bias toward Germany: ‘‘The Duce does not wish to hear that Germany works against our interests.’’42 Equally troubling was Mussolini’s preference for modern authoritarian movements, rather than the old-fashioned nationalist parties and Prussian autocrats whom Grandi regarded as the most reliable and safest defenders of the country against Bolshevism and chaos. It should not have come as a surprise to him, then, that Mussolini would endorse Hitler rather than Paul von Hindenburg in the German presidential election of March 1932.43 Grandi frequently boasted that his diplomacy was ‘‘revolutionary,’’

The Grandi Era

65

but Mussolini, in his view, opened up dangerous vistas by imagining that only Nazi-style dynamism could inject renewed momentum into Italian diplomacy—an ominous indication that the Duce was becoming hostage to his own ideology. Grandi mused in his diary: ‘‘Mussolini declared himself an ally of the newly reviving German nationalism that seeks to reverse the results of its war against the whole of Europe. . . . Fascist Italy reappears with its subversive, revolutionary, isolationist face. Is this in our interest?’’44 As one who understood Fascism mainly as an instrument to unite and strengthen Italy, Grandi rejected the notion that a uniquely Italian phenomenon could be an article of export.45 Mussolini also arrived at this conclusion at the end of the 1920s. The dissolution of the Fascist League in the United States offers a case in point. Mussolini, who otherwise supported the idea of the Fasci all’estero as another arm in his ‘‘parallel diplomacy,’’ had never allowed U.S. Fascists to infringe on Italian policy toward the United States, which remained on a traditional footing based on the notion of noninterference in domestic affairs. Dino Grandi had been instrumental in applying the foreign ministry’s control over the American Fascists by ordering their compliance with the directives of his functionaries in the United States.46 Much to Grandi’s discomfort, however, the Duce reversed himself in 1930 by espousing Fascist universalism.47 Grandi’s single-minded pursuit of Italian national grandeur led him to suspect that Mussolini’s incautious oratory on Fascist universalism would produce a dangerous tilt toward the Fu¨ hrer. ‘‘Let God protect Italy from its so-called friend Hitler!’’ Grandi recorded in his diary on 22 February 1932.48 Grandi treated Germany with great reserve, profoundly distrusted the Nazis, and dismissed Hitler as a mindless fanatic. Grandi’s thinking about the National Socialist phenomenon was at once obtuse and astute. As a Fascist, his mind was immune to liberalism’s critique of Nazism and unconcerned about the nihilism and unrestrained violence of Hitler’s creed. But as a Realpolitiker, he feared the Fu¨ hrer more than Stresemann, a fear that Grandi did not try to conceal from the German minister in Rome, Baron Constantin von Neurath: ‘‘I would not like that Hitler, with his immature enthusiasm, and the Steel Helmets [non-Nazi ultranationalists], with their precipitate demonstrations, should render more distress than good to the German cause and to the state of Europe.’’49 Grandi rarely expatiated on the ideological differences between Fascism and Nazism by questioning Hitler’s Nordic racism or violent antiSemitism—something Mussolini noted in his many off-the-cuff asides. Grandi seemed troubled only by the premonition that Nazism represented a threat to carefully calibrated diplomatic balances and Italy’s national interests. As Grandi feared, Mussolini was playing with fire by opening up a dialogue with the Nazis. There was merit in the foreign minister’s prediction that Mussolini’s hatred of the ‘‘decadent’’ West and its supine leaders would eventually cause him to give Hitler pride of place next to Italy in

66

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

‘‘Fascist universalism.’’ Moreover, Grandi was not wrong in suggesting that Mussolini had been encouraged by Hitler’s example to strike a ‘‘revolutionary’’ pose by lashing out against the Western democracies—tirades that certainly hurt Italy’s diplomatic standing in Europe. Grandi had a less abrasive approach that held out more promise: flattery and conciliation to cajole the West into granting Italy redress of long-standing grievances. Much to Grandi’s annoyance, the Duce supplemented the Palazzo Chigi’s representatives in Germany with a variety of agents and go-betweens to sound out rightist groups of many hues outside the Berlin government. As for the Nazis, high party dignitaries were entertained in Italy. Although a planned meeting between Hitler and Mussolini failed to take place in these years, the two men exchanged views through Italian intermediaries. Grandi was particularly irked by the activity of Major Giuseppe Renzetti, who was instructed to weld the Hitler movement together with the Stahlhelm (also distrusted by Grandi) to form the basis of a German rightist bloc. Mussolini often withheld key information on his German doings from the Palazzo Chigi. Grandi was informed of an Italo-German air agreement by the Duce only belatedly and learned about many of his inflammatory speeches in the newspapers. Troubled by these initiatives undertaken without his knowledge, Grandi attempted to maintain control by enjoining the irregulars in the field to avoid interference in the Italian ambassador’s bailiwick. To prevent overlap, Renzetti was assigned major responsibility for coordinating these extracurricular activities and promoting close ties between prominent Nazis and Fascists. It was only in July 1933 that Mussolini explicitly instructed Renzetti to avoid impinging on matters strictly pertaining to diplomacy.50 If there was ambivalence in the Italian attitude toward Germany, there was none in the official German attitude toward Italy. German perceptions of Italians were as clear as German expansionist drives were unrelenting. If Stresemann had attempted to sidetrack Italy and the Western Powers with the formula, ‘‘the Anschluss question is not acute,’’ his successor at the foreign ministry, Julius Curtius, cared not one whit about the Italian reaction when he brazenly tried to ram through a speedy implementation of a customs union with Austria. Contempt for Italy permeated the Wilhelmstrasse. Forgetting Bismarck’s ruthless treatment of Italy, their Triple Alliance partner, the Germans imagined that their former ally had betrayed them by violating the sacred obligation of military assistance at the hour of Germany’s great need in 1914. This resentment remained a continuing theme in the German in-house diplomatic correspondence between Berlin and Rome.51 ‘‘L’E´THIOPIE PAR EXEMPLE?’’ In the aftermath of the customs union crisis, the French prime minister, Pierre Laval, suggested that France, as part of an across-the-board settle-

The Grandi Era

67

ment, would consider granting Italy concessions in Africa—‘‘L’E´ thiopie par exemple?’’52 Grandi was initially intrigued, but when he learned that the French admiralty would never concede naval parity to Italy, he lost interest.53 There matters rested while Grandi voyaged to the United States on a goodwill mission in November 1931. His major accomplishment, as he wrote to the Duce, was to have won over his American hosts by a show of restraint, in contrast with Laval, who, on a visit immediately preceding his, had worn out his welcome with demands and recriminations.54 On Grandi’s return in early February 1932, he had two short and tense sessions with the tough French negotiator, Andre´ Tardieu. Not until France had first gained British and U.S. acquiescence in the French thesis on land armaments would Tardieu even consider naval parity with Italy.55 In the latter part of February, the anti-Italian atmosphere in Paris was moderated by a growing French fear of Germany and the suspicion that Italy was about to bind itself to the Teutonic world. Philippe Berthelot, the secretary general of the Quai d’Orsay who was not known for his admiration of Fascist Italy, for the first time approached Italy to discuss concrete issues dividing the two countries. Berthelot suggested that ‘‘crumbling’’ Ethiopia serve as an acceptable outlet for Italian expansion. His overture was choreographed by an officially inspired press campaign that called for improved relations with Italy. Rightist leaders chimed in. In an address before the French Senate on 29 March 1932, Tardieu dwelled on ‘‘Latin Sistership’’ and the two nations’ common culture. Even the leftists warmed up. One of Italy’s beˆ tes noires, Edouard Herriot, was prepared to pay the Duce homage.56 The subject of Ethiopia kept bobbing up. Mussolini, however, viewed the hints of Laval and Berthelot as a French trap to ensnare him in Africa, far away from the Balkans and the Danube. Moreover, while Grandi became discouraged when he learned that Tardieu, instead of playing up to the Italians, was about to approach Germany, the latter was already making overtures in Paris.57 That Italy’s stock in the French capital had not really risen in value seemed confirmed by a dramatic reversal engineered by Tardieu when he called for a Franco-German collaboration in the Danube basin through a mechanism of trading preferences. Grandi’s Danubian barrier, the Brocchi accords—a series of Italo-Austrian economic preference agreements—seemed doomed to extinction. Hence, Mussolini brushed aside Tardieu, refused to meet with Laval, and ignored Herriot. To take control of Balkan diplomacy as well as to forestall Tardieu’s rapprochement with Germany, Grandi on 4 March 1932 urgently pressed Mussolini to get on with a global settlement with France as a prelude to avenging the defeat of Italian arms at Adowa by the conquest of Ethiopia. ‘‘We will give France the Beaumarchais project regarding citizenship in Tunisia the day in which our troops enter Addis Ababa,’’ Grandi boasted. Mussolini responded, ‘‘But don’t you understand that France wants to

68

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

chase us out [of the Balkans] in order to immobilize us again in Africa . . . ?’’58 In July, Grandi recorded the Duce as saying: ‘‘France wants to bog us down again in Africa in order to distract us from Europe. It is a crude trap.’’59 In actual fact, Mussolini was indeed preparing to unsheathe the imperial sword—but behind Grandi’s back. On 22 March 1932, he sent General Emilio De Bono on a reconnaissance mission to Ethiopia. De Bono submitted a cautious report, recommending prudence and political action rather than military invasion. The Duce wanted no one to steal the credit or the control in planning African imperialism. But one fact cannot be overlooked: Mussolini implemented three years later what Grandi had advocated in 1932. Grandi’s hopes for an agreement with France surged when Herriot replaced the hard-bitten Tardieu in May as head of a left-oriented government in Paris. The Italian foreign minister ruminated on ways to catch Yugoslavia and Germany in the Italian net as well. Adding urgency to this fantasy was the need for a dramatic diplomatic coup to save his job, which he knew to be in peril. There was a flicker of promise that Herriot would be more yielding on naval parity, but alarm quickly set in when Grandi learned that Herriot was building a Franco-British-American front against Germany without Italy. Worst of all, Herriot presented Grandi with the clear-cut choice he wished to avoid: alignment with the defenders of Versailles against German revanchism or collusion with the unreconciled vanquished powers bent on expansion. Grandi naively believed that Herriot would freely pay him the longoverdue colonial ‘‘reparations’’ in return for Italian loyalty to the wartime alliance. Even less adroit was Grandi’s effort, without the Duce’s prior authorization, to coax from Herriot’s confidante, Joseph Paganon, a mandate over Cameroon as well as a free hand in Ethiopia—all this in return for Italy’s support against Germany. But to no avail. Herriot, in July 1932, like Laval in 1931, was not yet sufficiently worried by Germany’s resurgence to pay Fascist Italy’s high price for a common front against Berlin. Not until 1935, after Hitler had arrived on the scene, was the attempt again made, with unexpectedly disastrous results all around.60 For the upcoming Lausanne conference of July, Mussolini ordered that Grandi, if he could not forestall a pending Franco-German rapprochement, should ‘‘destroy the conference.’’61 Grandi instead persisted with the goal of naval parity with France, which doomed his Lausanne diplomacy to failure. For having ‘‘gone to bed with England and France,’’62 Mussolini cashiered him on 20 July 1932. Grandi was sent off to London as Italian ambassador, and Mussolini, taking over the foreign ministry, applied the peso determinante strategy more aggressively, with a stronger proGerman orientation stripped of the Grandian language of peace and disarmament.

The Grandi Era

69

NOTES 1. De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 1: 378–79. 2. GD, 20 October 1929. 3. GD, 25 December 1929. 4. FO, C2355/230/18, 14 May 1930; ibid., C3851/55/22, 14 May 1930. 5. GD, . . . July 1932; De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 1: 384–85. 6. GD, 16 December 1930 and 30 March 1932. 7. This British version of Mussolini’s Florence speech is somewhat at variance with that rendered in Mussolini’s OO, 24: 233–36. 8. Ibid., 235–36. 9. FO, C5515/29/22, 27 June 1930. 10. For a further discussion of this theme, see Gian Giacomo Migone, Gli Stati Uniti e il fascismo (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980). 11. GD, 24 December 1929. 12. GD, 26 August 1930. 13. GD, 6 June 1930; DDI, 7, IX, 370, 12 November 1930. 14. De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 1: 381, n. 1. 15. DDI, 7, VIII, 302, 8 January 1930. 16. De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 1: 367–418; Dino Grandi, La politica estera dell’Italia dal 1929 al 1932 (Rome: Bonacci, 1985), introduction by Paolo Nello, 13–89; G. Boccianti, Verso gli accordi Mussolini-Laval: Il ravvicimento italofrancese fra il 1931 e il 1934 (Milan: Giuffre`, 1984). 17. GD, 25 August 1930. 18. GD, 21 March 1931. 19. DDI, 7, X, 26, 21 January 1931. 20. GD, 23 March 1931. 21. GD, 28 March 1931. 22. GD, 23 March 1931. 23. GD, 24 March 1931. 24. DDI, 7, X, 162, 24 March 1931. 25. ARR, T. 685–86, 3 April 1931; ibid., T. 426, 2 April 1931; T. 496–97, 14 April 1931; T. 606, 30 April 1931; T. 612–13, 2 May 1931. 26. ARR, T. 685–86, 3 April 1931. 27. DDI, 7, X, 169, n. 3; GD, 2 April 1931. 28. ADAP, B, XVII, 36 and 65, 23 March and 3 April 1931; DDI, 7, X, 157, 23 March 1931. 29. ADAP, B, XVII, 49, 27 March 1931; GFM, 1388/2784/D539706–08, 29 March 1931. 30. GD, 23 March 1931; DDI, 7, X, 142, 21 March 1931. 31. ARR, T. 543–559, 29 March 1931; DDI, 7, X, 169, n. 3, 26 March 1931; ibid., 196, 11 April 1931; GD, 25 March 1931. 32. DDI, 7, X, 272, 17 May 1931. 33. DDI, 7, X, 245, 4 May 1931. 34. GD, 2 April 1931. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid.

70

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

37. Ibid. 38. GD, 11 April 1931. 39. GD, 26 April 1931. 40. Fulvio D’Amoja, Declino e prima crisi dell’Europa di Versailles (Milan: Giuffre`, 1967), 43, n. 11. 41. DDI, 7, X, 284, 22 May 1931; See also Grandi’s harsh rebuke of Curtius’ policy in DDI, 7, X, 269, 15 May 1931; ADAP, B, XVII, 131, 15 May 1931. 42. GD, 13 March 1932. 43. GD, 20 March 1932. 44. Ibid. 45. Ennio Di Nolfo, Mussolini e la politica estera italiana (1919–1933) (Padua: CEDAM, 1960), 251. 46. For a persuasive elaboration of this thesis, see the article by Philip V. Cannistraro, ‘‘Per una storia dei Fasci negli Stati Uniti (1921–1929),’’ Storia contemporanea 26, no. 6 (December 1995): 1061–1144. 47. GD, 12 September 1930. 48. GD, 22 February 1932. 49. GD, 28 October 1930. 50. GD, 3 January 1931; DDI, 7, VIII, 340, 420 and 478, 31 January, 12 March, and 9 April 1930. 51. The official Wilhelmstrasse position can be found in GFM, 4007/D428/ K123667–72, 15 May 1928; ibid., 4007/K428/K123911–14, 18 June 1931. 52. DDI, 7, X, 413, 25 July 1931. 53. Peter C. Kent, The Pope and the Duce (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 124; Guariglia, Ricordi, 74; DDI, 7, XI, 41, 6 October 1931. 54. DDI, 7, XI, 100, 2 December 1931. 55. DDI, 7, XI, 189 and 211, 3 and 17 February 1932. 56. Burgwyn, Il revisionismo fascista, 228–29; GD, 20 February 1932; DDI, 7, XI, 222, 17 February 1932. 57. DDI, 7, XI, 248, 27 February 1932; GD, 28 February 1932. 58. GD, 4 March 1932. 59. GD, July 1932. 60. For particulars, see H. James Burgwyn, ‘‘Conflict or Rapprochement? Grandi Confronts France and its Prote´ ge´ Yugoslavia: 1929–1932,’’ Storia delle relazioni internazionali 1 (1987): 74–95. 61. GD, . . . July 1932. 62. De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 1: 394.

CHAPTER 5

1933: Annus Diabolicus CHANGING OF THE GUARD When Mussolini himself took over the portfolio of foreign affairs in July 1932, he appointed Fulvio Suvich to be his undersecretary and Baron Pompeo Aloisi his personal chef du bureau. These changes suggested the simultaneous emergence of two contradictory strains in Italian foreign policy. On the one hand, the elevation of both Suvich, a native of Trieste, and the francophile Aloisi, an expert in Balkan affairs, seemed to confirm the preeminence of the Adriatic wing in the foreign office; on the other hand, Mussolini’s dismissal of Grandi and his impatience with the machinery of the League of Nations seemed to anticipate a more militant mood. Instead of bringing about grandeur, economic reconstruction, and an outlet for surplus population through collaboration with the Western Powers in the fields of disarmament, reparations, and debts in the Grandian style, Mussolini intended to energize ‘‘dynamism’’ by revitalizing a tono fascista in Italian foreign policy. Moreover, the economic depression, which had brought about a disruption of international trading and a virtual breakdown of the gold standard, had loosened Italy’s ties with the New York and London financial markets. Thrown back on its own economic devices, Italy pondered autarky and bilateral economic agreements. In a Europe convulsed by mounting economic chaos and political upheaval, which exacerbated the ideological conflict between the democratic West and Bolshevist Russia, Mussolini advanced Fascist corporativism as a remedy. As part of a ‘‘totalitarian’’ solution to restore national unity and power, cor-

72

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

porativism aimed to mediate between individualism and collectivism, reconciling an alienated proletariat with Italian big business. Mussolini’s new outlook was punctuated by Italian support for the German position on reparations, the Saar, and on a speeded-up timetable for the evacuation of French troops from the Rhineland. To break AngloFrench domination of the League, Italy agreed to side with Germany and Soviet Russia, in a show of solidarity among ‘‘proletarian nations,’’ on disarmament and reform of the League’s Secretariat. But the Duce’s bid for friendship was not reciprocated. Although lacking the power to pursue a vigorous peso determinante strategy against the Western Powers without firm backing from Berlin, Mussolini persisted in supporting Gleichberechtigung, Germany’s demand for equality of rights. He proceeded to invite further danger by wooing revisionist Hungary.

EAGER AND RELUCTANT REVISIONIST ALLIES During the first half of 1932, Mussolini lacked Danubian friends. The government of Gyula Ka´ rolyi in Budapest, hopeful of obtaining a loan in Paris, muted revisionism, and Vienna, under the leadership of Karl Buresch, exhibited coolness toward Fascist Italy. When Engelbert Dollfuss replaced Buresch as Austrian chancellor in May, Mussolini imagined that the country’s authoritarian savior had arrived in power. Having lost faith in the Heimwehr as an independent striking force, the Duce summoned Prince Starhemberg to Rome in June and implored him to cooperate with Dollfuss in fighting both Nazis and Marxists, offering money and weapons in return.1 He had no need to persuade Starhemberg, but, since Dollfuss relied on French financial assistance, which Rome could not hope to provide, he kept his distance from Mussolini. Having secured passage of the Lausanne loan through his parliament by a razor-thin margin of one vote and buffeted by extremists at both ends of the political spectrum, Dollfuss was in no mood to engage in an adventurous relationship with Starhemberg.2 Stalled in Vienna by the reluctant Dollfuss, Mussolini was encouraged when Julius Go¨ mbo¨ s became minister-resident of Hungary on 30 September 1932. An unrepentant revisionist, Go¨ mbo¨ s had long dreamed of tearing up the treaty of Trianon and repossessing lands that had formerly been part of the Magyar heritage. As opposed to Bethlen, who welcomed support from every quarter, Go¨ mbo¨ s focused mainly on those countries with avowedly rightist regimes. Alone, Hungary was not powerful enough to advance its claims against any single state of the Little Entente. Clearly, then, Magyar irredentism was contingent upon an alliance with one or more of the larger revisionist states. Mussolini was elated to find a Fascist sympathizer in Budapest prepared to infuse new life into his floundering political bloc of Austria, Hungary, and Italy. Welded together by a common commitment

1933: Annus Diabolicus

73

to authoritarian principles, the bloc would safeguard Austria’s independence. After signaling Rome that he was prepared to break the logjam in the economic tripartite talks, Go¨ mbo¨ s moved to win Dollfuss over to the idea of a political agreement with Italy by promising to grant Austria tariff concessions to Hungary. More daring still, he offered to take up with Mussolini a hitherto untouchable subject: Italy’s harsh treatment of the South Tyrolean Germans.3 In their meeting on 10 November in Rome, Mussolini and Go¨ mbo¨ s set the stage for what was to be a strong Italian bid for ascendancy in the Danube region. The main item on the agenda was the Austrian problem. Worried over Nazi ambitions, Mussolini expatiated on his determination to defend the little rump state. Go¨ mbo¨ s conceded the Anschluss threat implicit in the rise of Hitler, but he added that the Austrian people, since they belonged to the Teutonic community, would, in the long run, inevitably be carried away by the Pan-German idea. Better a friendly Germany ensconced on the Brenner associated with the tripartite bloc than a hostile Hitler bearing down on the Adriatic. Mussolini revealed his lack of faith in Austria’s viability by expressing the hope that Anschluss could be postponed as long as possible—until the unavoidable European war that was bound to break out sometime in 1938. At this point, Go¨ mbo¨ s titillated the Duce by informing him that Dollfuss ‘‘hated’’ the Prussians, was opposed to an Anschluss, and seemed ready to enlarge the Brocchi accords, provided that the nomenclature customs union be avoided to spare him an angry PanGerman fallout in both Berlin and Vienna. This revisionist camaraderie was clinched when Mussolini agreed to take part in the promotion of Croatian insurrection against the Yugoslav state.4 Acting on the program he had worked out with Go¨ mbo¨ s in Rome, Mussolini on 29 November applied pressure on Dollfuss to implement Fascistlike reforms, join a customs union with Italy and Hungary cemented by close political ties, and eschew alignments with Germany, France, and Czechoslovakia.5 But Dollfuss was not yet ready to shut down the Austrian parliament and rule by decree. Moreover, the partnership between Dollfuss and Prince Starhemberg’s Heimwehr continued to be uneasy; instead of cooperation with Italy, each demonstrated a readiness to negotiate with the Nazis behind the other’s back.6 WAR SCARES An important link in any strong chain against German expansion was Yugoslavia. But relations between Italy and Yugoslavia, a mainstay of France’s Eastern European alliance system, had been badly strained throughout the latter part of 1932. In retaliation for the renewal on 28 October 1932 of the Franco-Yugoslav Treaty of 1927, Mussolini proposed

74

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

a customs union with Albania. Such a move was like waving a red flag in Belgrade’s face, but the Duce’s attempt to pull Albania permanently into Italy’s orbit by this ruse failed. The Yugoslav state, in Mussolini’s eyes, was near collapse. A deep economic malaise caused by a precipitous decline in the price of wheat had aggravated tensions among the various minority nationalities persecuted by Serb dictatorship. Mussolini pondered the use of terrorism. The Dalmatian coast, spotted with Italian-speaking communities, seemed an ideal place to begin. In September 1932, the Ustasˇ a, a Croatian terrorist organization, jumping off from camps in Zara, attempted to instigate an insurrection by rampaging through the region of Lika in Dalmatia, looting and throwing bombs. Infuriated, King Alexander talked freely of blood and war. Italy was denounced in the Yugoslav Senate, and anti-Italian organizations staged rallies in Belgrade. Yugoslav activists answered the Ustasˇ a provocation with the senseless decapitation of the famous Lions of Trau, the symbol of Italy’s mighty imperial past, which commemorated Venetian rule in Dalmatia. Insults and threats of war were exchanged in the press. Passion on both sides threatened to progress beyond the usual vituperative editorials when Mussolini appointed one of his most trusted collaborators, Paolo Cortese, as the new manager of insurrection. A ‘‘Committee of Dalmatian Action’’ was launched to rekindle irredentism while strategists in Rome mapped out a synchronized Italo-Bulgarian military buildup along Yugoslav frontiers. Mussolini’s newly unleashed press war was marked by a basic contradiction and was self-defeating. His projection of territorial ambitions beyond the outer fringes of the old irredentist claims did indeed tally with the italianization of Croatians and Slovenians in the Julian Alps. But many of those Croatians whom he was trying to enlist in the struggle against the Serb-dominated regime in Belgrade were so alienated by these measures— as well as by the anti-Slav Fascist propaganda—that they overlooked their own national grievances and sought protection from King Alexander against their common Italian foe. Moreover, the Duce seemed not to appreciate the likelihood that an independent Croatia, instead of shoring up the defense of Austria in cooperation with Italy, would be a barely viable entity, thus providing an inviting target for German expansion into the Balkans. Equally fanciful was the Duce’s belief that Croatia would serve as an exemplary Italian appendage while Italy pursued irredentism in Dalmatia, which itself was heavily populated by Croatians. Hobbled by the same mistakes committed during the era of the Tirana pacts, Mussolini’s policy toward Yugoslavia in 1932 and January 1933 degenerated into aimless, shifting, almost frantic provocation, in the misguided hope that somehow the nerves of his Serb adversaries would crack and the Yugoslav state collapse from ethnic tensions exacerbated by Italian subsidies and terrorism.

1933: Annus Diabolicus

75

While marching to the brink with Yugoslavia, Mussolini feared a FrancoYugoslav preventive war against Italy launched by General Maxime Weygand, but that did not stop him from swearing vengeance on every invader of Italy.7 Only after finally digesting the information conveyed to him by Baron Pompeo Aloisi that Yugoslavia was not on the verge of collapse did Mussolini eventually cut off additional subsidies to the Ustasˇ a leader Ante Pavelic´ .8 Although continuing to support Croatian separatism, Mussolini vetoed further revolutionary actions. By February 1933 the crisis had eased. The worsening climate in Europe prompted France to revive the idea of a rapprochement with Italy that Laval had tried to put into motion in 1931. The spread of the great depression, Hitler’s coming to power in Germany, and Italy’s support of Gleichberechtigung at the ongoing Disarmament Conference seemed to presage an Italo-German alignment. In seeking a counterweight against Germany, the anti-Fascist French foreign minister, Joseph Paul-Boncour, appointed his friend, the newspaperman Henri de Jouvenel, as a special ambassador to Mussolini in a mission limited to six months. De Jouvenel arrived in Rome on 22 January 1933 with high expectations of negotiating a general understanding with Italy. The outstanding issues dividing them were the perennial ones: Libya, Italian nationality rights in Tunisia, Ethiopia, and the Danubian question. But despite his optimism, de Jouvenel was not equipped with the necessary instructions to transform his good intentions into something concrete. The suggestion to expand the Franco-Yugoslav treaty into a tripartite arrangement and the absence of any French concession of naval parity left Mussolini cold. Because he wanted to assure Austrian independence on his own, the Duce had no interest in the French proposal that Italy align itself with France and the Little Entente, nor would Mussolini knuckle under to French pressure that he cease efforts to break up the Yugoslav state. HITLER IN POWER Hitler’s electrifying accession to the chancellorship of Germany on 30 January 1933 jolted Europe’s diplomats. Mussolini was initially delighted with the surge to power of a kindred movement that resoundingly validated the Fascist idea. Hitler sent a personal message to the Duce, citing his ‘‘admiration and homage,’’ as well as his anticipation of friendship or even an alliance with Italy and a visit to Rome. To disarm Italian fears, the Fu¨ hrer reiterated his lack of interest in the Alto Adige.9 Mussolini responded by sending warm congratulations to Germany’s new master and told his captive audience at home: ‘‘War alone can carry to the maximum tension all human energies and imprint with the seal of nobility those people who have the courage to confront it; every other test is a mere substitute.’’ The Duce expounded on imperial expansion as a clear sign of national vitality and claimed that Fascism was ‘‘the one powerful and truly original force

76

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

in our century.’’ The new watchword: ‘‘Better one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep.’’10 But behind these brave words lurked the fear of Anschluss and the determination to uphold Austria’s independence. Indeed, Hitler’s unabashed intention of annexing Austria threatened to put a quick end to the Nazi-Fascist honeymoon. Mussolini’s assurances to Berlin that Dollfuss headed a fiercely anti-Marxist government did not persuade any German Nazi to respect Austria’s independence. Faced with continued German pressure on Austria, the Duce informed Hitler that he was adamantly opposed to Anschluss, and he let the idea of a visit to Rome drop.11 But far from renouncing Anschluss, the Fu¨ hrer slapped the Duce in the face by expressing his intention ‘‘to throw Dollfuss into the sea.’’ Confident that the Nazi wave was irresistible, he demanded new elections in Austria that would mark the end of Dollfuss, the political death of the Heimwehr, and the formation of a parliament dominated by Hitler’s own minions in Vienna.12 The Duce was taken aback, since, for him, Hitler’s respect of Austrian independence was the precondition of ideological brotherhood. True, Hitler’s promise to renounce Germany’s claims on the South Tyrol—a declaration that no other top-level Nazi or German politician had ever cared to make—pleased Mussolini. That gesture was, however, offset by the Wilhelmstrasse’s refusal to carve up Eastern Europe into economic spheres of interest between Germany and Italy as recommended by Germany’s own ambassador in Rome, Ulrich von Hassell; rather, the Fu¨ hrer would pursue Drang nach Su¨ dosten Nazi-style. Mussolini was thrown into a quandary. Since he harbored exaggerated fears that an increasingly belligerent France was plotting a European antiFascist bloc and a preventive war against Italy, he needed Germany as a friendly counterweight.13 Yet, at the same time, Mussolini was aware that geopolitical logic required firm action against Hitler’s stepped-up Anschluss campaign.14 Sensing Nazi impetuosity, Mussolini advised Hitler to keep on the good side of the British and to follow the Italian example of crushing Communism at home while preserving correct diplomatic relations with Moscow.15 His first enthusiasm over Hitler having worn off, Mussolini hoped to tame the Fu¨ hrer’s dynamic expansionism by making small voluntary concessions before Germany would be strong enough to dictate its price. Apprehensive over the threat to his newly found, if vacillating, prote´ ge´ Dollfuss, Mussolini informed Berlin of his opposition to Hitler’s call for immediate elections in Austria, which he feared would result in big Nazi gains and speed Austria down the road to ‘‘voluntary’’ Anschluss. For Dollfuss, Hitler’s arrival in power was a disaster. Increased Nazi agitation against his government quickly followed, and this, in turn, made him perilously dependent on Italy. At the same time, Mussolini caused Dollfuss much embarrassment over the Hirtenberg crisis that blew up in January when the Viennese socialist newspaper, Arbeiter Zeitung, published the details of the import from Italy of captured World War I weapons

1933: Annus Diabolicus

77

for repairs at the factory of their origin at Hirtenberg in Austria. The bulk of these arms were bound for pro-Nazi sections of the Austrian Heimwehr, mainly in Styria, and the rest were set aside for the Ustasˇ a.16 Not surprisingly, the socialists’ revelations produced a storm of protest in France and the Little Entente. Mussolini sought to protect himself by letting Dollfuss take the brunt of Little Entente criticism, to which the Austrian chancellor responded defiantly.17 The case eventually went before the League, where, on 11 February, Britain and France allowed Italy to escape international censure. Austria alone was required either to destroy the arms or ship them back to Italy. Eventually, much of the military equipment fell into the hands of the Heimwehr or ended up in Hungary. Since Mussolini was unsure about Dollfuss’ commitment to either Italy or authoritarianism, he kept Starhemberg in reserve as an insurrectionary alternative. Arriving in Rome for a round of talks in mid-February 1933, the prince proposed that Italy finance a Heimwehr coup d’e´ tat, whose purpose would be the destruction of the parliament and the elimination of Austro-Marxism as a political force in the country, after which, perhaps, some of the ‘‘old men,’’ like Dollfuss and Anton Rintelen, could be kept on. Both opposed Anschluss, but Starhemberg hedged his bets by suggesting that Hitler would be pleased with a Heimwehr dictatorship.18 The Duce indirectly warned Starhemberg of Hitler’s designs. ‘‘The Danubian Basin was Italy’s European hinterland,’’ Mussolini remarked; ‘‘without it we shall be forced to play the insignificant role of a peninsula on the edge of Europe.’’ Would the Nazis recognize the Danube region as Italy’s sphere of influence? In harmony with Mussolini’s wishes, if on his own initiative, Dollfuss prorogued the Austrian parliament and began to rule by decree on 7 March 1933—the opening round in a campaign to disrupt both the Nazis and the Social Democratic party. The banning of the Socialists’ defense arm, the Schutzbund, followed on 31 March. To maintain a certain distance from Rome, Dollfuss expressed irritation over the pressure exercised on him by Starhemberg and the prince’s main rival in the Heimwehr, Emil Fey, to speed up Fascist reforms, knowing full well that they were carrying out Mussolini’s express wishes.19 In March, the Italians and Hungarians made important decisions on Austria. They agreed on wholehearted support for Dollfuss as the head of a government that vowed the destruction of Austro-Marxism. The trouble was that Dollfuss was mishandling the question of Austria’s identity. The Austrian Nazis were rapidly capturing a large following on the platform ‘‘one people, one state,’’ while Dollfuss and the Heimwehr floundered in equivocation and avoided a firm commitment to Austrian independence. Hence, the Italians and Hungarians struck on the formula ‘‘one people, two states,’’ which would impart to the two Germanic peoples a sense of spiritual community and cultural affinity; neither Mussolini nor the Hun-

78

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

garians seemed to comprehend that this formula was more consistent with Hitler’s current ruse of Gleichschaltung (political coordination) than with a newly forged concept of Austrian statehood.20 Likewise, the Heimwehr posed a serious problem. Headed by a dilettante and splintered between pro-Nazi sympathizers and Austrian patriots, it was not entirely reliable and should therefore have been kept from the levers of power. Yet no one in Rome and Budapest was willing to discard the old paramilitary ally. During the Easter holidays, two prominent political visitors from Germany—Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen and Hitler’s right-hand man Hermann Go¨ ring—arrived in Rome, while Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss made the pilgrimage from Vienna. To prevent an Italo-German deal behind his back, Dollfuss intended to fight Go¨ ring and von Papen for the Duce’s ear. Dollfuss had every reason to be suspicious of Go¨ ring, who tried to obtain Mussolini’s acquiescence in the appointment of Nazis to the Austrian government.21 Fortunately for Dollfuss, Go¨ ring’s brusque manner in discoursing on the inevitability of Nazi domination in Austria raised Mussolini’s guard against Germany.22 On the other hand, Go¨ ring repeated Hitler’s promise to ‘‘regard the question of the South Tyrol frontier as finally liquidated by the peace treaties.’’23 When it was Dollfuss’ turn to see Mussolini, he proved to be no sycophant. If basically in agreement with the Duce’s logic—a logic fully shared by Starhemberg—that crushing Marxism would ‘‘take the wind out of the Nazis’ sails,’’24 he intended to do so step by step. And there was much that Dollfuss did not share with the Duce. He neither revealed his intention of keeping lines with France and Czechoslovakia open nor his determination to avoid alienating his anti-authoritarian following by an aggressively proItalian orientation and open warfare against the socialists.25 Dollfuss also had a bone to pick with Starhemberg for acting like a rebellious subordinate rather than a loyal follower.26 Mussolini admitted the justice of Dollfuss’ complaint but insisted that he keep on good terms with the Heimwehr.27 Agreement was finally reached: Dollfuss would be in charge of the government and the one to safeguard Austria’s independence, while the Heimwehr would conduct the propaganda campaign against Marxism.28 In a matter dear to his heart but touchy for die-hard Fascists, Dollfuss asked the Duce to allow private schools to be founded for the German-speaking population in the province of Bolzano. Although Mussolini would not be drawn into questions relating to italianization programs in the South Tyrol, the meeting ended on a happy note, for the Duce was personally drawn to the feisty Austrian chancellor. Since Mussolini’s squabble with Hitler over Austria was now an open secret, he emphasized the flaws in Nazi ‘‘Aryanism’’ and intimated to the Germans that their anti-Semitic policy was a dangerous mistake that played into the hands of ‘‘international Jewry’’ and harmed Germany’s interna-

1933: Annus Diabolicus

79

tional reputation.29 One could discreetly conduct a purge of Jews from high positions of power without giving the impression of persecution.30 Rather than race, what unified people and galvanized them to follow a predestined leader to power and empire was the idea of nationhood. Mussolini followed up his lecture on pragmatic anti-Semitism by prompting Hitler to achieve class peace by adopting Italian-style corporativism. But there were limits to what Mussolini would do to check Nazi Germany’s ill-concealed ambitions. When asked by Dollfuss to make representations in Berlin over the terrorist acts of Austrian Nazis bent on the overthrow of his government, the Duce did nothing other than reiterate his opposition to Anschluss. Similarly, for fear of alienating the Fu¨ hrer, Mussolini would not respond to Dollfuss’ plea to cooperate with the Western Powers in joint League action to restrain Hitler.31 Mussolini would not risk an outright break with Germany.32 To block any further German penetration into the Balkan-Danubian region, Mussolini sought a fallback alignment of Italy, Yugoslavia, and Hungary, supplemented by an Italian-led Balkan alignment of Turkey, Greece, and Bulgaria.33 This was a chimera. As a prerequisite to diplomatic cooperation between Budapest and Belgrade, Go¨ mbo¨ s would have to sacrifice Hungary’s revisionist claims on Yugoslavia, which no Magyar would ever do. Worse still, with Mussolini’s own road to de´ tente with Yugoslavia marked by discord, he decisively rejected French participation in talks between Belgrade and Rome. The Yugoslavs proved equally unaccommodating, publicizing expose´ s about Italian diplomatic personnel who were stirring up trouble against the Belgrade regime. Another Yugoslav complaint concerned the Croatian separatists who continued to find hospitality on Italian soil—much to the relief of the Hungarians.34 King Alexander revealed his intransigence by telling the French, ‘‘I would much prefer to see German sausages in Trieste than Italian macaroni.’’35 Not until the following September would either Rome or Belgrade take any serious steps to repair the broken line of communication. Mussolini’s inability to patch over his own quarrel with Yugoslavia or to broker a settlement between Budapest and Belgrade impeded the implementation of the program that he and Go¨ mbo¨ s had mapped out for Austria. Keeping Germany in line therefore became all the more important. He would do this by outsmarting Hitler. By pointing out that, in view of Germany’s growing isolation, the Fu¨ hrer should join Italy’s Four Power Pact— which would ‘‘strike the weapons from the enemy’s propaganda’’36 —Mussolini set his own table. Using the pact as a means of containing Germany, the Duce aimed to best Hitler in their competition over Austria and in the Danube region without having to confront the Fu¨ hrer directly or having to lead a coalition of great powers against him.

80

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

THE FOUR POWER PACT AND DISARMAMENT In a dramatic speech delivered in Turin on 23 October 1932, Mussolini proposed the formation of a Four Power Directorate, consisting of Italy, Britain, Germany, and France; under his leadership, the directorate would bring about orderly treaty revision outside an outmoded League of Nations. The Duce was then concerned mostly about curtailing French hegemony, but, as Hitler’s intransigence on the Austrian question began to make itself felt, his priorities underwent a change. Less fearful of a French preventive war against Italy (in reality, a nonexistent threat), Mussolini’s attention turned to controlling German rearmament and revanchism. By March 1933, Mussolini’s Eastern European diplomacy had run aground. Unable to establish a dominant position in the Balkans, at odds with the Little Entente, estranged from a Yugoslavia that refused to break up, and hanging on for dear life in Austria, Italy had failed in its revisionist ambitions. But all was not bleak. In 1933, the depression had rooted itself everywhere, the liberal democracies seemed ill-equipped to provide remedies, and new authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe were aping Mussolini’s style and Italy’s novel corporativist economic institutions. Mussolini boasted that the Fascist model would save the world from class warfare and economic misery, that his Italy, not Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, represented the wave of the future. Rather than reducing tensions by sliding into passivity, Mussolini contrived the Four Power Pact to refurbish Italy’s prestige. Inconvenienced by the instability and war threats in Europe that Italy was in no position to exploit, the Duce constantly had to defer his plans to invade Ethiopia to an indefinite future. The Four Power Pact, by institutionalizing Great Power cooperation, was supposed to immobilize European opposition and grant Mussolini time and opportunity. Fearing that Europe was dividing between competing blocs and alliance systems, his newly constituted Concert of Europe would contain Great Power rivalries and dispense justice by carefully managed treaty revision. Mussolini produced the first draft of the pact on 4 March 1933, an instrument of crisis management, by which Italy could obtain maximum security in Europe and also leave the way open to selective revisionism.37 The Four Power Pact was Mussolini’s answer to the League of Nations, toward which he had long been hostile. Under the domination of France and its Eastern European allies, the League had codified the ‘‘injustices’’ of the peace treaties and perpetuated the distinctions between victors and vanquished. Mussolini was not alone in deriding the notion that the League could ever promote harmony and goodwill among nations; what particularly bothered him was the bloated sense of power by such clients of France as Eduard Benesˇ and Nicolae Titulescu, who placed their hopes in the League as a peace-keeping entity. Italy claimed that the aggrieved nations would inevitably rearm and avenge themselves against the dictated peace.

1933: Annus Diabolicus

81

Mussolini intended to use the pact to satisfy his dreams of an African empire by overcoming the foreboding of an annus diabolicus that gripped Europe on Hitler’s emergence in power. If Mussolini were able to establish normal relations with France, at least for the short run, and could encourage Britain’s active participation in European affairs, there was no inevitability about a Nazi-Fascist alignment. These singular accomplishments would win Italy deserved recognition as one of the Great Powers. As Europe’s honest broker, Mussolini intended to implement Italy’s decisive weight in the continental balance of power from the Fascist citadel in Rome. A friend of no one, Italy would observe an intransigent autonomy and be the balance wheel of European diplomacy. Consistent with the Fascist principles of authoritarianism and hierarchy, Mussolini held that the strong had the right to dominate the weak. Thanks to a temporary edge in certain types of military equipment, he took his country to be more than an equal among the strong. The one European Great Power that had been excluded was Soviet Russia. Owing to their hatred of communism, the members of the refurbished European Concert were all agreed on leaving the feared Stalin on the fringes of European high politics. But Mussolini, uninhibited by ideological scruple, was careful to keep his own line out to Moscow. Italy had recognized the Soviet Union in 1924, which led to important economic ties between the two countries. Since Hitler represented as much of a threat to the Soviet Union as he did to Italy, there was room for cooperation between Rome and Moscow. Italy and the Soviet Union therefore signed a Pact of Friendship, Neutrality, and Nonaggression on 2 September 1933. Yet another brick in Mussolini’s complex diplomatic architecture, the pact with the Soviet Union could be used, as the need arose, either to keep Germany in check or to lessen French influence in Central Europe.38 While Mussolini’s Four Power Pact idea fell on sympathetic ears in Britain, he had a formidable task in selling it to Hitler, in spite of the advantages held out to Germany. To be sure, Mussolini was baffled over the best way to handle the Third Reich. Unlimited German strength posed a danger to Austria and the South Tyrol as well as to Italy’s ambitions in Southeast Europe. At the same time, a stronger Germany would make a more adequate counterweight to France. Whatever his inner doubts, Mussolini tried to hasten Germany’s signature by pointing out the need to quiet the violent reaction of the world to the new Nazi regime. To avoid isolation and a preventive attack by ‘‘revanchist circles,’’ Germany should ‘‘break through the ring’’ and ‘‘get through the next few months without conflict’’ by signing up.39 Behind these Italian warnings lay an ulterior motive. Mussolini wanted to buy time for his own war against Ethiopia. He was therefore willing to sponsor a degree of German rearmament. As opposed to the Italian position during the 1920s, Mussolini was now prepared to acquiesce in certain revisions in favor of the Third Reich at the expense of Poland,

82

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

such as the ‘‘Polish Corridor,’’ which would set the dangerous precedent of ‘‘territorial rectifications.’’ Given the Nazi Weltanschauung of conquest and expansion, it was small wonder that Hitler would perceive only annoying impediments in Mussolini’s Four Power Pact. Although pleased with the revisionist and antiLeague aspects of Mussolini’s project, the Fu¨ hrer had no intention of allowing foreign supervision of a controlled rearmament in stages; furthermore, he regarded Mussolini’s advocacy of a band of territory across the Polish corridor linking the Reich to East Prussia as only a prelude to a much vaster program of expansion defined in the Nazi lexicon as Lebensraum. Nor was Hitler much impressed with Mussolini’s argument that, since France was on the warpath, ‘‘the conclusion of the Four Power Pact would be for Germany the best counterblow that could be dealt to antiGerman propaganda throughout the world.’’ Guns, ‘‘blood and soil,’’ much more than paper, were what made the world turn in Berlin. Much more than Mussolini, Hitler knew that the French had long ago lost their stomach for war. Already a defeated people, they would be vanquished in due course. Moreover, Hitler had absolutely no intention of respecting Austria’s integrity or of allowing Germany to be circumscribed in any way. Since Nazism was propelled by a savage hatred of Germany’s wartime enemies, to say nothing of Jews and Slavs (even the Italian people, a Mediterranean race, were considered to be Untermenschen), Hitler placed no more stock in true Great Power cooperation than he did in the despised League of Nations. But all this would be played out in the future. For the time being, to give him more time to rearm, Hitler would artfully use Mussolini’s pact as a temporary expedient during a ‘‘fragile’’ period for the Third Reich. Mussolini had even less success with the French. On 2 March, he granted de Jouvenel an audience to acquaint him with the thinking behind the Four Power Pact, but they quickly got bogged down on naval parity and the Polish corridor. Hungary also thwarted agreement by complicating the Yugoslav equation. Mussolini insisted that the ‘‘gravely mutilated and humiliated’’ Hungary be given justice by a return of territories containing a majority of Magyars. Yugoslavia would never agree to surrender the Magyar-dominated Voivodina, which, if turned over, would bring Hungary to the gates of Belgrade. Mussolini persevered, insisting that Italian security in the Adriatic could be preserved only by an Italian presence in Albania, but this was a convenient ploy to sabotage an Italian rapprochement with Yugoslavia dictated by Paris. As a means of overcoming the chronic conflict between Italy and Yugoslavia, de Jouvenel suggested the formation of a large Danubian union that would unite Austria, Hungary, and the Little Entente. Still undecided about war against Ethiopia, Mussolini was not yet ready for this solution; only on Tunisia and Libya did he show less intractability. For his part, de Jouvenel could not make any meaningful concessions to Italy; in spite of his ebullient optimism, his hands were tied by the

1933: Annus Diabolicus

83

Quai d’Orsay. Only on the question of Austrian independence was there a meeting of minds: There would be no Anschluss. Even so, they did not agree on the means. Mussolini had long been convinced that France must allow him complete liberty on the Danube where, united with Austria and Hungary, Italy would form a rampart that could prevent an Anschluss. Instead of a rapprochement with France based on a global settlement of their grievances, Mussolini intended to use his Four Power Pact to extract concessions and hold the balance between France and Germany.40 Mussolini’s Four Power Pact was inextricably linked with the disarmament question that continued to drag on in Geneva without any resolution in sight. When Germany abruptly departed from a plenary session in early December 1932, the disarmament talks seemed to have broken down permanently. The day was saved when France, Germany, Italy, Britain, and the United States issued a statement on 11 December granting Germany ‘‘equality of rights in a system that would provide security for all nations.’’ If the other signatories did not disarm, then Germany would be entitled to rearm. Under this promise, Germany returned to the disarmament conference, but in the presence of Hitler, the fragile consensus quickly fell apart. The French were greatly alarmed, especially in the absence of British guarantees of support against future German aggression. Still, the British persevered in the belief that some agreement should be made to set limits to German rearmament; otherwise the Nazis would run amok. The French, by contrast, insisted that a nazified Reich released them from any bond to make more concessions that required disarmament and trust in Berlin on inspection systems; Hitler would be restrained only by counterforce and alliance systems. Faced by French tenacity and a warlike regime in Berlin, Ramsay MacDonald struggled to save the tottering disarmament conference, which had reopened on 2 February 1933. A deadlock immediately developed between the French demand for security and arms control and the German insistence on parity of armaments. In mid-March, MacDonald presented a plan for disarmament that attempted to spell out the already conceded principle of equality of rights with concrete arms figures. While the talks limped along, Baron Aloisi, behind the scenes, convinced MacDonald and his foreign secretary, John Simon, that they should repair to Rome for a talk with Mussolini to forestall another collapse in Geneva. The two British statesmen arrived in Rome on 17 March; there Mussolini presented them with the Four Power Pact. They immediately expressed their admiration of the Duce’s project and remarked on the similarity between the British and Italian positions on parity of rights for Germany and the principle of treaty revision. Mussolini seemed to have stolen the show on the disarmament question by presenting his Four Power Pact as the appropriate forum in which to resolve the various controversies afflicting Europe. Almost immediately,

84

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

however, the other three powers began to bend the provisions of the pact to suit their own interests. The British demanded the deletion of the article that provided for consultation between the signatories on non-European and colonial problems; the French were worried over the very mention of treaty revision; and their allies in the Little Entente, equally distressed, put forward the demand that they be represented as the ‘‘Fifth Power.’’ To avoid complete ostracism, Hitler drifted along with the current as long as ‘‘equality of rights’’ still remained in the successive drafts. Surprisingly, Mussolini, with hardly a protest, yielded on all fronts by allowing drastic changes that emptied revisionism of all meaning. By the time the Four Power Pact was finally signed in Rome on 15 July 1933,41 it had taken a long and tortured journey to an inconclusive declaration of good intentions. Mussolini tolerated the emasculated final product because he still hoped to have secured the indispensable condition for the invasion of Ethiopia: an unbroken period of peace in Europe. The disarmament negotiations taking place in Geneva expired more slowly. Cornered on the Anglo-Italian front, Hitler accepted the MacDonald plan as a basis for negotiation after his famous ‘‘peace’’ speech of 17 May, for which Mussolini took much of the credit.42 This was merely a ruse, which guaranteed continued haggling. Britain preferred an agreement that placed some limits on Germany to no agreement at all, while the French were reluctant to make concessions in the absence of new guarantees of their security if any new treaty were violated. Unwilling to assume new responsibilities on the Continent, the British were ready to listen to the Italian argument that concessions must be made to Germany. The Italian position was at once realistic, naive, and tantamount to a biased brokerage favorable to Germany. No matter what was decided, so read the Italian thesis, Germany would rearm. Since not even France was prepared to undertake a preventive war, Germany’s signature on a treaty must be obtained by allowing some rearmament. Frustrated by his failure at mediation, Mussolini exploded against both France and Germany. To Aloisi on 2 September he said: ‘‘I do not understand why France, with 84 billions of gold, with formidable defenses in the East and colonies . . . trembles before Germany. There are only two ways of solving the problem of German rearmament: a preventive war, or control.’’43 On 11 October, he remarked to Ronald Graham, the British ambassador in Rome, that German policy was ‘‘in the hands of two men, Hitler and Go¨ ring, one a dreamer, the other an ex-inmate of a lunatic asylum, neither of them conspicuous for reason or logic and both suffering from a bitter sense of injustice.’’44 To save the Geneva conference from imminent disaster, Mussolini proposed to transfer the disarmament talks to the already moribund Four Power Pact forum, where he intended to present another of his compromise proposals. Hitler answered by walking out of the League on 14 October, which effectively killed the Four Power

1933: Annus Diabolicus

85

Pact, the disarmament conference, and Mussolini’s compromise proposals at a stroke. Since Hitler had given Mussolini no prior warning, his callous behavior produced a chill in Italo-German relations.45 On the whole, as far as Europe was concerned, Mussolini meant to use the Four Power Pact primarily to slow down Germany’s military resurgence as a means of preventing Hitler’s absorption of Austria. But since the Duce continued to overvalue French power and to underestimate the speed with which Hitler was preparing to burst the bonds of the Versailles treaty, in total defiance of the rest of Europe, his much vaunted ‘‘equidistance’’ among the Great Powers was not working convincingly. As the next chapters will show, his pact failed to check German rearmament. And, instead of arresting Hitler’s ongoing subversion of Austria by means of cooperation with the West in the interest of preserving European stability, the Duce contributed to the weakening of the anti-Nazi elements in the country out of an ideological preference for authoritarian solutions over democratic fronts and alignment with the Little Entente. Rather than redounding to Italy’s advantage, such subversion of the existing European order played into Hitler’s hands. By the time the Duce’s invasion plans of Ethiopia moved into high gear during the latter part of 1934, the pact had been long forgotten and the future of Austrian independence imperiled.

NOTES 1. D’Amoja, Declino e prima crisi dell’Europa di Versailles, 139. 2. DDF, 1, II, 149, 30 December 1932. 3. Lajos Kerekes, Abendda¨ mmerung einer Demokratie. Mussolini, Go¨ mbo¨ s, und die Heimwehr (Vienna, Frankfurt, Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1966), 116–19; NPA, 416, 4 November 1932, and 416, 6 November 1932; K. Haas, ‘‘Die Ro¨ mische Allianz, 1934,’’ Der Ma¨ rz 1933: Vom Verfassungsbruch zur Diktatur in E. Fro¨ schl and H. Zoitl, eds. (Vienna: Volksbuchhandlung, 1984), 78–79. 4. DDI, 7, XII, 414, 437, and 491, 10, 17 November and 1 December 1932; Kerekes, Abendda¨ mmerung, 117–19. 5. DDI, 7, XII, 480, 29 November 1932. 6. For a more complete background on Italy’s intrigues with Dollfuss and Starhemberg during 1932, see H. James Burgwyn, ‘‘La troika danubiana di Mussolini: Italia, Austria e Ungheria, 1927–1936, Storia contemporanea 21, no. 4 (August 1990): 626–30. 7. Baron Pompeo Aloisi, Journal: 25 juillet 1932–14 juin 1936 (Paris: Plon, 1957), 41. 8. Ibid., 39–40, 48–49; Sadkovich, Italian Support for Croatian Separatism, 117. 9. DDI, 7, XIII, 61 and 91, 31 January and 14 February 1933; De Felice, Mussolini il Duce, 1: 437 n. 1. 10. The quotations in this paragraph are taken from Mack Smith, Mussolini’s Roman Empire, 47.

86

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

11. DDI, 7, XIII, 91 and 202, 14 February and 14 March 1933; DGFP, C, 1, 112, 23 March 1933. 12. DDI, 7, XIII, 202, 212, and 243, 14, 16, and 20 March 1933. 13. An Italian private informer, S. Pirazzoli, wrote from Paris that General Maxime Weygand was campaigning for a preventive war against Italy in early April assisted by the Yugoslavs. Attilo Tamaro, Venti anni di storia, 1922–1943, 3 vols. (Rome: Tiber, 1955), 2: 3. 14. For a balanced discussion of Mussolini’s reaction to Hitler’s coming to power, see De Felice, Mussolini il Duce, 1: 438–67. 15. DDI, 7, XIII, 121, 21 February 1933. 16. Esmonde M. Robertson, Mussolini as Empire-Builder: Europe and Africa, 1932–1936 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), 35. 17. Ju¨ rgen Gehl, Austria, Germany, and the Anschluss, 1931–1938 (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 48–49. 18. DDI, 7, XIII, 98 and 103, 16 and 17 February 1933; Starhemberg, Between Hitler and Mussolini, 103–9. 19. DDI, 7, XIII, 224 and 323, 16 and 29 March 1933. 20. DDI, 7, XIII, 226 and 292, 17 and 25 March 1933. 21. DDI, 7, XIII, 442, 20 April 1933. 22. Ibid. 23. DBFP, 2, V, 90, 25 April 1933; DDI, 7, XIII, 442, 20 April 1933. 24. Dollfuss’ phrase. DDI, 7, XIII, 204, 14 March 1933. 25. De Felice, Mussolini il Duce, 1: 473. 26. DDI, 7, XIII, 319 and 323, 29 March 1933. 27. DDI, 7, XIII, 411 and 442, 12 and 20 April 1933. 28. DDI, 7, XIII, 364 and 365, 4 April 1933; Gottfried-Karl Kindermann, Hitler’s Defeat in Austria 1933–1934 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988), 72. 29. Aloisi, Journal, 109. 30. DDI, 7, XIII, 427, 18 April 1933. 31. DDI, 7, XIII, 849, 16 June 1933. 32. DDI, 7, XIII, 393, 9 April 1933. Dollfuss first asked for Mussolini’s intervention in Berlin in March. DDI, 7, XIII, 224, 16 March 1933. 33. DDI, 7, XIII, 479, 26 April 1933. 34. DDI, 7, XIII, 479, 26 April 1933. 35. Hubert de Lagardelle, Mission a` Rome: Mussolini (Paris: Plon, 1955), 6. 36. DGFP, C, 1, 164, 19 April 1933. 37. DDI, 7, XIII, 165, 4 March 1933. 38. The details of this story can be found in J. Calvitt Clarke III, Russia and Italy against Hitler: The Bolshevik-Fascist Rapprochement of the 1930s (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991). 39. DGFP, C, I, 122 and 230, 29 March and 13 May 1933. 40. DDI, 7, XIII, 157, 2 March 1933. 41. The history of the Four Power Pact is best told by Konrad Hugo Jarausch, The Four Power Pact 1933 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966). 42. DDI, 7, XIII, 628, 18 May 1933. 43. Aloisi, Journal, 143. 44. DBFP, 2, V, 444, 11 October 1933. 45. DGFP, C, II, 120, 126, and 145, 12, 13, and 22 December 1933.

CHAPTER 6

Mussolini’s Danubian Strategy CRUSHING AUSTRIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY During the negotiations for the Four Power Pact, Mussolini intensified his effort to save Austria from the Nazis and establish Italian sway in Vienna by waging a war against Social Democracy through Dollfuss and Starhemberg, in alignment with revisionist Hungary. His long-range ambition (erratically pursued during the latter 1920s) of staking out the Danube region as an Italian sphere of influence remained unaltered. Mussolini aimed to have his own sponsored alignment—a tripartite front consisting of Italy, Austria, and Hungary, whose governments were based on authoritarian principles that would prevail over the Little Entente and the democratic idea. The maneuver was based on four false premises: first, that Hitler would need a long time to consolidate his power in Germany before challenging Austria’s independence; second, that the suppression of AustroMarxism and democratic institutions in Vienna would inoculate the country against the Nazi virus; third, that Go¨ mbo¨ s would be a loyal follower of Rome rather than a supplicant of Berlin; and fourth, that Italy would have the power and prestige to dominate the Danube region. There was also a basic contradiction afflicting Rome’s tripartite alignment. Whereas Italy and particularly Hungary still longed to bring about a realignment of power along the Danube, Austria, barely hanging on to its independence, was content to abide by the status quo. On the first step of his Danubian program—establishing Italian sway over Austria—Mussolini encountered difficulty. While needing the Duce’s

88

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

support of Austria’s independence, Dollfuss tried to avoid becoming an Italian satellite and eschewed Fascism as a model for his country; he had his own authoritarian solutions in mind, based on Catholic principles and an economic program designed to benefit the hard-pressed small farmers. Since members of the conservative Christian Social party predominated in his cabinet, Dollfuss was able to keep Starhemberg’s paramilitary Heimwehr in its place, and hence, Italian influence at bay.1 Mussolini looked on approvingly when, in May 1933, Dollfuss founded the Fatherland Front as an authoritarian device through which to rule in place of the defunct parliament, a move Rome hoped would make him ever more dependent on both Italy and the Heimwehr. But in desperate need of money from the Western Powers, Dollfuss was reluctant to antagonize the French Socialist party by violent action against the Austro-Marxists.2 From his perspective, the Nazis represented a far greater danger than the subdued Socialists, who had disavowed Anschluss and long ago lost their revolutionary e´ lan. Notwithstanding Italy’s private representations in Berlin, there was no letup in Nazi violence. Berlin further punished Dollfuss by imposing a prohibitive 1,000 mark tax on all German travelers seeking to enter Austria, which sharply reduced the flow of much-needed German marks into an economy already in desperate straits. Dollfuss contemplated taking his case to the League, instead of relying solely on Italy to get Hitler to clamp down on the radical Nazi Landesinspekteur Theodor Habicht, and his Munich crowd, which was orchestrating anti-government propaganda in Austria. Still, that did not deter him from trying to make a deal on his own with Habicht by offering the Nazis two seats in his cabinet.3 Nor was the Heimwehr a totally pliant Italian tool. As long as the Austrian chancellor dragged his feet on persecuting Socialists and continued to tolerate members of the Agrarian party (Pan-Germans with faint democratic leanings) in his cabinet, the Heimwehr would resist Mussolini’s proddings to join the Fatherland Front. Perturbed by the Nazi propaganda blitz against Dollfuss, Mussolini lent support to the Austrian chancellor in his determination to avoid either new elections or the appointment of Nazis in his cabinet. But Italy’s support had its price. On 1 July, the Duce ordered Dollfuss to speed up an offensive against the Socialists and to implement Fascist-style reforms that would supposedly stimulate Austrian patriotism and lessen the attractiveness of Nazism. Dollfuss was further expected to shun the League in favor of political talks with Italy and Hungary, aimed at a common policy toward the Little Entente and Germany.4 Dollfuss, however, was no docile satellite. Steeped in Catholic authoritarianism rather than Fascism, he was worried that too intimate a connection with Mussolini would estrange the Austrian workers whom he was trying to woo from the Social Democrats. Leery of the immediate assault

Mussolini’s Danubian Strategy

89

against Marxism preached in Rome and Budapest, Dollfuss made it clear that he intended to proceed more slowly and with less drastic measures to avoid alienating important elements in the Christian Social party whose support was needed for the survival of his government. Nor did Dollfuss conceal his distrust of the Hungarians. Their expansive revisionist program was worrisome to the ruler of a country barely hanging on to independence. Dollfuss had no intention of cutting off all ties between Austria and the Little Entente, and he thought it senseless to participate in talks between the tripartite front and Germany before he had immobilized the Austrian Nazis. Go¨ mbo¨ s, too, showed that he was no Italian appendage. Without forewarning Mussolini, he visited Hitler on 16 June to seek concrete promises for support of Magyar revisionism rather than endure more persiflage in Rome. Go¨ mbo¨ s meant also to work out a formula for a de´ tente between Berlin and Vienna within an expanded tripartite front that would include Germany. He came home empty-handed, his ears ringing with the Fu¨ hrer’s expressed hatred of Dollfuss. Still, Go¨ mbo¨ s would not be budged from his neutral position in the dispute between Austria and Germany and continued to hold Dollfuss at arm’s length in the endeavor to keep on the right side of Berlin. At the end of July 1933, Mussolini and Go¨ mbo¨ s met in Rome to thrash out their differences. Although it was agreed that ‘‘the most urgent matter facing Austria is to bring about a de´ tente with Germany,’’ the Duce tried, none too successfully, to disabuse Go¨ mbo¨ s of his favorite quadruplice notion by pointing out that Hitler’s currently hostile behavior toward Austria had disqualified Germany from membership in the tripartite front. In fact, Go¨ mbo¨ s succeeded in aligning Italian policy with his own. For from now on, Mussolini would give the impression, even if it did not always represent his true intention, of using the German peril to reduce French influence in the Danubian basin rather than building a common front of Great Powers against Hitler. Underlying everything, there was a touch of Magyar blackmail: If Mussolini were to acquiesce in French confederation schemes for the Danube, Hungary would move closer to Germany.5 Given his shaky position in Vienna, Dollfuss was the weakest partner of the tripartite alignment. Nevertheless, he showed more guile and flexibility than his strong-minded confederates in the fight to preserve Austria’s independence and the survival of his own cabinet against Nazi pressures by keeping an open mind on diplomatic alignments with the Western Powers and the Little Entente countries. To broaden Austria’s diplomatic base, Dollfuss undertook a trip to London and Paris during the summer of 1933 to gain support against Nazi terrorism. The British were sympathetic to his predicament, but they suggested that he reconcile with the Social Democrats to avoid isolation. Although Dollfuss brushed aside this advice, the British did agree on 26 July to support him by making representations in Berlin

90

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

to end German-backed subversion of the Austrian government. Mussolini, however, did not fall in line. Wanting to prevent France and the Little Entente from speculating on German-Italian antagonism regarding Austria, the Duce advised Hitler privately on 29 July to head off Britain’s gesture for concerted action by easing up on the propaganda war against Austria.6 The Fu¨ hrer agreed to do this and to forbid acts of terrorism, but he categorically refused to give a written undertaking to abstain from an Anschluss. On 9 August, Habicht gave his answer by making a hostile broadcast against the Austrian government. Dollfuss had no better luck with the French. Joseph Paul-Boncour withheld French support for an international loan to Austria until Dollfuss made peace overtures to the Socialists and reduced his dependency on Fascist Italy. Still, Dollfuss persisted in asking the French for permission to form special auxiliary corps to counter Nazi subversion. This placed the French in an awkward position. Austria, they acknowledged, needed tools to resist the Nazis, but they did not want to challenge the disarmament clauses of the peace treaties.7 Irritated by Dollfuss’ peregrinations in the West, Mussolini summoned him to Riccione on 19 August. After chastising him for not moving expeditiously on the Italian program, the Duce ordered Dollfuss to impose the Fatherland Front on the parties and to replace the Agrarians in his cabinet with Starhemberg and the prince’s Heimwehr cohort Richard Steidle.8 Mussolini promised military assistance in case either the Germans or the Austrian Legion (consisting of expatriate Austrian Nazis undergoing military training in Bavarian camps) should try to force their way across the frontier. As a significant concession, Mussolini allowed the Austrian chancellor to initiate economic contacts with the Little Entente, contrary to the assurance made to Go¨ mbo¨ s in Rome that there would be no overtures to Prague.9 Starhemberg followed Dollfuss to Italy where he hammered out a hardline Heimwehr policy with Mussolini. Until Dollfuss instituted a Fascist dictatorship, the prince would shun his cabinet and refuse Heimwehr membership in the Fatherland Front.10 But Mussolini, with the memory of the failed Heimwehr coup of 1929 in his mind, held back from giving Starhemberg carte blanche. Dollfuss was still his man in Vienna. While encouraging increased Heimwehr pressure on the Austrian chancellor, the Duce cautioned the prince to avoid any public statement that might diminish his prestige.11 Buoyed by the knowledge that Mussolini had linked the independence of Austria to his quasi-dictatorship in Vienna,12 Dollfuss on 11 September publicly announced his intention of instituting a Christian Social German state in Austria organized on corporative precepts; he also reshuffled his cabinet by appointing loyal Heimwehr men to key positions. Monsignor Enrico Sibilia, the apostolic nuncio in Vienna, lent a helping hand for au-

Mussolini’s Danubian Strategy

91

thoritarian solutions by releasing President Wilhelm Miklas from his oath to the constitution.13 But when it became obvious that Italy was unable to restrain Hitler from interfering in Austria’s domestic affairs, Dollfuss resumed his usual procrastination in carrying out Mussolini’s program. Having determined to shift for himself, he proceeded to engage in secret contacts with various German factions without prior approval from Rome.14 On hearing of these intrigues, Mussolini, it was rumored, despaired of Dollfuss and even considered replacing him with his archenemies Emil Fey and Anton Rintelen—men more likely to toe the Italian line. Equally irritating, Dollfuss proved as stubborn as ever in refusing to expand the Brocchi agreements, a series of tripartite tariff reductions worked out in 1932. In this case, it was Go¨ mbo¨ s who did the urging, but Dollfuss, suspicious that Hungary was working against his efforts to ward off German pressure, argued that Austria could not absorb any more Hungarian agricultural products.15 Starhemberg, too, harried the Italians with his complaints against Dollfuss and reports of the incessent internecine Heimwehr conflicts. Although the prince had managed to strengthen his position, having entered an alliance with Kurt von Schuschnigg’s paramilitary formation, the Stu¨ rmsharen, and assumed the vice-presidency of the Fatherland Front, Starhemberg was worried about the Heimwehr’s future. Should Dollfuss conspire with the Agrarians to abandon the struggle against Marxism, he warned the Italians, the youth and ‘‘healthy elements’’ in the country would go over to the Nazis. Critical of what he alleged to be Dollfuss’ ‘‘open door’’ to PanGerman organizations, such as the National Corporative Front and the Landbund, Starhemberg feared that Nazi fellow-traveling Greater Germans would be able to wrest control of the Fatherland Front from his hands. Starhemberg was also afraid of being outsmarted; he worried that Dollfuss would impose his leadership on the Heimwehr for the unpopular war on Nazism while stealing credit for the suppression of the Socialists. Meanwhile, Starhemberg’s spat with Fey, his long-standing rival, continued unabated. Should the Socialists first be ‘‘smoked out’’ of Vienna, as urged by Fey, or should they be rounded up in the provinces before the final assault on their stronghold in the Austrian capital, as advocated by the prince?16 Italian undersecretary Fulvio Suvich visited Berlin on 12–13 December in an attempt to ease the tension between Austria and Germany. Hitler gave him the usual runaround by asking that Italy accept his promise to respect Austria’s independence (without any written guarantee) while delivering a diatribe against Dollfuss for pursuing anti-German policies. If Dollfuss wanted an agreement with Germany, he should cease suppressing Austrian Nazis, shun France and the Little Entente, appoint Habicht as interior minister, and grant Habicht Austrian citizenship. Suvich replied that Germany should swing behind Mussolini and Dollfuss in the destruction of democracy and Marxism in Austria. After this rough exchange,

92

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

Suvich realized that nothing could be done to deter the Fu¨ hrer from hounding Dollfuss from public life and from placing Nazis in the Austrian government.17 Dollfuss, sensing that Fey, his most dreaded rival, was replacing Starhemberg as Rome’s favorite, hastened to assure the Italians that everything was well between himself and the prince. In truth, tension between them was strained to the breaking point over the pace in implementing Mussolini’s program. Their feud culminated when Dollfuss, without prior consultation with either the Heimwehr or Rome, arranged to meet Habicht secretly in Vienna to prepare the ground for a deal with the Nazis. When Starhemberg discovered the plot sometime during the first week of January 1934, he prevailed on Dollfuss to cancel the meeting. Habicht, who was bound for Austria by air when he heard the news, had to turn back to Germany abruptly. The Italians did not learn of these machinations until 7 January; it is quite possible that the Italian agent, Eugeneo Morreale, joined Starhemberg in staying Dollfuss’ hand. The Italian minister, Gabriele Preziosi, was not officially apprised until two days later.18 Mussolini was thoroughly disgusted with the whole business. Worried that Suvich in Berlin was planning a deal with Hitler at his expense, Dollfuss asked that he visit Vienna as a confirmation of Italian loyalty.19 Suvich agreed, but when he met with Dollfuss in January, instead of offering reassurances, the Italian minister shocked him with criticisms and exhortations to speed up the war against Social Democracy. Furthermore, Suvich expressed dismay over the Habicht incident and Dollfuss’ request that Britain and France take Austria’s case before the League. Sidetracking Dollfuss, Suvich turned to the Heimwehr by imploring Fey to keep up the pressure for implementation of authoritarianism in Austria. Dollfuss resented the obvious slight but was in no position to challenge Suvich or reduce his dependency on Italy, since his dispute with Hitler had reached a complete impasse. Similarly, he could not count on the Western Powers since they seemed disposed to let Mussolini take the lead in bringing Hitler to book. Quite different reasons lay behind Go¨ mbo¨ s’ vexation with the Austrian leader. Outraged that Dollfuss might reject Magyar revisionism in favor of reconciliation with Prague, he dismissed the Austrian chancellor as a vacillator, for his shameless maneuvering and lack of charismatic appeal. He lamented that 60 percent of Austria’s population, discouraged over Dollfuss’ failure to live up to his Fascist promises, had fallen to the Nazis—a refrain he was to repeat endlessly in the upcoming months.20 All the bickering appeared to vanish when, on 12 February, the Austrian government finally settled accounts with the hapless Socialists by storming their strongholds in Vienna. The government explained that it was merely responding to a Socialist armed uprising. In reality, the military’s assault was the inevitable outcome of steadily increasing provocation on the part

Mussolini’s Danubian Strategy

93

of the Dollfuss regime, egged on by Mussolini and the Heimwehr. After many months of lukewarm support for the Heimwehr, Mussolini had finally decided in January to halt Dollfuss’ backsliding and flirtation with the Nazis by putting his money on the Heimwehr. To the satisfaction of Italian Fascists and the Go¨ mbo¨ s circle, the Heimwehr’s victory was complete. Equally gratifying, the Western Powers, although fussing over the authoritarian behavior of the Dollfuss regime, seemed prepared to concede Italian domination over Austria. Although Dollfuss eventually did take his case to the League, against Italian wishes, Mussolini did not really mind, since the resultant declaration on 17 February that Austria’s independence and integrity should be maintained was an empty one not likely to nettle Hitler. The violence that marked 12 February annoyed Dollfuss, for he preferred the slower but less risky strategy of chipping away at Social Democratic political power. But, so far as is known, he made no protest against either the final outcome or the drastic measures taken against those rounded up by his minister of justice, Kurt von Schuschnigg. Dollfuss, who had a deepseated aversion to the Socialists, accepted the violent way that ‘‘red’’ Vienna had been crushed. In contrast, the Heimwehr camp was unabashedly elated over how the repression was managed. After the initial euphoria had died down, however, Starhemberg grumbled over the few posts that Dollfuss had reserved for Heimwehr men following the Socialist purge.21 Another visit with Mussolini on 17 April sufficed to brace his spirits. Mussolini told him that Dollfuss must complete his work by a final liquidation of the parties and by applying the finishing Fascist touches to the Fatherland Front. Starhemberg, jealous over Fey’s having received the lion’s share of credit for the events of 12 February, spelled out new differences between himself and his energetic foe. In a complete turnabout, he suggested that the Heimwehr eschew independence and join the Fatherland Front en masse while he collected all the militarized forces in the country under his authority as vicepresident of the Front. Fey held fast to the old view that the Heimwehr would be swallowed up by party intrigue should it join the Front. Mussolini sidetracked Fey by firmly supporting Starhemberg and instructed the prince to work things out with Dollfuss.22 The Hungarians, though pleased over the Heimwehr’s show of force, were quite determined not to allow Italy to become the sole arbiter of the Danube region. Believing that an Italo-Hungarian alignment could not substitute for German assistance to Hungary in its revisionist aims, they hastened to inform Berlin of their absolute neutrality in the Austrian-German conflict.23 Admiral Miklo´ s von Nagyba´ nya Horthy, the Regent of Hungary, who exercised a strong influence on policy, was more explicit still in claiming that he regarded an Austrian political coordination with Germany as an historical necessity.24

94

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

In a meeting that took place in Budapest during the latter part of February, Suvich and Go¨ mbo¨ s agreed to the following: the postponement, for the moment, of an accord between Germany and Austria; the rejection of Nazis and their ‘‘nationalist’’ sympathizers in the Austrian government; support for a Dollfuss–Fey–Starhemberg triumvirate in a common struggle against the left; and pressure on Austria to cut all ties with France and the Little Entente. As soon as the Dollfuss regime was firmly in place in Vienna, they would take a new look at Germany. Although giving way to the Italians on their Austrian program, Go¨ mbo¨ s once again scored a success by scotching an Austrian rapprochement with the Little Entente. At the end, the conversation veered into dangerous military speculations. Go¨ mbo¨ s was transported by visions of a European war waged victoriously by the totalitarian powers. Czechoslovakia would be crushed and Anschluss consummated, which would enable Hungary to seize Slovakia and the Burgenland. Thus did Go¨ mbo¨ s reveal his shallow fidelity to the preservation of Austria, the bedrock of Italian security in Europe.25 ROME PROTOCOLS BLOC In spite of Hungarian unreliability, Mussolini aimed to swing Go¨ mbo¨ s around to a firm defense of Austria and the Dollfuss regime during a tripartite meeting that took place in Rome in March 1934. But Go¨ mbo¨ s refused to be pinned down. Mussolini could only dissuade Go¨ mbo¨ s from insisting on a provision assuring Hitler, in the final communique´ issuing from the meeting, that the newly established Rome Protocols Bloc was not directed against the Third Reich. Hungary, Go¨ mbo¨ s defiantly asserted, intended to carve out its own sphere of influence in the central portion of the Carpathian range. Germany’s active assistance would be solicited north of the Danube and Italy was counted on for support in the south. Go¨ mbo¨ s had thereby hoped to ruin the French plan of achieving a comprehensive Danube community through Franco-Italian cooperation. Much more to Hungarian taste was the prospect of the Danube region divided between two separate and hostile camps. Mussolini, perhaps with Ethiopia on his mind, let Hungarian intransigence stand in the hope that the bloc would purchase Italy time by placing Austrian concerns on hold.26 On 18 March, Mussolini capped his meetings with Go¨ mbo¨ s and Dollfuss with a provocative speech in support of Hungarian revisionism. In what was likely a truer revelation of this thinking, he explained to the British that if Hungarian revisionism was not given a public endorsement, nothing would stop Go¨ mbo¨ s from conniving with Hitler to hasten Germany’s absorption of Austria. As if acting by prearrangement with Rome, Dollfuss, on 26 April, replaced Fey at the vice-chancellery with Starhemberg, who also kept his post as vice president of the Fatherland Front. Fey was left with an unimportant

Mussolini’s Danubian Strategy

95

security portfolio. To cement a partnership with Dollfuss that he knew was favored in Rome, Starhemberg quashed any lingering putschist impulses by finally agreeing to the Heimwehr’s incorporation into the Fatherland Front.27 Mussolini was pleased by this action that supposedly placed country above politics. But matters did not work out smoothly. Angered by his loss of influence when the Heimwehr was deprived of its autonomy, Fey turned to clandestine talks with the Nazis to restore his political fortunes.28 Dollfuss was greatly irritated by Fey’s independence and his contacts with Nazi street thugs, but that did not stop the Austrian chancellor from initiating a dialogue with upper-class Pan-German Austrian ‘‘nationals’’ (cautious sympathizers of Nazism and moderate friends of Hitler) to stave off a Nazi putsch. THE ASSASSINATION OF DOLLFUSS On 16 March, Hitler gave the order that prohibited terrorism and propaganda against the Dollfuss regime. Encouraged by Nazi restraint, Mussolini, on the suggestion of Franz von Papen, finally agreed to meet the Fu¨ hrer in order to thrash out their differences over Austria. Ulrich von Hassell reported that Mussolini, recoiling from any discussion on fine points of ideology, penetrated to the heart of Italo-German disagreements in some surprising observations: Austria was a German State and could only make German policy. He [Mussolini] had always taken cognizance with satisfaction of the Chancellor’s assurance that Germany did not desire an Anschluss, but Italy’s fear was that the Austrian NSDAP [Habicht] directed from Germany might create a de facto situation of Anschluss. If assurances were given that the Austrian NSDAP was not directed by Reich Germans, Dollfuss would be willing to permit the NSDAP an important role in the government. Dollfuss himself desired this, and he, Mussolini, would support this because he urgently hoped for a termination of the German-Austrian conflict.29

Mussolini’s understanding of von Papen’s initiative was that such a meeting with Hitler should be carefully prepared, prefaced by a clear affirmation of Austrian independence.30 The position of the Wilhelmstrasse, which wanted to apply tight controls over Nazi activity in Austria, was to allow free scope to the ‘‘natural political developments’’ in Austria. Pressure applied from Germany for either annexation or Gleichschaltung would be precluded, provided that the rest of Europe also abstain from interference in Austria’s affairs. Since the Wilhelmstrasse was confident that Pan-Germanism would eventually capture the hearts of most Austrians, this was Gleichschaltung by natural causes rather than artificially induced from across the frontier. The Nazis should behave themselves by keeping out of the way while the professionals com-

96

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

pleted their work.31 Von Hassell in Rome, like von Papen, thought that this message could best be brought home by a meeting between Hitler and Mussolini. In addition, von Hassell wanted to take the anti-German sting out of the Rome Protocols Bloc by implementing his plan of parallel ItaloGerman economic exploitation of the Danube region. Sheltered by a ‘‘Gentleman’s Agreement’’ between the two countries tidying up all matters under dispute, Italy would not feel endangered as Germany and Austria drew closer together. There would be no more need for secretive negotiations and both would be freed from surprises by the Western Powers.32 But the Austrian Nazis continued to defy the Wilhelmstrasse. Throughout April, several clashes occurred between the Austrian Legion and the Heimwehr, causing Mussolini much anxiety. The Wilhelmstrasse could not prevent Austrian Nazis from acts of terror against the Austrian government, any more than Mussolini could bring order out of the feuding Heimwehr factions that undermined Dollfuss’ authority. Against this chaotic background, Mussolini repeated to von Hassell on 28 May what he had previously told von Papen. While still insisting that his Alpine neighbor remain ‘‘independent,’’ he averred that ‘‘Austria was absolutely a German state which in the long run could never conduct a policy against Germany but only always with Germany, and Italy very much desired a settlement of the conflict between Vienna and Berlin on this basis.’’ If the Austrian Nazis really kept the peace, Dollfuss, so promised the Duce, would ‘‘seize the initiative’’ for better relations with Germany.33 Neither dictator had been altogether candid with the other. Hitler had no intention of letting up on the pressure to unseat Dollfuss and nazifiy Austria, and Mussolini would not agree to any face-saving Gleichschaltung formula. The Duce’s talk of ‘‘Austria as a German state . . . that could never conduct a policy against Germany’’ was a coded message, for his preference was clearly to develop a plan with Hitler that would guarantee Austria’s independence rather than to consort with the Western Powers against the Fu¨ hrer—a tall order indeed. Mussolini was deterred from eliciting the support of London and Paris in checking an Anschluss from the fear that they might ask embarrassing questions about Italy’s part in the destruction of the Social Democrats in Austria; moreover, such a move, he suspected, would be considered in Berlin as ideological apostasy, to be avoided at all costs. In truth, both Mussolini and Hitler were attracted to each other as charismatic dictators who hoped to wish the problem of Austria away so that they could firm up a totalitarian front against Paris and the Little Entente. The problem of Austria would not, however, go away. In the absence of straightforward talk, rumors abounded that Mussolini would drop Dollfuss if a suitable alternative could be found. But, after the unfortunate experiences leading up to the events of 12 February, would Mussolini consider the likes of Fey, Rintelen, or Starhemberg? Dis-

Mussolini’s Danubian Strategy

97

trustful of these unreliables and incompetents, he would stand by Dollfuss. Now he would have to make this clear to the Fu¨ hrer in person. When Hitler stepped off the plane at Venice on 14 June, wearing an ordinary trenchcoat and civilian clothes and nervously fidgeting with a gray felt hat, he was met by a confident Duce fitted out in a snappy military costume, his chest emblazoned by ribbons and medals. Venice was Mussolini’s show. Vast throngs cheered him while mocking the undistinguished Fu¨ hrer. Heated debates on Austria took place between them at Stra and then on the Lido. Hitler was blunt and to the point. Mussolini should withdraw his ‘‘protecting hand’’ from Austria by agreeing to Dollfuss’ replacement by an ‘‘independent,’’ nonparty figure who would immediately promulgate elections. National Socialists would be appointed to the new cabinet in proportion to the votes they received, which were expected to be high. Hitler wrapped up his oration by declaring his lack of interest in Anschluss for the present.34 There was no need to put this in writing, for one should rely on the Fu¨ hrer’s word. Not much was said about the Rome Protocols or Nazi terror in Austria.35 Because Hitler ranted for long periods without the aid of an interpreter, what occurred was more monologue than dialogue, and his words may well have given rise to misunderstanding. But what the Duce did comprehend was the standard Nazi refrain that he had long ago rejected: new elections and a new chancellor. For Mussolini, terrorism in Austria must cease and tranquility be restored for some time before any progress could be made on Hitler’s program.36 Since the Duce was in no mood to yield on these vital points, his deadlock with Hitler was not easily veiled by the mutual promise to keep in touch on all matters concerning Austria. While refusing to budge on Hitler’s major demands, Mussolini did inform Berlin that he would accept a coalition cabinet including Nazi sympathizers—so long as it was one dominated by Dollfuss. When the Nazis persisted in demanding the Austrian chancellor’s removal, the Duce readily took up Starhemberg’s wish to block anyone close to Hitler from the bastions of political power in Vienna. Upset over rumors that Dollfuss was planning to broaden his support by including certain pro-Nazi nationals in his government, Mussolini in July implored both Fey and Starhemberg to end their feuding and act decisively against the Nazi threat before it was too late.37 Mussolini’s Starhemberg–Dollfuss duumvirate was obviously crumbling. Dissension within the Heimwehr had worsened, the Nazi tide flowed stronger than ever, and the Fatherland Front, its Fascism stillborn, had failed to generate either ideological or economic dynamism. At a time when the Hungarians were sorely testing Italian patience with their flagging loyalty to Austrian independence, the entire experiment collapsed when the unfortunate Dollfuss fell under a hail of Austrian Nazi bullets on 25 July 1934. Although Dollfuss had cleverly played off his many opponents and

98

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

supposed allies in a gallant effort to preserve the independence of his country, the Austrian chancellor had contributed to the erosion of his own standing by his shortsighted decisions, a narrow political outlook, and excessive machinations. Mussolini was outraged. ‘‘Hitler is the murderer of Dollfuss,’’38 he thundered to Starhemberg, ignoring Hitler’s disavowals that he had any ties with the Austrian Nazis involved in the attempted coup. After offering condolences to Dollfuss’ wife, Mussolini hurried the prince onto a flight to Vienna from his favorite vacation spot on the Lido to meet the emergency, and he rushed several Italian divisions to the Brenner. When news arrived that the coup had failed and that Hitler’s armies remained in their barracks, the Italian troops camped on their side of the Austrian frontier. But the crisis did not blow over so quickly. The Italian press took up the offensive by denouncing the Germans as a nation of pederasts and assassins. Mussolini’s official periodical, Gerarchia, pointed out that Austrians were in no sense Germans by culture or sentiment; they belonged to a Roman, Mediterranean, and Catholic civilization.39 Mussolini raged to Starhemberg that Hitler was ‘‘a horrible sexual degenerate, a dangerous fool.’’ In Bari, on 6 September, the Duce proclaimed from a tank turret: ‘‘Thirty centuries of history allow us to regard with supreme indulgence certain doctrines taught beyond the Alps by the descendants of people who were wholly illiterate in the days when Caesar, Virgil and Augustus flourished in Rome.’’40 Notwithstanding Mussolini’s quick military response as a clear warning to Hitler, Dollfuss’ death revealed many flaws in the Duce’s efforts to shore up Austria’s independence. As effective anti-Anschluss devices, the Four Power Pact remained stillborn, and the Danubian troika lost its antiGerman edge due to the relentless revisionism of Julius Go¨ mbo¨ s and his lack of support for Dollfuss. Moreover, Austria’s resistance to Nazi pressure was not helped by Mussolini’s cooperation with Prince Starhemberg in imploring Dollfuss to disable the Social Democratic Party. To have destroyed a useful anti-Anschluss rampart inside the country out of ideological hatred was self-defeating.

NOTES 1. F. L. Carsten, The First Austrian Republic 1918–1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 182. 2. DDI, 7, XIII, 691 and 778, 25 May and 8 June 1933. 3. Martin Kitchen, The Coming of Austrian Fascism (London: Croom Helm, 1980), 149. The Italians got wind of these negotiations. ASMAE, AP:A, 19: 949, 11 May 1933. 4. For Mussolini’s 1 July letter to Dollfuss, see Julius Braunthal, The Tragedy of Austria (London: Victor Gollancz, 1948), 184–87. 5. DDI, 7, XIV, 24 and 29, 26 and 27 July 1933; Jens Petersen, Hitler e Mus-

Mussolini’s Danubian Strategy

99

solini (Bari: Laterza, 1975), 207; Kerekes, Abendda¨ mmerung, 153–54. Kerekes and Petersen agree that Go¨ mbo¨ s had gotten the best of Mussolini at this meeting. 6. DDI, 7, XIV, 34, 29 July 1933. 7. Jacques Ne´ re´ , The Foreign Policy of France from 1914 to 1945 (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), 144–45. 8. DDI, 7, XIV, 102, 18 August 1933. 9. NPA, 477, 19, 20 August 1933; Haas, ‘‘Die Ro¨ mische Allianz,’’ 82. 10. C. Earl Edmondson, The Heimwehr and Austrian Politics (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1978), 196; DDI, 7, XIV, 154, 6 September 1933. 11. ASMAE, AP:A 18: 1677/206, 20 September 1933. ¨ sterreichs im Jahre 1934,’’ 12. Karl Stuhlpfarrer, ‘‘Zur Aussenpolitischen Lage O in Februar 1934, Erich Fro¨ schl and Helge Zoitl, eds. (Vienna: Volksbuchandlung, 1984), 455–56. 13. ASMAE, AA, 409: 3948/175, 23 September 1933. 14. The twists and turns of Dollfuss’ negotiations with the Germans are summarized in Petersen, Hitler e Mussolini, 175–92, and in Gehl, Austria, Germany, and the Anschluss, 71–76. 15. ASMAE, AA 370: 245, 27 November 1933; DDI, 7, XIV, 462, 9 December 1933. 16. ASMAE, AP:A 17: 4614/2496, 8 November 1933; DDI, 7, XIV, 400 and 489, 22 November and 18 December 1933; ASMAE, Austria, 1933, 17, 5006/463, 19 December 1933, and AP:A 24: 58/3 and 430/240, 1 and 31 January 1934. 17. DDI, 7, XIV, 476, 13 December 1933; ibid., 505, 25 December 1933. 18. ASMAE, AA 307: 1003/495, 8 March 1934. 19. NPA, 413, 9 December 1933. 20. DDI, 7, XIV, 157 and 435, 7 September and 2 December 1933. 21. ASMAE, AA 307: 1003/495, 8 March 1934. 22. DDI, 7, XV, 110, 17 April 1933; Edmondson, The Heimwehr and Austrian Politics, 230. 23. DGFP, C, 2, 279, 26 February 1934. 24. DGFP, C, 2, 290, 28 February 1934. 25. GFM, K64–1934–23–96, 21 February 1934; ASMAE, AA 307: 21–23 February 1934; Haas, ‘‘Die Ro¨ misches Allianz,’’ 83. 26. DDI, 7, XIV, 802, 13 March 1934; Petersen, Hitler e Mussolini, 292; DGFP, C, 2, 346, 21 March 1933; Aloisi, Journal, 182. 27. DDI, 7, XV, 151, 26 April 1934. 28. ASMAE, AA 410: 082, 2 May 1934; DDI, 7, XIV, 246 and 345, 17 May and 4 June 1934; ibid., XV, 175, 2 May 1934. 29. DGFP, C, II, 377, 3 April 1934. 30. DDI, 7, XV, 197, 8 May 1934. 31. DGFP, C, II, 320 and 329, 13 and 16 March 1934; ibid., 389 and 393, 9 and 10 April 1934. 32. GFM, 3408/8842/E615256–61, 24 March 1934. 33. DGFP, C, II, 472, 29 May 1934. 34. DGFP, C, III, 5, 7, and 10, 15 and 16 June 1934. 35. GFM, 2811/6100H/E44309–35, 23 June 1934. 36. FO, R3510/37/3, 20 June 1934.

100 37. 38. 39. 40.

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period DDI, 7, XV, 520 and 528, 13 and 15 July 1934. Starhemberg, Between Hitler and Mussolini, 170. Mack Smith, Mussolini’s Roman Empire, 56. Elizabeth Wiskemann, The Rome-Berlin Axis (London: Collins, 1966), 57.

CHAPTER 7

Italy’s Imperialist Adventure MUSSOLINI PONDERS INVASION Italian nationalists ever since the great imperialist Francesco Crispi had yearned to acquire Ethiopia as a colony; Mussolini was no exception. But during the 1920s, though given to outbursts that Italy must ‘‘reach the Oceans,’’ Mussolini was frustrated by Anglo-French dominance in the Mediterranean and was distracted from an African empire by revisionist projects. As late as mid-1932, when Grandi suggested an invasion of Ethiopia, the Duce made short shrift of the idea. In December 1932, however, after Grandi’s departure, Mussolini commissioned General Emilio De Bono, a Fascist comrade of the first hour, to draw up a preliminary war plan while he made the diplomatic preparations along the lines roughed out by Rafaello Guariglia, the Palazzo Chigi’s most radical spokesman for African colonization. According to Guariglia, Italy should acquire Ethiopia not by gradual economic or political penetration but by a military campaign ‘‘in the grand style.’’ Before embarking on invasion, however, Italy must first gain British and French acquiescence. To prevent any radical break with tradition, Guariglia felt that the Ethiopian enterprise should be made an episode, rather than a dangerous new departure. Once a protectorate had been imposed on a defeated Ethiopia, Italy, in his view, would be a satisfied power and a reliable Concert of Europe partner, rather than a radical revisionist bent on continental expansion.1 Guariglia’s colleagues in the Palazzo Chigi viewed Ethiopia through nineteenth-century imperialist lenses. Dependent on trade and maritime com-

102

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

merce, lacking a strong industrial base, Italy was condemned to be a second-rate power unless it obtained colonies. Ethiopia was the only major African region that had not already been snapped up by the other European powers. Important as a source of raw materials, it possessed highland agricultural areas deemed suitable for Italian emigrants. The economic imperialist persuasion was augmented during the early 1930s by the argument that the unemployment and stagnation of trade caused by the depression could be relieved by imperialist acquisitions. Still, until Italy was ready for a test of arms, it should engage in a peripheral policy by the subversion of Ethiopia and bribery of the border tribal chiefs. But this politica periferica, halfheartedly pursued, yielded no quick or spectacular returns. Growing restless, Mussolini began to ponder invasion. In early 1933, he told Starhemberg that if Italy failed to penetrate the Danube region, ‘‘We might even be pushed to Africa.’’2 In August, the Duce transferred all matters pertaining to East Africa to the colonial ministry under De Bono. Freed of interference by unimaginative service chiefs and the Palazzo Chigi’s diplomatic propriety, De Bono could on his own initiative draw up operational plans and implement them. But events in Europe stayed Mussolini’s hand. Rather than behaving like a dutiful Fascist pupil, Hitler stepped up the pressure on Austria, while Dollfuss avoided dependency on Italy. Mussolini therefore had no choice but to place Ethiopia on hold and move cautiously during most of 1933. He refrained from talk of war against the world and strove to preserve the status quo in Europe by means of the Four Power Pact until diplomacy had done its work. Harmony reigned so far between the Palazzo Venezia and the Palazzo Chigi. By fall 1933, Italy’s diplomatic preparations had bogged down. The Four Power Pact had fizzled, and the disarmament talks came to an abrupt end when Germany stormed out of the League in October 1933. Losing patience with diplomacy, Mussolini entrusted De Bono with the practical preparations for an attack on Ethiopia. In a similar spirit, he published a sensational article, entitled ‘‘Verso il Riarmo,’’ in March 1934 that scandalized Europe. Bristling with militant nationalism, Mussolini denounced the League and sneered at pacifism. In the real world of arms races and military alliances, he wrote, Italy would have to hasten its rearmament and win quick returns in Africa before other states could move. The Mediterranean must be converted from an Anglo-Saxon lake into a Roman sea. In the same article, Mussolini injected a worrisome ideological component into his Realpolitik. Breaking with the ‘‘peaceful’’ and ‘‘European’’ spirit of the defunct Four Power Pact, he urged Fascist combat against liberal democracy.3 One month later, he released additional funds for Ethiopian war preparations. But the shrewd calculator in Mussolini emerged to temper the visceral impulse for war. Since Italy was in no position to defy the Western Powers, careful diplomatic preparation could not be avoided. Although, by autumn

Italy’s Imperialist Adventure

103

of 1934, a sizable Italian military force had arrived in East Africa, the Duce was still undecided whether he would fight a colonial war, a national war, or any war at all. AUSTRIA After the assassination of Dollfuss, which brought Italian troops to the Brenner and was denounced by the Western Powers, the Germans undertook a new course toward Austria. Momentarily eschewing violence, Hitler appointed Franz von Papen as his personal extraordinary emissary in Vienna. Ostensibly, von Papen’s mandate was to restore normal relations between the two governments, but the urbane, silver-tongued aristocrat actually aimed to seduce the new government with a Pan-German program that would culminate in a peaceful Anschluss. The Fu¨ hrer dismissed Habicht from his post as director of propaganda for Austria and closed the border to Nazi traffic. But since there was no letup in Austrian Nazi violence, Rome remained suspicious. Worse still, from the Italian standpoint, political pundits everywhere in the post-Dollfuss era were predicting that a rudderless Austria would quickly slide into Nazism. To reestablish his leadership, Mussolini looked for a reliable minion to steel Austria against further Nazi encroachment. Should it be Kurt von Schuschnigg or Prince Starhemberg? Which one would control the government, the army, and the Fatherland Front? Starhemberg saved Rome from having to make a choice by stepping aside, which enabled Schuschnigg to be appointed without opposition as the deceased chancellor’s replacement.4 Italy’s views of this transition remain unclear. We know that Schuschnigg was not loved in Rome, but the Italians also questioned Starhemberg’s competence when he began preaching that the renovation of Austria should be patterned on the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, which had been issued by the Holy Father in 1931.5 An angry Suvich decried this as a defection from Fascism to Catholicism, but Starhemberg, unrepentant, justified his apostasy as the only credible counter to the Nazis. Rome retaliated by slashing financial and military aid to the Heimwehr.6 Yet Starhemberg continued to carry out Mussolini’s directives by applying pressure on Schuschnigg to avoid drawing moderate Nazis and ‘‘national’’ opposition into his entourage.7 Ignoring this advice, Schuschnigg admitted to Mussolini during a meeting in Rome on 21 August 1934 that he was willing to consult with those Greater Germans if they endorsed the principle of Austrian independence. Hardly raising a protest,8 Mussolini let Schuschnigg deal with the Nazi problem in his own way. Schuschnigg took advantage of Mussolini’s flagging interest by gradually establishing his ascendancy over the prince, whose energies were being dissipated in the high life and in his continued rivalry with Fey over control of the Heimwehr.9

104

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

Unquestionably, there existed no rapport between Mussolini, the daredevil Fascist revolutionary, and the austere and reserved Schuschnigg, whose stuffy legitimism and Tyrolean associations made for formal meetings devoid of freewheeling discussion. The cloistered college professor and the man on horseback did little more than exchange pious hopes for Austria’s capacity to survive the Nazi onslaught.10 Mussolini, however, was not yet prepared to give up on Austria. Nevertheless, the assassination of Dollfuss and growing German power convinced him that his previous approaches—meddling in Austrian internal politics or the defense of Austria by Italy alone, in cooperation with Germany, or through the Rome Protocols Bloc—would not suffice. In the search for a guarantee of Austria’s independence, he would have to bring in France and the Little Entente, not one by one, but as a bloc. The Duce was faced with many obstacles. The Little Entente acted as if it preferred Anschluss to a Habsburg restoration and took no initiative in alleviating Austria’s economic distress. Thanks to its running feud with Italy, Yugoslavia had moved closer to Germany; Romania was relatively far removed from Pan-German pressures and was preoccupied mainly with minimizing Italian influence in the Balkans; and the Czechs, offended by the Italian role in the suppression of the Austrian Socialists, disliked Schuschnigg’s authoritarian regime. The Yugoslavs posed the greatest problem. When Mussolini rushed troops to the Brenner in July, they threatened a move into Carinthia, should the Italians cross the frontier. To a certain extent, Mussolini had brought this Little Entente hostility upon Italy by his association with Hungarian revisionism. While Mussolini sought a means by which to reduce the tensions in the Danube region between the Little Entente and his troika partners, Austria and Hungary, the French faced disarray in Eastern Europe following Hitler’s rise to power. In April, the French foreign minister, Louis Barthou, undertook a fence-mending tour of Eastern Europe to revive French leadership.11 While solicitous of Poland and the Little Entente, he was not prepared to offer additional French commitments to deter German aggression. Rather, his nuanced diplomacy was aimed at easing the tension in Eastern Europe that had been provoked by France’s negotiations with the Soviet Union to contain Hitler. None of this was to Mussolini’s liking, not so much because he regarded the Soviet Union as ‘‘an evil empire’’ but because he felt left out. Austria seemed more manageable as an object of Franco-Italian cooperation. Both Britain and France had expressed gratitude to Mussolini for his forceful defense of Austria, but, to avoid an Italo-Yugoslav military confrontation in the event Hitler stirred up further trouble in the Danube region, they wanted to broaden the little beleaguered country’s basis of support. On 31 July, the permanent secretary of the Quai d’Orsay, Alexis Le´ ger, suggested that a tripartite committee be set up in Rome to oversee

Italy’s Imperialist Adventure

105

Austrian affairs and to recommend joint action should Austrian independence again be threatened.12 This came at a time when Italy and Austria were working on a military protocol between them.13 To prevent the Germans from playing on great-power differences over the Anschluss question, the Italians were willing to include Great Britain, France, and Germany in the projected protocol. If Hitler agreed to join, he would be accepting Austrian independence just as Stresemann, at Locarno, had accepted the finality of Germany’s frontiers with France and Belgium. In other words, such agreement would insist on no diktat on either the Rhine or the Brenner. Such a forum of ambassadors would also grant Italy a mandate to protect Schuschnigg against Gleichschaltung. Should Germany refuse participation, this would earn Hitler’s regime the opprobrium of France and Britain and would undermine von Papen’s gambit of an Austro-German modus vivendi based exclusively on Teutonic unity.14 Instead, Germany simply ignored the Italian proposal in favor of a waiting game, on the assumption that Austria’s independence could not be propped up indefinitely either collectively or by Italy alone. But the British and French were not finished. In mid-August they proposed a de´ marche to Vienna that urged Schuschnigg to widen his popular support by reconciling with ‘‘moderate’’ Socialists and ‘‘national’’ elements free of Nazi excesses. This proposal was anathema to the Italians, who would have no truck with the hated Austro-Marxists and distrusted Nazis dressed up as respectable bourgeois citizens. Moreover, they feared massive defections from the Heimwehr to the Austrian Nazis should Schuschnigg either admit Socialists into the government or grant amnesty to those jailed in the 12 February government crackdown.15 Mussolini, willing to join a diplomatic partnership to protect Austria, would simply not accept shared responsibility in Austrian domestic affairs with anyone. Hounded by the British and French to reconcile with the Austrian Socialists, Mussolini intended to talk with Schuschnigg, during the latter’s upcoming visit in Rome on 21 August, about an Italo-Austrian protocol containing military guarantees open to the participation of other countries. London and Paris would be kept in the dark until the Italo-Austrian protocol had been worked out. But Schuschnigg never gave Mussolini a chance, for he, more than Dollfuss, resented Italian tutelage and pressure for greater Heimwehr representation in his government. Moreover, in sore need of loans, he wanted to keep lines open with Paris and London, since there was no gold available in Rome.16 Taking the initiative, the Austrians at the end of August presented a proposal that the Italians thought resembled their own. Yet, there would be no Italo-Austrian protocol, and the initiative would be left to Schuschnigg rather than to Mussolini.17 Austria, France, Germany, Britain, and Italy would be obliged to intervene immediately in the event that Vienna’s domestic order and security were threatened. A major absentee was Yu-

106

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

goslavia, which bothered the Italians only insofar as no one was doing much to halt Belgrade’s growing tilt toward Berlin. Could France restrain the Serbs in case of a German march into Austria? The Austrian government would determine both the nature of the threat and the country to send military assistance.18 Although not happy at the elimination of the protocol from the Austrian proposal,19 Mussolini swung behind Schuschnigg’s version and let him take the lead in shepherding it through the Geneva back corridors.20 All seemed to be proceeding smoothly when the British suddenly declared in mid-September that they would refuse to participate in any guarantee of Austria.21 Bending to British pressure, Barthou, who had earlier been willing to consider a Danubian organization centered on the states of the Roman Protocols,22 also declined to be associated with any Great Power assembly outside the League’s jurisdiction and without the inclusion of the Little Entente countries as equals. Angered by the very mention of the League, the Italians insisted that Britain and France grant them a mandate to act on their behalf in Austria, reiterated the necessity of a preliminary bilateral accord of guarantee with Schuschnigg, and scorned the Yugoslavs.23 This forceful Italian reply placed Barthou in a quandary. So long as France and Italy remained hopelessly snarled in their perennial outstanding disputes—disarmament, Tunisia, and colonies—little progress could be made on the Austrian question. Furthermore, much to Mussolini’s chagrin, Barthou’s peregrinations in Eastern Europe were stealing the limelight from Rome. For his part, Barthou preferred to downgrade Italy’s part in his antiGerman front but knew that he could not. Mussolini, after all, was resolved to defend Austria and was on bad terms with Hitler. Barthou therefore decided to accept Italian predominance in Vienna as the most effective safeguard against Nazi pressure. He was indeed a political realist who did not permit ideology to interfere with French national interests. Still, he was discouraged by Britain’s refusal to undertake any commitment and by the intransigence of the Little Entente. Moreover, he was susceptible to the argument of the Quai d’Orsay, which held that the Yugoslavs would drift into the German camp if France followed Mussolini’s lead on the Austrian question. The Yugoslavs, to be sure, were not facilitating Barthou’s endeavor to placate Rome. Indeed, they instigated an irresponsible press war that denigrated the Italian army, belligerently stated their preference for an Anschluss over a Habsburg restoration in Austria, and bragged about marching into Carinthia should the Italians ever venture across the Brenner frontier. Mussolini replied by threatening to break off diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia.24 Confronted by this mounting Italo-Yugoslav antagonism, Barthou made his choice. Instead of coddling the Italians, he caved in to Britain and the Little Entente in order to pursue negotiations with the Soviet Union and the Danube Convention aimed at the creation of an East-

Italy’s Imperialist Adventure

107

ern Locarno. Although wanting to crown his tour d’horizon of Europe with a successful trip to Rome, Barthou placed his invitation at risk by treating the Italians lightly—on par with Yugoslavia—in the conviction that they would have to agree to French terms in order to prevent Anschluss. Given these intractable deadlocks, Britain, France, and Italy issued a declaration on 27 September 1934 reaffirming the independence and the territorial integrity of Austria. As empty of force as the declaration of 17 February, this farcical and tardy response to the Nazi assassination of Dollfuss revealed the lack of will and contrasting perspectives of the three signatories. Not surprisingly, it was greeted with derision in Berlin. Although the Italians were worried by the yawning gap between an affirmation of principle and a formula of guarantee for Austria’s independence,25 they were not terribly upset. Yugoslavia would be excluded from Great Power parley and the League left out of the Austrian equation. Similarly, the Western Powers would no longer meddle with the Italian effort to dominate Schuschnigg, notwithstanding Mussolini’s diminished confidence in the Austrian chancellor’s determination to evade the blandishments of von Papen. Schuschnigg was much less happy with the negotiations leading up to the 27 September declaration. The British had written off Austria, the French had shown partiality to the Little Entente over the defense of Austria, and Schuschnigg himself was under fire in Vienna for his excessive dependency on Italy, which redoubled his resolve to avoid any bilateral military protocol with Mussolini in the future. On 17 November, Schuschnigg arrived in Rome to talk again with Mussolini. Their exchanges were awkward and underscored by a mutual lack of comprehension. The agenda was the usual one: loans for Austria, the nature of Austria’s ‘‘nationals,’’ Italian concessions in the Alto Adige, and the dangers of Hungarian revisionism. But these burning issues were run through quickly and handled gingerly. Nothing was said about either the Italo-Austrian military protocol or broader international guarantees to deter a German invasion of Austria.26 Having merely gone through the motions with Schuschnigg, Mussolini finally had to develop a new approach to keep the peace in Europe while he moved ahead with his plans to invade Ethiopia: a multinational guarantee of Austria negotiated in concert with France against either a nazification of Austria or a German invasion. GROUNDWORK FOR WAR During the last weeks of September, Barthou, in a change of course, authorized the resumption of Franco-Italian talks on colonial questions; these had been suspended since Grandi’s departure from the Palazzo Chigi. The Italians presented a set of proposals. To fulfill Article 13 of the London Pact, France should declare its disinterest in Ethiopia, concede the coastline

108

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

of French Somalia, with the exception of Djibouti, and make other colonial territorial rectifications along the Libyan frontier. Italy would reciprocate by abandoning its claims in Tunisia and Morocco. As an earnest of goodwill, Mussolini promised to downgrade Italian support for Croatian separatism and to discuss the tangled Albanian question directly with Belgrade. Before an immense throng in Milan on 6 October, Mussolini showed restraint toward the Serbs, though he did boast of Italy’s military strength. Aloisi construed his speech as ‘‘a clear invitation to Yugoslavia.’’27 Impressed by a less intransigent Italy, Barthou decided to tackle the Yugoslavs head-on by inviting King Alexander to France for a lecture on the importance of Austria’s independence to Yugoslav security and the necessity of cooperation with Italy in upholding it.28 A visit to Rome by Barthou would follow between 4 and 11 November 1934. King Alexander was in a quandary. He took the Italo-Yugoslav entente so ardently espoused by the French as a retreat from their treaty obligations toward Yugoslavia; at the same time, he suspected that Mussolini, with Barthou’s connivance, was poised to succeed France as the dominant power in the Balkans. Hence, Alexander spurned Italy’s tentative overtures for a de´ tente,29 but he accepted Barthou’s invitation. This tentative beginning, however, was aborted when Croatian terrorists, some of whom were known to have resided in Italian training camps, assassinated Alexander and Barthou in Marseille on 9 October.30 Many fingers pointed toward Mussolini for ordering the king’s murder, but there is still no evidence implicating the Duce directly in the crime, apart from his past support of Croatian terrorism and the camps he provided in Italy to house Pavelic´ and his henchmen. Why should the Duce suddenly want to stir up a crisis with Yugoslavia when his diplomacy was aimed at the inclusion of Belgrade in his anti-Anschluss front? Notwithstanding a wish to play down the incident, Mussolini stoutly defended himself and Hungary against Yugoslav charges that they together had masterminded the outrage. The resultant quarrel between the two revisionist allies and the Little Entente proved to be more of an obstacle to FrancoItalian rapprochement than their long-standing colonial differences. Whereas the new French government insisted that an African settlement was possible only if Italy would agree to a clause on Austrian independence guaranteed by the Little Entente,31 Mussolini insisted that Hungary be recognized as a major guarantor. Rather than conciliate Yugoslavia, he would stand by Magyar revisionism.32 Pierre Laval, who succeeded Barthou at the Quai d’Orsay, was a man cut from a different cloth. A traditional and ardent republican, Barthou was an intellectual who expressed his ideas forthrightly, whereas Laval was a backstairs intriguer whose devotion to the truth was suspect. Instead of encircling Germany with alliances, the new French foreign minister meant to downgrade Barthou’s pactomania and take ‘‘little steps’’ in the direction

Italy’s Imperialist Adventure

109

of improved relations with Hitler. Laval eschewed blocs in favor of bilateral negotiations with Rome and Berlin. Less anti-German and more comfortable among dictators than Barthou, Laval was eager to please Mussolini by diverting criticism from Italy over the Marseille assassinations. In such an improved atmosphere, the two countries would arrive at a meeting of minds on the contentious issues dividing them and Laval would publicize the rapprochement by a visit to Rome. But there were major stumbling blocks. The Yugoslavs accused Italy of complicity in the plot to kill their king and of abetting the disintegration of their country. Stung by the criticism leveled at Italy by the Little Entente, Mussolini avoided approaching Belgrade on an Italo-Yugoslav treaty of arbitration and conciliation that the French held to be a prerequisite to Franco-Italian discussions.33 Laval’s projected trip to Rome appeared to have been squelched. At this point, an incident occurred that seemed to galvanize Mussolini into accelerating his plans to invade Ethiopia. On 5 December 1934, an Anglo-Ethiopian boundary commission clashed with a force of Italian-led tribesmen at the oasis of Walwal in the Ogaden province of Ethiopia. After a fierce battle, the Ethiopians were routed. Mussolini had had no hand in this affair, which was provoked by a trigger-happy Italian commander. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia brought the Walwal incident to the notice of the League of Nations on 14 December. Mussolini was thus given a handy pretext for condemning Ethiopia as an irresponsible and barbaric empire, but the incident came at a time when he was becoming increasingly agitated over Germany. Fearing that Hitler would be emboldened to exacerbate tensions in Austria after the anticipated German victory in the upcoming Saar plebiscite,34 the Duce bent to Laval’s demand that Italy cooperate with the Little Entente in defending Austria under the auspices of the League.35 This meant downgrading Hungarian revisionism. Go¨ mbo¨ s lashed back by warning that Hungary would not tolerate any extension by the Little Entente to guarantee the Danubian territorial status quo under the guise of protecting Austria.36 But since Mussolini was pressed for time,37 he ignored Go¨ mbo¨ s and allowed the Rome Protocols to languish. On 30 December, without informing the foreign ministry, Mussolini issued a directive to the military for an invasion of Ethiopia. The Ethiopian problem must be solved as soon as possible, he maintained, before Haile Selassie had time to modernize his army with the help of foreign experts. The aim was to be ‘‘the destruction of the Abyssinian forces and the total conquest of the country. . . . The empire cannot be made otherwise.’’ A large force (mechanized equipment and gas) was needed for a conquest— the quicker the better, to reduce the diplomatic fallout. Mussolini convinced himself that Hitler was still two or three years away from acquiring

110

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

the war machine needed to move on Austria and that Yugoslavia posed no threat to Italy since it was paralyzed by internal division.38 But Mussolini knew that he had to have an accord with France before the Ethiopian matter could be addressed. Luckily, at the end of December, Laval discarded the prerequisite of an Italo-Yugoslav de´ tente, which removed the last obstacle to talks with the Duce. The stage was thus set for the historic meeting between Mussolini and Laval, which took place in Rome between 4 and 7 January 1935. After extensive talks, they succeeded in sorting out their conflicting interests and their claims on Africa, armaments, and Central Europe. The European provisions concerned Germany and the Anschluss threat. In the event that the independence or integrity of Austria was threatened, France and Italy, within the framework of the League (this was a key concession by Mussolini), would consult on measures to be taken; in addition, Austria’s neighbors (except Switzerland), as well as France, and perhaps Poland and Romania, would together work out a pact of nonintervention in each other’s domestic affairs. As a neighbor of Austria, Yugoslavia loomed large in these plans, but Mussolini showed no disposition to resolve the issues of Croatian terrorism or Albania directly with Belgrade. Finally, in a departure from past practice between their two countries, Mussolini and Laval agreed to cooperate on the question of disarmament and to consult in case Germany broke the restrictions imposed on it by the Versailles Treaty. It was obvious that the ring around Germany that Mussolini and Laval wanted to create had many missing links. On the subject of Africa, Mussolini and Laval were able to settle most of their differences quite easily. Minor frontier rectifications, between Eritrea and French Somaliland and between Tunisia and Libya, were agreed to in Italy’s favor. Italy made a great concession by promising to relinquish the special rights of Italian citizens in Tunisia. It was Ethiopia that posed the greatest problem. After the hard bargaining was over, ambiguity resulted from the exchange of notes, the meetings, the oral exchanges, and what was said and written afterward.39 But this much is clear: France was prepared to forgo the economic interests in Ethiopia that it had enjoyed under the 1906 agreements, save the zone adjoining Djibouti—the Addis Ababa railway; this ruled out French consent to a total Italian military conquest of Ethiopia. The rest is uncertain. Mussolini claimed that Laval, in using the phrase ‘‘free hand,’’ had granted him French acquiescence in Italian economic domination of Ethiopia; France’s political disinterest in the country left him room for war against Haile Selassie. Perhaps Mussolini took this expansive view because, as he revealed later to Anthony Eden, he thought it was fair compensation for his having yielded to France ‘‘100,000 Italians in Tunis and received in return half a dozen palm trees in one place and a strip of desert which did not even contain a sheep in another.’’40 No doubt Laval had conceded Mussolini economic predominance in

Italy’s Imperialist Adventure

111

Ethiopia and political influence over Haile Selassie—maybe even an Italiansponsored coup d’e´ tat to remove him from power. In the absence of any discussion of war, however, Laval thought it unlikely that Mussolini would risk diplomatic isolation by undertaking a hugely expensive and dangerous attack against Ethiopia. Imperial grandeur a` la Mussolini and military adventurism were quite foreign to Laval’s wheeling-and-dealing nature. Laval later insisted in a self-serving way that French disinterest could not in any case have been equated with a violation of the sovereignty and integrity of Ethiopia. Laval claimed that he had granted a free hand at once as a permission for Italy to undertake a peaceful political penetration of Ethiopia and as a warning to Haile Selassie that he could no longer count on French protection against Italy. It behooved the Negus (one of Haile Selassie’s titles), therefore, to make far-reaching concessions to Mussolini. Undoubtedly, differences arose from glib oral exchanges between two men not known for their attention to detail. While Mussolini eventually took a ‘‘free hand’’ and a ‘‘wink’’ as Laval’s willingness to ignore Italian use of force, no matter on what scale, the French minister had no such thoughts. Rather, he seems to have believed that the Italians would follow the French example in Morocco: subsidization of internal unrest, guerrilla warfare, and the leisurely conversion of Ethiopia into an Italian protectorate within the European Concert and at no risk to Italy’s security on the Brenner—the very politica periferica favored by Mussolini’s advisers in the Palazzo Chigi. Was Mussolini bent on conquest in January? Did he seek to avenge Adua and satisfy Fascist pride by a quick military occupation of the Ogaden as a prelude to a dictated peace imposed on Haile Selassie? Or were his gigantic military preparations merely intended as leverage to wrest Italy’s claims by diplomatic intimidation? Though inclined toward a ‘‘total solution,’’ Mussolini reckoned that the agreements with Laval left open a retreat to a negotiated settlement that would still leave him master of Ethiopia. Since Britain had to be factored into his imperialist equation, the Duce would wait on events and decide accordingly. But no matter what was on his mind, Mussolini had scored a great propaganda victory at home. By coming to Rome to sign bilateral accords, Laval had admitted parity with Italy. The ‘‘old and decadent democracy,’’ the cradle of the revolution that had once changed the world, had conferred a patent of respectability on Mussolini, who represented the wave of the future. Armed with what he took to be Laval’s blank check for Ethiopia, Mussolini now had to obtain one from the British—a much more difficult task.41 Mussolini delayed until 25 January 1935 before instructing Grandi to inform the British government of the 7 January accords, but Grandi was told to seal his lips on the Duce’s intention of ‘‘resolving the Ethiopian problem in a radical manner’’ for fear that the British would not be as accommodating as the French.42 On 29 January, Grandi carried out these instructions, only to discover that Sir John Simon, the British foreign sec-

112

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

retary, had already been apprised by Laval.43 Like Laval, Simon had slight interest in Ethiopia and little faith in the League as an effective peacekeeping device; most of the cabinet had little faith in it as well. Italian vagueness was answered by Simon’s lawyerly hair-splitting. His negative reactions to Italy’s Ethiopian plans were implicit rather than stated. He accommodated Mussolini by blocking Ethiopia from bringing its case before the League. In cooperation with France, Simon sought to sidetrack the Ethiopians by insisting that they activate their 1928 agreement with Italy, which called on the two signatories to settle their disputes by bilateral arbitration. To avoid the glare of international publicity and scrutiny at Geneva, the Italians readily accepted. The League Council was thereby enabled to defer discussion of the problem until the outcome of arbitration was known. Mussolini drew from Simon’s behind-the-scene maneuvers the mistaken impression that Britain had countersigned Laval’s blank check and would refrain from taking the Italo-Ethiopian dispute before the League if it came to a test of arms. While immersed in his Ethiopian preparations, Mussolini could not hide from the problem of Austria. Since Schuschnigg was slipping out of his control, the Duce decided at the end of February to reduce tensions with Yugoslavia by broaching the idea of rapprochement. Italy would repudiate Croatian terrorism and break up the Ustasˇ a gang quartered on the Italian island of Lipari. Following a mutual press truce, a friendship treaty would be signed, topped by a military alliance. The aim was to block German annexation of Austria and, failing that, a German Drang nach Su¨ dosten.44 As might be expected, Mussolini’s idea of rapprochement with Belgrade and the inclusion of Yugoslavia in the projected defense of Austria rocked Budapest. Mussolini tried on 23 March to convince Go¨ mbo¨ s of the peril of Anschluss. To deter Hitler further, Mussolini urged Go¨ mbo¨ s to acquiesce in a mutual security pact in the Danube region, negotiated with France, to include Germany and the Little Entente which, in turn, would concede to both Austria and Hungary the right to rearm.45 Since there was no room for Hungarian territorial revisionism in this implementation of the Mussolini–Laval accords of 7 January, the plan did not sit well with Go¨ mbo¨ s, nor did it with Hitler, who showed no interest in a pact of mutual assistance in Central and Eastern Europe, since such an arrangement would hem in Nazi Lebensraum. Bilateral nonaggression pacts with neighboring states represented the Fu¨ hrer’s outer limit. THE STRESA CONFERENCE On 16 March 1935, Germany shocked Europe by publicly repudiating the disarmament provisions of the Versailles Treaty. Mussolini was irritated by Hitler’s bold stroke and appalled by Britain’s weak reaction. Ignoring the dangerous consequences of the German landslide victory in the Saar-

Italy’s Imperialist Adventure

113

land plebiscite, Simon and Anthony Eden, Lord Privy Seal, traveled to Berlin at the end of March in order to make Hitler a law-abiding European citizen. Mussolini’s reaction was more to the point: ‘‘I know the Germans only too well.’’46 Only by a show of force could they be brought to reason. Worried about Hitler’s intentions, Mussolini called on France and Britain to hammer out a set of agreements based on the commitment to check further unilaterial German rearmament, to protect Austrian independence, and to preserve the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland. Laval, having fluctuated between appeasement and encirclement of Germany, in this instance agreed that Berlin needed a clear warning. But would Laval and Mussolini together be able to overcome Britain’s equivocation? The omens were not good. Instead of joining a united front against Germany, the British still hoped to persuade the French and Italians to cooperate with them in luring Germany back into a system of collective security under the auspices of the League, with the emphasis on disarmament rather than deterrence. Likewise, the British cared little about Austria’s future, as the Italians had long known. Still, Mussolini plunged ahead. At the Stresa Conference, which convened on 11 April at British initiative, he persuasively spoke of the need for concerted action with binding commitments, but Ramsay MacDonald and Sir John Simon would not be moved. Although desiring to follow the Duce’s lead, Laval and Pierre Etienne Flandin dragged their feet. The final result was a bland communique´ that did nothing to deter Hitler and served only to convince Mussolini that the Western democracies were pusillanimous.47 Germany was spanked for repudiating its disarmament obligations; Britain and Italy reaffirmed their obligations under the Locarno agreements; and all three powers agreed to consult on the steps necessary for the maintenance of Austria’s independence—nothing more and nothing less than the pious nullities of 17 February and 27 September. The two most responsible for the loophole on Austria were surely MacDonald and Simon, who made everyone else believe that their hands were tied by their countrymen’s aversion to any continental military commitments. Instead of binding themselves to new undertakings in Eastern Europe, they contemplated a naval agreement with Germany. And what about Ethiopia? While platitudes stood for concerted action on Austria, nothing was said in the plenary sessions about Ethiopia, which made a complete farce out of the so-called Stresa Front. The French avoided the subject for fear of an Italo-British dispute that might wreck their united front against Germany; the British believed that relations with Italy could only worsen if awkward inquiries were made about Italy’s war preparations. Moreover, as the British permanent undersecretary Sir Robert Vansittart later admitted, ‘‘My real trouble was that we should all have to choose between Austria and Abyssinia, if Mussolini stuck to his mania for fame and sand.’’48 Before the convening of the conference, the Italians had expressed the wish to exchange views on ‘‘the mutually harmonious de-

114

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

velopment of economic interests in Ethiopia,’’49 but they later changed their minds, having decided that the matter would be better decided by direct Italo-Ethiopian negotiations or by unilateral Italian action. Behind the scenes, Ethiopia was discussed and Italian military plans aired among the secondary players, so nobody in London could plead ignorance as to Mussolini’s ultimate intentions—even a military showdown between Italy and Ethiopia.50 Nor could the Italians claim that the British had hidden their opposition to an Italian war against Ethiopia.51 Nevertheless, frank exchanges by the lesser fry at Stresa were obscured by an important lastminute change made in the final communique´ . The three powers would oppose any unilateral repudiation of treaties that might endanger the peace ‘‘of Europe’’; this replaced the phrase ‘‘of the world’’ from an earlier draft. Laval smiled, and the British made no objection. Small wonder that Mussolini should take this silence for consent to do as he wished in Ethiopia. Italian news bulletins crowed that Italy had emerged from Stresa as the power broker of Europe, while the British and French press lavished praise on Mussolini for acting as a responsible European. It did seem as though Mussolini had engineered an astonishing shift from a posturing revisionist to a pillar of the status quo. The purpose behind this, however, was not the high-minded one of preserving peace but of keeping Germany at bay while Italy proceeded with the invasion of Ethiopia, free of the Anschluss incubus and the active opposition of France and Britain. When it became clear that Britain would remain a passive spectator to German rearmament and Nazi intrigues in Austria, the French and Italians moved quickly to strengthen their Stresa declarations by signing military accords on 28 June 1935. These outlined the various contingencies for Franco-Italian military cooperation in the event of German aggression against either signatory or against Austria. The French started to transfer some ten to fourteen divisions from the Italian border in the Alps to the northeast. This enabled the Italians to remove their troops from the French frontier to the Istrian peninsula and the Brenner. Whatever credibility the ‘‘Stresa Front’’ had as a deterrent against further German rearmament was destroyed by the Anglo-German Naval Accord of 18 June 1935, which allowed Germany to build up to 35 percent of British naval strength. Britain had once again become an accomplice of Germany in its violation of the Versailles Treaty. Still, that did not stop the British from lecturing Rome on the sanctity of Italy’s international obligations. From Stresa onward, both London and Paris implied that Mussolini should eschew war against Ethiopia lest he fail to discharge his European responsibility as watchdog of the Brenner.52 The Duce resented this kind of moral prompting. Why should he listen to arrogant ‘‘Perfidious Albion’’ pontificate on Italy’s duty to police the Nazis on the Anschluss question, when those same high-minded British gentlemen were themselves cutting a naval deal with Hitler behind Italy’s back and contributing nothing to the defense of Austria? Laval, too, though worried about the An-

Italy’s Imperialist Adventure

115

schluss threat, did not want to antagonize Britain by appearing to be too pro-Italian. Mussolini needed no further proof of the Stresa front’s fragility. Never one to tread quietly, Mussolini proceeded by bluster and scare tactics, rather than by chicanery a` la Laval. He intensified his pressure on the British with a radio campaign—Radio Bari—aimed at undermining British influence in Egypt, Palestine, and the Yemen, and he tried to tie their hands on the Ethiopian question by publicly keeping a low profile on the Anschluss question. He told the departing German military attache´ on 25 May of a ‘‘basic reorientation’’ of Italian policy, perhaps a ‘‘gradual and systematic rapprochement between Germany and Italy.’’53 Finally, the ultimate threat. Only Austria stood between Italy and Germany, he told the Fascist Grand Council the following day. ‘‘It may therefore not be out of place to address a few words to those who would like to fossilize us on the Brenner to prevent us from moving in any other part of the world.’’ Rather than sacrifice his Ethiopian policy, Mussolini implied, he would abandon Austria. Was this threat merely a bluff? Would Mussolini be able to scare the British into following Laval’s line on Ethiopia by his threat to open up the road to Berlin? On 11 May, Mussolini met with Schuschnigg in Venice, at which time they broached the subject of Italian military assistance to Austria. Two big impediments were Hungarian opposition and Yugoslav hostility. If Yugoslavia should succumb to German blandishments, Mussolini’s military strategy vis-a`-vis Austria would be seriously compromised. One way or the other, Mussolini conceded, Yugoslavia would have to be included in Italy’s Danubian anti-Anschluss front. Schuschnigg, menaced by armed Nazis encamped in Carinthia, preferred to see Yugoslavia in Mussolini’s grip rather than in Hitler’s. In spite of this common ground, Schuschnigg was reluctant to accept Italian patronage, no matter what grave perils his country faced. Although aware that Austria alone could not repel a German attack, he favored a European defense over Italian military assistance. Discouraged, Mussolini urged that the restoration of the Archduke Otto be contemplated as a last-ditch measure to unify a divided Austria against Nazi pressure. While not concealing his monarchist leanings, Schuschnigg pointed out that a return of the Habsburgs would encounter formidable opposition in Europe.54 As Mussolini became increasingly troubled by Schuschnigg’s evasiveness, the Hungarians moved closer to Germany. On the threshhold of the invasion of Ethiopia, therefore, Mussolini’s grip on Austria was loosening, and he was witness to the slow but steady unraveling of his Protocols Bloc. ITALIA FARA` DA SE` In Britain, a new government came to office in June 1935. MacDonald retired and was replaced as prime minister by Stanley Baldwin in a general cabinet reshuffle. Baldwin made Eden minister for League of Nations affairs

116

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

while appointing Sir Samuel Hoare as foreign secretary. Increasingly worried about Mussolini’s warlike intentions in Ethiopia, Vansittart decided that veiled warnings were not enough: ‘‘Italy will have to be bought off—let us use and face ugly words—in some form or other, or Abyssinia will eventually perish.’’55 Vansittart drew up a proposal, which Eden presented to Mussolini during a visit in Rome on 24–25 June 1935. Great Britain would cede a corridor across British Somaliland to Ethiopia, including the port of Zeila, which would give Ethiopia an outlet to the sea; in return, Ethiopia would grant substantial territory in the Ogaden to Italy, most of which consisted of large tracts of useless desert. Eden presented the plan without first consulting the Ethiopian government, nor were the French apprised. Mussolini summarily rejected the ‘‘Zeila Plan,’’ since it would have allowed Ethiopia to enjoy British protection and to become a maritime power, able to import arms and communicate with the outside world. Moreover, since the Italian colonies were small, exposed to attack, and separated by hundreds of miles, he needed a corridor to connect them. When Eden defined Laval’s free hand as limited to economic predominance, ‘‘Signor Mussolini flung himself back in his chair with a gesture of incredulous astonishment.’’56 The Duce replied with two alternatives: (1) a peaceful cession to Italy of all the territories surrounding the region of the old Amharic kingdom conquered by Abyssinia over the last half century, as well as Italian control over the Abyssinian nucleus, where the emperor would be allowed to keep his throne; or (2) a call to Italian arms ‘‘to wipe out the name of Abyssinia from the map.’’57 The battle lines were drawn. Eden’s compromise plan remained on the table down to the Hoare–Laval proposals in December, while Mussolini, having finally apprised the British directly of his warlike intentions, remained firm up to the Italian invasion on 3 October. The Duce left the door barely cracked for a diplomatic solution. Bitterly disappointed by Mussolini’s abrupt rejection of the Zeila plan,58 Eden departed with a distinct dislike of the Duce, a dislike the Italian leader reciprocated by referring to him as ‘‘Lord Eyelashes.’’ During the first months of 1935, the League of Nations Union, a British nonparty organization, prepared for a national plebiscite on the question of whether or not the British people favored the idea of peace through collective security. On 27 June, the results of the Peace Ballot were announced. The majority of the people supported the League, but they did not want war with Italy. Moreover, they did not understand that collective security could probably be enforced only by the adoption of military sanctions. But, since the government felt itself bound by public opinion, its resolve to defend the League Covenant was strengthened. With such a close association with the League, little room was left for diplomacy in a cabinet not renowned for taking clear and open decisions. Better to take heed of the ballot and preach loyalty to the League, hoping that Mussolini would

Italy’s Imperialist Adventure

117

come to his senses, rather than to take any risky independent initiative. The Cabinet’s penchant for inaction was further strengthened when it received on 18 June the report of the interdepartmental committee, chaired by Sir John Maffey, which was mandated to review British interests in Ethiopia. The report, which was supposed to be kept secret, stated that since no vital British interests existed in the area, there was no need for Britain to resist an Italian conquest of Ethiopia. Mussolini, in contrast, placed a premium on action. Concluding from Eden’s visit that Britain could be pushed around, he addressed the Blackshirts on 6 July: Abyssinia, which we are going to conquer, we shall have totally. We shall not be content with partial concessions, and if it dares resist our formidable strength, we shall put it to pillage and fire. . . . To those who may hope to stop us with documents or words, we shall give the answer with the heroic motto of our first storm troops: ‘‘I don’t give a damn.’’59

In Il Popolo d’Italia on 31 July, Mussolini ruled out compromise. There would be no turning back, only a ‘‘total solution . . . with Geneva, without Geneva, against Geneva.’’60 Too much money had been spent, and too many troops were under arms. The prestige of the regime was at stake. Mussolini’s determination to defy the League was ably assisted by the League itself. The secretary-general was the pro-Italian Joseph Avenol, whose chief aide was the Italian Massimo Pilotti; throughout the crisis, they bent over backwards in facilitating a compromise on the Ethiopian question favorable to Italy. In a political sense, the League had no existence at all as an independent agency; collective security was a chimera. Furthermore, the League machinery was not geared to dealing with cases of premeditated aggression. Still, the League possessed the important weapon of sanctions to deter would-be aggressors. And Fascist Italy, due to the country’s dearth of raw materials, had precisely the kind of economy that the sanctions system was capable of crippling without having to resort to military measures—sanctions on oil and coal. Drawing back from the threat of sanctions, Britain and France chose to activate the League’s mechanism of mediation in their search for a peaceful resolution of Italy’s dispute with Ethiopia. As Mussolini hurtled his way toward war, Grandi in early July discussed with the British a convening of the tripartite powers—Britain, France, and Italy—as defined in the 1906 treaty, while Aloisi talked with Laval and Eden. The two Italian diplomats played on the German danger in order to persuade the British and the French to keep Italy’s quarrel with Ethiopia outside the competence of the League.61 Italy gained a respite when, on 1 August, the League Council accepted a scheme sponsored by Britain and France to defer further scrutiny of the Ethiopian question until 4 September

118

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

while the tripartite committee attempted conciliation. But Mussolini was in no mood for compromise. When Aloisi left Rome for Paris to represent Italy in the tripartite talks, he was instructed: ‘‘You must act as a fighter rather than as a diplomat, as a Fascist rather than as a negotiator. Even if I am given everything I prefer to avenge Adowa. I am prepared.’’62 Such an attitude doomed the tripartite meetings to failure and brought talk of sanctions out in the open. The British were torn. Should they preserve the Stresa Front and respect the Franco-Italian agreements by appeasing Italy with territorial concessions in Ethiopia? What if Mussolini persistently refused to compromise and attacked British forces or territories? On 16 August, the British tried to placate Rome by introducing certain modifications of the Zeila plan. Italy would be granted broad economic concessions but no political control unless Emperor Haile Selassie gave his consent. With the exception of Eden’s territorial adjustments in June, Ethiopian sovereignty would be respected. Britain would support the League, avoid use of the deadly word ‘‘sanctions,’’ and take no isolated action against Italy. Simon was following Vansittart’s advice not to force the pace in Paris with ‘‘an unreliable France and an unready England.’’63 But Mussolini rejected the British-sponsored proposal and stood firm on his all-or-nothing position. Bending to British pressure, Laval wrote Mussolini on 30 August that France could not ignore the League and implored him to reconsider. Mussolini took this in stride; he knew that Laval was doing good work for Italy at Geneva in polishing a plan with Avenol designed to declare Ethiopia not worthy of League membership because of its brutal slave trade and abuse of dissident tribes within the empire. When the League Council convened on 4 September, the Ethiopian delegation politely but firmly countered the Italian charge that their government was uncivilized. The Italians replied the next day by walking out of the meeting. To escape the deadlock, the Council set up a Committee of Five to search for a solution. During this crisis, the British appeared ready to assume a more forceful leadership of the League. On 11 September 1935, Sir Samuel Hoare rose before a hushed League assembly and made what appeared to many as an unequivocal declaration to invoke collective security against all acts of unprovoked aggression. Representatives of the small states rushed to shake his hand over Britain’s announcement that peace was indivisible and that every nation, large and small, would be protected against military attack. Devotees of the League were sure that Hoare had broken with vacillating British policy toward the peacekeeping mechanisms of the Covenant. Although flattered by all the attention, Hoare had not meant to take a strong stand in opposing Italy’s war plans. Rather, he hoped to deter Mussolini from undertaking a ‘‘mad-dog’’ act. Should he achieve that goal, peace would be maintained, Britain would emerge as the champion of the League, and Hoare would be toasted by public opinion

Italy’s Imperialist Adventure

119

as the hero of collective security without sacrifice or risk of war. The speech was apparently strengthened by the movement of two British battle cruisers, flanked by other ships, to the vicinity of Gibraltar, Alexandria, and Aden. The Duce countered by deploying the Italian navy between the Eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea and by strengthening his forces in Libya. On 18 September 1935, the Committee of Five came up with a compromise. The League would be given extensive supervision and control of Ethiopia, Italy would carry out that nation’s economic development, and France and Britain would facilitate territorial adjustments between Italy and Ethiopia. Believing that Hoare would not hesitate to use the fleet if necessary, Aloisi, Guariglia, and Grandi urged Mussolini to accept the committee’s compromise.64 After a moment of hesitation, however, the Duce brushed off his chief advisers and rejected the proposals of the Committee of Five outright in the belief that Britain would not go to war for the sake of Ethiopia. Mussolini could get away with such defiance because Hoare and Laval had tied each other’s hands. Laval refused to apply harmful sanctions or promise unconditional commitments against Italy without a firm British guarantee in Europe covering an Anschluss and a German remilitarization of the Rhineland.65 Failing to gain from the British what he considered as fair compensation for dissociating himself from Italian political domination of Ethiopia, Laval would not give unequivocal assurance of military support if Italy attacked British forces in the Mediterranean. Likewise, he would not sacrifice the security afforded by the Franco-Italian Accords and their military corollaries aimed at the protection of Austria simply to deny Mussolini the rewards of a colonial adventure in East Africa. He would accept only limited staff talks in return for another joint attempt to conciliate Mussolini. Still, if forced to choose between Rome and London, Laval would choose London—and Geneva—a priority forced on him in the French cabinet by Edouard Herriot, a staunch supporter of the League and an outspoken critic of Fascist Italy.66 So Laval tried to do the impossible—to support the League, Britain, and Italy. Hoare, however, refused to act on the sanctions question without strong French support. As this was not forthcoming, Hoare made it clear to Rome that Britain had no intention of either imposing military sanctions or closing the Suez Canal; the naval build-up was a purely precautionary measure. Instead of provoking Mussolini into war and permanent estrangement, peace must be preserved and Italy maintained as a guardian of the Brenner against any German move on Austria. Moreover, the British people were quite opposed to any military response to Italian aggression to save a faraway African country. Faced by the fac¸ ade of a resolute Anglo-French front, Mussolini, it was hoped, would reconsider his warlike attitude. Such were the ingredients of Britain’s appeasement of Italy. Hoare was supported in this strategy by the Admiralty, which felt undermanned, overextended,

120

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

and incapable of meeting the threats posed simultaneously by Japan, Germany, and Italy. Would armed force or sanctions on oil have stopped Mussolini? That was a question both Hoare and Laval wished to avoid. Feeling militarily unprepared, they determined in advance that there would be no showdown with Mussolini. Hoare’s 11 September speech therefore falsely raised public hopes that Britain and France were finally ready to breathe life into the League by stopping Italian aggression in its tracks as an object lesson to Hitler. While there was bluff among the British and French, there was none in Mussolini. His defiance was based on shrewd calculation informed by purloined British documents. His intelligence service provided him with the Maffey report, which stated that no vital British interest was at stake in Ethiopia; he was also informed by the same unimpeachable source that the British fleet was suffering severe shortages of ammunition, submarines, and aircraft. This knowledge enabled him to ignore chief of staff Pietro Badoglio’s dire prophesies of a general war with Britain if Italy continued on its collision course. Mussolini calculated that Britain would be moved to military action only if Italy should try to profit from the war by modifying the status quo in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. In his preference for action over compromise, Mussolini disdained diplomacy and its polite usages. In spite of Badoglio’s reservations, the second thoughts of his diplomats, and his own genuine alarm over a possible war with Britain, Mussolini feared that, after the propaganda and the arms build-up, anything short of military glory would expose him to ridicule and cause the ruination of his regime. There could be no retreat. On the eve of the war, Sir Eric Drummond, the British ambassador in Rome, read him well: I need only say in conclusion that I found the Head of the Government calm, affable and unperturbed. If mad, he is a very singular madman; while for one who has set the whole world by the ears, condemned thousands of young Italians to a painful death, and millions of his countrymen to an almost animal level of existence, he seems astonishingly untroubled by the remorse of conscience. The explanation lies probably in his philosophy and creed. He believes in war as the means by which a country can be kept vigorous, young, powerful and progressive. He believes also that Italy is the heritor of the ancient traditions of the Roman Empire. He finds his country lacking space, raw materials and the place in the sun which he holds to be its due. These reasons combined have rendered him oblivious of other considerations such as economic and financial facts and have produced in his mind the impression that he is acting as a predestined instrument.67

On the evening of 2 October, the doors of the balcony were flung open, and Mussolini strode out to address a huge throng of Italians assembled in the Piazza Venezia. His face stern and imperturbable, the Duce proclaimed in a harsh and stacatto cadence Fascism’s indomitable will to seize what

Italy’s Imperialist Adventure

121

was rightfully Italian. The thousands of Blackshirts packed in the square led the chant, ‘‘Duce! Duce! Duce!’’ Mussolini basked in the glory of defiance and popular acclaim as his troops launched the invasion of Ethiopia the next day. NOTES 1. DDI, 7, XII, 223, 27 August 1932. 2. Starhemberg, Hitler and Mussolini, 107. 3. Toscano makes this point in his introduction to Aloisi’s Journal, xiii. 4. DDI, 7, XV, 610, 30 July 1934. 5. ASMAE, AP:A 26: 4549/2399, 22 November 1934. 6. DDI, 7, XVI, 178, 23 November 1934; FRUS, 863.00/1216, 4 October 1935; ibid., 863.001236, 11 October 1935. 7. Edmondson carefully unties the complicated tangle of intrigues in his The Heimwehr and Austrian Politics, 245–63. 8. DDI, 7, XV, 722, 21 August 1934. 9. DDI, 7, XV, 722, 21 August 1934. 10. Carsten, The First Austrian Republic, 222. 11. For a detailed description of Barthou’s diplomacy, see Piotr S. Wandycz, The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 1926–1936 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988). 12. DBFP, 2, VI, 548, 31 July 1934; DDI, 7, XV, 615 and 616, 31 July 1931. 13. The draft of such a protocol cannot be found in the Italian archives. DDI, 7, XV, 646, 3 August 1934, n. 3. 14. Ibid. 15. DDI, 7, XV, 700, 705, and 712, 11, 16, and 18 August 1934. 16. DDI, 7, XV, 722, 21 August 1934; Aloisi, Journal, 210–11; FO, R4686/37/3, 23 August 1934. 17. DDI, 7, XV, 788, 9 September 1934. 18. DDI, 7, XV, 741, 776, and 781, 29 August, 6 and 8 September 1934. 19. Aloisi, Journal, 213. 20. DDI, 7, XV, 783, 8 September 1934. 21. DBFP, 2, XII, 87, 12 September 1934. 22. Jordan, The Popular Front and Central Europe, 28. 23. DBFP, II, XII, 104, 109, and 110, 23 and 25 September 1934; DDF, I, VII, 343, 361, 364, 19 and 25 September 1934; DDI, 7, XV, 839, 859, 870, and 875, 19, 23, and 25 September 1934. 24. Francesco Lefebvre D’Ovidio, I’intesa italo-francese del 1935 (Rome: Privately published, 1984), 437. 25. DDI, 7, XVI, 23, 7 October 1934. 26. DDI, 7, XVI, 157 and 164, 17 and 19 November 1934. 27. Aloisi, Journal, p. 225. 28. William I. Shorrock, From Ally to Enemy: The Enigma of Fascist Italy in French Diplomacy (Kent, Ohio and London, England: Kent State University Press, 1988), 49. 29. Sadkovitch, Italian Support for Croatian Separatism, 129.

122

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

30. There are two excellent summaries of Barthou’s policies: Shorrock, From Ally to Enemy, 78–98, and Ne´ re´ , The Foreign Policy of France from 1914–1945, 155–172. 31. DDF, 1, VIII, 235 and 246, 12 and 13 December 1934; De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 1: 521. 32. Robertson, Mussolini As Empire-Builder, 90–91. 33. DDI, 7, XVI, 247, 277, and 288, 6, 11, and 14 December 1934. 34. GFM, 2700/5737/H029110–17, 23 November 1935. 35. DDF, 1, VIII, 323 and 346, 27 and 29 December 1935. 36. DDI, 7, XVI, 338, 26 December 1934. 37. Mussolini told Aloisi on Christmas day, ‘‘it is now necessary to get things moving fast.’’ Aloisi, Journal, 239. 38. DDI, 7, XVI, 358, 30 December 1934. 39. The official record of Mussolini’s talks with Laval and their exchange of notes can be found in DDI, 7, XVI, 391 and 399, 5 and 6 January 1935. The general declarations, proce`s verbal, protocols, and correspondence that followed are in DDI, 7, XV1, 403, 7 January 1935. Mussolini and Laval later exchanged letters on the meaning of their accords that can be found in DDI, 8, III, 106, 23 January 1936, and 252, 19 February 1936. 40. DBFP, 2, XIV, 325, 25 June 1935. Enclosure. 41. The literature on the Franco-Italian accords is vast. Most helpful are the works by Robertson, Baer, Shorrock, De Felice, and C. J. Lowe and F. Marzari, Italian Foreign Policy 1870–1940 (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975). 42. DDI, 7, XVI, 492, 25 January 1935. 43. DDI, 7, XVI, 510, 30 January 1935. 44. ASMAE, FL, Reel 10, 26 February 1935. 45. KU¨ M, 35, 23 March 1935. See also Aloisi’s Journal, 246–47, for further examples of Mussolini’s irritation with the Hungarians. 46. Aloisi, Journal, 261. 47. The judgment of Le´ on Noe¨ l, Les Illusions de Stresa: L’Italie abandonne´ e a` Hitler (Paris: E´ ditions France-Empire, 1975), 70–80 48. Sir Robert Vansittart, The Mist Procession (London: Hutchinson, 1958), 521–23. 49. DBFP, 2, XIV, 225, 3 April 1935. 50. DBFP, 2, XIV, 230, 12 April 1935. Simon was aware of Italy’s plans to invade Ethiopia as far back as January. Richard Lamb, The Ghosts of Peace 1935– 1945 (London: Michael Russell, 1987), 9. 51. Ibid. 52. DBFP, 2, XIV, 244, 3 May 1935. 53. DGFP, C, IV, 109, 26 May 1935. 54. ASMAE, FL, 11, 11 May 1935; NPA, 414, 11 May 1935. 55. DBFP, 2, XIV, 301, 8 June 1935. 56. Anthony Eden, Facing the Dictators, 1923–1938 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 221–25. 57. DBFP, 2, XIV, 325, 25 June 1935, Enclosure; DDI, 8, I, 431 and 443, 24 and 25 June 1935.

Italy’s Imperialist Adventure

123

58. Anthony R. Peters, Anthony Eden at the Foreign Office 1931–1938 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 122. 59. Quoted in George W. Baer, The Coming of the Italian-Ethiopian War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 219 n. 24. 60. OO, XXVII: 110–11. 61. DBFP, 2, XIV, 346 and 365, 5 and 15 July 1935. 62. Aloisi, Journal, 294. 63. DBFP, 2, XIV, 434, 9 August 1935. 64. Aloisi, Journal, 307–8; Guariglia, Ricordi, 264–69. 65. Gaines Post, Jr., Dilemmas of Appeasement: British Deterrence and Defense 1934–1937 (Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell University Press, 1993), 94–96. 66. Shorrock, From Enemy to Ally, 147. 67. DBFP, 2, XIV, 630, 23 September 1935.

CHAPTER 8

The Italian Empire: A Hollow Triumph HOARE-LAVAL AGREEMENTS The Italian invasion of Ethiopia began at dawn on 3 October without the usual courtesy of a formal declaration of war. Heading a force of 127,500 metropolitan and 83,000 colonials, General De Bono jumped off from the Italian assembly areas in Eritrea. Adua was the first objective, to be followed by a thrust into Danakil. Further military movement into Amhara hinged on diplomatic developments in Europe, but there was a war plan that aimed at the complete conquest of the Ethiopian armies. Undefended, Adua was speedily overrun, which helped to restore Italian honor. The campaign quickly took on an ugly appearance, however, with the random bombing of the city’s defenseless population. After the initial success, a lull ensued as the cautious De Bono awaited reinforcements, a delay that caused Mussolini many a headache. On 7 October, the League Council found that Italy had resorted to war in disregard of its obligations under Article 12 of the League Covenant, which required that member states submit disputes to arbitration. Acting on the report, the League Assembly ratified this decision on 11 October. Only the friends of Italy—Austria, Hungary, and Albania—dissented. In accordance with Article 16 of the Covenant, the Assembly established a Coordination Committee of Eighteen to consider the imposition of sanctions against Italy. Action was swiftly taken: an embargo on arms and munitions, a ban on loans and credits, and a prohibition of the export of materials important for Italy’s war production. Oil, however, essential for

126

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

Italy’s war effort, was omitted from the list, which raised questions on the League’s resolve to stem Mussolini’s aggression. Britain and France were charged with the task of negotiating a resolution of the conflict before the sanctions were scheduled to go into effect on 18 November. If the purpose of the sanctions resolution was to chastise Mussolini without thoroughly alienating him, the opposite effect was achieved. What had originally been a Fascist enterprise planned on the sly had been transformed by League opposition into a national cause. Singled out for punishment by a satiated and selfish West, ‘‘proletarian’’ Italy was now ready for sacrifice to achieve final satisfaction for the vittoria mutilata. Men flocked to the colors, and women rushed to common collection points with wedding rings and other gold artifacts to help defray the huge expenses of the war. Throughout the fall, Mussolini wavered between the annexation of Ethiopia and a more limited goal. At first, he threatened that ‘‘sanctions mean war,’’ but, when it became clear that there would be sanctions, he changed his tune. An economic embargo short of oil he could live with; military gestures would be answered by war.1 After the expected quick victory and before the League could react, he would dictate the terms of empire. But behind the phrase ‘‘crisis with Britain yes, a decisive break no,’’ Mussolini left open the possibility of a settlement on Italian terms negotiated away from the noisy public forum in Geneva. Here, Italy would recognize British interests in Ethiopia, accompanied by a ‘‘reciprocal and simultaneous demobilization of the Mediterranean.’’2 But the carrot was always accompanied by the stick. Should the League resort to sanctions on oil and should Britain close the Suez Canal to Italian shipping, Mussolini would reply with war and the abandonment of the Brenner. Was this a bluff? In view of repeated assurances from both the British and the French that stringent countermeasures would not take place,3 brinkmanship would work. In spite of his military directive of 30 December 1934 and his belligerent talk to Eden in June of wiping Ethiopia off the map, Mussolini wanted to gain control of Ethiopia without precluding the restoration of normal relations with the Western Powers at the end of the military campaign. He did not want a war with Britain in the fall of 1935 simply because the Italian armies were already stretched too thin and Hitler stood poised to exploit Italy’s quarrel with the League by absorbing Austria. Though eminently capable of a ‘‘mad-dog’’ act and itching for a showdown with the British navy, Mussolini kept his balance, if just barely, out of fear coupled with a streak of common sense.4 The immediate task facing Mussolini was to secure a military victory before oil sanctions set in or the League took military action against him. The imposition of economic sanctions against Italy promised to impose a great hardship on an already overstrained economy. Galvanized by Mussolini’s risky propaganda—‘‘Italy against the world’’—the country tightened its belt and prepared for a campaign that would reach a successful

The Italian Empire: A Hollow Triumph

127

outcome by May 1936. An important diplomatic objective was to prevent the imposition of oil sanctions and to maintain the flow of oil from the one non-League member, the United States, no matter what action the League might take. Laval was caught in the crossfire between Rome and London. To neutralize Eden, who had become the symbol in Italy of the League’s punitive measures against Mussolini, Laval worked on a system of diluted sanctions, hoping that the British would eventually recognize that secure European frontiers were of far greater importance than League embarrassment over Italy’s African peccadillo. But unable to evade British pressure, Laval warned Mussolini on 8 October that in case of hostilities in the Mediterranean, France would be obliged to stand with Britain. To avoid this disaster, Italy should negotiate and make concessions.5 The Italian delegation in Geneva buckled under the pressure. Aloisi told Mussolini on 12 October that Britain was determined to carry through its punitive policy against Fascist Italy. ‘‘Laval is our only safeguard,’’ Aloisi added, urging the Duce to take the mediating hand that the Frenchman had extended. To prevent Laval from giving in to British pressure, Mussolini agreed.6 In the effort to extricate himself from this ‘‘inevitability,’’ Mussolini ‘‘worked on’’ Laval between 13 and 17 October by spelling out his terms for resolving the conflict.7 Italy would acquire already conquered territory in northern Ethiopia, a coastal linkage between Eritrea and Somalia, a mandate or other form of administration in the peripheral zones of Ethiopia, and a commercial outlet for Ethiopia through the Italian colonial port of Assab. Italian control over Addis Ababa, whether by direct League mandate or some other diplomatic contrivance, would be assured by the requirement that Ethiopia disarm.8 Rarely absent from Mussolini’s dialogue with the French was a threat. War between Great Britain and Italy, if allowed to break out, would isolate France against a powerful Germany and cause Italy to withdraw its troops from the Brenner.9 The Duce provided himself with an escape route by requesting that the terms of any negotiation bear the stamp of a French initiative. To allow Britain to save face, Mussolini would agree to stay in the League by linking the congruent participation of Italy in the administration of Amhara and the disarmament of Ethiopia to the previously rejected proposal of the Committee of Five.10 While engaged in negotiations, he counted on De Bono for quick territorial conquests to strengthen his diplomatic hand. Laval was cornered. He knew that Mussolini’s truculent demands were beyond what the British would accept, yet he did not want to lose his privileged standing in Rome. He retreated to the comfortable assumption that Mussolini would be content with a political solution that left in existence a rump Abyssinia under Haile Selassie’s rule once Adua had been avenged. The British would thereby be placated.11

128

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

On 17 October, Hoare called in Grandi to make two points: The British were not engaged in a conflict with Fascism, and war was in no way inevitable between Great Britain and Italy. This was music to Mussolini’s ears; the attack on Ethiopia could continue without fear of retaliation.12 Hoare and Grandi talked of easing the tension by mutual troop withdrawals from areas of potential conflict. Naturally Hoare did not reveal to Grandi that he was simultaneously applying heavy pressure on Laval to stand by Britain. The next day Laval gave in from fear that France might lose Britain without having won Italy. He reluctantly pledged military support in the Mediterranean in case of an Italian attack resulting from Britain’s collaboration in the international action undertaken by the League and pursued in concert with France. Nevertheless, translating the commitment into a credible military deterrent remained problematic. The financially pinched British fleet was already stretched to the breaking point in guarding remote imperial outposts in the Far East against menacing Japanese moves. Low on the list of priorities was the Italian threat to the British imperial lifeline running through the Suez Canal. The Mediterranean fleet was suffering from severe shortages of all kinds, and the British naval lords were not anxious to be drawn into a conflict with Italy. Neither were the French admirals, and the French army still counted on military agreements with Italy to protect Austria’s independence. France would not go to war against Italy if oil sanctions were imposed or to check an Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Mussolini learned of these military talks and drew the gloomy conclusion that Britain and France were preparing for a showdown with Italy in the Mediterranean; equally worrisome, the Western Powers were pressuring Germany and America to adhere to League sanctions on oil.13 ‘‘Time,’’ he told De Bono, ‘‘works against us’’; hence, he implored, as much territory as possible should be occupied with lightning speed.14 Mussolini’s fears turned out to be groundless, for talk of war encouraged talk of conciliation. On 22 October, the British took up Laval’s mediation suggestion by launching conversations with the French aimed at a compromise between Italy and Ethiopia. Many participants played secret and important roles in the hammering out of the final proposal. Mussolini sent General Ezio Garibaldi to London as his personal agent, and Grandi worked with Vansittart in drafting an outline of possible agreement. Spadework was done in Paris by a foreign office official, Maurice Peterson, and his French counterpart, Count Rene´ de Saint-Quentin; Vansittart and Hoare put on the final touches.15 With rumors abounding of Anglo-French naval maneuvers in the Mediterranean and Mussolini on record to wage war if sanctions on oil should be declared, the Hoare–Laval Agreement emerged on 7 December 1935. In many respects, the agreement approximated what Mussolini had earlier demanded.

The Italian Empire: A Hollow Triumph

129

Most of the Ogaden region would be annexed to Italian Somaliland, and land recently conquered by the Italian expeditionary corps in Tigre´ would be added to Italian Eritrea. Italy would be charged with the economic development of a vast zone in the southern Amharic regions under some form of League supervision. In exchange, the Negus would retain sovereignty over territories not ceded outright to Italy, and Ethiopia would be compensated by a corridor running through Eritrea to Assab on the Red Sea. Before the Hoare–Laval proposal was transmitted to Mussolini, it was leaked in Paris on 9 December, presumably by enemies of Fascist Italy in the Quai d’Orsay. The dramatic publication of the agreement in popular French and British newspapers produced an outcry in both countries against rewarding Italian aggression. Still, Laval pressed hard for an immediate and favorable reply. Since Mussolini wanted first to evaluate the hullabaloo before making a decision on a proposal whose substance he did not much like, he put Laval off by saying that no decision could be made until the Fascist Grand Council met on 18 October.16 Wanting neither to accept outright nor bluntly refuse, he preferred probing the British and French for more concessions: additional territory, a precise definition of economic expansion, and an explicit obligation placed on Ethiopia to disarm. When an exhausted Laval replied that he could do no more, Mussolini continued to spin out negotiations in the belief that another postponement of oil sanctions would surely follow. But since Italy’s diplomats all thought the Hoare–Laval proposal fair, and the military, caught in the change of command in Ethiopia between De Bono and Badoglio, was biding its time, Mussolini was under heavy pressure to accept it. Shrewdly, Suvich sent Mussolini a long memorandum that appeared at once to salve his ambition and serve as a warning. Suvich, too, found much wrong with the Hoare– Laval plan and anticipated its rejection. The League would answer by imposing oil sanctions followed by Italy’s departure from the League. Then it would be a race against time with the fate of the nation resting in the lap of the military. Badoglio would have to bring home the Ethiopian trophy before the economy collapsed.17 Was that possible? Shortly before the Fascist Grand Council was to meet on 18 October, Mussolini, apparently seized by doubts over his military’s ability to outpace League action, drafted a communique´ stating his acceptance of the Hoare– Laval proposal as a basis for discussion.18 It was just what Hoare and Laval were looking for. But before the announcement was released to the press, public furor in London persuaded the House of Commons to reject their plan. Hoare was singled out as the scapegoat and forced to resign by embarrassed colleagues who drew back from bucking an aroused public opinion. A cruel joke quickly made the rounds: ‘‘No more coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris!’’19 With the death knell of the agreement sounded in London, Mussolini lost no time in tearing up his communique´ . Following a Grand Council meeting on 20 November, he issued a statement blaming

130

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

Britain for the imbroglio, which left only a crack in the door for further negotiations. A heavy gloom enveloped Rome. Prices were rising, defying the world was losing its attraction, war weariness was setting in, and there was a worrisome military standstill as the Italian armies braced for the muchheralded Ethiopian Christmas offensive. Would the Adua disaster be repeated? Germany certainly thought so. The diplomatic front offered no relief. Suvich found Mussolini to be very ‘‘discouraged and gripped by fatalism,’’ and Aloisi reflected that the international situation was ‘‘absolutely uncertain, confused, and without direction.’’20 In a letter to the Duce on 22 December, Laval reproached Mussolini for preventing a quick acceptance of his plan; ‘‘the outcome of peace in Europe lies in the hands of Italy.’’21 Mussolini wrote back a conciliatory note three days later, promising to do nothing that might lead to an irreparable breach with France.22 When Laval was ousted from office in January in a hailstorm of criticism for his appeasement of Italian aggression, the new government, headed by Albert Sarraut and his foreign minister Pierre-Etienne Flandin, offered nothing except threats from Le´ ger that Italian bombs landing on the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railroad would cause outrage in France and a denunciation of the 7 January accords.23 From London there was bad news as well. On 22 December, Baldwin gave Eden, Mussolini’s beˆ te-noir, the post of foreign secretary, which he assumed on 2 January 1936. But as the year progressed, the situation improved. Sanctions continued to be imposed in a haphazard manner, and the crucial question of an oil embargo was pigeonholed in an experts’ committee. Badoglio had thrown back the Ethiopian Christmas offensive and was preparing to go over to the attack. General Rodolfo Graziani, in charge of southern armies based in Somaliland, set forth toward Harrar across arid and craggy land in Ogaden. With negotiations at a standstill, Mussolini was free to proceed with his military pincers movement unhampered by diplomacy or effective League action. AUSTRIA SLIPS AWAY Up to summer 1935, Italy’s relations with Germany remained frozen over Austria; Mussolini still portrayed Hitler as a sexual degenerate and accused Germany of giving the Negus military hardware that could be used against an Italian invasion. Hitler’s most pressing fear was that Italy and Ethiopia might reach a negotiated settlement, thereby curtailing Italy’s deepening isolation from the West. But strict German neutrality turned to cordiality when Hitler began to fear an Italian defeat before the first shot was fired. Dire consequences would follow. The Fascist regime would collapse, followed by the spread of Communism. To appease Mussolini, Hitler put a stop to the arms traffic and began to encourage Italian aggression. In the improved atmosphere, a stream of high-ranking party officials passed back

The Italian Empire: A Hollow Triumph

131

and forth between the two countries during September, highlighted by an important meeting near Verona between Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the German armed forces intelligence, and General Mario Roatta, his Italian counterpart. After attempting to clear the air about Austria, Roatta suggested police cooperation in ‘‘the common struggle against the communist danger.’’ Although no formal agreement was signed between the two secret police services until 1 April 1936, this was the first time that anti-Communism provided a pretext to draw the two regimes together. There was, however, no movement beyond flirtation during the fall of 1935. Much to the disappointment of the Germans, Mussolini did not have any intention of abandoning Austria. But with oil sanctions hanging over his head following the failure of the Hoare–Laval agreement, to say nothing of an uncertain outcome on the Ethiopian battlefield, the Duce, in January 1936—perhaps out of momentary panic or resentment toward the West— took what appeared to be a major step in reorienting Italian policy toward Germany. ‘‘The simplest method would be for Berlin and Vienna themselves to settle their relations on the basis of Austrian independence,’’ he told von Hassell on 6 January; ‘‘If Austria, as a formally quite independent State, were thus in practice to become a German satellite, he [Mussolini] would have no objection.’’24 The Duce declared that Stresa was ‘‘dead and buried once and for all,’’ and he denounced Bolshevism for hatching the anti-Italian sanctionist campaign at Geneva. Mussolini followed up the von Hassell interview with a lead article in Popolo d’Italia on 26 January, in which he took exception to the Anglo-French Declaration of Mutual Assistance in the Mediterranean, aimed against Italy. He threatened to redefine Italy’s obligations under the Locarno Treaty and to storm out of the League should oil sanctions be applied. On 28 January, von Hassell emphasized to the Duce ‘‘the resultant necessity for the Italian side to exert their influence in Vienna toward an understanding with Berlin.’’ After asserting that he no longer saw any reason to stand by Austria, the Duce excused himself for not yet applying influence in Vienna for an agreement with Germany, as if a firm understanding that he would do so had already been reached.25 Did Mussolini mean what he said? Though tempted to break with the West and gravitate toward Germany, Austria still gave him pause. The Duce’s advisers differed on what he should do. His son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano, the minister of press and propaganda who eyed the foreign ministry, favored close ties with Germany based on ideological kinship, as did his underling, Dino Alfieri, as well as the Italian ambassador in Berlin, Bernardo Attolico. But Suvich stubbornly held out for Austria. In two incisive memoranda to the Duce, he pointed out that an Italian sacrifice of Austria to Germany would be a ‘‘colossal error,’’ for that action would remove an important obstacle to the ageless Teutonic drive on Trieste and the Adriatic. To be a Mediterranean power was the ultimate German objective. Since

132

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

the Nazis were the quintessential expansionists in the Reich, they should be treated with the utmost caution and utilized only as a diplomatic lever to reduce French and British pressure on Italy arising from the Ethiopian conflict. Italy must avoid a complete break with the West to prevent dependency on an unreliable Hitler.26 Confronted by this conflicting advice, Mussolini swung like a pendulum between the traditional diplomats and the young Fascist admirers of Nazi Germany. At the cost of annoying the Western Powers, the government in Vienna demonstrated its loyalty to Italy by supporting Mussolini’s line at Geneva against sanctions. This decision was unpopular with the Austrian people, however, who were opposed to Mussolini’s war of aggression. Nevertheless, a change began to occur in Austrian policy after Mussolini launched his invasion of Ethiopia. Without securing clearance from Rome, Schuschnigg in October 1935 allowed himself to be drawn into discussions with Franz von Papen, Hitler’s special emissary to Vienna, aimed at a bilateral agreement between Germany and Austria. When, during the latter part of December, Mussolini for the first time withdrew troops from the Brenner to reinforce the Ethiopian front, Schuschnigg, alarmed by this relaxed Italian vigilance, did what the Hungarians had feared all along and what Mussolini had expressly told him not to do. He stepped outside the Roman Protocols bloc by visiting Prague in latter January to explore a Central European solution to the problem of Austria’s independence. DECLARATION OF EMPIRE Three major overlapping events threw doubt on Mussolini’s peso determinante strategy and threatened Italy with isolation: the pending League decision on the question of oil sanctions, Hitler’s imminent remilitarization of the Rhineland (Einmarsch), and the looming ratification of the FrancoSoviet Pact by the French Senate. Mussolini was greatly relieved when Badoglio smashed through the Ethiopian lines on 16 February. The string of victories on the military front that followed hardened the Duce’s attitude toward the Western Powers. There would be no more talk about an Ethiopian mandate under the aegis of Geneva. No settlement with the defeated Negus would be considered, except through Mussolini’s own approved intermediaries, and only a settlement that would leave Italy a stranglehold over Haile Selassie’s country.27 But Rome was thrown into a panic later in February. Since there had been no effort by Mussolini to resolve the Ethiopian conflict by negotiation, the British, who had not taken the initiative since the misfiring of the Hoare–Laval plan, raised the question of oil sanctions against Italy. To ward off this potential threat, the Italians applied heavy pressure on the French to detach themselves from the British lead. Should the League apply oil sanctions, Italy would withdraw from the League and denounce the 7

The Italian Empire: A Hollow Triumph

133

January 1935 accords with France, including the proviso on military cooperation.28 Although Mussolini, Suvich, and Aloisi all refrained from any direct threat to denounce their country’s Locarno obligations, the French ambassador in Rome, Charles de Chambrun, concluded that, should oil sanctions be applied, Italy would escape isolation by taking the road to Berlin and would leave France to face a potential German remilitarization of the Rhineland without hope of Italian support.29 Indeed, the Italians mused, how could a country victimized by sanctions participate in sanctions against Germany? But, threatened by the oil embargo and still fearing a military mischance, Mussolini covered himself by promising a return to Stresa and some sort of agreement with a defeated and truncated Ethiopia if the French blocked additional League action.30 In another breath, however, attempting to curry Hitler’s favor, Mussolini told von Hassell that Stresa was dead. This was Mussolini’s brand of ‘‘equidistance,’’ but no matter what he said or to whom, decisions on the Ethiopian battlefield would dictate Italian diplomacy. During the middle of February 1936, Hitler made the momentous decision to remilitarize the Rhineland, in defiance of Germany’s obligations under existing European law.31 To throw the Anglo-French into disarray, the Fu¨ hrer wanted Mussolini to repudiate the Locarno Treaty that he was poised to violate by his planned Einmarsch.32 This step was likely only if sanctions on oil were applied. Paradoxically, if military victory made Mussolini strut more defiantly against the Western Powers, it also enabled him to keep Germany at arm’s length and Italy’s ‘‘intransigent autonomy’’ alive. Thus, one must take with a grain of salt Mussolini’s assurance to von Hassell on 22 February that Italy would not support Britain and France should they take action against a German remilitarization of the Rhineland;33 he would wait on events. Hitler and Mussolini clearly eyed each other with the greatest suspicion, and both reserved maximum freedom of action. Mussolini’s language to the Germans was veiled. When he wanted to stress their two countries’ ideological affinity, he talked up the Bolshevik peril; when he wanted to deliver Berlin a warning on Austria—or conceal his own inner reserve toward the Nazi regime—he pointed out the stupidity of Germany’s policy toward Jews and the Catholic church. According to Starhemberg, Mussolini, in early March, ruminated on Hitler’s untrustworthiness and Nazi Germany’s intention of seizing Austria to open the door to the Balkans and the Adriatic. Faced with this threat, Mussolini told the prince, he would eschew any ideological bloc with Nazi Germany against democracy and steadfastly defend Austria’s independence.34 On 2 March, Eden brought the question of an oil embargo against Italy before the Sanctions Committee in Geneva. If the battered League were ever to enjoy renewed life, the application of sanctions against Italy was unavoidable. It was Eden’s opinion that, despite the steady deterioration of Anglo-Italian relations, the continuing suspicion between Germany and

134

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

Italy over Austria would keep Mussolini and Hitler apart. As opposed to his service chiefs, Eden believed that an Italian attack on the British Mediterranean fleet was remote.35 In view of his moderate speeches during the preceding weeks, as well as his failure to forewarn anyone at Geneva, including the French, Eden’s League pronouncement seemed abrupt. His determination to force through a favorable vote was tempered, however, by the refusal of the United States to cooperate with any League action and the obvious reluctance of Flandin to follow the British lead. Flandin and Eden met behind the scenes on 2 and 3 March; their encounters were painful. Finally, they agreed to make another appeal to Italy and Ethiopia to negotiate—a pointless proposal that hardly masked their profound differences. Primarily concerned with security in Europe, Flandin told Eden that if oil sanctions were imposed, Mussolini would take Italy out of the League and denounce the Franco-Italian military accords of 28 June 1935; Hitler would take advantage of the resulting crisis by ordering German troops into the Rhineland. Flandin would contemplate oil sanctions only if Britain promised to honor its Locarno commitments, regardless of the behavior of Italy and Germany. Eden was in a tight spot. Since Ethiopian resistance was near collapse, sanctions would do little good; but if the League did nothing, he would look ridiculous at home.36 Eden met Flandin halfway by agreeing to defer the issue of oil sanctions to the British cabinet for a final decision.37 Flandin reciprocated by promising not to take isolated action in case of a German remilitarization of the Rhineland. France had thus precluded a strong reaction to Hitler, and Britain had abandoned its sanctionist crusade against Mussolini. Flandin, joined by the Pope, tried to prevail on Mussolini at this eleventh hour to ward off any League vote on sanctions by negotiating a settlement, any settlement, with Ethiopia. With the war going so well, however, Mussolini turned aside this ‘‘ultimatum’’ by declaring that he would never negotiate with ‘‘a pistol at the throat’’ and prepared to leave the League on 7 March.38 Hitler beat him to the punch by marching into the Rhineland on that very day, using the imminent passage of the Franco-Soviet pact as a pretext. He had not bothered to give advance notice to Rome. Brushing aside the objections of his own generals, Hitler acted on the twin assumptions that Italy would ignore its pledge to uphold the Locarno Treaty while the Ethiopian dispute dragged on at the League and that the French army would stay put behind the Maginot Line. Hitler’s intuition did not fail him. The French, led by an ineffective caretaker cabinet, were immobilized by a timid military and by British pressure to refrain from a forceful response to the German move. In a gesture aimed to conciliate London and prevent a Locarno front from forming against him, Hitler followed up his bold stroke by promising a return to the League. Ignoring Mussolini’s sensibilities, he made no reference to either Austria or to the Four Power Pact.

The Italian Empire: A Hollow Triumph

135

Mussolini was thunderstruck by the Einmarsch and outraged by Hitler’s stab in the back. By offering to rejoin the League, the Fu¨ hrer had deprived the Duce of his threat to leave the League in case sanctions were imposed. Failing to grasp the duplicity in Hitler’s diplomacy, Mussolini feared that Germany would join a newly strengthened sanctionist front.39 In Mussolini’s defense, neither Eden nor Hoare fathomed the extent of Hitler’s perfidy either. Distraught by the sudden collapse in Italian bargaining power, the Duce, on 8 March, hastily agreed ‘‘in principle to the opening of negotiations’’ to resolve the Ethiopian conflict.40 Like the French, the Italians were dismayed by the British disposition to shrug their shoulders over Hitler’s military promenade into the German Rhineland. That Britain should frown so menacingly at Mussolini’s distant imperialist venture while showing so little concern over Hitler’s shredding of the Locarno Treaty signified to the Italians that London was angling for an agreement with Hitler involving a redistribution of colonies. They were not wide of the mark. There was more to the German-biased British double standard. Although Eden accepted the League Council’s ruling that the Third Reich was in breach of its international undertakings, he evaded Geneva in favor of a private settlement among the Western Powers and Germany that excluded Italy. He saw the Italian invasion of Ethiopia as a different matter. By holding the threat of League sanctions over Italy’s head, he intended that the Duce travel the road to Geneva. The Italian press and Grandi’s reports singled out Eden as the major villain in the piece, but this was hardly the full story. By his actions in Geneva, Eden was hardly out of line with cabinet directives, and he mirrored British public opinion that viewed the German action as not entirely unreasonable and certainly not comparable to Italian aggression against Ethiopia. Thanks to the Einmarsch, Mussolini escaped the threat of oil sanctions, but, since this was not immediately clear, the Duce freed himself of Italy’s Locarno obligations on 8 March by refusing to take a position on the remilitarization of the Rhineland.41 Only when it became obvious that Britain would oppose any effective punitive measures against the Third Reich did Mussolini later join France in a meaningless moral note of censure against Germany. In fact, Mussolini had decided to move closer to Hitler. Ideological attraction to the Nazi regime had little to do with this decision; the Duce’s aim was always Italy’s elusive peso determinante in European diplomacy. The large number of high-level Nazis and Fascists who continued visiting one another produced nothing concrete, only vague hints of solidarity—with one notable exception. Following up on the Roatta– Canaris accords of the previous September, Arturo Bocchini and Heinrich Himmler on 1 April agreed on common action between their respective police forces against the Communist danger. More ominous still, convinced that Hitler’s Einmarsch had rendered French military assistance to Austria impossible, Mussolini encouraged Schuschnigg to pursue a modus vivendi

136

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

between his country and Germany—something the Austrian chancellor had already decided on his own to do. In order to speed up the conquest that would cut through Mussolini’s diplomatic tangles, in mid-March, Badoglio released heavy mustard gas attacks on the defenseless troops facing him in Ethiopia, shattering their will to resist as an organized army. As Mussolini sensed victory, he strengthened Italy’s ‘‘intransigent autonomy’’ on 23 March by declaring an economic policy of autarky. Again, more massive use of gas was ordered. The opposition crumbled. Spears and swords could not avail against tanks, planes, and gas canisters. On 2 May, his army in tatters, Emperor Haile Selassie left Addis Ababa for Djibouti as a way-station to his eventual destination in Jerusalem. Following his departure, what remained of his armies broke up. While Graziani received his marshall’s baton in Harrar, Badoglio rode victoriously into Addis Ababa on 5 May. At the cost of only 1,600 Italian dead, the Duce’s war was over. This was the moment that Mussolini had awaited for so long: announcement of the birth of the Second Roman Empire. On the night of 9 May, the Duce appeared on the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia to solemnize the victory. Before an overflow crowd intoxicated with patriotic fervor, his face set and expressionless, he proclaimed that ‘‘Ethiopia is Italian.’’ ‘‘Duce! Duce! Duce!’’ rolled across the piazza as Mussolini stood proud and rigid at the balcony rail, hands set firmly on his hips, jaw protruding, and a flicker of a smile in acknowledgment of the flowers flung his way. Reluctantly, ‘‘the founder of the empire’’ had to share the spotlight with Victor Emmanuel, who received the crown of emperor, but that was a small irritation that only slightly dampened the festive mood. Medals and honors were freely dispensed and lavish parties thrown for the returning conquerors. Mussolini basked in the glory of his finest hour. Patriots, large sectors of the bourgeois classes, and the Church hastened to join the celebration. Church bells peeled, and te deums were sung across the land. Old critics of the regime in Italy, like Luigi Albertini and Benedetto Croce, accepted the victory without protest. The Fascists waxed ecstatic. Italy had won the battle alone; a national spirit, like that of an armed camp inured to sacrifice, had been forged. The Western Democracies were exposed as decadent, selfish, and cowardly, unable to stand up to the vigor and idealism of Fascist Italy. Through indomitable will, the black-shirted Duce had overwhelmed the shambling British diplomats mumbling passages from the League Charter. As head of a young nation of warriors on the march, Mussolini had bested all his enemies and thumbed his nose at the mightiest empire of the world. All this Fascist embellishment aside, Mussolini had unquestionably gained in prestige; there is nothing like military conquest to unite a nation behind a charismatic magician with words. Margherita Sarfatti, Mussolini’s recently dismissed mistress, had perhaps a more realistic assessment: ‘‘We have been a little kingdom, now we’re just a little empire.’’42

The Italian Empire: A Hollow Triumph

137

What prompted Mussolini to take so many risks to conquer Ethiopia, in defiance of both supporters and advisers who feared that disaster instead of glory would follow his failure to negotiate a settlement? Did the Duce seek to divert public opinion from the economic problems caused by the world depression? There were indeed rumblings of discontent. Italians were feeling the depression, and the disgruntled Marxist-inclined industrial workers were impervious to the false enticements of Fascist corporativism; nor had vast legions of impoverished farm workers been successfully integrated into the Fascist state. But Mussolini was able to control dissent, if not apathy, by a secret political police whose efficiency would later win the admiration of Heinrich Himmler, and the Duce rarely paid any attention to economic advice or conditions unless there was some visible political payoff. Mussolini’s decision to move in Africa was governed primarily by the prevailing balance of forces in Europe. There was, he calculated, a fraction of time that would allow him to conquer Ethiopia while Hitler was still not in a position to annex Austria militarily and usurp Italy’s inoperative hegemony in the Danube basin. Though Mussolini’s African imperialism was not prompted by economic motives, he used this imperial adventure as a means of generating public support. Wide investment vistas would now supposedly open up in Africa. Under Italian domination, Ethiopia would be a prize area for the export of Italian capital and an excellent source of raw materials. The idea of building a ‘‘proletarian’’ empire and civilization in the style of ancient Rome captured the imagination of Fascists who placed a premium on brute strength and e´ lan vital in the style of old Roman days. It is ironic that Italy came so late to colonial empire-building, when this national pastime had lost its practicality and profit. Such was the inward obsolescence of Fascism and its major delusion; Mussolini thought of glory in very dated terms. The Duce covered this outmoded imperialism with a varnish of idealism by claiming that he was defending Christianity and the white races against barbarian Ethiopians. But far outweighing ‘‘the civilizing mission’’ and economic myth-making was prestige. Mussolini’s craving for conquest was powered by an inexorable drive to be a modern Italian Caesar. Divorced from social revolution, ‘‘Mussolinianismo’’ exalted the power and prestige of the nation in terms of imperialist conquest. Empire-building emanated from the fatal logic of Mussolini’s unique style of dictatorship and of his belief in war as a positive good. How should we evaluate Mussolini’s diplomatic achievement? At the outset of the Ethiopian crisis in December 1934, Mussolini unquestionably sought a ‘‘soluzione integrale violenta’’ against Haile Selassie in the belief that the Western Powers would not hinder his invasion. His mobilization for war in Africa certainly did not include a showdown with Britain and France for supremacy in the Mediterranean. Believing himself to be a practitioner of Realpolitik, Mussolini was initially thrown off balance when

138

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

Britain departed from its habitual realism at the League hustings and began to parrot Wilsonian idealism, as if Italy had lost all value as an important ally against the German menace. Since the British were themselves indifferent to Ethiopia and held a virtual monopoly over the rest of Africa, why should they not have allowed Italy its place in the sun? Faced by Britain’s efforts to block Italy’s control over the Amharic nucleus, and, thanks to his intercepted messages, sure that he would meet no military opposition or sanctions on oil, Mussolini plunged ahead. Had the League stood firm against Italian aggression, the Duce would have settled for a diplomatic solution that granted him less than the conquest he sought. Undeniably, Mussolini was a clever player in the hazardous game of guesswork. He adroitly sized up the weaknesses of his adversaries and took advantage of the penchant of the democracies for appeasement. The Duce played hardball and got away with it. Had his generals failed him or had the British closed the Suez or attacked the Italian fleet, he and his regime would most likely have collapsed. So, within these strict limits, one can call Mussolini’s conquest of Ethiopia a capital achievement. For the moment, an all-toobrief one as it turned out, Mussolini succeeded in narrowing the gap between the vox ducis and the vox populi that Fascism had hitherto failed to attain. But victory came with a huge price tag. Italy was now burdened with the enormous task of occupying Ethiopia and subduing scattered resistance on the part of tribal chiefs who had resolved never to surrender. The Italian command under General Graziani proceeded to subdue them with the utmost savagery. Furthermore, where could a relatively impoverished Italy, whose economy, overly strained by huge military expenditures, find the resources to reconstruct Ethiopia? Additional stress was placed on the military. It was a horribly expensive and time-consuming task to return, retool, and upgrade the masses of unused equipment rusting on African quays and stored in scattered and remote supply depots throughout Ethiopia. Completely apart from the problem of the Brenner, Italy’s strategic position actually suffered from the acquisition of such a distant empire. The navy simply lacked the resources to provide adequate protection to such an extended maritime lifeline. While Mussolini somehow managed the risks, miscalculations abounded. Sharing a long-standing nationalist proclivity to overestimate Italian power, he ignored basic tenets of effective diplomacy. One must plan strategy to fit the worst-case scenario and hold steadily to fixed priorities. The preservation of Austria’s independence was the fulcrum of Italian security and independence, while acquisition of empire enhanced Fascist prestige and strengthened the Duce’s own hold over the country. In playing on the German danger to induce the Western Powers to give him a free hand in Africa, Mussolini was tempting fate. No matter whether France and Britain

The Italian Empire: A Hollow Triumph

139

called Italy to account or gave in to Italian blackmail, the Duce would be hard pressed to guard the Brenner while pursuing African imperialism. ITALY AND THE AUSTRO-GERMAN ‘‘GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT’’ Two ominous events followed in rapid succession to rob Mussolini of the fruits of empire. Weakened on the Brenner and distracted by events in Africa, the Duce ignored his Locarno obligations as Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland; he also excused himself while Germany signed the ‘‘Gentleman’s Agreement’’ with Austria on 11 July. Both events represented irreversible steps toward Anschluss. By fashioning such drastic alterations in the European balance of power, Hitler dealt Italian security a body blow from which it failed to recover until after World War II. Besides reducing Mussolini’s empire to a sideshow, Hitler’s command performance irretrievably compromised Italy’s position in Austria. The litmus test of Mussolini’s influence in Vienna was Starhemberg’s reliability as a confederate and his standing in Austria. Both were in serious decline. The prince destroyed his credibility in Rome by seeking out contacts in January 1936 with the Western Powers, the Habsburg pretender Otto, and Franz von Papen, Hitler’s special representative in Vienna. Though Starhemberg showed vigor, if not dexterity, in his contradictory diplomatic perambulations, he seemed gripped by lassitude in the struggle with Schuschnigg over Austria’s political future.43 Appearing in Rome during March 1936, the prince suggested to Mussolini that his current pet project—one also promoted by von Papen—of an ideological bloc consisting of Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Germany be accepted as a replacement for the moribund Stresa Front. Mussolini, he alleged, flatly turned down his proposal to avoid antagonizing the Western Powers and, above all, because ‘‘it is impossible to make a pact with Germany.’’44 Nothing came of their meeting, because Mussolini had decided, albeit with a heavy heart, to rely on Schuschnigg rather than on Starhemberg, a decision confirmed when he dealt the prince and his Heimwehr a mortal blow by encouraging Austria to pass a bill introducing universal military service. As Starhemberg had pointed out, the draft would open up the army to a large influx of Nazis and other unreliable political elements.45 Still, it was something Schuschnigg wanted, and the measure passed on 1 April. Without a militant and privileged Heimwehr, Starhemberg was deprived of a political base in Austria and Mussolini of political leverage in Vienna. The Duce still tried to control Austrian foreign policy in the Danube region. Since for both the Italians and the Magyars treating with the Czechs meant a violation of a taboo, Mussolini and Go¨ mbo¨ s, at the Rome Protocols meeting on 21–23 March 1936, peremptorily ordered Schuschnigg to break off contacts with Czechoslovakia. The Hungarian minister

140

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

did so because he had his eye on Slovakia, the Italian leader because he hoped Hitler would focus Nazi attention on Prague rather than Vienna.46 In January 1936, Mussolini had begun to move closer to Germany, and he became more determined than ever to protect his own personal standing with Hitler. Still, Mussolini said practically nothing while Schuschnigg expressed reluctance over being drawn into any dialogue with the Germans.47 Obviously Mussolini was confounded by conflicting objectives. He wanted to slow down the momentum leading to Anschluss, to protect his own privileged access to Hitler, to keep Austria cut off from the Little Entente, and to prevent Go¨ mbo¨ s from forging links with the Third Reich independent of Italy. As in the case of Ethiopia, Mussolini was flirting with danger by allowing himself to be caught in contending forces beyond his control. Starhemberg made one last dramatic gesture to revive his flagging fortunes and gain Mussolini’s support. Without consulting the cabinet, he published a message on 13 May praising Fascism for overcoming democratic falsehood and hypocrisy to conquer barbaric Ethiopia. A flagrant affront to the Western Powers, the communique´ irritated Schuschnigg, who used the prince’s blunder as a pretext for reshuffling his cabinet. Starhemberg was peremptorily dismissed from the vice-chancellery. By combining the leadership of the Fatherland Front with the chancellorship, Schuschnigg put an effective end to dualism. Starhemberg was left with two public positions: federal sports leader and chairman of the mothers’ aid section of the Fatherland Front. No satirist could have missed the humor of the playboy prince so sedulously serving motherhood. Yet Starhemberg did not give up. Once again in Rome, to attend an Austro-Italian soccer game on 15 May, he professed his readiness to take up the fight, not excluding a coup d’e´ tat.48 Mussolini let Starhemberg down graciously by promising to reemploy him should the Austrian chancellor take a wrong turn,49 but there was no mistaking the Duce’s endorsement of Schuschnigg.50 Much flowed from that choice. Since Mussolini wanted strong ties with Hitler, he was prepared to allow, if not encourage, Schuschnigg to seek a modus vivendi with Germany. This task was made much easier for the Austrian chancellor by the Duce’s dissociation from the Heimwehr, which, in spite of its own inner fragmentation and pan-German factions, stood as a strong symbol of resistance to the Nazis in Austria. Now that Starhemberg was out of the way, Schuschnigg was free to pursue negotiations with von Papen without serious internal opposition and in consultation with his favorite Italian confidante, Senator Francesco Salata, the president of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Vienna, who had all along opposed dualism and favored exclusive rule by the Austrian chancellor.51 Gabriele Preziosi was bypassed since the skeptical Italian minister had only dark forebodings over any contact with von Papen and had been the main Italian contact with Starhemberg and the Heimwehr. Schuschnigg was prepared to accept Austrian ‘‘nationals’’ (‘‘respectable’’ Nazis) in his

The Italian Empire: A Hollow Triumph

141

cabinet, so long as they loyally accepted the program of the Fatherland Front. Salata endorsed this idea but cautioned Schuschnigg to avoid any deal with the nationals outside the framework of an agreement with Germany.52 Before proceeding further with von Papen, Schuschnigg sought an audience with Mussolini. Mussolini hosted Schuschnigg at his country home at Rocca delle Caminate on 5–6 June 1936. The Austrian chancellor outlined his premises for a rapprochement with Germany: recognition of Austria’s independence, no direct political accord with Austria’s Nazis, and the cessation of Nazi propaganda favoring Anschluss. As for Austria’s concessions, Schuschnigg agreed in principle to the admission of one or two nationals to the government, amnesty for the Austrian Nazis, and a reciprocal press accord abolishing political polemics. Mussolini pointed out to Schuschnigg the danger of direct negotiations with the nationals: ‘‘they tend to create not a way of living but a way of dying.’’ But, in view of the disinterest of France and Britain over Austria’s fate, Schuschnigg should come to terms with Germany. Italy, the Duce assured him, would remain a reliable ally.53 Schuschnigg returned home and plunged immediately into further talks with von Papen while keeping Salata closely apprised. Both Salata and Schuschnigg indulged in the ingenuous belief that a modus vivendi with Germany would enable the government to restore its authority by dividing the Nazi opposition. Once the handful of nationals had been coopted into the Fatherland Front and given meaningless posts in the cabinet, the way would be clear for Schuschnigg to crack down on the radical Nazis. Bound to the modus vivendi, the Reich government, as well as the Nazi party, would not be able to move against Schuschnigg’s punitive measures or challenge his authority as head of an independent country. Compounding the naı¨vete´ of this strategy, Schuschnigg chose to maneuver within severely restricted limits. In line with Italy’s wishes and in accordance with his own views, he refused to enlarge his domestic support by including left democrats. To placate Mussolini, Schuschnigg described his consultations with von Papen as limited by common interests; any agreement with Germany would be coordinated with and subordinated to the Rome Protocols.54 No matter what optimism about Austria’s future Mussolini conveyed to Schuschnigg, the Duce realized that he was fighting a rearguard action. On 13 May, he confided to Aloisi his fear of ‘‘completely losing Austria.’’55 Should an Austro-German agreement come into force, he well knew, it would not constitute a Nazi renunciation of Anschluss but only a pause, a readiness to allow a Gleichschaltung to evolve by natural forces. Translated into diplomatic terms, the Anschluss question was not urgent—a none too subtle German reminder to Europe that the problem should be forgotten until Hitler was ready to move. Mussolini nevertheless swallowed his doubts because he sensed isolation. Relations with the West were badly strained over his declaration of empire, and he feared that Hitler would

142

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

desert him in favor of a rapprochement with Britain.56 To keep in Hitler’s good graces, he would promote a modus vivendi between Germany and Austria and decline to intervene in Berlin on Schuschnigg’s behalf to secure him better terms.57 Having given up on the Heimwehr, he could use Starhemberg’s eclipse as a handy excuse for leaving Austria to its fate. Meanwhile two other events intervened to dwarf the Austrian problem in Mussolini’s mind and propel him down the road to Berlin: the coming to power in France of Fascism’s nemesis, Le´ on Blum’s popular front government, and Franco’s uprising in Spain. In a general changing of the guard on 9 June, Mussolini handed the ministry of foreign affairs to Ciano, the staunchest germanophile in the Duce’s entourage, and he replaced Suvich as undersecretary with Giuseppe Bastianini. Dino Alfieri advanced to Ciano’s former job as minister of press and propaganda. Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law, was to expend far less energy than Salata in keeping Italy involved in the modus vivendi between Austria and Germany. Encouraging the Duce’s love of grandeur and feeding on his resentment of the Western Powers, Ciano sought to further Italian dynamism in alignment with the Third Reich. Mussolini himself had arrived at the conclusion that the Austrians had proven themselves unable to instill unity and redefine a viable historical mission. How could Austria be propped up indefinitely by a bitter traditional enemy that refused either to return the South Tyrol or treat its German-speaking population with more respect? Schuschnigg and von Papen produced the German-Austrian ‘‘Gentleman’s Agreement’’ (Abkommen) on 11 July 1936. Pro-Nazis were invited to join the Austrian cabinet, and a normalization of relations with Germany was piously declared. Schuschnigg mistakenly believed that he had secured Hitler’s recognition of Austria’s full sovereignty. The Germans, however, viewed the Abkommen from a different angle, as a clever diplomatic ruse to veil the reality that Anschluss was right around the corner. Julius Go¨ mbo¨ s was jubilant over the outcome, for he saw that Mussolini had finally acquiesced in the solution that he had been propounding since 1932. Knowing that Anschluss was now a foregone conclusion, and tormented by that realization, Mussolini put on a bold front when he told von Hassell that the Gentleman’s Agreement ‘‘will bring to an end the unhappy situation of Austria as a football of foreign interests and, above all, will finally remove the last and only mortgage on German–Italian relations.’’58 Tell the Fu¨ hrer, he instructed Ciano, that the modus vivendi was proof of a parallel Italo-German policy.59 The Duce had not wanted to make the choice of empire and Anschluss, nor an estrangement from Hitler, but when events beyond his control outpaced his calculations, he chose imperial glory, acquiescence in the Gentleman’s Agreement, and further distance from the Western Powers. His empire was thus rendered a hollow triumph, more a dangerous frivolity than an exercise in shrewd Realpolitik. That would have required him to

The Italian Empire: A Hollow Triumph

143

negotiate with the West on Ethiopia along the lines of the Hoare–Laval Pact and to defend Austria by the resurrection of the Stresa Front.

NOTES 1. Mussolini, OO, 27: 139, 159. 2. DDI, 8, II, 236, 4 October 1935. 3. DDI, 8, II, 437, 20 October 1935. 4. Renato Mori, in his carefully researched work, Mussolini e la conquista dell’Etiopia (Florence: Le Monnier, 1978), argues that Mussolini, ever since 1925, was bent on an all-out war against Ethiopia that left no room for a negotiated settlement. 5. DDI, 8, II, 292, 8 October 1935. 6. Aloisi, Journal, 314–15. 7. Guariglia’s term. Guariglia, Ricordi, 263. 8. DDI, 8, II, 331, 13 October 1935. 9. DDI, 8, II, 357 and 366, 16 and 17 October 1935. 10. DDI, 8, II, 366, 17 October 1935. 11. DDI, 8, II, 344, 14 October 1935. 12. FO 371, J630/1/1, 17 October 1935; DDI, 8, II, 376, 17 October 1935. 13. DDI, 8, II, 493, 26 October 1935; ibid., 557, 2 November 1935. 14. Mussolini, OO, 27: 300. 15. The history behind the Hoare-Laval Agreement is told by Rosaria Quartararo, ‘‘Le origini del piano Hoare-Laval,’’ Storia contemporanea 8, no. 4 (December 1977): 749–90. 16. DDI, 8, II, 842, 12 December 1935. 17. DDI, 8, II, 632, 14 November 1935. 18. De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 1: 720–21 19. Cited in David Clay Large, Between Two Fires (New York: Norton, 1990), 172. 20. Aloisi, Journal, 332–34 21. DDI, 8, II, 904, 22 December 1935. 22. DDI, 8, II, 525, 25 December 1935. 23. Aloisi, Journal, 339, 345. 24. DGFP, C, 4, 485, 7 January 1936. 25. DGFP, C, 4, 525, 28 January 1936. 26. DDI, 8, III, 131 and 194, 29 January and 7 February 1936. 27. Aloisi, Journal, 351. 28. DDI, 8, III, 266, 276, and 295, 21 22, and 24 February 1936; DDF, 2, I, 239, 27 February 1936. 29. DDI, 8, III, 294, 24 February 1936; DDF, 2, I, 224, 25 February 1936; Aloisi, Journal, 352. 30. DDF, 2, I, 239, 27 February 1936. 31. Esmonde M. Robertson, ‘‘Mussolini and the Rhineland,’’ European Studies Review 7 (1977): 409–35. 32. DGFP, C, 4, 564, 14 February 1936. 33. DGFP, C, 4, 579, 22 February 1936.

144

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

34. Starhemberg, Between Hitler and Mussolini, 215–22. No record of this conversation can be found in the DDI. 35. Peters, Anthony Eden at the Foreign Office, 168. 36. DBFP, 2, XVI, 3, 6, and 20, 2, 3, and 4 March 1936. 37. DBFP, 2, XVI, 11, 3 March 1936. 38. DDF, 2, I, 290, 6 March 1936; Aloisi, Journal, 355; DGFP, C, 5, 554, 25 September 1936. 39. Guariglia, Ricordi, 306; DGFP, C, 5, 18 and 45, 7 and 9 March 1936. 40. DDI, 8, III, 398, 8 March 1936; George W. Baer, Test Case: Italy, Ethiopia, and the League of Nations (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1976), 229. 41. DDI, 8, III, 396, 8 March 1936. 42. Quoted in Philip V. Cannistraro and Brian R. Sullivan, Il Duce’s Other Woman (New York: Morrow, 1993), 491. 43. DDI, 8, III, 233, 14 February 1936; AP:A 40, 647/345, 22 February 1936. 44. Starhemberg, Between Hitler and Mussolini, 221. 45. Starhemberg had forcefully expressed these fears in his meeting with Mussolini in April 1935. ASMAE, FL, Reel 2, 19 April 1935. 46. ASMAE, AP:A 43: 86/49, 27 February 1936. 47. DDI, 8, III, 506, 21 March 1936. 48. DGFP, C, 5, 343, 22 May 1936. 49. Starhemberg, Between Hitler and Mussolini, 237–38. 50. DDI, 8, IV, 64, 16 May 1936. 51. Gehl, Austria, Germany, and the Anschluss, 125. 52. DDI, 8, IV, 95 and 157, 22 May and 1 June 1936. 53. DDI, 8, IV, 192, 5 June 1936. 54. DDI, 8, IV, 407, 416, and 429, 29, 30 June, and 2 July 1936. 55. Aloisi, Journal, 385. 56. De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 1: 755–56. 57. DDI, 8, IV, 208, 7 June 1936; ibid., 420 and 448, 1 and 4 July 1936. 58. DGFP, D, 1, 155, 11 July 1936. 59. DDI, 8, IV, 514, 13 July 1936.

CHAPTER 9

The Dictators Converge MUSSOLINI AT THE CROSSROADS At the end of the Ethiopian war, no one could say with certainty where Italy would turn. Having founded his empire without German aid or military hindrance by the League, Mussolini had neither obligations toward Hitler nor concrete reason for breaking off from the West. Even before the fall of Addis Ababa, the Duce had hinted at a possible return to Stresa. While the Wilhelmstrasse thoroughly doubted Mussolini’s loyalty, Hitler himself was unsure. Determined to foil any resurrection of Stresa, he hoped to entice Mussolini to align with him. The British, mindful of their own role in alienating Mussolini from the West, feared that he might fall into this trap. To offset Italian resentment over their criticism of his Ethiopian conquest, they made a bid to improve relations with Rome in June and July 1936. If Italy could be isolated from Germany, Britain’s unceasing search for a direct agreement with Hitler would be much simplified. But Mussolini emerged from his conquest of Ethiopia with a growing contempt for Western irresolution, which he ascribed to the defects of their democratic regimes and their declining populations. The Duce’s ideological biases were reinforced by the accession of Galeazzo Ciano to the post of foreign minister on 9 June 1936. The presumptive heir to his father-in-law, Ciano was determined that the most Fascist ministry would be the Palazzo Chigi. But instead of transforming it by a mass dismissal of the old guard in favor of Fascist stalwarts, Ciano reduced the traditional apparatus to an empty shell by creating a new office at the top, the Gabinetto, which

146

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

he staffed with sycophants and favorites. The old chain of command at the Palazzo Chigi operated more and more in a vacuum, and the reports of ambassadors stationed abroad were increasingly disregarded. Thus escaping the dead weight of tradition, Ciano could introduce a tono fascista more in keeping with the ‘‘new’’ Italy that amounted to a contempt for diplomacy and its old canons of security and the balance of power. He and his clique in the Gabinetto preferred to deal with leaders who had the full power of decision, were not encumbered by parliaments and public opinion, and who delighted in talk of war and expansion. This was a step beyond Grandi and Suvich. With an eye out for Italian security, they had negotiated—sometimes in good faith and sometimes not—with other countries irrespective of their political regimes and leadership styles. Ciano, on the other hand, searched for countries seeking a ‘‘new course’’ and dictators bearing a Fascist mien. By dwelling on the opposing ways of life that divided Italy from the West, the new Italian foreign minister naturally gravitated toward the regime in Berlin, which shared Fascist Italy’s decisiveness, worship of power, and contempt for negotiation. Wooed by all sides in the aftermath of the declaration of empire, Mussolini oscillated between belligerency and goodwill and continued his usual mixture of threat and concessions. The opening session of the League Assembly in June, which had been called to decide upon the revocation of sanctions against Italy, failed to tie up the loose ends of the Ethiopian war. When Haile Selassie made an unexpected entry, the Italian journalists in the galleries began to whistle and hoot, which prompted Nicolas Titulescu, the Romanian minister, to shout, ‘‘In the name of justice, silence these savages.’’ Many in the audience applauded as the Swiss police escorted the arrested journalists out of the hall. But while Mussolini sported about as the conqueror of Ethiopia and poked fun at the pusillanimous ‘‘plutocratic democracies,’’ he reiterated privately to British statesmen and through interviews with the London press that the end of sanctions would mark the entry of Italy into the ranks of the ‘‘satisfied’’ states. This, he assured them, would be followed by a harmonization of imperialist interests between their two countries.1 The British reciprocated by piloting the lifting of sanctions through the League on 15 July; they further reduced tensions by ordering the end of the Mediterranean and Red sea alerts and by withdrawing their warships to home waters. With the end of sanctions, the British guarantees to Greece, Yugoslavia, and Turkey against Italian aggression were dissolved. Britain, however, was not willing to accept Italy’s demands for immediate recognition of its empire and the expulsion of Ethiopia from the League. Since Mussolini was adamant on these points, British overtures of friendship bore no immediate fruit. If Mussolini’s military confrontation with Britain had been diffused, his strained relations with France threatened to take a turn for the worse when

The Dictators Converge

147

the Popular Front government took office in Paris on 4 June 1936 under the premiership of the Socialist leader Le´ on Blum. A firm opponent of Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, Blum had written on Laval’s visit to Mussolini in January 1935: ‘‘For the first time a French minister is a guest of the assassin of [Giacomo] Matteotti.’’2 Still, in the aftermath of Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland, Blum showed that he was prepared to swallow his antipathy toward Fascism and consider de´ tente with Rome. Mussolini had an equally difficult time overcoming his dislike of Blum, who represented much that he held in contempt: anti-militarism, outspoken Socialism, and fidelity to the League. The Popular Front he characterized as ‘‘nailed to the cross of the Soviets who wish to Bolshevize France for the purpose of maximum guarantees against Germany.’’3 Yet Mussolini treated Blum as he had Laval, with a mixture of conciliation and intimidation. While holding friendly interviews with French correspondents, in which he expatiated on the dangers of Anschluss and the German peril, he threatened to denounce the Franco-Italian military accords if Blum did not take the initiative and lift the League’s sanctions. This Blum would not do, but he promised to apply pressure on Britain to do so and not to stand in the way of any League effort to spare Mussolini further embarrassment over the recognition of his conquest of Ethiopia.4 Mussolini reacted to Blum’s inaction by boycotting the upcoming conference of the Locarno Powers, which was scheduled to meet in Brussels to respond to Hitler’s march into the Rhineland. This action proved that all along the Duce had linked French security on the Rhine to French initiative on the sanctions question.5 Blum must eat humble pie. Furthermore, France’s stock had dropped in Rome, which characterized the French government as being riddled by leftists and its diplomacy as debilitated by defeatism. Mussolini told Hans Frank, German minister without portfolio, ‘‘France is sick and old. It thinks only of eating; it is a country in which the cuisine has become ‘an art of the state.’ Its demographic decadence is terrifying. In France the population figure falls by two thousand every week.’’6 But if bitter feelings over the Ethiopian war continued to trouble Italy’s relations with the Western Powers, two momentous and almost simultaneous developments precipitated a decisive plunge downward: Italy’s acquiescence in the German-Austrian Gentleman’s Agreement of 11 July 1936 and, six days later, the outbreak of civil war in Spain. When General Francisco Franco raised his standard of rebellion in Spanish Morocco on 17 July, the Italians were caught by surprise. There had been no contact between the rebels and Rome prior to Franco’s Pronunciamento. True, Italy had cultivated friendly relations with the Spanish dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera during the 1920s, but, after the Republican government came to power in 1931, Mussolini lost interest in the Iberian peninsula. In 1934, however, the Italian government signed an agreement with Spanish monarchist conspirators, providing for military support

148

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

should civil war break out in Spain. Since there was no uprising at that point, nothing came of that accord, and none of the Spaniards involved in the 1934 negotiations participated in the delegation that Franco dispatched to Italy during the latter part of July 1936 to solicit Mussolini’s military assistance. Nonetheless, a climate favorable to the military uprising existed in Rome, particularly after the February 1936 elections in Spain shifted the political balance toward the extreme left. Since the Spanish navy stayed loyal to the Republic, General Franco had to secure help in creating an aerial bridge for the passage of troops from Morocco to the mainland. He sent Luis Bolı´n, a monarchist reporter, to Rome on 19 July with a request for aircraft and munitions. Mussolini, supported by the Italian Military Information Service, turned a deaf ear. In desperation, Bolı´n turned to Ciano, who immediately perceived the opportunity to inject a more dynamic impulse into Italian policy and thereby cash in on the trust accorded him by his father-in-law as dauphin of the Fascist movement. After a number of meetings, the Duce reversed his position. Learning that France had shipped military supplies across the Pyrenees to assist the beleaguered legal and recognized Republican government in quelling the military uprising, Mussolini sent Franco twelve Savoia–81 bombers, which arrived in Spanish Morocco on 30 July. After his about-face, Mussolini perceived solid geopolitical advantages in Italian intervention. A friendly Franco regime in Madrid would enable Rome to draw Spain into an expanded Italian Mediterranean orbit by preventing political cooperation between the two popular front governments recently installed in Paris and Madrid. Also possible was Italy’s leasing or purchasing of naval bases in the Balearics. Situated near Gibraltar, the Italian fleet would be in a position to challenge Britain’s already long and vulnerable lines through the Suez Canal and disrupt naval traffic between Algeria and the French mainland. At this point, apart from Mussolini’s visceral dislike of popular front governments, Fascist ideology counted for little; the strategic purpose of keeping Spain separated from France was uppermost. Mussolini aimed neither to export Fascism to Spain nor to engage in an anti-Bolshevik crusade hand-in-hand with Germany. Soviet aid arrived much later, and the Communists counted for less than 5 percent of the Republican government’s support. Moreover, Germany and Italy did not discuss or coordinate their respective decisions to intervene. Still, like many conservatives in Britain and France, Mussolini lumped anarchism, socialism, and communism together as a leftist conspiracy directed against civilization and the forces of order. In this counterrevolutionary sense, Mussolini welcomed the opportunity to support the conservative, authoritarian Franco against ‘‘red’’ Madrid, as he had supported the conservative, authoritarian Dollfuss against ‘‘red’’ Vienna.7 Inadvertently, therefore, he was able to keep in step with conservative thought in France and Britain and receive a ringing endorse-

The Dictators Converge

149

ment from Pope Pius XI who, on 14 September, had warned the world that communism must be prevented from spreading from Spain to set fire and destroy all Europe. Later, when the Soviet Union became deeply embroiled in the Spanish conflict, Hitler abetted Mussolini’s advancement from a counterrevolutionary outlook to a more purely Axis conception that visualized a victory for the Republic as a victory by communism (and its fellow-traveling democrats and masons) over Fascism and the totalitarian idea—a conception fraught with antagonism toward European liberals and conservatives alike. For his part, Ciano fooled himself into believing that Italy was leading Germany by the hand in this struggle.8 In July 1936, however, much remained vague in Mussolini’s mind, except the belief that Franco, with limited Italian help, would win a quick victory and he, as Fascist Duce, a windfall propaganda success. Unexpectedly fierce Republican resistance dashed Mussolini’s facile assumptions. The Blum government immediately leapt to Madrid’s defense by shipping war materiel across the Pyrenees. Soon after, however, a split occurred in Blum’s cabinet between the Radical Socialists, who wanted to be neutral in the Spanish conflict, and the interventionists, who supported Blum’s determination to supply a fellow popular front government under siege. Blum was also under pressure from the conservative-minded Chamber of Deputies that wanted him to prevail on the other major European powers to abstain from intervening in Spain. Fearful that his divided cabinet would fall if he did not bend to the Chamber’s wishes, Blum announced on 8 August that he was prepared to abide by the principle of nonintervention. As an earnest of France’s good intentions, he shut down the Pyrenean frontier and prohibited the exportation of all further war materiel to Spain. Blum was forced to do this mainly because of domestic opposition to active French support for the Spanish Republic, but the pressure exerted on him by the British government not to get embroiled in the Spanish conflict was, if indirect, certainly not negligible. The Conservatives running the British government, if forced to choose, preferred a Franco victory, but they did not want to work for it themselves and hoped to prevent anyone else from interfering in favor of either side, out of fear that great power intervention would cause the civil strife in Spain to become a general war. As for Italy, the British wanted to make sure that Mussolini would not acquire bases in the Balearics as the price of his military assistance to Franco. On 21 August, Italy joined the French nonintervention plan. Within a week, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and Germany also accepted. Shortly thereafter, a formal Nonintervention Committee convened in London to oversee compliance with the accord. Apart from the occasional surreptitious delivery of materiel, France on the whole complied with nonintervention, as did Britain. But Italy and Germany, followed later by the Soviet Union, flagrantly violated nonintervention by ultimately dispatching huge

150

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

quantities of equipment to Franco’s forces. Large contingents of foreign troops made their way to the Spanish battlefield: International Brigades to save Spain from Fascism, Italians in the guise of ‘‘volunteers’’ to save Spain from Bolshevism, and the German Condor Legion to test its high-tech equipment in bombing runs against defenseless Republican civilians. All that such participation did was to make a mockery of nonintervention and ensure that the Spanish Civil War would be dragged out indefinitely, fought on a large and bloody scale to the enduring suffering of the Spanish people. Italian tanks and artillery were sent to Spain at the end of September, and ground troops arrived on 21 October to participate in the drive on Madrid. On 28 November, the Italians signed a secret treaty with Franco that at once gave Italy a lot of vaguely worded rights and an anti-French document. Franco was careful not to spell anything out, except a promise of Spain’s neutrality in the event of war with a third power; Mussolini was satisfied with promises that sounded like concrete concessions. By December 1936, the British had begun to view Italian intervention in Spain with alarm, for they suspected that Mussolini was on the verge of seizing the Balearic Islands. They had grounds for worry. The previous August, Mussolini had sent a former squadrista, Arconovaldo Bonaccorsi, to Majorca. In a flurry of activity, Bonaccorsi encouraged the Falange movement (a political satellite of Franco with a distinctly Fascist tone) to spread terror among the Republicans and supervised the construction of airfields for bombing raids on Republican strongholds; these actions seemed to presage an Italian takeover of the island. But, on 17 December, Bonaccorsi was withdrawn from Majorca, which greatly relieved London. Although the scale of Italian participation in the Spanish struggle was not diminished, the British were satisfied that Mussolini would accept without qualification the territorial status quo in the Mediterranean. This meeting of the minds was codified in the Anglo-Italian ‘‘Gentleman’s Agreement’’ of 2 January 1937, a title chosen by Mussolini much to the discomfiture of Eden. Italy thereby renounced any territorial claims on the Balearics and agreed to clamp down on Radio Bari, the source of Italian propaganda to the Arab world. Nothing specific was said about Spain, save the promise to ‘‘further the ends of peace.’’ The British reciprocated by conceding the Italian point of excluding France, which for years had been trying to promote the idea of a Locarno pact for the Mediterranean.9 What irony! Did Mussolini not feel that he had obtained a free hand in Spain under cover of a ‘‘Gentleman’s Agreement’’ with Britain, just as Hitler had secured in Austria with Schuschnigg? Since the British government seemed inclined more to Franco than to the Republicans, and since London now had a promise that Italy would respect the imperial lifeline in the Mediterranean, Mussolini had every right to act with impunity in Spain in defiance of the Nonintervention Committee and without fear of forceful British counter-

The Dictators Converge

151

measures. As for France, that nation was securely isolated and officially barred from further intervention on behalf of the Spanish Republic. TO BERLIN VIA VIENNA Mussolini accepted the Austro-German ‘‘Gentleman’s Agreement’’ of 11 July 1936 as a disagreeable but necessary sacrifice to achieve a closer alignment with Germany. He was unwilling to renounce his Mediterranean expansion and solidarity with the Third Reich in favor of an alignment with the Western Powers to prevent a further Austrian slide into Anschluss. Nevertheless, he was not yet ready for a total capitulation. To brace spirits in Vienna, he told the Austrian foreign minister, Guido Schmidt, that the ‘‘Gentleman’s Agreement’’ would actually redound to Vienna’s favor, for ‘‘Germany had now all the more reason to be dependent on Italian friendship and would not likely sacrifice it on Austria’s terrain. In reality Germany’s dynamism is turned solely against Czechoslovakia.’’10 Occasionally buoyed by the reports of Francesco Salata, who recently had been promoted to Italian minister in Vienna, Mussolini clung to the hope that Austria would somehow survive. This flickering optimism was soon to be extinguished by Count Galeazzo Ciano and the coterie surrounding him, who, their heads turned by the discipline and power of the Third Reich, wished to draw closer to Hitler. Because of his supercilious attitude toward Austria, Ciano allowed himself to be hustled through the steps leading to Anschluss, whose progression he chose not to arrest; he felt not the slightest pinch of remorse, so long as Hitler treated Italy with the respect due to the founder of the Fascist idea. Talks between Germany and Italy aimed at their military cooperation in Spain date from a conversation between Roatta and Canaris on 28 August 1936.11 On Mussolini’s instructions, Ciano took a further step toward a pronounced German orientation during a Berlin visit in October, just as Italian troops were entering the lines in Spain.12 The Fu¨ hrer warmed the atmosphere by recognizing the Italian empire of Ethiopia, and the two countries agreed to send additional military aid to Franco’s insurgents. Ciano, meeting with Hitler at Berchtesgaden on 24 October, delivered a batch of purloined British Cabinet correspondence documenting ‘‘the German peril’’ that included a harsh indictment by Eden. In stirring up Hitler against the British, Ciano hoped to sidetrack German approaches to London; to cultivate Hitler’s good will, he avoided the subject of Austria. Hitler reacted violently by remarking that Britain was governed by ‘‘dangerous adventurers.’’ By raising the anti-Bolshevik standard, Germany and Italy now had to take the offensive against the democracies and increase their aid to Franco, in order to counter the growing influx of Soviet materiel and to guarantee Franco’s success in the upcoming attack on Madrid. Hitler assured Ciano that the Mediterranean was reserved for Italy and the Baltic

152

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

for Germany. Carried away by the prospect of a revanchist war, Hitler said, ‘‘In three years Germany will be ready, in four years more than ready.’’13 In a speech delivered on 1 November in Milan, Mussolini made the dramatic announcement that ‘‘this Berlin–Rome Line is not a Diaphragm but rather an Axis’’ and expatiated on the illusion of disarmament and peace. Thus did the Axis, for public consumption, get its name. Mussolini did not neglect his second line of defense in the Balkans. Although reserving kind words for the military qualities and courage of the Hungarians, Mussolini held out an olive branch to Yugoslavia,14 one of Hungary’s deadly enemies, which had been charged in Budapest with persecuting Magyars and living on the stolen sacred lands of the ancient crown of St. Stephen. Indeed, Mussolini was careful to stress that the newly born Axis was not intended to be a closed group hostile to the rest of the world but rather an axis around which to build a structure of European collaboration. He also indicated the desire for a ‘‘clear, rapid, and complete understanding [with Britain, but not France] on the basis of the recognition of our reciprocal interests.’’15 Still, Mussolini’s elocution confirmed the widening Italian distance from the Western Powers in order to associate more closely with Germany, a process begun with Ethiopia and continued by Italy’s departure from the League the next year, accompanied by a large influx of Italian ‘‘volunteers’’ in Spain. On 16 November 1936, Italy and Germany recognized the Franco regime. This was a serious step. By acknowledging Franco to be the head of the legitimate government in Spain even before the capture of Madrid, Italy and Germany had proclaimed their determination to ensure the defeat of the Spanish Republic. Germany stood to profit immensely from this collaboration. A prolonged Italian involvement in Spain would result in the estrangement of Italy from Britain, which fully suited Hitler’s purposes; the Anglo-Italian ‘‘Gentleman’s Agreement’’ was about to be voided and Mussolini to become more dependent on him. Germany would provide enough materiel to ensure that Franco did not lose, but not enough for a quick victory. Mussolini would be encouraged by the theme of an Axis antiCommunist crusade—a theme strongly emphasized in Hitler’s Nuremberg speech of 13 September—to bind himself hand and foot to Franco, which would bog Italy down indefinitely in Spain while the Fu¨ hrer kept his options open. So what if Mussolini hogged the stage as the high priest of antiBolshevism? Now Go¨ ring thrust himself forward as the choreographer of the Austrian ballet by visiting Rome in January 1937 in order to sow distrust of Schuschnigg. He informed the Duce that the Schuschnigg regime was disgraced for having denigrated National Socialism; likewise, the Communist danger was not being addressed. Italy should prompt Schuschnigg to respect the 11 July agreement and acknowledge Germany’s hereditary rights in Austria.

The Dictators Converge

153

Mussolini assured him: ‘‘If anyone should speak again of the ‘guardia al Brennero,’ they should not count on Italy in any way.’’ He also agreed to apply pressure on Schuschnigg to live up to the Gentleman’s Agreement. Unwilling to challenge Go¨ ring on the Anschluss question, the Duce relied on the field marshal’s promise that Germany would consult with Italy before undertaking any forceful change in Austria. Their differences boiled down to this: Go¨ ring had no specific plan for Anschluss but intended to move things along as rapidly as possible in the expectation of Italian compliance, while Mussolini, who had no specific plan for avoiding Anschluss, hoped the problem would go away and torment him no longer.16 Next on the agenda was Spain. It occurred to the Italians that there was an imbalance: Italy was providing more aid to Franco than was Germany. Although his country was seriously strapped for funds, Mussolini would not press Go¨ ring to open up the German wallet for the Spanish Nationalists, fearing that this would augment German influence in the Mediterranean at Italy’s invitation. As Ciano told the diplomat Roberto Cantalupo: ‘‘If we close the door of Spain to the Russians, only to open it to the Germans, we can kiss our Latin and Mediterranean policy goodby.’’17 Mussolini and Go¨ ring were both quite capable of saying different things to different people, sometimes with a measure of cunning and duplicity, at other times with disarming frankness. Behind Mussolini’s back, Go¨ ring repeatedly reprimanded the Hungarians for their close ties with Rome,18 and he told Schuschnigg: ‘‘Listen, Herr Bundeskanzler [chancellor], neither of us need these Italians. We shall straighten out such matters between ourselves. For us the only way is to do things from state to state without the interference of third parties.’’19 Go¨ ring had not hidden anything from Mussolini. The inevitability of Anschluss was a tacit assumption left unstated during the January visit, but it was expressed unambiguously in April when the two men conferred again.20 The Duce undoubtedly found Go¨ ring’s bluster on Austria offensive and his vanity irritating; it was Ciano who admired him and cultivated certain shared tastes.21 But apart from the astonishing fact that the Italians would repeatedly host the most impatient and noisiest annexationist in the Reich, the Germans and Italians continued their dangerous communication in code. Their talk of a joint crusade against Communism stood for a joint determination to stand against the Western Powers.22 Mussolini’s guard against Anschluss, as a consequence, was reduced one more notch. In hardly auspicious circumstances, Mussolini met with Schuschnigg in Venice in April 1937. Although behind the scenes, D. M. Tuninetti, Mussolini’s agent and the new Italian press officer in the Vienna legation had urged Schuschnigg to absorb chosen ‘‘nationals’’ into the Fatherland Front as a means of ending their agitation against the government, there was little exchange on this subject during the Venice meeting, other than the Duce’s reflection that Go¨ ring had complained to him about Austria’s halting im-

154

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

plementation of the Gentleman’s Agreement. If Austria was no longer an Italian military protectorate, Mussolini implied that it would enjoy the protection of the Axis; he was pleased to hear that Schuschnigg was determined to avoid the Paris–Prague alignment. Mussolini advised that Schuschnigg emphasize Austria as a German state while affirming substantial differences in religion and culture. Mussolini made an oral promise that he would uphold Austria’s independence, but he nullified that gesture by omitting such a pledge in the final communique´ . On the day that Schuschnigg departed for home, Mussolini’s mouthpiece in the Italian press, Virginio Gayda, implied in the Giornale d’Italia that the Austrian chancellor and the Duce had agreed to the admission of Austrian Nazis into the Fatherland Front as a first step to their sharing power in the government.23 Angry that his talks with Mussolini had been misrepresented, Schuschnigg demanded a public disavowal.24 But even his own minister in Rome admitted that the Italians had pointed out the desirability of expanding the Fatherland Front with more Nazis.25 Whatever the distortions, Schuschnigg was truly embarrassed at being so badly compromised among colleagues back home who had yet to be briefed on the results of the Venice talks. Insensitive to the Austrian chancellor’s delicate political situation, Ciano admitted that he had Gayda publish the article to hold Schuschnigg to his Venice commitment that more Nazi sympathizers would be incorporated into his government.26 Mussolini and Schuschnigg parted company estranged and pessimistic.27 Schuschnigg was in no mood to suffer the Duce’s advice on Austria’s internal affairs, while Mussolini was determined to avoid anything that would antagonize the Germans, even if that meant toeing Berlin’s Austrian line. The Gayda affair reveals that the Duce was squiring the Fascist proNazi fronde into prominence. In using a favored pen to discredit Austria and its fumbling chancellor, Mussolini seemed not to care that Gayda was obtaining his information on Austria directly from that country’s Nazis and their sympathizers. The Austrian foreign ministry unsuccessfully sent reliable reporters to Rome to set the record straight.28 Ciano outdid the Duce in demonstrating a readiness to throw Austria over. He did not like the country and was unwilling to cut ties with the Third Reich to save it. To mask the dangers of Anschluss, Ciano indulged in the fantasy that Italy’s security and its hold on the Alto Adige would be left unaffected. The Brenner was easier to defend than the Rhine, he was wont to lecture the French, for it was snowbound much of the year and contained rocky, unassailable passes.29 Ciano’s pro-German following accelerated the speed with which ideology in Fascist Italy was outpacing Realpolitik. Austria had fallen out of step with the Axis. Schuschnigg’s government was considered much too clerical and tainted with democracy for radical Fascist tastes; nothing less than outright dictatorship based on the Fu¨ hrer principle would satisfy them. Since Austria had rejected Italian

The Dictators Converge

155

Fascism as a model, as was dolefully admitted by Ciano’s cohort, the Nazis were backed as the only worthy alternative.30 Mussolini’s tilt toward the Third Reich and his mounting disinterest in Schuschnigg are largely explained by his fear that Hitler, if double-crossed by Italy on Austria, might leave him at the mercy of the Western Powers in the Spanish imbroglio, where Fascist prestige had been heavily invested in the cause of General Franco’s Nationalists. The Italian defeat at Guadalahara in March threatened to upset Mussolini’s timetable. Having expected a quick capture of Madrid, which now appeared far off, he had planned to rush troops from Spain back to the Brenner before Hitler moved into Austria, thus delaying, if not checking, an Anschluss. The bottom line had been that Mussolini wanted time to fortify the defense of the South Tyrol against the engorged Nazi colossus. But the restoration of Italian prestige in Spain was more important than garrisoning the Brenner. Haunted by Anschluss, Mussolini needled an American reporter: ‘‘Next fall I am going to invite Hitler to come into Austria and make Austria German,’’31 as if the Fu¨ hrer needed any prompting from Rome. Ever the provocateur, Mussolini hid from his own growing despair over Austria’s future by making officials and journalists of democratic governments that he did not like squirm in discomfort and fear. ITALO-YUGOSLAV RAPPROCHEMENT Many aspects of the Italo-Yugoslav relationship had recently changed. With Austrian independence hanging by a thread, the feeling in Rome of an inherent, irreconcilable hostility toward its Adriatic neighbor began to subside. Italy contemplated a new approach toward Yugoslavia without repudiating its long-standing ambitions—separating Yugoslavia from the Little Entente and sabotaging a suspected French intention to tighten ties with Belgrade. But hard negotiation lay ahead to dissipate the enduring suspicion between the two nations arising from their rivalry over Albania, Italy’s asylum for runaway Croatian terrorists, and Mussolini’s assumed complicity in the assassination of King Alexander in 1934. The Italians were fortunate to find that Milan Stojadinovic´ , the new Yugoslav premier, was partial to authoritarian government and an admirer of the Duce, even though he had annoyed the Italians by upholding League sanctions during the Ethiopian conflict. In keeping with Mussolini’s desire to conclude something ‘‘serious’’ or nothing, Ciano drew up an Italian draft for an exclusive alliance that was forwarded to Belgrade in January 1937. To the Yugoslavs, he revealed his fear and suspicion of Germany: ‘‘I am a friend of Germany but—between us and confidentially—Germany is not only a dangerous adversary to her enemies but a difficult friend to her friends.’’32 The supposedly secret negotiations were leaked to the British. Reeling

156

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

from Eden’s harsh criticism of an exclusive alliance with Italy, Stojadinovic´ was able to satisfy the Italians with a watered-down version, which was signed on 25 March 1937. The Italians made important concessions; they promised to respect the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia and agreed to keep the Croatian terrorists confined to their camps in Italy. On the Albanian question, the Yugoslavs tacitly recognized Italy’s ‘‘acquired position’’ as delineated in the Ambassadors’ Conference of 1921. A trade agreement followed that was intended to increase the volume of goods exchanged between the two countries. It was clear to everyone that Stojadinovic´ had downgraded France and the Little Entente in favor of alignment with Rome. Ciano paid him the ultimate compliment: ‘‘Stojadinovic´ is a Fascist.’’33 By pursuing rapprochement with Yugoslavia, the Italians were taking up a strategy that had been tried before, in 1932–1933, with a singular lack of success. To achieve the destruction of the Little Entente and the elimination of French influence in the Balkans, they endeavored once again in 1937 to trade cold war and subversion for rapprochement and authoritarian unity with Belgrade. As before, in the case of Hitler’s crusade to remove Dollfuss, Rome’s willingness to resolve old differences with a former bitter enemy amicably was chiefly induced by the change in the constellation of power in Eastern Europe wrought by Germany’s resurgence. In anticipation of Anschluss (Ciano told the Yugoslav Prince Paul that ‘‘The Anschluss is inevitable’’),34 Italy hoped to rekindle Belgrade’s interest in a Rome-led alignment that would serve as a replacement for the Roman Protocols to safeguard Italian interests south of the Danube.35 But not in cooperation with the Little Entente; the alignment would consist of Poland, Hungary, and a Romania that was expected to sever ties with Paris. Ironically, Berlin, simultaneously seeking a rapprochement with Yugoslavia, had been urging the Italians to do likewise and seemed unaware of the anti-German slant to the Rome–Belgrade negotiations.36 ¨ HRER MEET THE DUCE AND FU Notwithstanding the cold reception afforded Ciano by the Viennese in May 1937, he made a belated effort to gain Germany’s acquiescence in Austria’s independence. In early July, he submitted a memorandum to Berlin, advocating a four-power agreement between Italy, Germany, Hungary, and Austria—a warmed-over version of Julius Go¨ mbo¨ s’ plan to extend the Roman Protocols to include Berlin.37 A cat-and-mouse game ensued. Constantin von Neurath immediately dismissed Ciano’s proposal as contrary to the Axis spirit, whose consecration was to take place during the Duce’s upcoming German visit in September.38 Mussolini and Ciano were obviously chafing over the meager results of the Axis and wanted to remind the Germans that Italy still had an interest in Austria. But all that was forgotten

The Dictators Converge

157

when the Duce stepped onto German soil. He was tremendously impressed with German military war production figures and swept off his feet by the goose-stepping parades of the S.S. and the motorized columns of the Wehrmacht. Only when a violent thunderstorm interrupted his speech before 800,000 intoxicated Nazis at the Maifeld in Berlin on 28 September did cracks appear in the aura of German efficiency. The Duce, soaked to the skin, his prepared notes drenched, was hustled away by a single chauffeur. But that unfortunate experience did not cause him to repudiate what he had proclaimed: ‘‘When Fascism has a friend, it will march with that friend to the last.’’ Mesmerized by German discipline, Mussolini returned home resolved to transform Fascist Italy into the Nazi image. Margherita Sarfatti, an astute observer of Mussolini’s behavior, commented: ‘‘God, how he’s changed, he’s really another person. I am a writer, I sense it even in his style that he is completely changed.’’39 Perhaps it was not that the Duce had changed so much as that changing events had brought forth basic character flaws and ideological prejudices. Although no special agreements had been signed, Hitler had achieved an important psychological advantage: The matter of Austria did not prevent the mutual esteem between himself and the Duce from turning into mutual veneration. Both Mussolini and Ciano shied away from the subject of Austria for fear of provoking Hitler. Doubtless, too, their discretion was prompted by the belief that Germany would drop Italy in favor of Britain should Rome dampen the Axis fires by bringing up this Teutonic taboo. Only Go¨ ring raised the question of Austria while the Italians were in Germany, and the Fu¨ hrer correctly inferred from their silence that he had a free hand. The Italians, for their part, administered a stiff rebuff to Austria and Hungary by refusing to meet their ministers during the German festivities. The last Italian anti-Nazi obstacle in Vienna was removed when Francesco Salata was recalled in late September. A deplorable consequence of Mussolini’s visit was his attempt to foist on his countrymen certain admired Nazi mannerisms and habits. Military exercises, parades, and Fascist uniforms for high-ranking Italian bureaucrats became the order of the day. The elderly and obese were required, as were young people, to demonstrate their fitness by jumping through fire rings. The goose-step was declared de rigueur for military reviews, though it was thoroughly botched by Italian troops. Less humorous was Mussolini’s strengthened determination that ‘‘henceforth the [Fascist] revolution must impinge upon the habits of the Italians. They must learn to be less ‘sympathetic,’ in order to become hard, relentless, and hateful—in fact, masters.’’40 Convinced that Hitler was irresistible and Nazi power invincible, Mussolini was ever more resolved to make the Rome–Berlin Axis a postulate of Italian foreign policy. Germany had become what he dreamt to make of Italy: a gigantic war camp where millions of disciplined and

158

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

brainwashed fanatics would joyously worship him as the Germans did the Fu¨ hrer. Meanwhile, Germany and Italy labored to factor Japan into the Axis equation. During the summer of 1936, Italy had eagerly pressed Japan for a close political alignment. To make themselves an attractive diplomatic partner, the Italians ostentatiously took the Japanese side in their dispute with China. Alignment with one of the world’s great naval powers could divert British attention away from the Mediterranean. But, since this strong Anglophobe medicine was too much for the Japanese to stomach, the idea of a bilateral alliance between Rome and Tokyo lost momentum. The Germans stepped in to pick up the thread. Joachim von Ribbentrop arrived in Rome in November 1937 to bring Italy into a tripartite alliance with Germany and Japan. Ciano was ecstatic that three nations were poised to embark on a war ‘‘to break through the crust which is stifling the energy and the aspirations of the young nations.’’41 Despite Ciano’s optimism, no military alliance was signed; he had to be satisfied with a milder protocol that on 6 November made Italy a charter member of the Anti-Comintern Pact. If a tripartite united front against Britain remained a chimera, Mussolini was able to establish a tighter rapport with the Germans on Austria when he confided to von Ribbentrop that he was ‘‘tired of mounting guard over Austrian independence, especially if the Austrians no longer want their independence.’’ Italy’s interest in the little truncated state was ‘‘no longer as lively as it was some years ago for one thing because of Italy’s imperialist development which was concentrating her interest in the Mediterranean and the Colonies.’’ The best thing to do, he continued, ‘‘is to let events take their natural course.’’42 The belief that the Austrians ‘‘had not modified in the slightest their cold and negative attitude towards us’’ was reinforced in the Duce by unflattering comments regarding Italy that the Austrian foreign minister, Guido Schmidt, was alleged to have made to the British Permanent Under-Secretary Sir Robert Vansittart.43 Angered, Ciano intended ‘‘to ask for Guido Schmidt’s scalp.’’44 The new Italian minister in Vienna, Pellegrino Ghigi, was given a description of his task ‘‘as that of a doctor who has to give oxygen to a dying man without the dying man’s heir noticing. In case of doubt we are more interested in the heir than in the dying man.’’45 ‘‘When the Spanish question is liquidated,’’ noted Ciano in typical Fascist braggadocio, ‘‘he [Mussolini] will invite Go¨ ring to nazify Austria.’’46 THE SPANISH QUAGMIRE The Italian contribution to the Nationalist camp was at first limited to the supply of military equipment. What had started as a trickle of Italian arms during the opening phase of the Spanish Civil War had by early spring 1937 reached flood proportions—tanks, heavy guns, and 50,000 troops.

The Dictators Converge

159

Spain was originally Ciano’s war, which prompted him to fish simultaneously in other troubled waters by suggesting to the Turks that they pounce on the French mandate of Alessandretta.47 Expectations were raised for a quick end to Republican resistance with the capture of Ma´ laga in February, which the Fascists celebrated as a tribute to their e´ lan. Concentrated on the Castilian Plateau, Mussolini’s ‘‘volunteer’’ army prepared for a dash into Madrid in early March, crowned with a glorious flag-blessing of Italian arms in the Spanish capital. The war would soon be over, and the Blackshirts would return home to recount their heroic deeds to wives, lovers, and comrades. On 10 March, Mussolini sailed to Libya for a theatrical inspection of his North African colony. A week later, he mounted a horse and brandished ‘‘The Sword of Islam’’ at a parade of Arab cavalrymen, symbolic of his dream to drive the British and French from the Arab world and bring it under Italian rule. The visit had been prefaced with Arab-language broadcasts by Radio Bari, beamed to audiences throughout the Near East, which conveyed the message that Arab peoples had an ally in ‘‘Proletarian Italy’’ against British and French exploitation. In the attempt to foment discord in British-controlled areas, Mussolini hid Italy’s imperialist conquest of Libya behind his pose as ‘‘The Protector of Islam.’’ Just as inconsistent was the Duce’s effort to court simultaneously both Arab nationalists and Zionists.48 Mussolini wanted to announce the fall of Madrid from the Roman ruins in Libya as one more step toward the recreation of the Roman empire. But this scheme was rudely interrupted on 18 March by news that the Italian advance on Madrid had been checked at Guadalahara by the Republican forces. The poorly trained Fascist militia was thrown into battle on a narrow front and in foul weather. When the offensive stalled in a sea of mud, waves of heavy Soviet tanks counterattacked, flanked by infantry of the International Brigades that included the anti-Fascist Garibaldi Battalion. The panicked Blackshirts fell back in disarray, though regular Italian army troops were able to halt the Republican attack the next day. Ernest Hemingway was certainly mistaken in proclaiming Guadalahara as one of the truly decisive battles of all time, for it only temporarily derailed the Nationalists’ offensive. But Italy was draped in mourning, while the Republican forces took heart and the Italian political exiles gloated. The battle represented the first defeat for Fascist arms and a terrible humiliation for Mussolini, as well as a blow to the amour propre of the country, which had just successfully expunged the blot of Adua. Instead of cutting his losses and withdrawing from the Spanish conflict, Mussolini was prompted by the defeat at Guadalahara to avenge himself against the ‘‘reds’’ and the critics of Fascism around the world for taking delight in the humiliation inflicted on the Blackshirts by the Garibaldini. Mussolini’s propaganda machine swung into high gear with diatribes against Britain. The Gentleman’s

160

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

Agreement, which was supposed to presage an Anglo-Italian entente, was further shredded by more ‘‘volunteers’’ for Spain and reinforcements to Libya. Eden concluded from all this activity that Mussolini was perennially dissatisfied, drunk with power, and a gangster whose controlled press portrayed Britain as decadent and senile.49 Instead of a ‘‘satisfied’’ power, Mussolini’s Italy was on the prowl to extend its power over Egypt, the Sudan, and the Red Sea, and it therefore deserved to be ranked high on Britain’s official list of possible enemies. But Eden was not imbued with any sense of urgency. Belittling Italy’s war-making capabilities, he took care not ‘‘to run after’’ the Italians to grant them de jure recognition of the Italian empire. Furthermore, Eden received a clear warning from the Admiralty to go easy on Italy, which represented far less of a naval menace to British interests than either Germany or Japan. In addition, Neville Chamberlain, who became prime minister on 28 May 1937, was ready to make sacrifices to secure Mussolini’s goodwill in order to disrupt the Rome–Berlin Axis and thereby strengthen the British hand in relations with Germany. On 10 June, Chamberlain declared at a gala Conservative dinner party that it would be ‘‘the very mid-summer of madness’’ to imagine that the independence of Ethiopia could be preserved by the continuation of sanctions. True, Hitler had the highest priority in Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, but Mussolini was not far behind. Dino Grandi moved to exploit Chamberlain’s amiability. Knowing that any initiative for breaking the Anglo-Italian deadlock would not emanate from the proud Mussolini, Grandi on 27 July 1937 contrived a fictitious message from the Duce, alleging his desire for an improved atmosphere with Britain. Grandi took it upon himself to summarize this ‘‘message’’ orally to Chamberlain, bypassing Eden.50 Chamberlain gratefully responded to the Duce’s ‘‘goodwill’’ by writing him a friendly letter that held out the promise of concessions. Grandi’s gambit worked. Mussolini believed that Chamberlain, not he, had taken the initiative in making a fresh start. But Chamberlain had to overcome the major issue troubling the Italians: the lack of British recognition for the Italian empire. To avoid a public outcry in Britain, Chamberlain chose to proceed through the League by having each member released from its collective obligations toward Ethiopia.51 His hopes were quickly dashed by foot-dragging in Rome. Instead of encouraging Mussolini to strike while the iron was hot, Ciano preferred to postpone negotiations with Chamberlain out of his petty jealousy toward Grandi; more important still, an accord with Japan that bore anti-British connotations held center stage. In brief, Italy’s negotiations with Britain were foiled by German intrigues to block an Italo-British accord, a lack of pragmatism in the diplomacy of Ciano, and the psychological incapacity of Mussolini to expose himself to ridicule by extricating Italy from Spain without first avenging Guadalahara.

The Dictators Converge

161

In early August, responding to Franco’s exhortations, Mussolini stepped up his intervention by ordering Italian submarines to attack Soviet ships loaded with weapons and supplies en route to Spanish government ports from the Black Sea. When a British-registered tanker was sunk, the Western Powers stiffened themselves against Italian ‘‘piracy’’ by calling for a conference at Nyon; there a system of patrols would be developed for the Mediterranean to curb further submarine attacks against neutral ships ferrying goods to Spain. The French sniffed a victory over Fascist Italy in this impending stiff rebuke. By putting enforcement into the nonintervention policy, a European conflict could be avoided and the Republicans given a better chance to repulse the Franco-led rebels. Anglo-French resolve to discipline Italy was thrown into doubt, however, by a rift between Chamberlain and Eden over the most appropriate approach to Mussolini, a rift that became obvious at a cabinet meeting on 8 September. Eden insisted that unilateral British concessions, such as recognition of the Italian empire, would merely whet Mussolini’s imperialist appetite and provide further evidence of British weakness and retreat. Chamberlain countered with the argument that Mussolini’s ‘‘letter’’ held out hope for breathing life into the moribund Anglo-Italian Gentleman’s Agreement.52 On 10 September, the Nyon Conference convened. When the Soviet Union denounced Italy and Germany for piracy on the high seas, the latter two declined to make an appearance. The Italians were caught off balance by the unwonted firmness of the Western Powers, who ignored their refusal to participate and continued the conference. Overcoming their pride, the Italians arrived late with the Germans. By the end of October, final arrangements had been made for Italian participation in the patrolling of the Mediterranean to begin on 11 November. Much to Italy’s satisfaction, the Soviet fleet’s patrol duty was confined to the Black Sea. Unexpectedly, peace prevailed on the high seas. As the British Admiralty learned from decrypted signals, Italy had suspended its underwater depredations, which made Nyon appear as a triumph of firmness against Italian lawlessness. A month later, however, Mussolini put the lie to this notion by shipping more aircraft, four submarines, two destroyers, and, eventually, more troops to the Nationalists. In this belligerent mood, Mussolini ordered his delegates to storm out of Geneva on 13 November. As his parting shot, he portrayed the League Council as ‘‘fools, maneuvered by turbid occult forces, enemies of our Italy and of our revolution.’’ Chamberlain’s position in London was thereby rendered dubious: How could he recognize Italy’s empire by securing the approval of the League from which the Duce had just rudely taken his leave? To further confound Chamberlain, Mussolini, despite the warm welcome he had accorded Lady Chamberlain (the widow of the former Foreign Secretary Sir Austen) in December 1937, directly challenged the Nyon Conference the next month by renewing submarine

162

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

attacks in the Mediterranean. This act confirmed that the Duce was determined to achieve victory for Franco, regardless of the diplomatic consequences. Fortunately for Mussolini, the British and French representatives at Nyon had no real intention of enforcing ‘‘freedom of the seas’’ and nonintervention in the Spanish Civil War. But if the Duce proved that he was once again, as in Ethiopia, prepared to walk to the brink with the Western Powers over the Spanish question, a terrible truth finally came home to him: Rather than aiming for a quick victory by rapid movements and large frontal attacks, as was hoped for in Rome, Franco sought to conquer territory and wear down the enemy in a war of attrition. No matter how much military assistance Mussolini sent, no decisive battle was joined. Adding insult to miscalculation, Franco did not really want any more Italian troops, whose fighting abilities he derided; hence Italy was sucked ever deeper into the Spanish quicksands.53 But not Hitler. Apart from the shameless bombardment of the open city of Guernica and other splashy exploits by the Condor Legion, Hitler kept direct German military involvement small and under firm control. Unlike the Duce, the Fu¨ hrer did not tie the prestige of his regime to the success of Franco’s cause. In spite of a diminished supply of German weaponry, Berlin did far better than Rome in securing important economic advantages from the Franco regime. And the longer the war lasted, the greater the tension between Italy and the Western Powers that would keep Mussolini bound to Hitler. Instead of cutting his losses by removing his troops from Spain, Mussolini ordered that they wage a resolute and ruthless war. True, more than a few Italian representatives and generals, even Mussolini and Ciano from time to time, protested against Franco’s mass executions and torture of his enemies.54 But the Duce and his son-in-law themselves knew how to be merciless. Ciano ordered that the water supply of enemy towns be cut off, and Mussolini ordained that any anti-Fascist Italian taken prisoner in Spain be shot. In March 1938, the Duce ordered a pitiless bombing of Barcelona that had no redeeming military value but gave his country a reputation for pugnacity and ruthlessness; the bombing irritated even Franco and his generals, who were systematically practicing atrocities against any captured Spaniards suspected of Republican sympathies. Ciano reported Mussolini as ‘‘delighted that the Italians should be horrifying the world by their aggressiveness for a change, instead of charming it by their skill at playing the guitar. In his [Mussolini’s] opinion this will send up our stock in Germany too, where they love total and ruthless war.’’55 No matter where one’s sympathies lay, on the side of the Republicans or the Nationalists, the Spanish civil conflict witnessed unimaginable barbarities on both sides that were daily committed in violation of any military etiquette or law of war. Joseph Stalin’s deeds were among these. The senseless purges, arbitrary shootings, and kangaroo courts carried out by Soviet

The Dictators Converge

163

agents against anarchists, comrades-in-arms, and Trotskyist enemies have by now been well-documented. Less well-known is that Italian brutality in this war was not only close to that found in the suppression of Libya during the 1920s and in the conquest and ‘‘pacification’’ of Ethiopia, but not far below the brutality visited by the Spaniards on each other and by Germans on the Spaniards of the Republican persuasion. This truth perhaps was partially obscured by the failure of Pablo Picasso to put his brush and easel to use in exposing the Barcelona outrage as he did the German bombardment of Guernica that so horrified the civilized world. On the whole, Mussolini’s intervention in the Spanish conflict appeared ‘‘altruistic,’’ in the sense that he made no serious move either to acquire the Balearic islands or obtain economic advantages. Indeed, Mussolini’s support of the Spanish insurgents seemed ‘‘disinterested’’ when compared to the rank opportunism and ruthless calculation marking Nazi Germany’s military contribution. This restraint was due not to altruism or disinterestedness, however, but to a lack of leverage and credibility. Franco, the consummate realist, knew that Mussolini had overextended himself, was isolated, and discredited by his army’s spotty performance, and so he replied with negligible payback and niggardly praise. Many high-ranking Italians wanted fair compensation for their largess, but Mussolini, in his weakness, had to be satisfied with posturing as the Fascist ‘‘padre’’ protecting the ‘‘healthy’’ elements of the Spanish population against the atheistic ‘‘reds.’’ Mussolini was similarly deterrred from making a sustained effort to impose Fascist institutions on the Franco regime by support of the Spanish Falange. Aside from the ill-fated mission to Spain by the radical Cremona Fascist leader Roberto Farinacci, who was ultimately laughed out of the Nationalist camp, Mussolini refrained from any political interference in the Burgos regime, save exhortations to speed up the pace of the war by more reliance on Italian generalship and troops. Although constantly grumbling over Franco’s military ineptitude and stalling tactics, the Duce put up with Spanish contempt and indifference, satisfied to fight a comradely antiCommunist crusade. This, he hoped, would prevent a red regime in Madrid from joining forces with the French Popular Front, a liaison that would have jeopardized Italy’s Mediterranean security by facilitating the shuttling of French troops from their bases in Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco to the homeland. But after the battle of Guadalahara, ideological imperatives joined strategic calculation. Mussolini interpreted Stalin’s growing control of the Republican forces as a signal for the Communist International to line up the weak-kneed European democracies to roll back reactionary and Fascist movements everywhere in Europe. Behind the Popular Front stratagem, in the Duce’s view, was Stalin’s ulterior motive of imposing Communism on enfeebled and degenerate liberal-Masonic societies deprived of their virile and regenerative life-forces. No less than for the sympathizers of the Span-

164

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

ish Republic, the Spanish Civil War was, for Mussolini, the focal point of a life-and-death struggle between Fascism and Communism whose outcome would decide the fate of Europe. As a mark of his own fatalism, the Duce took the anti-Fascist fuorusciti refrain with deadly seriousness: ‘‘Today in Spain, tomorrow in Italy.’’ What had started out as improvisation was ending up as an ideological commitment to save Spain from Bolshevism and the Axis Powers from Communist encirclement. ITALY AND THE ANSCHLUSS On 12 February 1938, Schuschnigg drove from Salzburg to visit Hitler at Berchtesgaden, hoping that Germany would confirm the recognition of Austrian independence embodied in the Austro-German Agreement of July 1936. Instead, Hitler bullied and shouted. Surrounded by his glowering generals and his surly S.S. guards with their leashed and snapping German shepherd dogs, Hitler threatened armed attack. Buckling under this brutal show of force, Schuschnigg agreed to allow the progressive nazification of Austria. Hitler’s dramatic ultimatum prompted Mussolini and Ciano to revive Anglo-Italian negotiations before the beginning of the final stage of Hitler’s offensive against Austria. On 16 February, Ciano instructed Grandi to solicit an accord on the issues dividing Italy and Britain—the Ethiopian empire, the Mediterranean, and Italy’s ‘‘volunteers’’ in Spain—before an Anschluss irretrievably weakened Italy’s diplomatic leverage; otherwise, the world would view Italian overtures to London as being induced by German pressure on the Brenner. If an Anschluss should occur, ‘‘then we would have to direct our policy in a spirit of sharp, open, and immutable hostility towards the Western Powers.’’56 But Ciano was not prepared to oppose Anschluss; he was concerned only that Hitler’s speeded-up timetable would weaken his negotiating hand in London. His irritation with Berlin for failing to inform Italy of the showdown with Schuschnigg did not dampen his enthusiasm for the Axis. Oddly, Grandi was astonished by Ciano’s message; he felt it to be entirely out of line with the Axis, whose evolution over the years had given him no end of worry. Far from teaching London that Italy represented a key element of European and British security, Ciano’s letter, in Grandi’s view, demonstrated the correctness of Eden’s view that Italy should approach Britain hat in hand. On 18 February, two meetings of great moment took place between Grandi, Eden, and Chamberlain. In his vindictiveness toward Eden, Grandi affected indifference toward the Austrian question. He reproached Britain for letting Mussolini serve as the lone watchdog on the Brenner and exhibited unswerving loyalty to the Axis at the very moment that Berlin was imperiling the security of his country.57 When Chamberlain pressed him on whether Mussolini and Hitler had arrived at a meeting of the minds on

The Dictators Converge

165

Austria, Grandi ‘‘denied emphatically that any agreement . . . had been made.’’ Chamberlain was reassured, but not Eden. Although it was late in the day, Grandi continued, Mussolini would be encouraged to take a more independent line on the Austrian question if Britain would agree to a freewheeling discussion on all subjects touching on their mutual relations: Spain would not be a serious difficulty nor would propaganda. The talks should take place in Rome rather than in London. Still, Grandi would not accept outright a formula that Britain had put forward to cover the withdrawal of Italian volunteers from Spain before first consulting with his government.58 It was obvious that Grandi and Chamberlain were pursuing two interrelated themes; Eden was the odd man out. They wanted to repair the break between Britain and Italy and, by tacit collusion, to quash Eden’s sharp criticisms of Italian policy that blocked a resumption of talks. Hardly needing Ciano’s instruction that he undertake ‘‘any step that may add an arrow to Chamberlain’s quiver,’’59 Grandi reveled in Chamberlain’s obvious displeasure with his foreign secretary. Exploiting their differences, he had placed them squarely in the dilemma Ciano had dreamed of prior to the Italian foreign minister’s cry of alarm of 16 February: Britain must immediately open negotiations with Rome and grant de jure recognition of Italy’s empire in Ethiopia or Mussolini would tighten his bond with Germany. Even if, in this penultimate hour of Austria’s existence, Ciano and Grandi had had the aim of saving Schuschnigg—and most certainly, Ciano, for one, had long ago lost interest in Vienna’s fate—they knew that no help could be expected from London. The Rhineland precedent of 1936 was there for all to see. Both Chamberlain and Eden had long ago agreed that Britain was in no position to halt the expansion of German influence in Austria by force. The two Englishmen, however, did differ markedly on their interpretation of where Italy stood. Chamberlain saw Hitler’s threat to Austria as a direct challenge to Italian security. To counter any further menacing German moves into the Danube and Balkan regions, Mussolini, he felt, would be ever more anxious to reach an agreement with Britain on all outstanding issues. Chamberlain held that his superior comprehension of diplomatic calculation and economic logic would appeal to what he conceived to be Mussolini’s essential pragmatism and would overcome the expansionist drives in Fascist ideology that threatened to carry Italy into the German camp. Eden approached Fascist Italy from quite a different perspective. Since he believed that Mussolini had tacitly consented to Hitler’s campaign to draw Austria firmly within Germany’s sphere of influence, he discounted the possibility of using the Austrian question to disrupt the Rome–Berlin Axis. Finding Fascism repugnant and Mussolini a warmonger, Eden preferred to let negotiations with Rome drop completely. This impasse over Italian intentions was overcome by Chamberlain. Brushing aside his foreign secretary’s objections, he concluded that conver-

166

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

sations with Grandi must start at once, not with the purpose of saving Austria, but rather to make a fresh start on the outstanding Mediterranean issues dividing Britain and Italy. In the absence of an accord between Rome and London, he was fearful that a precipitate Austrian crisis would explode into a Franco-German conflict and that this would inevitably drag his country into war before it was prepared to fight. Disliking Nazi strong-armed methods, he would accommodate limited German expansion eastward if done by diplomatic agreement. Chamberlain gained support from many quarters for opening conversations with Italy: the Secretary of the Cabinet, Sir Maurice Hankey, the Admiralty, the majority in the Cabinet, and that exemplar among those who favored a stiff line against Germany, Duff Cooper, the First Lord of the Admiralty. Eden was isolated. Now that his dispute with Chamberlain had spilled out into the open, he felt he had no choice but to resign. When that announcement was made on 20 February, toasts were drunk in the Italian embassy, the Fascist press rejoiced, and Paris was enveloped in gloom over Britain’s surrender to the appeasement of Italy. Chamberlain told Grandi the following day that he perceived the Axis to be ‘‘a reality which can constitute perhaps a very precious pillar of European peace.’’60 The great absentee from the Anglo-Italian talks was France. The British were loath to include the French in the conversations with Grandi because they feared that Paris would take the Anschluss threat seriously and demand joint action with Britain to halt Hitler before he crossed the Austrian frontier. Since Chamberlain had no interest in supporting Italy as a bastion against German pressure on Austria, he would not let the French call his bluff. But there was no reason to worry. Whenever French Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos experienced anxiety over Nazi intrigues in Vienna, he would contemplate only a joint Anglo-French de´ marche to Berlin declaring opposition to Anschluss—but this was to be via words, not military action. What nettled the British was that Delbos, in his belief that Mussolini had already abandoned Austria in favor of Mediterranean ambitions—a not far-fetched assumption—dismissed the idea of cooperation with Italy. There is great irony here. Italy and France, coming from quite different perspectives, and out of sorts with each other, were both seeking ways to make their peace with the feared Third Reich on the eve of Austria’s demise and the destruction of the peace settlement in East Central Europe. Burdened by the Maginot mentality and a defeatism that softened them up to a German-dominated continent, the French sought to avoid war in an exercise of post-Rhineland ‘‘neo-realism.’’ Mussolini, on the other hand, avoiding the harsh reality that his peso determinante was shriveling to an Italian appeasement of Hitler, doggedly pursued Italian imperialism by means of intimidation, or threat of war, against the Western Powers—the Duce’s post-Anschluss ‘‘Realpolitik.’’ On the eve of Schuschnigg’s meeting with Hitler in Berchtesgaden on 12

The Dictators Converge

167

February, Ciano noted that Mussolini favored the nazification of Austria.61 Following this disastrous visit, Schuschnigg halfheartedly sought Mussolini’s counsel. Since the Duce had gone on a skiing trip, Schuschnigg could get no answer, only the information that Mussolini had tried unsuccessfully to persuade Hitler by telephone ‘‘to adopt an attitude of moderation.’’62 While officially the Duce pretended not to be aroused over Hitler’s moves at Berchtesgaden, in private he was, according to Ciano, irritated over Germany’s failure to keep Italy apprised.63 Ciano claimed to have invited Schuschnigg to publish details of the part played by Italy in the Austrian crisis: ‘‘The truth is that we only learned about the whole thing after the fait accompli when there was no possible alternative and nothing remained for us but to give our approval to what Schuschnigg had done.’’64 The real truth is that Ciano had long ago written Austria off. ‘‘What in fact could we do?’’ he wrote plaintively on 23 February, ‘‘Start a war with Germany?’’65 Moreover, Schuschnigg, knowing that Mussolini would do little, if anything, made no strong appeal to Italy for assistance—an appeal, in any event, that he preferred not to make. Nor did the diplomatic wires hum between Vienna and Rome either after Schuschnigg’s promulgation of a plebiscite to head off a German invasion or after Germany’s ultimatum that he cancel it and resign. When informed of the planned plebiscite, the Duce advised against it.66 And when, on the penultimate day of Austria’s independence, Schuschnigg turned to Rome for advice, Ciano, after consulting Mussolini, noted in his diary that Italy should not be held to account. Rather than take any of the blame, Ciano lambasted the Western Powers: ‘‘Do they expect to rebuild Stresa in an hour, with Hannibal at the gates?’’ It was France and England that had lost Austria, he argued, and concluded defiantly that Italy, in the meantime, had acquired Abyssinia.67 No matter how one judges Schuschnigg’s strategy of taking on Hitler by himself, the belief in Vienna that the Protocols Bloc had enjoyed a resurgence vanished without a trace when Mussolini failed to lift a finger in Austria’s defense following Germany’s unopposed invasion and annexation of the country on 12 March. The Duce told Hitler’s special envoy, the Prince of Hesse, that same evening: ‘‘Italy is following events with absolute calm.’’ The Fu¨ hrer was ecstatic: ‘‘I will never forget this.’’68 Now that Austria was finished and Eden was out of the way, Rome and London could commence work on a settlement of their own differences. Since both sides wanted to end their public bickering, it did not take long. The ‘‘Easter Accords’’ between Italy and Britain were signed on 16 April 1938, reaffirming the Gentleman’s Agreement of 2 January 1937. Since the British were now reconciled to a Nationalist victory in Spain, they cared only to contain Italy’s interference in the conflict so as to prevent any escalation into a Franco-Italian conflict. London was therefore satisfied when Italy pledged to begin a program of evacuating its volunteers from Spain

168

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

and to remove all men and war materiel at the end of hostilities. Britain, in turn, agreed to sponsor legislation in Geneva that would free the League’s member nations to recognize the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. But before the accords could be enforced, there remained a key issue: The British made recognition of Italian sovereignty in Ethiopia conditional on Italian compliance with their formula for the withdrawal of Italy’s ‘‘volunteers’’ from Spain. Mussolini concluded that an Anglo-Italian condominium had been established in the Mediterranean, while Chamberlain waxed optimistic that Mussolini’s appetite for imperialist expansion had been quenched. In compliance with Italy’s wishes, the British left the French out of the Easter Accords; Mussolini wanted no revival of the Stresa Front. Much had changed since 1934 when Mussolini, from a position of strength, had rushed troops to the Brenner as a strong deterrent to German invasion. Dollfuss had been assassinated, and a less compliant and ‘‘simpatico’’ Schuschnigg held power in a country racked by internal divisions. In Mussolini’s view, Hitler had become unassailable. What irony! In truth, at the time of the Anschluss, German rearmament was less than it appeared, and the German economy was weaker than its opponents believed. A reconstruction of the Stresa Front would still have been possible to contain the expansion of the Third Reich. But the Italians, as well as the British and French, were victims of Hitler’s bluff and their own fear of Nazi Germany. None of them dared to stop the Fu¨ hrer. Given the lassitude and indifference on the part of Britain and France toward Austria’s fate, perhaps Italy could have done nothing to deny Hitler his Anschluss prize, nor could Austria’s own political leaders deny responsibility for their country’s vulnerability to Nazi pressure and its ultimate diplomatic isolation. Eduard Benesˇ and his friends from the Little Entente also share culpability in their paranoia about a Habsburg restoration and their refusal to grant Austria economic concessions and diplomatic support. Reacting to Fascist Italy’s hostility, they showed a self-serving opportunism that ensured that the Habsburg successor states, Italy included, would meet the rising PanGerman menace fragmented and divided. But if Mussolini was a hapless victim of the Anschluss, much of his predicament was of his own making. Since Mussolini was opposed to the formation of coalition governments in Vienna that included liberals or Marxists, to qualify for Italy’s protection, Austria would have had to be an authoritarian state, no matter how much that would limit Schuschnigg’s choices in broadening his political support against the mounting Nazi threat. For Mussolini to have condoned a political mix that included middle-of-the-road elements and liberals, let alone Austrian Social Democracy, would have required him to turn in his Blackshirt for democratic broadcloth. Incapable of such an ideological somersault, Mussolini was deaf to the Cassandra-like voice of Karl Ernst Winter, a leading Austrian liberal, who, in 1934, warned that Italy really had only two choices: democracy in

The Dictators Converge

169

Austria or a swastika on the Brenner.69 But by 1938, as the example of Czechoslovakia proved, democracy alone would not have saved Austria; only forceful intervention by a resurrected Stresa Front could have done so. There was a strange twist in this episode of Fascist Italy’s foreign policy. Mussolini and Ciano had both ignored an important historical lesson and a cardinal ideological plank. Fascism had climbed to power on a program of exasperated nationalism, which held the liberal classes responsible for failing to defend the gains of the Great War against the Habsburg Empire. What a joke it was for them abjectly to have allowed a far more menacing Nazi Germany to replace truncated little Austria as a Brenner sentinel capable of imperiling liberal Italy’s hard-won conquests of Trieste and the South Tyrol! Not many will disagree with the aphorism that ‘‘The Berlin– Rome Axis was the spit on which Austria was roasted.’’70 NOTES 1. DDI, 8, IV, 112, 171, 174, 27 May and 3 June 1936. 2. Cited in Joel Colton, Le´ on Blum: Humanist in Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 219. 3. DDI, 8, IV, 299, 17 June 1936. 4. DDF, 2, II, 324, 19 June 1936; ibid., 328, 329, and 332, 20 and 26 June 1936. 5. Shorrock, From Ally to Enemy, 185. 6. Count Galeazzo Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, ed. Malcolm Muggeridge, trans. Stuart Hood (London: Oldham’s Press, 1948), 45. 7. Much of my discussion of Italy’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War is drawn from the exhaustive study by John F. Coverdale, Italian Intervention in the Spanish Civil War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975). 8. De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 2: 385. 9. Paola Brundu Olla, L’equilibrio difficile (Milan: Giuffre`, 1980); Christopher Seton-Watson, ‘‘The Anglo-Italian Gentleman’s Agreement of January 1937 and its Aftermath,’’ in The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, ed. Wolfgang Mommsen and Lothar Kettenacker (London: Allen & Unwin, 1983), 267–83. 10. ASMAE, FL, Reel 3, September 1936. 11. DDI, 8, IV, 819, 28 August 1936. 12. DGFP, C, V, 618, 21 October 1936. 13. Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, 56–60. 14. OO, XXVIII: 67–71. 15. Ibid. 16. Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, 80–91; DGFP, C, VI, 164, 30 January 1937; ibid., D, I, 207, 30 January 1937; ASMAE, FL, Reel 5, 15 and 23 January 1937. 17. Roberto Cantalupo, Fu la Spagna: ambasciata presso Franco (febbraio–aprile 1937) (Milan: Mondadori, 1948), 65. 18. Laszlo Lajos Sandor Bartalits, Hongarije en de Anschluss 1918–1938 (Tilburg: H. Gianotten N.V., 1968), 164–65.

170

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

19. Kurt von Schuschnigg, Austrian Requiem (New York: Putnam, 1946), 101. ¨ sterreich (Munich: J&V, 1979), 20. Norbert Schausberger, Der Griff nach O 383. 21. DDF, 2, IV, 431, 11 February 1937. 22. Hitler, in his meeting with Ciano at Berchtesgaden, deftly manipulated Ciano’s vanity and desire to be esteemed by Nazis when he urged a joint crusade against Bolshevism to divert Italy’s attentions from Pan-Germanism. Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, 56–60. 23. Virginio Gayda, Il Giornale d’Italia, 24 April 1937. 24. Schuschnigg, Austrian Requiem, 124–25. 25. NPA, 414, 30 April 1937. 26. D. M. Tuninetti, La mia missione in Austria, 1937–1938 (Milan: C.E.B.E.S., 1946), 88–89. 27. Von Hassell ably summarized their mutual irritation. DGFP, C, VI, 333, 24 April 1937. 28. Schmidt sent a reliable reporter, Baron De Clies, from the Neue Freie Presse to inform Gayda of the true domestic situation in Austria, but to no avail. NPA, 406, 4 March 1937. Schuschnigg was angry at Gayda for misrepresenting his talks with the notorious Arthur Seyss-Inquart. DDF, 2, V, 334, 24 April 1937. 29. DDF, 2, V, 242 and 243, 10 April 1937. 30. Details on the pro-German fronde are provided by Petersen, Hitler e Mussolini, 407–10, and by Meir Michaelis, ‘‘Il Conte Galeazzo Ciano di Cortellazzo quale antesignano dell’asse Roma-Berlino,’’ Nuova rivista storica 401, no. 61 (January–June 1977): 116–49. 31. Quoted in Cannistraro and Sullivan, Il Duce’s Other Woman, 499. 32. Quoted in J. B. Hoptner, Yugoslavia in Crisis 1934–1941 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 67. 33. Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, 98–105. 34. Quoted in Hoptner, Yugoslavia in Crisis, 83. 35. Ibid., 82–87; Gehl, Austria, Germany and the Anschluss, 140–41. 36. DGFP, C, VI, 297, 28 March 1937; Gerhard L. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany 1937–1939 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 216–17. 37. DGFP, C, VI, 453, 7 July 1937. 38. DGFP, C, VI, 461, 13 July 1937. 39. Quoted in Cannistraro and Sullivan, Il Duce’s Other Woman, 504. 40. Count Galeazzo Ciano, Ciano’s Diary, 1937–1938, ed. Malcolm Muggeridge, trans. Andreas Mayor (London: Methuen, 1952), 135. 41. Ibid., 28–29. 42. Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, 146. 43. A special file on Schmidt can be found in ASMAE, Ambasciata Vienna, B 318. 44. Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 44. 45. Ibid., 37. 46. Ibid., 58. 47. Giordano Bruno Guerri, Galeazzo Ciano (Milan: Bompiani, 1979), 232. 48. Claudio Segre, in his stimulating essay, ‘‘Liberal and Fascist Italy in the Middle East, 1919–1939: The Elusive White Stallion,’’ in The Great Powers and the

The Dictators Converge

171

Middle East 1919–1939, ed. Uriel Dann (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988), 199–212, adroitly describes the contradictions in Italy’s Near Eastern imperialism. 49. Eden, Memoirs, 508. 50. De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 2: 425. 51. DBFP, 2, XIX, 64 and 65 and n. 1, 27 July 1937. 52. DBFP, 2, XIX, 144, 8 September 1937. 53. Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 46. 54. Ibid., 5, 68, 72, 91–92. 55. Ibid., 92. 56. Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, 162. 57. Ibid., 164–85. 58. DBFP, 2, XIX, Appendix I: Extracts from Neville Chamberlain’s Diary; Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, 164–85. 59. Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 78. 60. Cited in Quartararo, Roma tra Londra e Berlino, 372. 61. Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 73 62. Carsten, The First Austrian Republic, 266. 63. Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 77. 64. Ibid., 77. 65. Ibid., 79. 66. Ibid., 85. 67. Ibid., 87. 68. DGFP, D, 1, 352, 11 March 1938. 69. Petersen, Hitler e Mussolini, 178–79. 70. Quoted in Gehl, Austria, Germany, and the Anschluss, 133.

CHAPTER 10

Consolidation of the Axis MUNICH Now that the Anschluss had become a harsh reality, Mussolini had to convince himself that the Axis was more valuable to Italy than the preservation of Austria’s independence. A novel tripartite front emerged. Instead of the moribund Four Power Pact or the ‘‘dead’’ Stresa Front, the Axis Powers, joined by the ‘‘sleeping partner’’ Britain, would decide the fate of Europe and preserve Mussolini’s freedom of action. By means of the Easter Accords (which were expected to be ratified quickly by the British Parliament), Italy had balanced Germany and isolated France. Staggered by the looming defeat of Republican Spain and confronted by an ever stronger Germany, France would have to come to Italy hat in hand before being invited back into a regrouped four-power alignment dominated by the Axis. Mussolini’s updated peso determinante strategy, however, continued to be flawed by an overestimation of Italian power and an ideological bias that contained shrewd insight, half-truths, and outright nonsense. According to Mussolini’s litany, France had been emasculated by anti-Fascist Popular Front governments, debilitated by its emotional ties with the Spanish Republic, and thrown leftward by the Franco-Soviet Pact. Encroaching Communism had accelerated the French slide into a profound moral and civil crisis that was characterized by a declining birth rate, invasive halfbreeds, urbanism, and sharpening social struggles. In addition to this ideological campaign, Mussolini engaged in combat against vocal Italian

174

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

anti-Fascist expatriates (fuorusciti) living abroad. The Duce had pulled the strings of the assassination on 9 June 1937 of the Rosselli brothers, radical liberals who had been leaders of the exiled anti-Fascists castigating him from their French sanctuary. A country that played host to Italy’s fuorusciti deserved retribution. Mussolini’s press, in Renzo De Felice’s vivid description, ‘‘acted like an impotent child indulging in ridiculous spite.’’1 After an initial willingness to reconcile with Mussolini, the French prime minister, Le´ on Blum, irritated by Italy’s pointed exclusion of France from the Easter Accords and by Italy’s escalated involvement in the Spanish Civil War, reverted to undisguised anti-Fascism. Nonplussed, Mussolini offered Blum a Franco-Italian entente in April 1937 if he would repudiate the Spanish Republic and grant Franco belligerent status. Blum derisively dismissed the offer and refused to appoint a successor to Charles de Chambrun as ambassador to Rome, for fear that a new appointee would require accreditation addressed to the ‘‘king of Italy, Emperor of Ethiopia,’’ a step that Blum was not prepared to take. On 10 April 1938, the Radical-Socialist E´ douard Daladier, ‘‘The Bulldog,’’ formed a cabinet with Georges Bonnet in charge of the Quai d’Orsay. Hoping to revive the 7 January 1935 Agreements, the new French team put forth proposals to Rome for a Mediterranean agreement resembling the Easter Accords. The Italians affected interest, but first wanted to find out what Berlin had to offer. They were not displeased that the Germans would see that they still had cards to play in Paris. Notwithstanding his enmity toward France, Mussolini emphasized in the press and in public declarations that the Axis did not imply a conspiracy to overthrow the European status quo. Equidistance between London and Berlin would be respected, and Italy, for the moment, would not throw its weight on either side of the scales. In this frame of mind, Mussolini awaited Hitler’s visit to Italy, scheduled to take place 3–9 May, with confidence renewed that he would be able to face his Axis partner from a position of strength. His lines now opened to both Paris and London, the Duce could calmly show Hitler around Italy and present his German guests with the draft of a treaty of mutual respect, signaling Berlin to quell the armed skirmishes that had recently been instigated by German-speaking hotheads in the South Tyrol. Hitler, in turn, intended to neutralize the Easter Accords by wooing Mussolini to be his faithful Axis consort. In spite of Mussolini’s propaganda buildup, Hitler’s arrival in Rome was hardly the occasion for an Italian celebration. Mussolini and Ciano both realized that the Axis was not at all popular in Italy, especially after the Anschluss; much more preparation was necessary. Not a few figures in the cultural world of Rome left the city to escape the Teutonic invasion. The Pope repaired to his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo and closed down the Vatican Museum, effectively barring Hitler and his entourage from the treasures they had planned to visit.

Consolidation of the Axis

175

To dazzle his German guests, Mussolini presided over a six-day ceremony filled with pomp and fantasy, designed to surpass everything he had been shown in Germany. Snappy military maneuvers were held before the dubious German high command, highlighted by a single-shot volley by 50,000 Italian troops outfitted in fancy new dress. Later the Germans were witness to a large naval review in the sunlit bay of Naples, whose scenery impressed the visitors more than the might and majesty of the Italian warships. Mussolini’s pride suffered from the fact that Italian protocol required the king, as official host, to ride beside Hitler in the lead carriage conveying the German guests around Florence. To offset this embarrassment, Mussolini hired a mob to crowd around his carriage shouting ‘‘Duce, Duce, Duce.’’ Caught in the contradictory impulse of being closely bound to Hitler, as German military power dwarfed Italy’s, and resenting him all the more for such dependency, Mussolini still was able to deny the Fu¨ hrer the prize he sought: a firm military alliance with Italy. ‘‘The Axis friendship,’’ Ciano coyly smiled, ‘‘made any alliance superfluous.’’2 Ciano wanted to keep the Germans at arm’s length in order to stay on good terms with Chamberlain, for he still relied on the British leader to release League members from their bond to deny Italy recognition of its empire. The results of Hitler’s visit, therefore, were very modest, but a tentative meeting of minds was reached over Czechoslovakia. The Germans apprised the Italians of Hitler’s concern over the allegedly shabby treatment of the Sudetenland Germans by Czechs and concluded that Mussolini and Ciano had confidence that the problem would be handled short of a European conflict. This tacit understanding was deceitfully contrived by Hitler, who had no intention of revealing to Mussolini his real aim to launch war against Prague on 1 October 1938. The unsuspecting Italians were satisfied when, at a state dinner at the Palazzo Venezia, Hitler announced his ‘‘unshakable will and also my political testament to the German people to consider untouchable forever the frontier at the Alps erected by nature between us.’’3 In a private meeting, the Fu¨ hrer repeated the idea previously advanced by Go¨ ring of transferring the German-speaking population of the South Tyrol to the Third Reich. Ciano expressed interest in this solution, but the Duce, out of embarrassment, maintained a resolute reserve. Any discussion of a population transfer would expose his italianization programs as a lamentable failure.4 The Germans departed for home to brew a crisis with the Czechs; nothing concrete had been achieved. They were amused by Italian political infighting and suspicious of Fascist military efficiency. Far from ambiguous was Mussolini’s sudden flare-up against France. The pinpricks of the French press during Hitler’s visit had activated the Duce’s gallophobia, and when in Geneva on 12 May the British arranged for the last obstacles to be removed for League members individually to recognize the Italian empire, Mussolini’s need for France became even less. He con-

176

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

fided to Ciano that the French ‘‘are a nation ruined by alcohol, syphilis, and journalism.’’5 In a bellicose speech on 14 May at Genoa, the Duce extolled the Anschluss and declared the Stresa Front ‘‘dead and buried.’’ The curtain to further negotiations with Paris was abruptly rung down. ‘‘France and Italy stand on opposite sides of the barricades,’’ he declared; ‘‘they desire the victory of Barcelona, we, on the other hand, desire the victory of Franco.’’6 The British, however, would move no further in Italy’s direction, refusing to ratify the Easter Accords since Italy had violated them by continued bombings of British ships in Spanish ports. The Foreign Office recognized that Mussolini intended to use the tie with Britain merely to make Italy more attractive to Hitler and to deepen the distance between London and Paris. The British stepped up their demands: The Duce must unilaterally withdraw the Italian forces in Spain, agree to an armistice in the fighting, and negotiate a settlement with France along the lines of the Easter Accords.7 Mussolini refused to consider the British demands short of a Republican surrender and would not tolerate any linkage of France with the Easter Accords. By the time the Czech crisis came to a head in August, therefore, Italy’s relations with France had reached a new nadir, the Easter Accords remained stillborn, and the Axis remained showmanship rather than an alliance. Still, the pageantry surrounding Hitler’s visit set the stage in Rome for further emulation of Nazism’s totalitarian measures and hardened the Duce’s determination never to be called a traitor by deserting Hitler.8 The Fascist party spearheaded a campaign to reform the conduct, habits, and attitudes of the so-called bourgeois. The spiritual revolution aimed at a restoration of Squadrist activism that glorified and acted out a life of risk and violence. To advance the dynamic of Fascist ‘‘totalitarianism,’’ Mussolini, under no pressure from the Germans but much to their satisfaction, issued a statement in July called the ‘‘Manifesto of the Race.’’ To demonstrate his ideological solidarity with the Fu¨ hrer and to widen the gulf between Italy and the democracies, the Duce deliberately adopted a policy of racial consciousness, reinforcing the brawny image of the Fascist warrior as the white conquistador triumphing over swarms of mentally stunted Ethiopians. The battle lines between Fascist Italy and the democratic West would be drawn tighter by putting the Jews in their place as well and by rooting out the effete pacifism and humanitarian values of the Italian people—one and the same thing.9 Mussolini told Ciano that he intended to create a bonfire of Jewish and pro-German literature. The revolution must teach Italians ‘‘to be less sympathetic, in order to become hard, relentless, and hateful—in fact, masters.’’10 The Vatican was hopeful that Mussolini’s racial laws would be confined to the Catholic tradition of a tempered legal and social discrimination that fell short of actual persecution. In the encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge

Consolidation of the Axis

177

(With burning concern), the Pope condemned Nazi-style racism based upon blood superiority. But these distinctions between Italy and Germany were obscured by the spectacle of two dictators joined by a common hatred of Jews and democracy. In May 1938, Hitler manufactured the first Czech crisis by concentrating troops on the Sudeten frontier. Prague answered with a partial mobilization, and the French promised to honor their treaty of alliance aimed at protecting their ally against German aggression. Since Czechoslovakia was ruled by the ‘‘chatterbox’’ Benesˇ , a stalwart defender of democracy and the League of Nations, Mussolini was delighted to support Germany’s territorial claims, as well as those of the many hostile neighboring states bearing down on the hard-pressed francophile Prague government. Carved out of the old Habsburg Empire, the new polyglot state had been created by the Paris Peace Conference. It included a multitude of ethnic minorities that kept the irredentism of Germany, Poland, and Hungary at fever pitch. All these nations therefore had a vested interest in the dismemberment of the infant state, but only Hitler was in a position to stir up serious trouble— in the Sudetenland areas populated predominantly by German-speaking peoples. As treatment of minorities went during the interwar period, the Prague government did well by the Sudeten Germans, granting them basic democratic rights and representation in the parliament. But Hitler was determined to magnify Prague’s ‘‘oppression’’ as an excuse to destroy the Czech state by ‘‘returning’’ the Sudeten Germans to the Volk community (they had formerly been part of the Habsburg Empire); this the Nazis cleverly passed off to the diplomatic community as vintage Wilsonian ‘‘selfdetermination.’’ Hitler’s preference was to accomplish the change by invasion; Chamberlain tried to persuade him to do so by plebiscite. To head off a war, Chamberlain in July appointed Lord Walter Runciman as a ‘‘mediator’’ to win Prague over to Germany’s demands; when that failed, he offered to pay Hitler a personal visit ‘‘to save peace in our time.’’ Germany’s intention of liquidating Czechoslovakia was an open secret that many, out of fear, refused to acknowledge. Von Ribbentrop, however, did not trouble to conceal Hitler’s warlike predisposition from the Italians. The Fascist heart was with Germany, he knew, even if the Italian nation had no stomach for war. Sure that the Western Powers would make no move, von Ribbentrop declared to the Italians that Germany could get the job done quickly without military assistance from Rome.11 This was just what Rome wanted to hear. Ciano, in response, confided that Italy, far from interested in the fate of Prague, was ‘‘absolutely solid behind Germany.’’12 In this fashion, the Italians downplayed the threat of war until the first week of August, when Hitler stoked up a second crisis over Czechoslovakia.13 On 19 August, the German military attache´ in Rome informed Ciano of a planned German attack on Czechoslovakia by the end of September. Ciano fretted: ‘‘Will the conflict be localized or will France set fire

178

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

to the powder barrel? In that eventuality there is no alternative for us but to fall in beside Germany immediately, with all our resources. The Duce is decided on action.’’14 Compared to his impressionable son-in-law, Mussolini, respecting Hitler’s cunning, had a calmer view of things. If Benesˇ reacted violently to Nazi provocation in the Sudetenland, Germany would have a plausible justification to intervene. There would be no reaction by the Western Powers because, in the view of the Duce, the British had lost their fortitude (‘‘natural in a people which has a comfortable life and has made a religion of eating and games’’) and the French had lost their nerve. Knowing that Italian military assistance would not be needed in a localized war, Mussolini boasted that he would march with Hitler.15 At the same time, he was irritated by German discretion over the details of their Czech plans. The Czech drama proceeded to unfold rapidly. Chamberlain requested that Mussolini intervene in Berlin to bring Hitler to reason, but he received no reply. While the Duce sat on the sidelines with arms folded, Hitler’s war threats and German riots in the Sudetenland convinced Chamberlain that he should meet directly with Hitler in order to head off war. On a first air journey, Chamberlain flew to Berchtesgaden on 15 September to tell Hitler that he agreed in principle to the incorporation of the Sudeten areas into the Third Reich. All that remained to be worked out were the modalities and timing of the transfer, the limits of the territory concerned, and the approval of the cabinets in London, Paris, and Prague. Ciano remarked that the Duce saw in embryo the shape of things to come. ‘‘There will not be war,’’ Mussolini prophesied, ‘‘but this is the liquidation of English prestige.’’16 Mussolini emerged from the shadows on 15 September. In a sensational article published in Popolo d’Italia entitled ‘‘Letter to Runciman,’’ he called for a nationwide plebiscite designed to grant self-determination to the ethnic groups in Czechoslovakia. The Germans rejoiced; Mussolini was imposing on Prague more than Hitler had demanded. Two days later, Mussolini embarked on a tour of northern Italy and made a series of speeches hostile toward Czechoslovakia. Versailles was extinct; a new Europe must be formed. Benesˇ ’ tyranny over ‘‘eight different races’’ [sic] must be ended and justice given to the Germans, Hungarians, and Poles. Thanks to Mussolini’s comments to Ciano and the observations of contemporary diplomats, we can deduce from these addresses a rough draft of Italian policy. Underneath the fierce talk lay the hope for a peaceful solution on German terms; if it came to a localized conflict between Germany, Prague, and Paris, Italy would remain neutral. If Britain intervened to generalize the war, Italy would enter battle on the side of Germany in an ideological struggle between democracy and totalitarianism. Mussolini’s harsh words and saber-rattling, if meant to yield to Hitler all he wanted without a fight, nonetheless enabled the British foreign office to convince Chamberlain that

Consolidation of the Axis

179

Italy had moved firmly into the camp of the enemy and should therefore be brushed aside in the search for a peaceful solution of the Sudetenland crisis. Chamberlain pressed on with his idea of detaching the German minority peacefully from Czechoslovakia, in contempt of Prague and by dragging the French along. On 22 September, he flew to Godesberg to lay the particulars of his plan before Hitler, but he was shocked to find that the Fu¨ hrer had hiked his demands. Negotiations trembled on the verge of breakdown. As Hitler waxed belligerent, the Czechs mobilized, the British fleet was placed on alert, and gas masks were handed out to the people of London and Paris. While the drama at Godesberg was being played out, Mussolini publicly blustered but remained inactive on the diplomatic front to avoid taking a definite position. Aware that Italy was in no shape to fight, he did not mind being excluded from the diplomatic mainstream, apart from curiosity over what Hitler was really up to. The Prince of Hesse, shuttling between Berlin and Rome, finally informed the Italians on 25 September that Germany would attack with the aim of destroying Czechoslovakia, regardless of what the Western Powers did, if Prague had not accepted by 1 October the terms of Hitler’s ultimatum. On the same day, Mussolini considered the possibility of a meeting between Ciano and von Ribbentrop to clarify the conditions of Italian intervention; the military staffs would meet on 29 September to plot common strategy. Since Hitler had rejected Chamberlain’s Godesberg proposals, war seemed imminent. Noted Ciano: ‘‘God protect Italy and the Duce.’’17 Dino Grandi, who had fallen from grace in Rome over his disapproval of the Axis and his criticism of Mussolini’s racial laws, now emerged from ostracism to play an important role.18 Ordered by Ciano to absent himself from Whitehall, Grandi had been a hapless witness to the deterioration in Anglo-Italian relations caused by Mussolini’s warlike speeches and Chamberlain’s reliance on Daladier and Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Czech crisis. Convinced that Mussolini had fled from the Easter Accords to the Axis, Chamberlain had informed Grandi of neither his pilgrimage to Berchtesgaden nor his trip to Godesberg. Not for the first time, Grandi defied instructions by taking the initiative in trying to repair the ties between London and Rome. Through secret channels, he apprised the British of Mussolini’s desire to avoid war and reassured Rome of Britain’s good will toward Italy. On 26 September, Grandi arranged to have a message sent to Whitehall urging that Chamberlain contact Mussolini. A couple of days later, the Earl of Perth, the British ambassador in Rome, did likewise. Finally yielding to their importunities, as well as to those of the French, Chamberlain broke his silence with Rome on 28 September, dramatically appealing for the Duce’s intervention with Hitler to head off a German invasion of Czechoslovakia.19 On receiving Perth’s message, Ciano seemed surprised over the readiness

180

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

of Britain and France for war and their willingness to tolerate a Russian military intervention in support of Czechoslovakia. The belief that the Western Powers would do nothing in the event of a German occupation of the Sudeten territory suddenly gave way to panic over the apparent imminence of a general war. Ciano immediately ran over to the Palazzo Venezia to consult with Mussolini. Losing no time, the Duce rang up Berlin. While renewing Italy’s pledge to stand by Germany, he urged Hitler to accept Chamberlain’s idea of a summit conference, where details of territorial cession of the Sudetenland areas to the Reich would be worked out. Shortly before his ultimatum to the Czechs expired, Hitler agreed to negotiate; the Four Power Conference would take place in Munich.20 Hitler seemed to draw back from the brink on learning that the Duce actually preferred peace over following him into war. What induced Mussolini to deliver Chamberlain’s olive branch to Berlin? Still bogged down in Spain, he knew that Italy was in no position to gamble that the Western Powers would not move to stop Hitler from seizing the Sudetenland by force. In a long drawn-out war, Fascist Italy would be the first victim—to the advantage of world Communism and to the immense pleasure of his domestic enemies and the anti-Fascist fuorusciti. Just before leaving for Munich, Mussolini received from Berlin Germany’s ‘‘moderate’’ claims. At Kiefersfelden, the first railway stop on the German side of the former Austrian border, where he joined Hitler’s train, Mussolini was given a fresh set of German demands on Czechoslovakia and a Nazi monologue on how France would be crushed in a war. That recitation left the Duce monosyllabic and unsmiling.21 At Hitler’s headquarters in Munich, where the conference took place, Mussolini found himself in the driver’s seat. Fearing that Hitler and von Ribbentrop would make impossible demands, the Duce pulled from his pocket the primitive German conditions that he had brought with him from Rome and presented them to the conference as his own. As Ciano put it, the Duce then majestically withdrew into studied aloofness from the ‘‘vaguely parliamentary atmosphere, moving around the room with his hands in his pockets and a rather distracted air,’’ while others worked out the details. Every now and then, he would join in the search for a formula.22 Andre´ Franc¸ ois-Ponc¸ et wrote: ‘‘Standing at his [Mussolini’s] side, Hitler gazed intently upon him, subject to his charm as though fascinated and hypnotized.’’23 Chamberlain and Daladier hastened to accept the Duce’s proposals. Outnumbered three to one, Hitler gritted his teeth and accepted them too. The agreement signed in the early morning of 30 September provided for the cession of the Sudetenland in stages, for plebiscites under international control in other zones of mixed population, and for a fourpower guarantee of the new rump state, Czechoslovakia. The Czechs were confined to the anteroom while the Great Powers dismembered their country. Presented with an ultimatum to sign, they capitulated.

Consolidation of the Axis

181

Munich cast Mussolini in the diplomatic spotlight. Chamberlain welcomed his ostensible mediation, Daladier appeared docile and ingratiating, and Hitler seemed putty in his hands. As Franc¸ ois-Poncet noted, a bust of the Duce had always been a showpiece in Hitler’s study. But the Fu¨ hrer was not happy; the Duce had denied him his war. Mussolini himself had mixed feelings over being hailed inside and outside his country as the savior of peace. Throughout the Sudetenland crisis, the Italians appeared anxious to keep in step with the Germans, and yet they had drawn back when it became clear that Hitler was prepared to march. Revelatory of the fear that lay behind the warlike bravado was Ciano’s notation that Italy had neither incited nor restrained Germany, as if to excuse his country from any responsibility or involvement should Hitler draw the sword.24 As for Mussolini, he was always expatiating on the heroism of war and his eagerness for a showdown against Britain and France, but he did nothing to prepare his country for such an ordeal; troops were not even recalled from Italy’s outposts in Ethiopia, Libya, and Spain to face the potential emergency at home. Mussolini had no policy, merely the hope that a peaceful solution of the Sudetenland question would be found. He wanted to believe his own propaganda that the Western Powers were washed up, that they would not resort to war to save Czechoslovakia because they were too decrepit and spiritless to make sacrifices. Next it would be his turn to take the measure of the toothless British lion and the enervated Marianne. But he knew that this was not yet so. During most of September, the Duce thought that Italy could support Hitler in a localized Sudetenland crisis without risk and give striking proof of Axis dynamism. When the reality, as opposed to the theoretical possibility, of an immediate outbreak of world war burst on him after Godesberg, Mussolini was probably unsure whether to pursue heroics by fighting for Hitler’s aims in Czechoslovakia or to retreat to a benevolent neutrality. Rather, he would wait on events and see who got involved before making a decision. Chamberlain’s request for Italian mediation was a godsend that freed Mussolini of his dilemma and jolted him into an awareness that he needed the appeasement of Hitler too. Hence the Duce’s willingness to act in Munich as the pawnbroker of Czechoslovakia. If Hitler, in his awareness of Italian ambivalence, failed to keep Mussolini apprised of his plans, Mussolini, out of pride, refused to make it clear to the Germans that his hands were tied. His country was utterly unprepared for war and quite alienated from the Axis—facts that made Mussolini wince in shame. But should the Sudetenland fall into Hitler’s lap, Mussolini feared that Nazi dynamism would veer southward toward the Adriatic. To offset the growth of German influence in Eastern Europe, Mussolini needed allies. To earn the gratitude and support of Poland and Hungary, he invited them in inflammatory speeches to help themselves to Czech territory, hop-

182

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

ing that Hitler would not take note of his aim to check Nazi Lebensraum. Meanwhile, basking in the limelight as the diplomatic maestro of Europe, Mussolini momentarily blocked out the harsh reality that the Munich verdict had brought about a further strengthening of Germany to the disadvantage of Italy in the European heartland. DIPLOMACY IN A WHIRLPOOL To cover himself for future moves, Hitler endeavored to involve Mussolini in a tripartite alliance to include Japan to counterbalance the FrancoSoviet pact and the Western Democracies. But the Duce put off the Germans both at Munich and later in Rome during a meeting in October with von Ribbentrop, declaring that the Italian people were happy with the Axis but not yet prepared for an alliance.25 Another important reason was concealed. Still hopeful of a British decision to implement the Easter Accords, Ciano wrote: ‘‘we must keep both doors open. An alliance [with Germany and Japan] would now close, perhaps forever, one of the two, and that not the less important. The Duce also seems to think so.’’26 The existing arrangement with the Axis was sufficient for Mussolini to exploit the new balance of power that Munich had altered dramatically to Germany’s advantage. Having conquered Ethiopia in defiance of the British, Mussolini anticipated the resolution of Italy’s long list of grievances with France left over from the Paris Peace Conference. When Andre´ Franc¸ ois-Poncet was appointed French ambassador to Rome in early October 1938—an appointment that involved the unconditional recognition of the Italian conquest of Ethiopia—it seemed to presage the end of the long-lived Franco-Italian hostility that had been exacerbated by the Spanish Civil War. Franc¸ ois-Ponc¸ et arrived determined to establish a close personal rapport with Mussolini, but the sentiment was not reciprocated. ‘‘I shall do everything to help him break his head,’’ the Duce promised Ciano; ‘‘I don’t like the man.’’ To reward the Munich peacemaker, France must yield much to Italy: a free port at Djibouti, control of the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railroad, Italian participation in the management of the Suez Canal Company, some form of condominium in Tunisia, and, last but not least, ‘‘Corsica, Italian and never gallicized.’’27 Spain continued to be an important bone of contention; France must also abandon the Republican cause. Heightened claims upon France went hand in hand with the intensification of Italy’s anti-Semitic campaign. Worse was not long in coming. As a counter to press talk of a full-fledged Anglo-French military alliance, Ciano on 30 November, in a speech witnessed by Mussolini before the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations, expatiated on the natural aspirations of the Italian people. Suddenly shouts were heard from among the deputies and the public galleries: ‘‘Tunis, Corsica, Nice, Djibouti.’’ Similar cries resonated in the square below the Pal-

Consolidation of the Axis

183

azzo Venezia. In a clumsy effort, Fascist bosses, undoubtedly receiving a tip from above, had inspired the demonstrators to impress on Paris that Italian public opinion demanded high sacrifices from an ungrateful wartime ally. Indeed, resentment against a niggardly France ran deep throughout Italy. But Mussolini was also feeling a mounting irritation against a neglectful Germany. What dividends had he reaped from the Axis? Instead of supporting Italy’s claims against France, von Ribbentrop was heading for Paris to promote a Franco-German de´ tente. Perhaps Italy’s post-Munich gallophobia was a warning to the Germans to be more attentive to Rome, lest Mussolini provoke a premature outbreak of war. But there were limits to this game. As Ciano later admitted to von Ribbentrop, Italy’s demands against France came in two packages. The first contained immediate concessions on Djibouti, the Addis Ababa Railway, and the Suez Canal, concessions that would not necessarily require France to make territorial sacrifices. The second package contained the dynamite, Italy’s ‘‘historical claims,’’ but Ciano hastened to add that Italy was prepared to bide its time. There was yet another angle. By speaking tough to the French, Mussolini hoped that the British would react by exercising moral suasion on France to yield Italy territorial concessions in order to preserve the peace. Instead of being cowed, the French took the opportunity presented by the bellicose 30 November demonstrations to shout ‘‘Never’’! to all of Italy’s demands. Mussolini’s true intentions had been unmasked, and Ciano’s subsequent disclaimers of any government involvement were dismissed. Already deep in appeasement to Germany, the French would not allow the weaker Axis partner, Italy, to make of the Italian colony in Tunis the Sudetenland of Italy or to allow the British ‘‘to give a new mission to Lord Runciman.’’28 To defend themselves against a further charge of weakness, the French answered Italian belligerency with menacing naval maneuvers, and Daladier declared before the French Chamber on 16 December that ‘‘France would not cede an acre of her territories to Italy.’’ Failing to stand up to a powerful Germany, Daladier picked on Italy, the country that both French civilians and military agreed was fatuous and absurd. The Duce replied the next day by denouncing the Franco-Italian Agreements of January 1935 under the pretext that they had never been ratified and exchanged. Since France had failed to grant Italy a ‘‘free hand’’ in Ethiopia, meaning the right of conquest, Mussolini wanted to tear up his quid pro quo: the provision allowing for the ultimate extinction of the rights of Italians residing in Tunis. Following von Ribbentrop’s signing of the Franco-German nonaggression treaty in Paris on 6 December, the Duce moved to make repairs in the listing Axis ship. Furthermore, he sought to dissipate any lingering tension arising from his differences with Hitler over the Vienna Award of 1 November, which had denied Hungary, Italy’s prote´ ge´ , the right to annex Ruthenia. Insecure about Hitler’s loyalty, Mussolini prepared for the ‘‘in-

184

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

evitable clash with the occidental democracies’’ on 2 January by taking up von Ribbentrop’s proposal to transform the Anti-Comintern Pact into a hard and fast alliance.29 By contemplating such a close tie with Germany, even though no irrevocable move was intended, Mussolini risked denying Italy the diplomatic leverage of the ‘‘decisive weight.’’ More important was future Mediterranean expansion, which would be rendered possible only if the Axis were given military teeth. So much for Italy’s maintaining an equal distance among the Great Powers. Improved commercial relations with the Third Reich were on his agenda too, as was the South Tyrol, where Mussolini, shedding his embarrassment, wanted Hitler to implement his promise to evacuate those Germans who wished to leave the region for the Fatherland. Von Ribbentrop wanted to include Japan, an idea not opposed in Rome, but when Tokyo hung back, Mussolini tabled tripartism in favor of a strengthened bilateral tie with Berlin. Although von Ribbentrop was chagrined by Japanese foot-dragging, Hitler was receptive to bilateralism with Rome, because he needed an Italian cover while undertaking the occupation of the rump Czechoslovakia, plans that he carefully concealed from the Duce. Italo-German staff talks were contemplated to prepare the ground for military cooperation. While puzzling through alliances and alignments with the Germans and Japanese, a reluctant Mussolini, urged by Ciano, agreed to invite Chamberlain to Italy. Mussolini had not despaired of inspiring the British to compete with Berlin for Italian friendship by doing his bidding in Paris. Satisfied by Ciano’s assurance in early October that 10,000 Italian troops would soon be pulled out of Spain, Chamberlain did his part in creating an atmosphere of reconciliation by finally recognizing Italian sovereignty over Ethiopia on 16 November 1938. The Easter Accords were at last in force. In search of an enduring European settlement, Chamberlain hoped to massage the ‘‘fickle and unscrupulous’’ Italians and to persuade Mussolini to intervene in Berlin to prevent further acts of German aggression. To loosen the economic bonds tying Italy to Germany, Chamberlain intended to dangle the bait of trade. His first stop was Paris, where he hoped to prevail on France to be more yielding to Italy, then on to Rome, where he would persuade Mussolini to accept an armistice in Spain. Thus, at one stroke, he would remove the greatest obstacle standing in the way of a Franco-Italian rapprochement, weaken the Axis, and isolate Germany. Instead, due to Daladier’s intractability, Chamberlain departed from Paris with his hands tied. When Chamberlain and Mussolini met on 11 January 1939 in Rome, they talked a lot about Spain and practically not at all about Italy’s demands on France. Mussolini delivered a roundabout apologia for Germany, obeyed an air-tight silence on what little he knew about the Fu¨ hrer’s future projects, and characterized the Western Powers as the warmongers. In the stilted but polite atmosphere, Mussolini was unable to separate the British

Consolidation of the Axis

185

from the French, while Chamberlain failed to loosen the bond between the Duce and the Fu¨ hrer. The British man of peace and compromise impressed Mussolini in Rome no more than he had in Munich. Chamberlain’s courteous words and unmilitary bearing were taken as confirmation that the British lion’s roar had turned into an effeminate smile. While taking pains to be agreeable, Mussolini confided to Ciano that Chamberlain and Viscount Halifax ‘‘are not made of the same stuff as the Francis Drakes and the other magnificent adventurers who created the empire.’’30 Ciano made similar mocking asides. Oblivious of Fascist scorn, Chamberlain departed Rome heartened by Mussolini’s pleasant farewell and the warm reception afforded him by the Romans. As his train pulled away, he beamed as the British colony, assembled on the platform, serenaded him with ‘‘For he’s a jolly good fellow.’’ During the latter part of January, the Italians through an obscure gobetween, dropped the French a hint to reopen a dialogue with Rome. Relieved that Chamberlain was not applying pressure on them to make concessions to Italy, the French sent Paul Baudouin, the director-general of the Banque d’Indochine, as a special emissary to Rome on 1 February. Everything was hush-hush; not even Franc¸ ois-Poncet was apprised, since he was at this time as suspicious of Italian intentions as was Daladier. Auspices for a Franco-Italian modus vivendi seemed improved, since the obstacle of Spain, formerly insurmountable, had presumably been removed by Franco’s capture of Barcelona in late January 1939. Would the Italians capitalize on the Nationalists’ imminent victory by heightening their demands on Paris? Or would the cessation of Communist ‘‘encirclement’’ and French military intervention in the Iberian peninsula render the Italians more reasonable? According to Baudouin’s report, the Italians submitted reduced claims: a free zone at Djibouti, acquisition of shares of the Djibouti-Addis Ababa railroad, appointment to several seats on the administration of the Suez Canal, and the right of Italians residing in Tunisia to refuse naturalization. There was no talk of Italian acquisition of the Balearics or of French cession of colonial territory to Italy, which tallied with Daladier’s position that France would suffer no diminution of sovereignty in its colonial spheres. France, Ciano advised, should launch Baudouin’s program through official channels. But Mussolini lost interest in de´ tente and shifted back into a war mode when Baudouin’s visit was leaked in the anti-Fascist French press and after Hitler in a major speech on 30 January promised German military support in case of an unprovoked war against Italy. On 4 February, the Duce gave vent to his soaring ambitions before the Fascist Grand Council. Italy had no free access to the oceans and was a prisoner in the Mediterranean; the bars of this prison were Corsica, Tunisia, Malta, and Cyprus, its sentinels Gibraltar and Cyprus. Italy’s object must be to break the prison bars and march to the oceans. To prepare for the inevitable retaliation by the West-

186

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

ern Powers, Italy must cover itself in Europe by consolidating the Axis and lining up Franco as an Italian ally. In the style of Hitler, Italian military reinforcements were moved into Libya, as if to present the French with a choice between concessions and war. During the middle of February, Mussolini’s anti-French press was so shrill as to make the Nazi press by comparison seem ‘‘timid and full of tact.’’31 These actions, as well as Mussolini’s oscillations between moderation and bellicosity, convinced Daladier that negotiations with Italy rested on constantly shifting sands and that French concessions would only invite heightened Italian demands rather than a stable and enduring peace. Daladier let Baudouin’s memoranda drop; France would not expose itself to the risk of being eaten ‘‘like an artichoke leaf-by-leaf.’’32 But any thought in Rome of alliance with Germany went up in smoke when, once again, Hitler surprised the Italians—and the world—by his lightning occupation of Prague on 15 March 1939. Hitler had not just broken his Munich promises; he had grabbed non-German territory. Dismayed by the disappearance of Czechoslovakia, the British abandoned appeasement on 31 March by granting Poland a unilateral guarantee to uphold its independence, if not its integrity; this Hitler denounced as a move to encircle his country. Having already sold their Czech ally down the river, the French remained paralyzed behind the Maginot Line. The Italians were frankly unconcerned about the fate of the Czechs but felt the sting of a German slap in their faces. Hitler had torn up an agreement that they had orchestrated, and he had reaped further advantages from the Axis while leaving Mussolini empty-handed. The Duce felt that he had lost parity in the Axis. But the Italians could not claim that they had been left completely in the dark. Von Ribbentrop had given Mussolini a taste of what was to come the previous October: ‘‘Czechoslovakia can be considered as liquidated. In September it would have required two weeks to carry out the invasion, today forty-eight hours would suffice.’’33 There were many other such innuendoes scattered throughout the Italo-German correspondence, for talk of war, any war, was von Ribbentrop’s favorite pastime. The Italians invariably overlooked Nazi braggadocio and were consistently caught off balance by unexpected and brazen German initiatives. Now they jumped to the conclusion that German legions were poised to descend from the mountains of Croatia to the shores of the Adriatic. Still, after a moment of shock and anger, the Duce held to the course of the Axis. Although aware of the hostile reaction of the Italian people and convinced that Prussian hegemony in Europe was an unalterable reality, he professed loyalty to the alliance the day after the Prague coup.34 But Ciano was dismayed over German treachery; in many talks, he seemed to prevail on the Duce to reconsider the Axis. ‘‘During the last few days he [Mussolini] has meditated a great deal about our discussion and agrees that it is now impossible to present to the Italian people the idea of an alliance

Consolidation of the Axis

187

with Germany. Even the stones would cry out against it.’’35 They decided to work on a plan for an accord with the Western Powers.36 Mussolini’s overriding fear was Croatia: ‘‘No one would tolerate the sight of a swastika in the Adriatic.’’37 All this talk of diplomatic revolution was more an impetuous reaction to yet another German fait accompli, coupled with an exaggerated fear of German machinations in Croatia, than a readiness to repair the tattered relations between Italy and France through serious negotiations. Furthermore, Mussolini was congenitally incapable of admitting a mistake when the Italian critics of the Axis, both inside and outside the Fascist hierarchy—Senator Luigi Federzoni, Giuseppe Bottai, Italo Balbo, Grandi, the Catholics, the despised bourgeoisie, and the king—turned out to be right. Repudiation of Hitler would have meant a renunciation of totalitarianism at home and the abandonment of the Fascist ‘‘new man.’’38 To be sure, radical Fascist revolution had long ago given way to all power to the dictator, but the Duce would not destabilize ‘‘Mussolinianismo’’ by discarding the recent Fascist myth of unshakable unity with the kindred regime in Berlin. Moreover, breaking from Hitler would arrest the momentum of Italian expansion. Mussolini was caught in an Axis vice. The Germans hastened to assure Rome that their seizure of Prague would not be a prelude to a strike against Croatia; the masters of the Third Reich knew that Mussolini could be won back by firm disclaimers of any intention to poach on Italy’s vital spaces in the Adriatic and the Mediterranean.39 Whereas Ciano wanted an indefinite postponement of the alliance while he explored alternatives with the Western Powers, the Duce’s mind was eased by Ambassador Hans Georg von Mackensen’s smooth disavowals and von Ribbentrop’s unctuous reassurances. ‘‘We cannot change politics,’’ Mussolini told Ciano; ‘‘We are not prostitutes.’’40 Nonetheless, in the aftermath of the Anschluss and Prague, Mussolini puzzled over a problem easily defined but difficult to resolve: how to reestablish an equilibrium in the Axis and keep Hitler under harness. On 26 March, Mussolini addressed the Blackshirts with words susceptible to a variety of interpretations. Italy would never again be an unreliable ally, he proclaimed; Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were bound indissolubly together by a common revolutionary ideology ‘‘in direct antithesis to all other conceptions of contemporary civilization.’’41 De rigueur for Fascist radicals, this opener did not presage a total commitment to the Axis. No matter how much these impulses overshadowed Mussolini’s gnawing fear of Hitler and runaway German power, he was not yet prepared to abandon his typical oscillations between Berlin and the Western Powers in order to buy time for military rearmament and secure maximum diplomatic negotiating leverage for Italy. Mussolini’s claim of Italy’s ‘‘vital spaces’’ in the Adriatic region constituted a clear warning to the Germans to refrain from any move there themselves. A grudging hand was extended to the French,

188

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

if not in the most polite fashion. Since Franco stood on the verge of victory (Madrid fell two days later), Mussolini observed, a major barricade between France and Italy had fallen. Eschewing the use of any familial Latin metaphors, he suggested discussions with France on Tunis, Djibouti, and the Suez Canal based on hard-nosed Realpolitik. But here Mussolini was playing a mind game on himself. Having been treated roughly by the Germans, he thought it possible to distance Italy from the Axis while still making demands on France. The Vatican was impressed and the British hopeful that the FrancoItalian quarrel, whose resolution was indispensable to European peace, might yet yield to negotiation. Franc¸ ois-Ponc¸ et, abandoning his opposition to appeasing Italy, saw a gleam of light; the speech was a maneuver ‘‘to incite us to conversation.’’42 After the shock of Prague, he reasoned, the Italians were searching for ways to loosen their ties with Berlin. Rome could not help but notice that, after the Western Powers had bent over backwards to appease Hitler with territory, it was now Italy’s turn to be given a fair hearing over unfulfilled claims left over from the Paris Peace Conference. Bonnet, Laval, Lord Perth, and Halifax all argued that the time was ripe for France to pay off its long overdue colonial debt to Italy. If Mussolini was accorded respect as a leader of a Great Power of equal standing, he would whittle down his demands to reasonable proportions. Chamberlain, in particular, fretted over Daladier’s obstruction. But the French prime minister refused to be moved from his belief that concessions from Paris would only stimulate Rome to make fresh demands. And quite rightly. At this time, Daladier was the lone statesman in the West who did not suffer from the delusion that Mussolini was still a free agent strong enough to conduct a true policy of equidistance and thereby ready to submit a shortened list of binding demands on France. Supported by the French Council of Ministers, which held that the dictators were acting in concert, Daladier delivered a radio address on 29 March in which he scotched all rumors of French concessions to Italy. Feeling stonewalled by Paris, Mussolini chose to derail the German Balkan express by his own lightning attack on Albania. INVASION OF ALBANIA Like Italy’s intervention in Spain, the invasion of Albania was originally Ciano’s brainchild. He had already tried to improve his standing among the veteran Fascist first wave, who barely concealed their contempt for the latecomer’s precocious arrogance, soft life, lightweight banter, and privileged access to the Duce. To polish his Fascist image, Ciano negotiated the anti-Comintern pact, ingratiated himself with the Nazis, and made dashing bombing raids on defenseless civilians. On contemplating the invasion of Albania, the frivolous foreign minister took no account of the painful his-

Consolidation of the Axis

189

torical antecedents. Sidney Sonnino, who similarly lacked military knowledge, had seized control of the Albanian campaign from the Supreme Command in 1916, with dire consequences for both the Allied cause and the prestige of Italian arms. Faced by an unexpected rush of Habsburg troops on Durazzo, Sonnino was compelled to issue the order for the evacuation of the Albanian port in 1916 to escape entrapment. Ciano’s contempt for history was matched by his ignorance of military logistics and basic economics. The Albanian terrain was simply ill-suited for warfare, and the country contained few accessible raw materials. The Italian government would have to spend a small fortune to build up an infrastructure before any financier would risk heavy investment in this inhospitable economic environment. The Albanian clans could be bought but not subdued; control could be established over the port towns but not over the craggy mountains in the hinterland, where tribesmen in earlier centuries had hurled back would-be conquerors from all directions. The Albanian venture was no spontaneous decision. As early as the late summer of 1937, Ciano had turned the idea over in his mind; Hitler’s annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland merely accelerated his plans for invasion to gain compensation for Italy.43 While Ciano’s agents were ordered in May 1938 to prepare the local terrain and to recruit dissident politicians opposed to the rule of King Ahmed Zogu, General Alberto Pariani was encouraged to organize a coup. Mussolini told Ciano on 18 May to inform von Ribbentrop that since the Albanian question was a ‘‘family matter,’’ Germany should keep its ‘‘hands off.’’44 A month later, the Duce ‘‘confirmed his intention to act and occupy Albania before the end of 1939.’’45 In January 1939, Ciano paid Milan Stojadinovic´ a visit to promote his plans for Albania. On their numerous hunting expeditions, they pondered whether King Zogu should be replaced or Albania be partitioned between them. If Italy should acquire Albanian territory, Yugoslavia could help itself to the Greek port of Salonika. Nothing definite was worked out. Ciano’s mind was still unsettled on the details of territorial delimitation, and Stojadinovic´ was hamstrung by the prince regent Paul, who wanted no more Albanians inside his frontiers and no more Fascism in his country.46 Stojadinovic´ ’s loose talk with Ciano strengthened Paul’s determination to ease his prime minister out of office at the next opportunity. Ciano’s talks with Stojadinovic´ and his many truculent asides leave one with the impression that he burned with the desire to emulate Germany and, at the same time, to check its Drang nach Su¨ dosten. In his view, Italy could not afford to stand still while Germany expanded; moreover, Hitler needed to be taught that Mussolini, too, could act on his own and defy the world. It was now time for Rome to catch Berlin by surprise rather than always the other way around. Ciano cared not one whit about the reaction of France, which still had important interests to defend in the lower Balkans, but he hoped to gain Britain’s acquiescence, no matter that

190

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

the ‘‘Gentleman’s Agreement’’ obliged the two powers to respect the status quo in the Mediterranean. Mussolini had been a touch more reserved, preferring to await the liquidation of the Spanish affair and the stipulation of an alliance with Germany before moving ahead on Albania.47 A military solution would have to be postponed, he feared, because Hitler would take advantage of a shaken Yugoslavia by promoting the independence of Croatia under German influence. He would be satisfied with an Italian protectorate over the little mountain kingdom by means of an accord with King Zogu.48 Following Hitler’s seizure of Prague, Mussolini ordered the abandonment of preparations for the attack against Albania in order to be prepared for a suspected German attack on Yugoslavia.49 Three events conspired to push Mussolini over the brink: Stojadinovic´ ’s resignation on 3 February, which squelched further talk of Albania’s partition; Germany’s assurance that the Balkans and Mediterranean lay within the Italian sphere of interest;50 and Daladier’s rebuff of 29 March, which extinguished any lingering thought of de´ tente with France. On 7 April, Italian troops disembarked on the shores of Albania. The expedition did not have clear sailing. Improvised at the last moment, the amphibious landing was disorderly. There had been talk of invasion during the first week of February 1939—prior to the German annexation of the rump Czech state—but no battle plan had been worked up. The chief of general staff was not informed of the invasion target date until 29 March. In these chaotic conditions, it was small wonder that a serious breakdown in military coordination should occur and that contact should misfire between Rome and the Italian-subsidized Albanian rebels who were supposed to move against the royal family. Fortunately for the Italian army, King Zogu put up practically no resistance. Still, what luckily turned out to be a military promenade strained an already hard-pressed Italian economy and showed up serious shortcomings in Italy’s military equipment and leadership. The British and French expressed their displeasure on 13 April by according a unilateral guarantee to Greece and Romania against any future Italian aggression. This was followed on 12 May by an Anglo-Turkish declaration of mutual support in the event of aggression leading to war in the Mediterranean; the declaration not only served as a warning but also reopened an old wound inflicted on the Italians at the Paris Peace Conference when the Allies refused to uphold Italian treaty rights in Anatolia. Hardly less worrisome to the Italians, the British were deep in negotiations with the Soviet Union, which, if brought to fruition, would let Communism loose in Europe. The British had downgraded their appeasement of the dictators; the enactment of national conscription in April drove the point home. Still, Chamberlain doggedly clung to the possibility of cooperation with Italy against the Nazi menace, in spite of Mussolini’s violation of the

Consolidation of the Axis

191

Easter Accords by his occupation of Albania. Nor did the British let up on exhorting the French to ameliorate their relations with Italy as the key to peace.51 But what impressed the Italians were not the discreet British interventions in Paris but the widely publicized guarantees that made them feel, like the Germans, victims of Allied ‘‘encirclement.’’ The outcome of the Albanian adventure was ironic. Launched basically as an Italian warning to Germany, it ended up instead with a British pledge to defend the Eastern Mediterranean against Italian pretensions. While the democracies wagged censorious fingers, the Germans, having snapped up Prague without opposition from anyone, flooded Rome with expressions of solidarity and congratulations over Italy’s consolation prize. PACT OF STEEL Field marshal Go¨ ring paid Rome a visit during 14–17 April to dissipate Italian anger over Hitler’s seizure of Prague. He assured his hosts that Yugoslavia was in the Italian sphere. Pleased by this, the Duce expressed the view that war against the democracies was inevitable; destiny summoned the Axis to meet the threat united and armed to the teeth; by 1942–1943, Armageddon. The current hot European issue manufactured by Germany was Poland. After digesting the rump Czech state, Hitler turned on the Warsaw government and made strident claims to the free city of Danzig and the Corridor. After Hitler’s 22 March takeover of the Memel territory, which had been removed from Germany by the Versailles treaty and had fallen under Lithuanian control, the Poles knew their turn was next. Go¨ ring took care not to alarm the Italians by apprising them of Hitler’s ultimate intention to shatter Poland in a Blitzkrieg attack and to pick up the pieces he wanted.52 There was an obvious disparity between Go¨ ring’s anodyne comments on Poland and Hitler’s hysterical speeches. Alarmed in April by Germany’s denunciation of its friendship pact with Poland, Ciano hastened to keep the roads to both Berlin and Paris open, seeking a meeting with von Ribbentrop to get a better read on Hitler and assuring Franc¸ ois-Poncet that he favored agreement between their two countries. But France was offended by Italy’s action in Albania and unsure of Mussolini’s ultimate goals. Were the Italian demands communicated to Paul Baudouin in February and revealed to the British merely a minimum, preparatory to a broader agenda once the two sides sat down to serious work?53 In place of Spain, Tunis now loomed as the major stumbling block. Angered over the French insistence that resident Italians must become French citizens, Mussolini seemed intent on reinstating the 1896 convention that Paris had unilaterally abrogated at the end of the Great War. Would he also demand southern border rectifications that would allow Italy to add territories to Cyrenaica?

192

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

Rather than pin Mussolini down, Daladier preferred teaching him a lesson: ‘‘Italy can and should be smashed in the early stages of a war and our vital lines of communication assured.’’54 Daladier had no desire to treat with a leader who fancied France a disintegrating country and who, in his mind, longed to acquire his country’s colonial territory by means of violence and extortion. No matter what France brought to the table, according to Daladier, Mussolini would never abandon the Axis. But London insistently prodded Daladier to compose the Franco-Italian quarrel in order to keep the Duce out of the German orbit.55 In the British view, Mussolini needed to be pampered with respectful treatment and a generous initiative. Daladier bent but did not break. While attempting to sidetrack Whitehall by warning that Italy was preparing a coup against Gibraltar, he furtively authorized Franc¸ ois-Ponc¸ et on 3 May to pursue Ciano’s initiative. On that same day, the Pope stepped in by proposing a five-power conference, to include France, Germany, Britain, Italy, and Poland, that would treat the Franco-Italian and German-Polish controversies as an ensemble.56 From the Italian standpoint, there were advantages in this; a German war against Poland over Danzig could be averted, and concessions for Italy could be wrenched from France in a Munich atmosphere crackling with Axis intimidation. Nevertheless, Mussolini did not want the Pope to upstage him by sponsoring such an important diplomatic conference where Italy and Germany would be outnumbered three to two. In any event, it was too late. Britain had already given Poland a unilateral guarantee, and Bonnet, though prepared to appease Italy with limited concessions in bilateral negotiations, rejected any linkage between the two sets of controversies in a five-power conference. France would not be confronted by the dictators while Britain applied pressure on everyone to be accommodating in the name of peace. Notwithstanding Franc¸ ois-Poncet’s optimism that negotiations could proceed on Baudouin’s proposals, Daladier reverted to outright intransigence; he would not pay ‘‘blackmail to a bandit’’ who in his mind was besieged by growing popular discontent and under fire from the military, the king, and anti-Nazi Fascist luminaries.57 The Italians themselves seemed at odds. Ciano was apparently not averse to exploring talks with France. Mussolini, although aware of the advantages that an agreement with France would have in enabling him to approach Hitler as an equal within the framework of the Axis, had already told his son-in-law on 26 April to place Paris on hold until after the treaty with Germany was in place.58 No matter what favorable impression the Duce conveyed to the Vatican, he sidetracked the Pope’s proposals, as well as bilateral talks with France, by providing Ciano with a memorandum to submit to von Ribbentrop that summarized Italy’s interests and ambitions and posed the question of an alliance. Although Italy must have peace over the next three years, Mussolini declared his readiness, depending on Tokyo’s pleasure, to conclude either a tripartite or a bilateral pact. He did

Consolidation of the Axis

193

not shrink from the ultimate commitment: ‘‘The military accords must be carefully prepared in order that—the circumstances clearly specified—they may be invoked almost automatically.’’59 In his wish to dissipate the hard feelings in Berlin stemming from Italy’s repudiation of the Triple Alliance in 1914, Mussolini was ready to bind his country hand and foot to Germany: peace for three years, so as to be retooled and fully prepared; then war against the Western Powers in an alliance that would close off the escape hatches for both Axis partners. When von Ribbentrop and Ciano met at Milan during 6–7 May, much still needed to be cleared up. The long-held suspicion in Berlin that Mussolini was planning an attack on France remained very much alive; the Germans did not fully understand that Mussolini’s talk of war was bluster. On the other hand, the Italians, left in the dark by the Germans, failed to draw the conclusion that Danzig and the Corridor were smokescreens concealing Hitler’s intention of gobbling up Poland. Von Ribbentrop bore with him three drafts of an alliance, while Ciano had at his disposal Mussolini’s memorandum. Von Ribbentrop’s heart lay in an accord with Japan, to convert the AntiComintern Pact into a threatening military alliance against Britain, France, and eventually the United States. A strictly bilateral alliance with Italy interested him far less. But von Ribbentrop was hampered by the usual Japanese snag. The Tokyo government, faced with strong opposition from the navy, refused to countenance anything other than an alliance against the Soviet Union, an idea that fitted well with the anti-Bolshevik strain in Nazi ideology, but not with Hitler’s current Realpolitik. The Fu¨ hrer’s immediate aim was to immobilize the Western Powers and isolate Poland for a localized war by means of a tactical de´ tente with Stalin. Von Ribbentrop took care not to spell this out to Ciano, leaving the impression that the Polish question was neither critical nor irreconcilable. He further downplayed the feeling of crisis in Berlin by emphasizing Germany’s absolute need for peace over the next five years. The ruse worked. Ciano found von Ribbentrop, whom he personally disliked, surprisingly free of bellicosity and out of character as ‘‘the bearer of a policy of moderation and understanding.’’60 But while Ciano in Milan was thus tranquilized by the ‘‘slowing down of the speed of German dynamism,’’61 Mussolini in Rome burned over the glacial reception that the Milanese gave the German foreign minister, and he was outraged by the French press, which reported the hootings of the crowd. Anti-Fascism needed to be taught a lesson by a demonstrative show of Axis solidarity. On the evening of 6 May, Mussolini ordered Ciano by phone to sign an alliance with Germany. Von Ribbentrop informed Berlin and received a quick approval from Hitler. On 12 May, a German draft was drawn up, unimpeded by Italy. Ciano regarded the provisions as ‘‘real dynamite’’ but offered no modification of substance. Mussolini gave his approval on 17 May and on the next day completely lost interest in the

194

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

idea of discussing the Franco-Italian question in a five-power conference sponsored by the Vatican.62 Von Ribbentrop received Italy’s highest decoration, and Ciano traveled to Berlin on 22 May to sign the alliance. The Pact of Steel, as the alliance was dubbed (Mussolini first wanted it called ‘‘the Pact in Blood’’), represents one of the most irresponsibly offensive alliances in the annals of modern European diplomacy; it also reveals Fascist diplomacy at its sloppiest. Italy was required to commit its forces in support of Germany should Hitler become involved in war, even a war of his own making. Nothing was put to paper about avoiding war for three years and no delimitation of spheres of influence in the Balkans was mapped out. The significance of the Soviet-German rapprochement as part of Hitler’s strategy to isolate Poland flew by the Italians without notice. Mussolini intended to acquire the right to be consulted in order to delay war but threw caution to the winds by ignoring safeguards and qualifying phrases. Finally, if belatedly, the Duce sensed he had fallen into a trap. To fill in a gaping hole in the alliance, he sent General Ugo Cavallero to Berlin on 5 June armed with a memorandum that stated Italy’s need for peace over the next three years.63 By this move, Mussolini revealed his fears, showing the Germans that his talk of war was pure strut and swagger. Would Hitler ever have postponed German dynamism by allowing the Italians formally to amend the alliance with the Cavallero Memorandum that called for an extended period of peace? What was the purpose of the Pact of Steel anyway—peace or war? Mussolini was not always sure; he seemed desirous only of obtaining Hitler’s faith in his loyalty and martial spirit. The Fu¨ hrer expressed himself in complete accord with the memorandum and stated that he was prepared to meet with Mussolini at the Brenner, perhaps to explore the possibilities of war issuing from Germany’s dispute with Poland over Danzig.64 But Mussolini evaded the invitation; the Fu¨ hrer’s word would suffice. Given Mussolini’s unexpected carte blanche, the Germans had been able to work their own primary objective into the alliance: the isolation of Poland as a prelude to a war of annihilation. The crusade against the ideological infidels residing in the Kremlin would be postponed sine die in favor of neutrality sweet talk aimed at Stalin to keep the Soviet Union out of an alliance with the West. Denied military cooperation with Moscow, the Western Powers would be deterred from going to war to save Poland from Germany. The Duce had set himself up as a perfect foil for Hitler. Uninformed by the Fu¨ hrer of his train of thought, the Duce, by Italy’s attachment to the alliance with Germany, unwittingly enabled Hitler to intimidate the democracies with a solid Axis front. Of course, Mussolini had intended Italy to be the intimidator, not Germany. On 23 May, in a secret session, Hitler laid before his generals his intention of pursuing Lebensraum by obliterating Poland at the first opportunity. Although Hitler meant his war to be localized, he saw no point in explaining his reasons to Mussolini,

Consolidation of the Axis

195

fearing that the Duce, to fend off a general conflict, would either call for another Munich to rob him of his war or leave him high and dry by pulling out of the Axis. Compounding his personalized and careless diplomacy, Mussolini incorrectly gauged events. Worried that Britain’s recent accords of mutual assistance with Turkey and its unilateral guarantee to Greece would block further Italian moves, he did not want the Western Democracies to think that the Axis had suffered a setback. By signing an alliance with Hitler, he would show Britain that its encirclement policies had boomeranged and his own people that Italy was still a dynamic force in Europe. Above all, Mussolini meant to use the Pact of Steel to wheedle concessions from the French. But the Duce, like Hitler, failed to realize that totalitarian aggression and diplomatic blackmail would no longer go unanswered. With the occupation of Prague and Albania, a period of European history had come to an end and a new one had begun; Western appeasement had been replaced by a policy of resistance. Among the Great Powers of Europe, that left only Italy and the Soviet Union to buy off Hitler. Furthermore, Mussolini erroneously calculated that the Pact of Steel would enable him to circumscribe Hitler’s dynamism by the obligation of mutual consultation in the alliance; he mistakenly believed that Britain would appreciate his insider’s role in Berlin as a brake on the policy of the Third Reich. But was it realistic to believe that Hitler would honor the alliance by granting Italy privileged status in Germany’s diplomacy? Here once again, Mussolini’s ‘‘blind-eye’’ toward Germany distorted his Realpolitik. Although repeatedly declaring that the Western Powers were inwardly decaying, the Duce still knew that they would not expire from Italian threats; he would need Hitler’s support to turn the Mediterranean into an Italian sea. Was this not an idle dream that overlooked the failure of Germans from Bismarck through Hitler to honor their promises, both written and oral, to support Italy’s imperialism? At the same time, although powered by the conviction that German hegemony was irreversible, Mussolini nursed the illusion of using the Pact of Steel to impose Italy’s war timetable on Hitler and to restrain him from prematurely undertaking a mad-dog act against Poland that would involve Italy in a European war it was nowhere near ready to fight. Feeding the delusion in Mussolini’s diplomacy was a growing fatalism: that events were outrunning his ability to control them and that Italy was fast falling behind the rapid rearmament pace set by Hitler’s Germany. NOTES 1. De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 2: 471. 2. Paul Schmidt, Statist Auf Diplomatischer Bu¨ hne, 1923–1945 (Bonn: Athena¨ um, 1950), 387–88; Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 112. 3. OO, XXIX: 96–97.

196

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

4. De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 2: 482–83. 5. Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 115. 6. OO, XXIX: 99–100. 7. Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, 16–18. 8. Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 134. 9. The two leading books on the subject are Meir Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), and Renzo De Felice, Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo (Turin: Einaudi, 1972). 10. Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 135. 11. Mario Toscano, The Origins of the Pact of Steel (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), 29–30. 12. Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 121 13. Giuseppe Bottai, Diario 1935–1944 (Milan: Rizzoli, 1989), 129; Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 119–20. 14. Ibid., 145. 15. Ibid., 148. 16. Ibid., 156. 17. Ibid., 162. 18. Dino Grandi, Il mio paese (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1985), 445. 19. DBFP, 3, II, 1159, 28 September 1938. 20. DBFP, 3, II, 1231, 30 September 1938. 21. Filippo Anfuso, Da Palazzo Venezia al Lago di Garda 1936–1945 (Bologna: Capelli, 1957), 72–76. 22. Ciano’s adulatory description of Mussolini’s behavior, Diary 1937–1938, 167. 23. Cited in Telford Taylor, Munich: The Price of Peace (New York: Vantage Books, 1980), 42. 24. Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 161, 163. 25. Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, 242–46. 26. Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 185. 27. Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, 250–51, 258; Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 191. 28. DBFP, 3, III, 474, 5 December 1938. 29. Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, 242–46, 258–59; Count Galeazzo Ciano, The Ciano Diaries 1939–1943, ed. Hugh Gibson (New York: Doubleday, 1946), 3. 30. Ibid., 10. For a more detailed description of Chamberlain’s visit to Rome, see Paul Stafford, ‘‘The Chamberlain-Halifax visit to Rome: a reappraisal,’’ English Historical Review, 98 (January 1983): 61–100. 31. DDF, 2, XIV, 130, 16 February 1939. 32. Ibid. 33. Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, 243. 34. Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 44–45. 35. Ibid., 47–48. 36. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 48. 37. Ibid., 46. 38. Point made by De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 2: 592–93. 39. Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, 276–80.

Consolidation of the Axis

197

40. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 49. 41. OO, 29: 251. 42. Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, La De´ cadence (1932–1939) (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1979), 413. 43. Ciano, Diary 1937–1938, 4, 6. 44. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 118. 45. Ibid., 128. 46. Ciano, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, 267–72. 47. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 36. 48. De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 2: 607. 49. Toscano, The Origins of the Pact of Steel, 170. 50. Donatella Bolech Cecchi, Non bruciare ponti con Roma (Milan: Giuffre`, 1986), 239. 51. Shorrock, From Ally to Enemy, 265. 52. DGFP, D, VI, 205 and 211, 15 and 18 April 1939. 53. DBFP, 3, V, 369 and 603, 5 and 23 May 1939. 54. DBFP, 3, V, 106, 9 April 1939. 55. DBFP, 3, V, 235, 20 April 1939. 56. Italo Garzia, Pio XII e l’Italia nella seconda guerra mondiale (Trent: Marcelliana, 1988), 60. 57. FRUS, 1939, I: 179–81. 58. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 70–71. 59. Ciano’s memo can be found in Toscano, The Origins of the Pact of Steel, 289–90. 60. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 78. 61. Ibid. 62. DGFP, D, 6, 341, 18 May 1939. 63. DDI, 8, XII, 59, 30 May 1939. 64. DDI, 8, XII, 130, 6 June 1939; ibid., 535, 11 July 1939.

CHAPTER 11

War NONBELLIGERENCY In the tension-filled months following the signature of the Pact of Steel on 22 May 1939, Mussolini strove to be a peacemaker and to serve as a brake on Hitler—but only when general war threatened and hope still existed of gaining territory from the Allies by intimidation or by force, under the growing shadow of the Third Reich. Mussolini and Ciano pursued their own peace policy by soliciting the West to abandon its guarantees to Poland, Romania, and Greece, which, they argued, stood as provocations to the Axis Powers. This Italian make-believe was matched by its dream of a ‘‘dynamic’’ diplomacy generated by support of a Croatian uprising against the Serb-dominated Belgrade regime. But Joseph Goebbels interrupted these reveries on 17 June in a violent speech at Danzig, in which he accused the Poles of aggression against the city and reaffirmed the German claim to its return. Because this was the same language that had previously been leveled at Vienna and Prague, it aroused alarm in most of the capitals of Europe. But not in Rome. Mussolini and Ciano continued to bask in the illusion that the Fu¨ hrer, having agreed to a long period of peace, would rant and rave against the Poles and then, after intimidation had done its work, step back from the brink and accept Danzig and the Corridor at a European conference presided over by Italy. Dismissing the German propaganda barrage as typical Nazi hyperbole, Ciano left for Spain on 9 July for a tenday visit.1 Acting on another fundamental misconception, Mussolini concluded

200

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

that, thanks to the consultative clause of the Pact of Steel, he was in a better position than ever for keeping Hitler chained to peace. Britain was expected to reciprocate by placing pressure on France to make concessions to Italy. Chamberlain took up the cue by asking Mussolini to restrain Hitler from a coup in Danzig and pointing out to Daladier on 14 July that the question of war or peace depended on a settlement of Franco-Italian differences.2 Daladier replied on 24 July that all Rome would understand was tough talk and that a new French initiative would be considered by Mussolini as proof of weakness. Chamberlain made no further de´ marche in Paris. Mussolini showed his discontent over the lack of movement in the West by lecturing the British about his fidelity to the German alliance and blaming Poland for the problem of Danzig.3 Just as Chamberlain was loath to come down too hard on the French, Mussolini had little disposition to act as a brake on Hitler if there was no threat of a general war. His real preference was to stand on the underlying assumptions of the Cavallero Memorandum: ‘‘War between the plutocratic, and therefore egoistic and conservative nations, and the populated and poor is inevitable.’’ To forestall a projected alliance between Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, Italy and Germany would break the unity of the Western Powers, accelerate the internal disintegration of their societies, and incite revolts in their colonies. Since Rome was not predisposed to ease tensions with France, there was no further reason to muffle Italy’s claims on Tunisia, Djibouti, and the Suez Canal.4 If, during the first two weeks of July, Ciano put his trust in von Ribbentrop’s assurances that there would be no war over Danzig unless ‘‘Polish provocations’’ compelled the Fu¨ hrer to react, the Italian ambassador in Berlin, Bernardo Attolico, was much less sanguine about German intentions. He reported that Hitler, convinced that Britain and France would not move in a German war against Poland, was feverishly making plans against the Poles and wanted to meet with Mussolini before launching them.5 His warnings went unheeded in Rome. Sure that the German-Polish crisis would end up in a new European compromise without exploding into an open conflict, Ciano wrote back that a visit to Italy by the Fu¨ hrer during August was not opportune; perhaps the following month.6 Shunning the ‘‘hysterical’’ Attolico, Ciano listened to his brother-in-law Massimo Magistrati, the first counselor of the Italian embassy in Berlin, who played down Hitler’s aggressive intentions, advised that Italy rely on his word, and pointed out that it was dishonorable for Italy ‘‘to run after Germany in its panic that the Fu¨ hrer was ready to move.’’7 It was Mussolini, not Ciano, who first grew anxious over the mounting tension between Germany and Poland over Danzig. After many evasions, he prepared himself to take up Hitler’s urgent requests for a meeting at the Brenner to talk about the Polish crisis. Spurred by the threat of a general

War

201

war, which his country was unprepared to fight, the Duce launched a proposal on 24 July for another conference, with a view to restraining Hitler and blackmailing the democracies into making concessions to Italy. Would Mussolini be able to find a formula capable of saving the peace while maintaining the life of the Axis? To placate Berlin, assurances were in order. ‘‘If Germany has to mobilize, Italy will do so likewise and at the same time.’’8 But behind the bravado lay compelling diplomatic arguments for postponing the inevitable showdown with the Western Powers. A war of nerves suited the Axis better; a conference would provide a popular way of handing Danzig over to Germany. If the democracies refused to confer, they would put themselves in the wrong, and, according to the information at Mussolini’s disposal, Poland and the Western Powers were in earnest and intended to fight.9 Given this proof that Italy would not follow Germany blindly, von Ribbentrop scotched Mussolini’s proposed conference on 26 July; five days later, Hitler canceled the Brenner meeting. Just as Attolico suspected, the Fu¨ hrer was determined to go his own way.10 By 6 August, Ciano had finally come to his senses. Rather than a panicmonger, Attolico had been prescient in pointing out that Germany was on the verge of a war against Poland in which Italy was expected to fight. To ward off catastrophe, Ciano proposed a meeting with von Ribbentrop. Needing no persuasion, Mussolini gave Ciano instructions the following day to inform the Germans that, since a conflict with Poland would be impossible to localize and since a general war would be disastrous for everybody, it should be avoided at all costs. ‘‘Never has the Duce spoken of the need for peace with so much warmth and without reserve,’’ commented a relieved Ciano.11 In Salzburg and Berchtesgaden on 11 and 12 August, Ciano encountered Nazis fanatically opposed to compromise, negotiations, or peace; they were dead set on aggression against Poland. To buy them off, the desperate foreign minister offered von Ribbentrop Danzig and the Corridor by means of a European conference. This time von Ribbentrop dropped all pretenses: ‘‘We want war, war, war. Poland must be invaded, defeated, annihilated, and annexed to the Third Reich in the same fashion as Austria and Czechoslovakia.’’ The Germans, Ciano belatedly concluded, ‘‘are possessed by the demon of destruction.’’12 Hitler brutally revealed his hand to Ciano the following day by declaring that he intended to answer Polish provocations with military might. Since the Western Powers would not move to broaden Germany’s war against Poland into a general conflagration, however, there would be no need for Italian military assistance. Dismayed by this facile logic, Ciano questioned the Fu¨ hrer’s assumption that the Western Powers would not fight and urged him to accept the Duce’s proposal for a European conference. Itching for war, Hitler turned a deaf ear, but, to mollify Mussolini, he invited Italy to settle accounts with Yugoslavia by seizing Croatia.13 Hitler was adept in

202

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

exploiting the Duce’s vacillation between greed and fear. If Italy were not to follow Germany into a European war, the Fu¨ hrer would guarantee the Duce’s loyalty to the Axis by promising to provide a cover for future Italian expansionist moves. Directly confronted at Salzburg by German determination to wage war, whatever the risk of a general conflagration and regardless of Italian interests, Ciano emerged a changed man. The onetime Nazi toady (and aggressor in Spain and Albania) now vowed to prevail on Mussolini to regard Italy as freed from the Axis by Germany’s infraction of the Pact of Steel.14 Ciano’s disillusionment marked how far apart Rome and Berlin stood. What the Italians had learned about the attitude of the Western Powers did not tally with German views. Berlin held that France and Britain would not intervene. Rome considered it beyond a doubt that both would intervene at once. Behind these conflicting views lay the unanswerable military reality if Italy should enter the war on the side of Germany. Since von Ribbentrop had stated in Salzburg that Germany would withdraw to defensive positions on its western frontiers, the Duce could reasonably conclude that the French and British, confronted by the Western Wall that blocked the road to Warsaw, would hurl their forces against Italy to knock out the weaker Axis partner. Since Italian fortifications were practically nonexistent, the French armies would roll unopposed into the Po Valley and capture the northern heartland of Italian industry while the British navy wrought havoc on the Italian coastline. As German tanks assaulted an isolated Poland, an unprepared Italy would bear the entire brunt of the Allied onslaught. Mussolini swung to and fro. Exhilarated by the idea of war, he stated that honor compelled him to march with Germany. Aware of Italy’s weakness, he hoped that Germany’s differences with Poland would be solved peacefully, with the Poles handing over Danzig and the Corridor to Hitler under his arbitration. But posturing as a peacemaker while Hitler brandished the sword was humiliating. At the same time, recognizing that the Western Powers might be ready to fight while Italy was not, Mussolini told Ciano to detach Italian policy from identifying too closely with Germany. Still, in case the democracies remained neutral, Mussolini wanted to remain nominally on the German side, ‘‘because we too must have our share of the plunder.’’ To escape from revealing to Hitler ‘‘the fear of war and the fear to reveal his fear of war,’’15 the Duce on 13–14 August considered, in the event of a European conflagration, a declaration of nonbelligerence rather than neutrality, which he found wimpish and disheartening.16 Nonbelligerency was a formula that Mussolini contrived to convince Hitler that he could be helpful to Germany from the sidelines and that Italy’s loyalty to the Axis would continue to be unshaken. The other side of this coin was the fear that, if he stayed out of a general war, Hitler would punish him with invasion for failing to live up to Italy’s obligations under

War

203

the Pact of Steel. This time there was little hope that the British would help Mussolini out of his predicament by cooperating with Italy to sell out Poland in the interest of peace. Since the British had decided to stand firm, they would no longer use Mussolini as their appeasement catspaw. Only if Poland were admitted, allowed to negotiate with Germany on an equal footing, and defended against an Axis diktat, would Britain agree to a European conference. In case of a European war, the two ancient friends would find themselves in opposite camps, if Italy placed itself on the side of Germany.17 The French were more unbending still. They preferred a declared enemy to a ‘‘neutral’’ Italy in tacit collusion with Germany.18 There would be no repetition of Munich. On 23 August, Germany signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union. The world was a stunned witness to toasts exchanged in Moscow of eternal German-Soviet friendship. Whoever would have thought that diplomacy could bridge the vast ideological differences between the Nazi and Communist regimes, which for years had treated each other as evil incarnate? The naked aggressiveness of the pact, highlighted in secret clauses by yet another partition of Poland and the Soviet absorption of the Baltic states, remained to be discovered. ‘‘There is no doubt that the Germans have struck a master blow,’’ Ciano conceded.19 At a stroke, the European balance of power had been transformed at the expense of the Western Powers—and Italy. But seen from Rome, the Poles, armed only with a flimsy and unconvincing British guarantee, had no choice but to capitulate to German demands. The fear of a general war having suddenly eased, Italian spirits were buoyed for their own country’s expansion. No matter that the Nazi-Soviet pact violated the obligation of consultation of the Pact of Steel and made a shambles of the anti-Comintern Pact; no matter that the nonaggression pact held perils for Italy. Ciano was preoccupied mainly with taking ‘‘our share of the booty in Croatia and Dalmatia,’’ while Mussolini called on his chief of general staff, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, to prepare a plan of attack on Greece and Yugoslavia.20 But when Britain announced a pact of mutual assistance with the embattled Poles on 25 August, the Italians were brought back to earth. Their resolve stiffened by British words rather than weapons, the Poles vowed to fight to the finish rather than submit, dreaming that their cavalry and e´ lan would triumph over Germany’s mechanized legions. Frightened by the specter of war, Mussolini fell back on the idea of a European conference. This suited the king, whom Ciano found to be in a state of open hostility toward the Germans. Meanwhile, the Italian people looked with dismay on the unfolding European crisis to which Italy might be dragged on the side of the hated Germans. On the same day, the Duce sent Hitler a letter: If Germany attacks Poland and the latter’s allies open a counter-attack against Germany, I inform you in advance that it will be opportune for me not to take the

204

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

initiative in military operations in view of the present state of Italian war preparations. . . . Our intervention can, however, take place at once if Germany delivers to us immediately the military supplies and the raw materials to resist the attack which the French and English would . . . direct against us.21

The Germans, he knew, were not prepared to provide Italy with the huge amount of military equipment it wanted. As Ciano noted: ‘‘The Duce’s military instinct and his sense of honor were leading him to war. Reason has now stopped him. This hurts very much.’’22 The arrival of Mussolini’s communique´ of 25 August on the day of Britain’s alliance treaty with Poland (which showed that the Western Powers were not cowed by the Nazi-Soviet Pact) dampened the euphoria in Germany issuing from Hitler’s diplomatic coup in Moscow. Perhaps the West would fight after all, and, faced with a general war, Italy would slink into neutrality. The Italians are behaving just as they did in 1914, they said in Berlin—words that echoed unpleasantly in the Duce’s ears. The Fu¨ hrer was thrown into a tailspin. He pushed back his plans to invade Poland from 26 August to 1 September and held Rome responsible for stiffening Britain’s resistance. Von Ribbentrop, in particular, claimed that Ciano had tattled to the British about Italy’s defection from the Pact of Steel, an action that he claimed had spurred London to defend Poland. This was perhaps a half-truth. During Hitler’s campaign of intimidation against Poland in August, the British, in contrast to their diplomacy leading up to Munich, constantly informed Rome of their every move while soliciting Italian advice in order to secure Mussolini’s moderating influence on Hitler. Moreover, the British ambassador in Rome, Sir Percy Loraine, and Ciano consulted frequently on ways to preserve the peace. Based on their own observations, the British were pretty certain that Italy would not enter the war on Hitler’s side; the Duce wanted peace.23 But rather than the collusion suspected in Berlin, there was stalemate. The British refused to satisfy Mussolini’s precondition for chairing a conference: obtaining a commitment from the Poles that they ‘‘freely recognize the right of the Free City [Danzig] to return to the Reich.’’24 Of capital importance was the fact that Britain had apprised Rome on 27 August of Germany’s secret offer of an alliance behind the back of its Axis partner. This was a shrewd diplomatic move, for London wanted to encourage Italy not to follow Germany and possibly to ask Mussolini to turn Hitler away from his proposed aggression. This would be done, however, without any concession and with the clear reminder to Mussolini of his equivocal position. Actually no one in London trusted Mussolini anymore, but Britain’s courteous demeanor and apparent deference fooled Ciano and Grandi into believing that London and Rome would cooperate in curbing Hitler’s appetite for war. On 26 August, Mussolini wrote to Hitler: ‘‘I leave it to you to imagine my state of mind at being compelled by forces beyond my control not to

War

205

afford you real solidarity at the moment of action.’’ Disclaiming any taint of pacifism, he concluded with a despairing appeal for a peaceful settlement: ‘‘I venture to insist anew . . . on the advantage of a political solution which I regard as still possible.’’25 In spite of his irritation over Mussolini’s loss of nerve, Hitler refrained from recrimination. As Italy diplomatically distanced itself from the Third Reich, the Fascist press, to head off German scorn and suspicion, ever more shrilly supported Hitler’s claims on Danzig and the Corridor against Polish ‘‘intransigence.’’ On 27 August, Mussolini looked forward to a hard, long, and bloody struggle from which Italy, on the sidelines, could draw advantages, but the next day he was ‘‘restless,’’ wanting ‘‘to do something.’’26 Cognizant of Italy’s incapacity to wage war, Mussolini tried to work out conference proposals during the last days of peace. He informed Hitler on 29 August: Whereas Italian relations with Paris were, as we knew, such that Italy neither could or would take any action in Paris, Italy’s relations with Britain, both official and personal, were very cordial and good. If Germany wanted Italy to take any action, or to make any statement in London, the Duce was entirely at the Fu¨ hrer’s disposal.27

Since Hitler was bent on aggression, Mussolini’s offer to act as Germany’s messenger stood no chance of acceptance in Berlin. On 31 August, two final efforts were made in Rome to stave off war. At 11 a.m., Ciano informed Halifax that the Duce could intervene with Hitler only if he were in a position to bring Germany the ‘‘fat prize’’ of Danzig. Empty-handed, he could do nothing. For once the one to act behind his ally’s back, Mussolini agreed to let Ciano inform London that Italy had no intention of going to war, out of fear that some incident might result in hostilities between the West and Italy for which his country was totally unprepared.28 Since the British stood solidly against any further appeasement of Germany, they dodged these frantic Italian mediation efforts to save the peace at the expense of the Poles by cutting their communications with Rome.29 On 1 September, in an act of flagrant and naked aggression against a poorly armed victim, Nazi Germany’s huge war machine smashed into Poland to launch World War II. While the statesmen in London and Paris prepared with resignation to honor their promises to aid Poland, Ciano in Rome sighed in relief. Since Mussolini had succeeded with Hitler’s approval in freeing his country from the trap of the Pact of Steel, there would be no immediate Italian entry into the war. Italy would have time to arm itself during the unfolding mortal duel between Britain and Germany and would be at liberty to choose sides when prepared.30 But Mussolini was not prepared to sever all his ties with Hitler. Before the Grand Council on 1 September, the Italian leader delivered Berlin a defense for nonbelligerence. He

206

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

should be charged with neither apostasy nor weakened loyalty toward Hitler, who he privately hoped would barely prevail over his adversaries in a long, exhausting struggle. At the opportune moment, the Duce would be able to intervene in the war, arrayed against, though not necessarily in armed conflict with, the Western Powers, but his own objectives and strategy would remain substantially autonomous—Italy’s parallel war. Alternatively, if Hitler and the Western Powers fell into a stalemate, Mussolini could step in as a mediator. In either case, Italy would again emerge as the peso determinante, pick up choice territory from the exhausted Allies, and remain in Hitler’s good graces in a Europe devoid of a hegemonical power. In contrast stood Ciano, Grandi, and Bottai, who were convinced that the Western Powers would hold their own and wanted to create an even greater distance from Germany than was denoted by nonbelligerence.31 Between 27 August and 3 September, Mussolini and Ciano were consumed with the questions of war and peace. Would this war be limited or general, long or short, and who would be the winner? Meanwhile, they continued to urge Hitler to accept their mediation and a conference, since, as they repeated each time, Germany was in a very strong position and would be able to dictate its terms. Due to either wishful thinking or miscalculation, Mussolini had not yet learned that Hitler was hardly a man of moderation who was likely to compromise when the annihilation of the enemy was within reach. On 3 September, the day that the Western Powers answered Nazi aggression against Poland with a declaration of war on Germany, Hitler delivered to Mussolini his final and inevitable refusal to parley. I also believe that, even if we now march down separate paths, Destiny will yet bind us one to the other. If National Socialist Germany were to be destroyed by the Western Democracies, Fascist Italy also would face a hard future. I personally was always aware that the futures of our two re´ gimes were bound up, and I know that you, Duce, are of exactly the same opinion.32

In a fit of intolerable guilt and cowardice at the moment of truth, Mussolini issued his declaration of nonbelligerency. Nonetheless, he was determined to keep the road to Berlin open by eschewing outright neutrality, which the Germans would undoubtedly take as betrayal. No matter that Hitler had acted in the pursuit of purely German interests and had for many years shockingly deceived his ally; the Duce was determined to avoid any sacrifice of his own expansionist ambitions that could be realized only in the framework of the Axis. There would therefore be no break with Germany and no thought of intervention on the side of the Allies. Pride and image were factors too. Propelled by the desire to distance himself from the old liberal Italy, with its diplomatic opportunism, smallness of view, and preference for gaining advantage on the sly short of war, the Duce did

War

207

not want anyone in Berlin to insinuate that Italy had once again deserted its ally, as in 1914. What particularly bothered him was that he had affirmed unequivocally and repeatedly his admiration for naked violence and warfare, then, at the decisive moment, he had pulled back. While the Pope joined the British in prodding Mussolini to find a solution that would guarantee peace as a moral virtue and as an end in itself, the Duce sought a mediating role, not as a moral imperative, but as a necessity dictated by momentary and contingent considerations and by the painful circumstance of military weakness. Mussolini’s future moves would depend on the shifting fortunes of the battlefield. ITALY DESCENDS INTO WAR When the Soviet Union invaded Poland on 17 September to take possession of its third of the already vanquished country, Mussolini felt left out and imperiled. Confronted by yet another fait accompli, he prepared to strike out on his own. While Mussolini believed that Hitler had deserted him for Stalin, Ciano pondered the formation of a neutral bloc in Eastern Europe to ‘‘resist with every weapon and by every means . . . the monstrous union [the Nazi-Soviet Pact] against the letter and spirit of our pact.’’33 Before a Council of Ministers meeting on 30 September, Mussolini veered further from Hitler by suggesting that Italy could choose either side once its armaments were complete. For his part, Ciano aimed to downgrade nonbelligerency to neutrality and to upgrade Italy from bystander to mediator. During a visit with Hitler on 1 October, the Italian foreign minister raised the possibility of a compromise peace, based on a truncated and disarmed Poland, and expressed anxiety over the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Hitler gave short shrift to the idea of a restored Poland in any guise. Furthermore, nothing would stop him from destroying the Western Powers, and he would tolerate no disruption in the prevailing harmony between Germany and the Soviet Union. In using peremptory language for what had been implicitly implied all along, Hitler urged Ciano to inform Mussolini that ‘‘Italy’s absence from the battlefield and a German defeat’’ would mean the end of Italy’s imperial aspirations in the Mediterranean,’’34 to say nothing of its Balkan ambitions. What would happen, Rome was left to ponder, if Germany won without any Italian military support? Rebuffed in Berlin, Ciano next pursued a Balkan bloc under Italian tutelage. His approach included not only diplomacy but war—an attack on Yugoslavia to gain Croatia as an Italian bastion against both a German Drang nach Su¨ dosten and further Soviet penetration. This ambition, however, was thwarted by the unwillingness of the British and French to understand the anti-German subtleties of Fascist diplomacy and their refusal to use appeasement to further Italian aggression against independent countries. Hence, Italy’s Croatian friends were reluctantly placed on hold. Fur-

208

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

thermore, Ciano made no headway with the Balkan neutrals, because Britain had already lined up Turkey in an alliance and Greece remained immune to Italian blandishments. Despairing of a neutral bloc, Ciano informed Berlin on 17 October that Italy would abandon its pursuit of a Balkan league.35 Mussolini preferred loyalty to the German alliance over an intermediate position between Berlin and London. Nevertheless, this pro-German slant did not mean that the Duce had arrived at any firm decision. When the Soviet Union attacked Finland on 30 November, Mussolini applauded the stout resistance of the brave defenders, while the Italian people expressed support for the Finns and hostility toward the Soviets, an attitude that discomfited Berlin and threatened to disrupt the officially correct relations between Rome and Moscow. During the autumn, Italian policy was marked by Ciano’s desultory efforts to redefine nonbelligerency as equidistance (with aggressive intentions toward Yugoslavia) and the Duce’s wild mood fluctuations caused by the unpredictabilities of the battlefield. In early October, believing that the British and French would hold firm, Mussolini expressed delight when it appeared that Hitler would be slowed down. In a darker mood, the idea of Hitler’s waging war and, worse still, winning it was altogether unbearable. In yet another moment, Mussolini hoped to embroil the Germans with the Soviets in endless disputes.36 Before the Grand Council on 7 December, the Duce, in line with Ciano’s thinking, stated that a victory by either side would be a disaster for Italy. The best outcome was ‘‘that the two lions tear each other to pieces, until they leave their tails on the ground—and we, possibly, can go and scoop them up.’’ For Bottai, however, Mussolini’s adherence to Ciano’s policy was ‘‘only an intellectual acceptance’’; his heart was still full of ‘‘interventionist palpitations.’’37 Two days later, carried away in a transport of proGermanism, the Duce talked of seizing Corsica and Tunisia from France,38 but these aggressive impulses were tempered by an abiding distrust and fear of the Third Reich. Instead of resettling the South Tyrolean Germans, as agreed to in principle earlier by Hitler, Berlin stood by while the Volkdeutsche carried out Pan-German activities. In November, the Duce ordered accelerated work on his northern frontier facing Germany to create impregnable fortifications on the scale of the Maginot Line. These defenses against a German invasion, which had originally been stepped up in the aftermath of the Anschluss, did not represent any turn against Hitler on the side of the Western Powers. Ciano delivered a key speech on 16 December before the Italian Chamber that seemed to mark the beginning of a break with Germany. Describing the Axis as an integral part of anti-Comintern policy, he dwelled on German perfidy. In transacting the Nazi-Soviet pact with Stalin, Germany had given Italy only two days notice; by launching aggression against Poland, Germany had violated the understanding with Italy that precluded

War

209

war for three to five years. Ciano boasted in his diary that his speech, if on first impression appeared to be anti-Bolshevik, was in substance antiGerman. The Italian people, he concluded, considered his speech to be ‘‘the real funeral of the Axis.’’39 On 2 January 1940, Ciano warned the Belgians that Germany was preparing an invasion of their country.40 As the year 1940 began, Mussolini seemed determined to stay Ciano’s course both by upholding neutrality in order to escape subordination to Germany and by delaying Italy’s entry into the war while he pursued mediation and military rearmament. To avoid a German move against the West that would force his hand, Mussolini sent Hitler a letter on 5 January 1940 that seemed to underwrite Ciano’s speech of 16 December: I feel that you cannot abandon the anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik banner which you have been flying for twenty years and for which so many of your comrades have died; you cannot renounce your gospel in which the German people have blindly believed. . . . The solution of your Lebensraum problem is in Russia and nowhere else.41

To counter British propaganda that was successfully playing on Germany’s brutal treatment of the Poles, he urged the creation of a rump Polish state under the aegis of Berlin. While Britain and France could never bring the Third Reich to heel, he pointed out, it was preferable to seek a compromise than ‘‘to risk all’’ in trying to destroy those two nations. Mussolini’s letter revealed a fundamental difference between his views and Hitler’s in language couched in pungent criticisms of Germany’s priorities. Although put on notice at the beginning of December by Dr. Robert Ley, the leader of the German Labor Front, that Hitler would settle accounts with Stalin after knocking out the Western Powers,42 Mussolini was doubtful that Germany could accomplish either aim. In the Duce’s mind, it was the Soviet Union rather than the Western Democracies that was currently the major enemy—not as the bearer of the Communist virus but as a strategic threat to Italian interests. Next to Germany itself, the Soviet Union, in connivance with Hitler, now loomed as the greatest rival to Italy in the Balkans—Bessarabia, the Bucovina, Bulgaria. True, Italy had abandoned the Danube region by acquiescing in the Anschluss, but Mussolini wanted to preserve the Balkans as a potential Italian sphere, where a toehold had already been established by the conquest of Albania. Mussolini was also caught in a time warp that reduced his realistic alternatives. He wanted desperately to prevent Hitler from taking the offensive against the Western Powers before Italy was ready to march. While Hitler banked on the superiority of German arms to bring total victory, Mussolini, counting few arms of any worth in his own arsenals, portrayed a Western defeat as illusory. As a frustrated bystander anxious to prevent an enlargement of the conflict, he would be satisfied to host another Mu-

210

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

nich at Poland’s expense. But Mussolini did not intend to be an impartial mediator, for he explicitly stated in his letter to Hitler that the ‘‘attitude of Italy is within, not outside, the framework of the Pact of the Alliance.’’ Were he to disassociate from Germany, there would be no war trophies for Italy in the future. Only after Germany and Italy had demolished Bolshevism would it then be ‘‘the turn of the big democracies, which cannot survive the cancer which is gnawing at them.’’43 If the Fu¨ hrer could only be prevailed upon to abort the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Mussolini would be able to use Germany once again to hold the ring while Italy moved on either the Balkans or the Mediterranean. Hitler, however, had no intention of following Mussolini’s advice or abiding by his priorities. He delayed replying to the Duce until 8 March. While the long gray lines of the British fleet continued to guard the gates of Mussolini’s ‘‘Roman sea,’’ Whitehall tried halfheartedly to keep the line open to Rome by offering to buy arms and munitions from Italy. When Mussolini rejected the offer, the British retaliated by fixing a blockade on much-needed German coal shipments to Italy by way of Rotterdam. The French were even less friendly. From September to March, they took no initiatives in talks with Italy to exploit the differences between Rome and Berlin, nor would Daladier take up Mussolini’s suggestion of a conference; resignation was more honorable than a second Munich.44 Angered by Anglo-French unconcern, Mussolini at a Council of Ministers meeting on 23 January declared that they could no longer win the war. Disavowing indefinite neutrality, Mussolini talked of terrorist bombings over France.45 The Duce proceeded to expound on his notion of a ‘‘parallel war,’’ an as yet nebulous phrase that Bottai took to mean ‘‘a war included in and meshed with the larger and more general one [on the German side], but with its own, specifically Italian objectives.’’46 As Mussolini inched back toward Germany, he put a stop to economic negotiations with the Western Powers and slighted peacemakers from abroad. When the American undersecretary Sumner Welles arrived in Italy on a peace mission in late February, he was first received by Ciano. Although cordial, Ciano spent more time disparaging von Ribbentrop and Hitler and inveighing against the British and French than seriously weighing peace plans. Welles fared no better with Mussolini, who spoke bitterly of the British and pointed out the invincible might of Nazi Germany.47 According to Ciano, Mussolini confided to Filippo Anfuso on 27 February: ‘‘ ‘There are still some criminals and imbeciles in Italy who believe that Germany will be beaten. I tell you Germany will win.’ ’’48 Once France and Germany had worn each other down, neither being strong enough to score a decisive victory, he frequently mused, Italy would become the ‘‘decisive weight.’’ But personal pride and the spirit of revenge constantly vied with the Duce’s gnarled Realpolitik.

War

211

‘‘Within a short time [he told Ciano] the guns will loose off by themselves. It is not possible that of all people I should become the laughing stock of Europe. I have to stand for one humiliation after another. As soon as I am ready I shall make the English repent. My intervention in the war will bring about their defeat.’’49

As Mussolini’s belligerence toward the democracies waxed, his tolerance of Ciano’s anti-Germanism lessened: ‘‘ ‘England will be beaten. Inexorably beaten. This is the pure truth, that you should get into your head.’ ’’ Ciano dolefully recorded: ‘‘During our seven years of daily contacts this is the first time that he picks on me personally.’’50 Finally, on 8 March, Hitler responded to Mussolini’s missive of 5 January. He strove to overcome the Duce’s critical reaction to the Nazi-Soviet Pact by pointing out that National Socialism’s ideological crusade against Jewish-polluted Communism had been transformed by the departure of Maxim Litvinov as foreign minister in May 1939. Since Bolshevism in Russia had given way to ‘‘Russian national state ideology,’’ relations had reverted to normality between two countries blessed with complementary economies and a common determination to ‘‘struggle against the blockade of the world by the plutocratic democracies.’’ Following the flattery— ‘‘though her people, her system and especially her leader, has always been our foremost friend, and always will remain our foremost friend: Italy’’— the subtle threat. If Italy did not come into the war to pursue grandeur, then it would be reduced to survival as ‘‘a modest European state.’’51 To offset the Welles mission, the Fu¨ hrer sent von Ribbentrop to Rome to profit from the Anglo-Italian coal crisis by a firm offer to deliver by rail the one million tons of coal a month, promised to Italy under the ItaloGerman economic agreement of 24 February. Von Ribbentrop reported that Hitler’s decision to attack the West was irrevocable and ‘‘that the French army would be beaten before next fall and that after that the only British soldiers left on the Continent would be prisoners of war.’’ Confronted by the enmity of the plutocratic West, ‘‘the destiny of the German and Italian nations was the same.’’52 A meeting between Mussolini and Hitler was hastily arranged to take place at the Brenner Pass on 18 March. The Duce still hoped to dissuade Hitler from his land offensive. Ciano recorded Mussolini’s conflicting emotions: ‘‘The prospect of an imminent clash in which he might remain an outsider disturbs him and, to use his words, humiliates him. He still hopes, but less than before, that he can influence Hitler and persuade him to desist from his intention to attack.’’53 But once in Hitler’s presence, Mussolini’s dilatoriness and reservations melted away before a confident and decisive Fu¨ hrer poised to end the phony war by a strike against Norway. By declaring his unalterable will to carry the war against the West, Hitler left no room for a compromise peace negotiated by Italy. Although reticent about revealing the time and place of his offensive in the West, Hitler impressed

212

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

on Mussolini the certainty of a complete victory. Hitler’s manipulation of Mussolini was a masterpiece. While boasting of Germany’s military might and its swift conquest of Poland, which he knew would stir the Duce’s aggressive impulses and desire to emulate his successes, Hitler reinforced in his mind the fear of emerging empty-handed unless Italy joined the war and became a great power at the shoulder of a conquering Germany and perhaps a Soviet Union associated with the Third Reich.54 Undoubtedly, talk of war titillated Mussolini, but he wanted no protracted conflict. Italy would intervene in three or four months, on the condition that the German offensive in the West was successful. Although the Duce had told Hitler that ‘‘Italy’s entry into the war is inevitable,’’ once back in Rome, he began to backslide, confiding to Ciano the hope that Hitler would ‘‘think twice before he jumps into the conflict. . . . Hitler is not preparing to launch the land offensive.’’55 Mussolini continued to believe a quick and decisive German victory over France to be beyond the capabilities of the Wehrmacht. Regardless of his expectations, the destiny of Europe rested not in his hands but on the ultimate outcome of Germany’s war. Italy’s tragic weakness was thus nakedly revealed, as was the sad self-deception of Mussolini’s aim to emerge as Europe’s peso determinante. Mussolini summarized his views on 31 March in a secret memorandum sent to Ciano, the king, and the military chiefs. He cast off the illusion of a compromise peace, predicted a German victory, and argued that Italy could not remain outside the conflict in the long run.56 But the Duce, oppressed by the vision of Nazi omnipotence, continued to indulge in fanciful thinking. Germany, he surmised, would abide the phony war on land while intensifying naval and air operations. Only in the certainty of a crushing victory—or in desperation if the blockade left no other course—would the German army launch a land offensive against the Western Powers. Given the continued weakness of Italy’s armed forces and the singular lack of enthusiasm for war voiced by his military chiefs, Mussolini continued to hedge his bets by ‘‘protracting as long as possible our existing attitude of nonbelligerence.’’ But should Italy intervene on the side of its Axis partner, Mussolini would not deploy troops in Southern Germany to fight alongside the Wehrmacht against France; instead, Italian troops would fight on fronts of Italy’s own choosing. To obtain ‘‘a window on the Atlantic Ocean,’’ Mussolini planned to wage a vigorous naval war against Britain under the cover of Nazi victories on land. Elsewhere, apart from a possible attack on Yugoslavia, Mussolini intended to remain on the defensive. To prevent his nominal German ally from winning a crushing victory, the Duce would desist from any offensive in the West, thus allowing the French to concentrate their forces on the Germans should they attack. No matter how closely Mussolini veered toward Germany and no matter how rapidly events were pushing him toward a decision for war, he wanted to preserve a free hand.

War

213

If the fortunes of war should ever turn against Hitler, Mussolini, although terribly disappointed in the collapse of his imperialist ambitions, would desert him. From this time on, Ciano ceased to argue that Germany would not win the war, nor, after the Duce’s stated refusal on 2 April to act ‘‘like whores’’ with the democracies, did Ciano intervene with Mussolini further to implement an evenhanded neutrality by improving relations with the Western Powers. ‘‘If we remain neutral,’’ the Duce told him, ‘‘Italy would lose prestige among the nations of the world for a century . . . and for eternity as a Fascist regime.’’57 But this gust of passion did not overwhelm Mussolini’s calculation. Like most other Italians, he did not want or believe in a total French military collapse, in spite of his relentless urge to settle accounts with the stingy and highly resented ‘‘Latin Sister.’’ Mussolini still hoped to buy time that would allow Italian intervention to be decisive. Even a distant intervention, however, received scant encouragement from the heads of the Italian armed services. In a memorandum delivered to Mussolini on 11 April, they expressed skepticism and distrust regarding even a limited offensive and urged him to ward off German pressure to take the field. The era of the phony war was brought to an abrupt end by the German invasion of Norway on 9 April. Mussolini was ecstatic. On 11 April, he informed the king that ‘‘we’’ would no longer ‘‘remain with our hands folded while others write history.’’58 On the same day, he wrote to Hitler: ‘‘The increasing vexations of the blockade against Italian traffic have created a very strong anti-Allied sentiment in the Italian people. . . . I do not know whether the French ever seriously harbored any illusions as to what Italy’s attitude might be, but if they did, they will undoubtedly have lost them now.’’59 Still, during April, Mussolini continued to play it both ways. He was afraid of missing an easy victory through a late entry into the war, and yet, so long as there was some chance of a negotiated peace, he wanted to play a leading role and gain advantages for his country. But neutrality was banished for good. After a long period of silence, on 22 April, Paul Reynaud, the new French premier, was prompted by Germany’s invasion to propose conversations with Mussolini designed to keep the peace between the two countries. On 26 April, Mussolini responded by explaining that Italy’s alliance with Germany prevented him from accepting the Frenchman’s proposal for a meeting. Pressed by the British, Roosevelt drafted a message on 29 April warning Mussolini against provoking ‘‘a further extension of the area of hostilities.’’ To this, the Duce replied that Hitler could not be beaten and that Italy’s situation as a ‘‘prisoner within the Mediterranean’’ was intolerable.60 As the French military situation worsened, Roosevelt again tried on 14 May to convince Mussolini to stay out of a war ‘‘that would encompass the destruction of millions of lives’’; Churchill issued a polite warning two days later. Mussolini tersely replied to the British and Amer-

214

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

icans on 18 May that he had no wish to parley and that Italy would remain loyal to its alliance with Germany at a time when the fate of Europe hung in the balance. On 10 May, Hitler launched the German invasion of Holland and Belgium. France’s turn swiftly followed. The crisis prompted a change in the British government. Winston Churchill became the prime minister of a coalition cabinet, while his rival, Lord Halifax, was kept on as foreign secretary. With the smell of war in the air, the Duce’s pulse quickened over Italy’s imminent military intervention. On 13 May, he told Ciano that the Allies were lost.61 The Duce seemed not wide of the mark. Instead of the stalemated war predicted by many military buffs, the Panzers, supported by swarms of Stuka dive bombers and motorized infantry, knifed through and raced around the Maginot Line. The shattered and demoralized French armies fell back in chaos or abjectly surrendered. After a couple of weeks, the end appeared to be in sight. Elated, the Duce told von Mackensen that ‘‘the time had come.’’ He would strike ‘‘in the next days.’’ He could not bear to wait longer. He was ‘‘the most impatient of all Italians.’’62 With the swastika fluttering over northern France, many Italians were carried away by a wave of bellicosity. Germany’s overwhelming power allowed Italy to demand what had not previously been thought possible: full satisfaction of the claims outstanding on France that remained from the Paris Peace Conference—and then some. The war hawks were led by Roberto Farinacci, a member of the Fascist grand council, and Achille Starace, the secretary of the Fascist Party. Although the monarchy, the Catholic Church, and Italian big industry were opposed to the German alliance and appalled at the prospect of war on Hitler’s side, many converts from the ranks of the doubters in and out of Fascist circles now hastened to participate in the Nazi victory parade. The Duce was right after all; the Axis would pay dividends. Enticed by visions of an easy Mediterranean triumph, Grandi felt renewed faith in Mussolini’s infinite wisdom, encouraging Italians to risk everything on a single throw. Ciano, too, succumbed to the lure of war as Germany marched from victory to victory. Like Mussolini, he did not want to be tardy in arriving at the conquerors’ banquet. The Duce, however, still restrained himself. Aware of the lamentable shape of his armies, he hoped to protect his ill-prepared country from deadly exposure and vulnerability to a triumphant and unforgiving Germany by averting a total French military collapse. A partially debilitated France would allow Italy to move freely on its just claims, but that France had to be left strong enough to stand against Nazi supremacy—tortuous thinking indeed! While the Germans drove on the British expeditionary force scrambling to evacuate the beachhead at Dunkirk, the cabinet, threatened with impending disaster, pondered a negotiated peace with Hitler and the appease-

War

215

ment of Mussolini. Halifax, going beyond Churchill’s wishes, offered Italy a bribe on 26 May for staying out of the war: Gibraltar, Malta, and the Suez Canal.63 According to Chamberlain’s diary, the new prime minister told Halifax that ‘‘if they could get out of the jam by giving up Malta and Gibraltar and some African colonies to Mussolini, he [Churchill] would jump at the chance.’’64 In answer to Anglo-French exhortations, President Roosevelt on 26 and 27 May went beyond his previous efforts in persuading Mussolini to remain neutral by asking him to provide the United States with Italy’s specific demands, which Washington would then transmit to the Allies. If Mussolini kept Italy out of the war, he would be admitted as an equal to the peace conference. But the Duce shrugged off the American president by emphasizing Italy’s ‘‘freedom of action.’’65 On 27 May, the French foreign minister, Daladier, panicked by his disintegrating forces, scared up a list of concessions to buy off the Italians in the first French offer of territorial concessions to preserve Italian nonbelligerency: the cession of Djibouti and the Somalian coast, a rectification of the Libyan frontier, an important territorial concession at the expense of Chad, and a condominium over Tunisia. Franc¸ ois-Poncet, according to Ciano, was on 27 May ready ‘‘to make a deal about Tunisia and perhaps even about Algeria,’’ but was told that he was ‘‘too late.’’66 On the same day, Franc¸ ois Charles-Roux, who had replaced Le´ ger as secretary general of the Quai d’Orsay on 18 May, held that the British would have to be consulted before formally tendering such an offer to the Italians; otherwise they might withdraw their naval and air support from the beleaguered French forces. Since Reynaud agreed with his secretary general,67 Daladier was forced to clear with London before sending his message to Rome. It is not clear whether Franc¸ ois-Ponc¸ et had acted on his own initiative or whether Ciano recorded his views inaccurately. Whatever notions of appeasing Italy or asking Mussolini to chair a conference remained in Churchill’s mind quickly vanished. With the British and French backed against the wall, Mussolini’s aggressive intentions, in his view, would only be encouraged by any talk of territorial concessions. Churchill therefore turned the French down cold, while the British ambassador in Rome, Sir Percy Loraine, firmly informed Ciano: ‘‘war would be met with war. . . . if Mussolini chose the sword he would be met with [the] sword.’’68 For his part, thanks to London’s uncompromising stand, Daladier put aside his original telegram to Rome in favor of a note submitted on 30 May to the Italian ambassador, Raffaello Guariglia, which contained the suggestion that they survey the whole ensemble of Mediterranean questions dividing them. Refraining from making any precise offers, Daladier invited the Italians to submit their agenda of demands. But Ciano’s position was that, even if France ‘‘came forward with an offer tomorrow to cede Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco, Mussolini would decline to discuss it.’’69

216

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

Now that Mussolini was sure of a crushing German victory, Italian intervention was just days away. In Rome, on 29 May, the die was cast; Mussolini fixed the date of Italy’s entry into the war for 5 June. The king sulked, the Italian military trailed off into vagueness when asked about its readiness to fight, and Badoglio remained silent. As outlined in the military directive of 31 March, Italy’s principal thrust would be directed against British bases and naval forces in the Mediterranean. No matter that the Italian ground forces were in woeful condition; Germany’s decisive military victories would allow Mussolini’s foray for booty to become a stroll in the goose step. When Hitler asked Mussolini to hold back a few days, the Duce complied, pointing out that he needed additional time to reinforce Libya. The target date was reset for 10 June. In the early evening of 10 June, Mussolini walked to the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia and told the assembled throng that ‘‘The hour destined by fate is sounding for us.’’ Italy would take the field ‘‘against the plutocratic and reactionary democracies of the West to resolve the problem of its maritime frontiers.’’ The ‘‘titanic struggle’’ about to begin was ‘‘but one phase in the logical development of our Revolution.’’ He closed with a shout: ‘‘Italian people, rush to arms and show your tenacity, your courage, your valour!’’70 This time the crowds did not cheer; they glumly dispersed, yet no one in Italy raised a protest. Winston Churchill remarked: ‘‘One man alone had ranged the Italian people in deathly struggle against the British Empire.’’ In an address delivered at the University of Virginia, Roosevelt was even less charitable: ‘‘On this tenth day of June 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor,’’71 which perfectly articulated the feelings of the French. And on 10 June, Mussolini committed the folly of entering the war as Hitler’s ally without receiving any prior assurances from Berlin about the realization of Italian aspirations. The Italian armies shambled up to the Alpine frontier without any initial intention of undertaking a serious offensive. As opposed to Hitler, and much to his disgust, Mussolini did have the courtesy to declare war. Franc¸ ois-Ponc¸ et commented: ‘‘It is a dagger blow to a man [France] who has already fallen. In your place, I would not be proud’’72 But the Italian armies encountered unexpectedly serious resistance when they finally moved to the attack. More humiliating still, Mussolini was required by Germany to sign parallel armistices with the defeated French on 24 June. Hitler also compelled him to whittle down his extravagant claims after France’s capitulation and accept a token occupation of fifty kilometers of French territory. Actually, the Duce saw the point in equitable treatment of a defeated foe, which could serve as the foundation for a future collaboration of the two Latin countries to balance against Germany in the postwar configuration of power. As things turned out, Mussolini had sealed his fate when he finally de-

War

217

cided to link up with Hitler as a comrade-in-arms. Little did he know that Britain would be able to hold out, that the Soviets would administer a stunning defeat to Germany before Stalingrad a couple of years later, or that America would eventually bring its entire resources to bear in a world war that Germany could not win after 1942. But even before these setbacks occurred, Italy’s parallel war had turned sour. An Italian invasion of Greece took place in October 1940, with the ill-prepared Italian troops and incompetent generals becoming bogged down in the uncharted and craggy Balkan mountains; eventually they were hurled back into Albania by an aroused enemy. In Libya, the British smashed through the Italian lines, capturing large numbers of dazed troops armed with antiquated equipment who long ago had lost their stomach for war on the side of Hitler. Lacking diesel fuel for offensive maneuvers, as well as bold leadership—let alone adequate air coverage—the Italian fleet anchored at Taranto was surprised by British torpedo planes in November 1940, suffering heavy losses. Much to the embarrassment of Mussolini, the Germans rushed to the rescue by storming into Greece and by sending General Erwin Rommel as commander of the Afrika Korps to firm up Italian lines on the Libyan front. Both salvage operations worked, but Mussolini’s prestige suffered irretrievably as Italy sank into further dependency on the German war machine. The tides of war began to turn in November 1942 when the British and Americans effected an unopposed amphibious landing on the coasts of Morocco. After a delay, courtesy of some spirited resistance offered by French governors and soldiers loyal to the Vichy regime, the Allies drove onward to Tunisia. This enabled General Bernard Montgomery, attacking from Egypt, to wrap up the ‘‘Desert Fox’’ in a pincers movement the following spring. Sicily fell to the Allies in June 1943 in a campaign marred by poor coordination between the British and Americans and missed opportunity. Many of the disheartened Italians surrendered, but the bulk of the German force escaped to the mainland to fight another day. The invasion of Italy followed on 10 July. As Allied planes raked Italy’s defenseless cities, Mussolini was overthrown on 25 July in a palace coup at a Fascist Grand Council meeting, where Ciano, joined by Grandi and others, voted against him. The Duce was arrested by the king’s police the next morning as he descended the stairs of the royal palace on his way home. No Italian lifted a finger to save him. The Duce’s Fascist regime crumbled instantly as an ecstatic Roman population cheered, desecrated his public icons, and shredded his posters. As elite Panzer divisions dashed deep into the Italian peninsula to trap the Allied invaders on their beachheads, as well as to punish the traitorous Italians, Hitler agonized over the deliverance of the only man outside Germany whom he openly admired. Under his direct order, German S.S. commandos led by Otto Skorzeny conducted a daring rescue mission with glider planes, plucking Mussolini from captivity in the Abruzzi mountains and

218

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

dispatching him to German safekeeping in Munich. Hitler resurrected the Duce as the puppet head of the infamous Republic of Salo` —officially, the Italian Social Republic—headquartered on Lake Garda in northern Italy. A first order of business was to arrest the Fascists who had voted to depose him. Ciano and others were caught and shot after a sham trial, but Grandi got away. As the Allies churned northward in April 1945, after a fierce and costly fight in the mountains of central Italy against tenacious German resistance, Italian partisans apprehended the Duce who was fleeing to Switzerland with his mistress Clara Petacci and shot them both. Their corpses were brought to a public square in Milan where they were ignominiously hanged by the feet from a gas station girder, while swarms of onlookers hooted and whistled. Mussolini died with hardly a friend left, save a few diehard loyalists. Gone with the Duce was the Fascist dream of imperialist glory. NOTES 1. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 107–8. 2. Duroselle, La de´ cadence, 415 n. 71. 3. R.A.C. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 248. 4. OO, XXIX: 272–75; Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 90–91. 5. DDI, 8, XII, 503, 7 July 1939. 6. DDI, 8, XII, 518, 9 July 1939. 7. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 111, 115; DDI, 8, XII, 740, 1 August 1939. 8. DDI, 8, XII, 662, 24 July 1939. 9. Massimo Magistrati, L’Italia e Berlino (1937–1939) (Verona: Mondadori, 1956), 379–82. 10. DDI, 8, XII, 687, 26 July 1939; DGFP, D, VI, 718, 25 July 1939. 11. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 118. 12. Ibid., 119. 13. DGFP, D, VII, 43, 12 August 1939. 14. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 120. 15. Mario Luciolli (Mario Donosti, pseud.), Mussolini e l’Europa: La politica estera fascista (Rome: Leonardo, 1945), 206. 16. De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 2: 656. 17. DBFP, 3, VII, 79, 19 August 1939. 18. DDI, 8, XII, 241, 25 August 1939. 19. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 126. 20. Ibid. 21. DGFP, D, VII, 271, 25 August 1939. 22. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 129. 23. DBFP, 3, VII, 173, 23 August 1939. 24. DBFP, 3, VII, 222, 24 August 1939. 25. DGFP, D, VII, 317, 26 August 1939. 26. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 129–30.

War

219

27. DGFP, D, VII, 418, 29 August 1939. 28. DBFP, 3, VIII, 584, 31 August 1939. 29. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 134–35. 30. Bottai, Diario, 157. 31. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 137. 32. DGFP, D, VII, 565, 3 September 1939. 33. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 151. 34. DGFP, D, VIII, 176, 1 October 1939. 35. DGFP, D, VIII, 266, 17 October 1939. 36. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 155, 167. 37. Bottai, Diario, 169–71; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, 62. 38. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 177. 39. Ibid., 180. 40. Ibid., 191. 41. DGFP, D, VIII, 504, 3 January 1940. 42. Gerhard Schreiber, Bernd Stegemann, and Detlef Vogel, Germany and the Second World War, vol. 3, The Mediterranean, South-east Europe, and North Africa 1939–1941 (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1995), 20. 43. DGFP, D, VIII, 504, 3 January 1940. 44. DBFP, 3, V, 604, 31 August 1939. 45. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 200. 46. Bottai, Diario, 175. 47. Sumner Welles, The Time for Decision (New York: Harper, 1944), 78–86. 48. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 213. 49. Ibid., 216. 50. Ibid., 217. 51. DGFP, D, VIII, 663, 8 March 1940. 52. DGFP, D, VIII, 665, 10 March 1940. 53. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 220. 54. DGFP, D, IX, l, 17 [sic] March 1940. 55. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 223–24. 56. DDI, 9, III, 669, 31 March 1940. 57. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 231. 58. Ibid., 235–36. 59. DGFP, D, IX, 92, 11 April 1940. 60. Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 1: 779. 61. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 249. 62. Cited in Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, 107 n. 81. 63. Lamb, The Ghosts of Peace, 139. 64. David N. Dilks, ‘‘British Reactions to Italian Empire-Building, 1936–1939,’’ in Italia e Inghilterra nell’eta` dell imperialismo, ed. E. Serra and C. Seton-Watson (Milan: ISPI, 1990), 194. 65. De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 2: 806. 66. Ciano, Diary 1939–1943, 255. 67. Shorrock, From Ally to Enemy, 282. 68. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, 115. 69. Quoted in Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, 115.

220

Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period

70. OO, XXIX: 403–4. 71. Hull, Memoirs, 1: 784. 72. Andre´ Franc¸ ois-Ponc¸ et, Au palais Francaise: Souvenirs d’une ambassade a` Rome, 1938–1940 (Paris: Fayard, 1961), 178.

Conclusion According to the canons of traditional statecraft, nations pursue their own interests within the existing framework of the balance of power. The right of each Great Power to exist as such is a commonly accepted assumption of the international community. If one nation should seek to become the hegemonical power by resort to war, the others would combine their forces to check the would-be aggressor. Calculation based on objective forces, fixed aims, and limited ends were the trademarks of this European system that broke down in the cataclysm of World War I. While Sonnino hoped to repair and restore the old system in the postwar era, Mussolini intended to modify or change its ground rules, using unorthodox methods and with goals that went beyond Italy’s military capabilities. At times, he was attracted to the idea of a Concert of Europe, in which Italy would uphold the European balance of power. More often, however, Mussolini strove to make Italy the ‘‘decisive weight’’ to accord him leverage for acquiring territory and concessions—a somewhat unrealistic task, given Italy’s lack of military strength. In essence, Mussolini meant to overturn the prevailing order, codified by the Paris Peace Conference, for the purpose of advancing Italy’s power and prestige. As the defiant leader of a pariah country, Mussolini was informed by futurist moods, nationalist resentments, Fascist slogans, and his own personal idiosyncrasies. Vanity, ambition, military dilettantism, and a capacity for self-deception were all hallmarks of Mussolini’s character that marred his judgment. Like many others in postwar Italy, he felt the sting of the ‘‘mutilated victory’’ and developed an inferiority complex toward France

222

Conclusion

and Britain, resenting their propensity to treat Italy as a lesser state rather than as an equal among the Great Powers. Mussolini could be disarmingly charming or brutally rude, and he liked to project a sphinx-like mystique. Still, always he wanted to give the impression of decisiveness and daring. An archetypal mountebank, Mussolini was an opportunist who aimed to acquire and exercise power. Often governed by instinct, he lacked the perseverance required for a coherent diplomacy. Whether addressing his own people or foreign governments, his style was much the same—charismatic posturing and charlatanry from a public platform, rather than dialogue and roundtable discussion. Disdainful of diplomatic parley with its spirit of give-and-take, the Duce treated every accord as an armistice or a stepping-stone to further demands. Muscleflexing and will to power were more congenial to his Blackshirt mentality than was polite discourse among gentlemen in coattails schooled in the old aristocratic tradition. Mussolini’s language brimmed over with violence and heroes—the challenge of the rough plebeian against inherited privilege, upper-class snobbery, and civilized discussion. His mind dominated by Darwinian concepts, Mussolini debunked pacifism and disdained liberalism and democracy. Carried away by a certain success, which reached its apex in the conquest of Ethiopia, the Duce at last sought his own elevation as Italy’s new Caesar—the true significance of ‘‘Mussolinianismo’’ in the international arena. For him, imperialism was the immutable law of nature and war the crucible of nationhood. The justification for Fascist foreign policy would be assured by an imperialistic policy that improved on the lackluster liberal record. Combined, these ideas inclined Mussolini toward aggression. When Mussolini came to power in 1922, he possessed a rough outline of what he wanted to accomplish: a selective revision of the Paris peace settlement by the establishment of Italian hegemony in the Adriatic and spheres of influence in the Balkans and Danube region. But France stood in Italy’s way. Though dreaming of replacing France as the dominant influence in Southeastern Europe, by force if need be, Mussolini was aware that his military was not up to the task of war against the ‘‘Latin Sister.’’ Hence, he had to fall back on stratagems. He joined up with the defeated powers to disrupt the status quo under the rubric of ‘‘equitable’’ treaty revision, and he promoted insurrection to destroy Yugoslavia and undermine French influence in Southeastern Europe. But by the end of the 1920s, it was obvious that Mussolini’s revisionist policies had yielded barren results. The French alliance system in Eastern Europe remained intact, and Yugoslavia refused to break up. After the Grandian interlude, Mussolini pondered a conquest of an empire in Africa carried out in a heroic style. To accomplish this feat, he had to hold the Western Powers at bay and navigate safely through a hazardous risk zone. Mussolini acted not on a whim or impetuously, but out of calculation.

Conclusion

223

Since the Western Powers were not expected to offer military opposition and Hitler was still preoccupied with rearming and consolidating his regime, which precluded any active German foreign policy, Italy seemed to be facing a favorable, if temporary, configuration of the European balance. But time was of the essence. The Duce hoped to finish off Ethiopia in time to reinforce the Brenner frontier with his African veterans as deterrence against an Anschluss implemented by a rising Third Reich. The Italians achieved a quick victory over the poorly armed Ethiopian legions flung against them. Proudly proclaiming the empire, Mussolini stood at the pinnacle of power—and at the crossroads. He could resuscitate the Stresa Front as a sated power, in alignment with the Western Powers to check Hitler, or proceed toward an Axis, to acquire additional leverage for his ultimate goal: the conversion of the Mediterranean from an AngloFrench lake into a Roman sea. Avoiding those extremes, Mussolini could continue to play the old game of makeweight in the balance of power in order to extract concessions from the appeasers. This was the strategy that he selected in the immediate aftermath of imperial conquest, or so it seemed. By refusing Hitler’s requests to turn the Axis of October 1936 into a formal alliance during the Fu¨ hrer’s visit to Italy in May 1937, as well as by signing the Gentleman’s Agreement of 1937 and the Easter accords with the British in April the following year, Mussolini still imagined that Italy could remain the ‘‘decisive weight’’ by maintaining equidistance. But strong ideological undercurrents and faulty diplomacy, which converged on the Austrian question, upset his balancing act. So long as Austria remained independent, Mussolini believed, Italy would not be encircled by a German Drang nach Su¨ dosten and thereby lose its diplomatic maneuverability. But the Duce had already narrowed his choices in 1934 by conniving with Dollfuss and Starhemberg in the destruction of the Austrian Social Democratic Party, whose demise removed a major barrier against Anschluss. Mussolini was left with a far less savvy Schuschnigg and a lifeless Heimwehr. Eventually he was elbowed out of Vienna by PanGermans working hand-in-glove with the proliferating Austrian Nazis. In standing aloof from the Gentleman’s Agreement of July 1936 between Hitler and Schuschnigg, Mussolini acknowledged that the Fu¨ hrer had won the game in Austria. The Duce could not avoid a bitter truth: He had grossly underestimated Hitler and the speed of German rearmament. Since Italy’s dwarfed military could no longer stand up to the Fu¨ hrer’s legions, Mussolini had no choice but to deliver the keys of Italian security in Europe to the Third Reich. It was not so much Mussolini’s attraction toward the Nazi creed but his unrelenting hatred of Austrian Social Democracy that provided the basic ideological component in Italian foreign policy in Europe between 1934 and 1936. That sufficed to compromise Italy’s security. Equidistance could work only so long as Austria remained truly independent. The negative reaction of the Western Powers to Mussolini’s aggression

224

Conclusion

at the expense of Ethiopia, coupled with the German-Austrian Gentleman’s Agreement, might have been enough to throw Mussolini into Hitler’s arms. But it was the chance opening of the Spanish Civil War and Mussolini’s decision to aid Franco that irrevocably pushed Italy toward the Pact of Steel. Initially conceived as a move to break up a French-Spanish popular front that stood as a challenge to Italy in the Mediterranean, Mussolini’s intervention on the side of the Nationalists further distanced him from the Western Powers. The sea change in Italian policy became explicit during the Duce’s trip to Germany in September 1937, for whatever residual neutrality had existed in Mussolini’s mind vanished in Berlin. Bewitched by German power and efficiency, he became ever more determined to be Italy’s man of destiny in the style of Adolf Hitler. In the belief that German military power was unstoppable, Mussolini and Hitler traded places: The Fu¨ hrer was now the master, the Duce the student. The irony is that the more Mussolini adhered to his fellow dictator and tried to apply Nazi methods in Italy, the less room he had for diplomatic maneuver. Mussolini’s acquiescence in the Anschluss of March 1938, which resulted in a clear shift of power in favor of the Third Reich on the Continent, ended forever any realistic hope, if there had ever been one, that Italy could be anything other than Hitler’s junior partner. With German troops posted on the Brenner frontier, Mussolini’s ‘‘decisive weight’’ was reduced to a figment of his imagination. Although irritated by the Anschluss, Mussolini did not complain to Berlin about Hitler’s brazen act. In truth, Germany rarely consulted Italy on any crucial diplomatic decision that directly involved Italian interests. Only in the case of Dollfuss, when the Nazis presented Italy with an accomplished fact, had Mussolini dared to face down the Fu¨ hrer. Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland, which caught Rome by surprise during its tangle with the Western Powers over oil sanctions, was simply forgotten as was the Fu¨ hrer’s absorption of rump Czechoslovakia. If the Duce had ably exploited British and French weakness in the case of Ethiopia, he showed a remarkable gullibility—or escapism—toward the Nazis on all the particulars of German expansion. In spite of his constant grumbling and his caustic criticism of the Germans, Mussolini forgave Hitler everything in his determination to cultivate a ‘‘special position’’ in Berlin consecrated by the Pact of Steel. Like Chamberlain, Mussolini was an arch-appeaser of Nazi aggression. The more Mussolini became entangled with the Third Reich, the less he was able to keep his mind uncluttered of ideological prejudice. In the past, whenever the Western Powers seemed to offer solid resistance to Italy’s imperialism, the Duce had drawn back, from fear that they had the backbone to follow up their strong words with military deeds. For Mussolini, propaganda was for show rather than the stuff of foreign policy. But when the Western Powers proceeded to break the Stresa Front by allowing

Conclusion

225

German rearmament and appeasing Hitler over Czechoslovakia, Mussolini took these capitulations as proof positive that they were ‘‘decadent’’ democracies in irreversible decline. As Grandi once observed, Mussolini liked to think of himself as ‘‘the Pope of anti-democracy.’’1 Success in war in Ethiopia and Spain had turned Mussolini’s head. Now that Hitler had shown him how to get away with aggression, it was his turn to demand Corsica, Nice, Malta, Djibouti. From February 1938 on, he pondered new vistas. Once having liberated Italy from the ‘‘prison of the Mediterranean’’ and ‘‘marched to the oceans,’’ he anticipated a ‘‘New World Order’’ by the year 2000 that would consist of Italy, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union. Energized by youthful and proletarian peoples, the totalitarian powers would divest the exhausted and enfeebled Western Democracies of their empires and divide up the world among themselves. Did Mussolini ever believe his own reveries? Certainly, he indulged more and more in selfdeception, hiding from Italy’s increasingly perilous diplomatic position by bombast and boasting, fooling himself into the belief that threats and intimidation would divide Britain from France, and downplaying the importance of the United States and the Soviet Union in any future European conflict. Furthermore, though holding his military in contempt, Mussolini made no move to overcome the lethargy and antiquated thinking of Italy’s armed forces. Similarly, he seemed not to draw the appropriate conclusions from the fragile state of the Italian economy. Unwilling to repudiate a ‘‘policy of grand presence,’’ Mussolini made no attempt to conduct a diplomacy that reflected Italy’s true military and economic weakness. Worst of all, he willfully ignored the dynamic imperialism of Nazi Germany. Isolated in a small circle of sycophants, the Duce placed faith in his own intuition and wanted to believe that his judgment was infallible. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Hitler reinforced Mussolini’s belief that Providence had singled him out to do great things for Italy. This actual conquest of Ethiopia was till now only an idea. I have affirmed, nurtured, developed, and achieved it. But this concrete achievement must be followed by others. Life, like revolution, continues. The conquest of Ethiopia is not an end in itself; it is a first step that would be senseless if I did not have a clear vision of further steps that I must of necessity undertake and implement. . . . Without resorting to hyperbole . . . I can say that I have my fatal responsibilities. My decisions are not capricious; providence and destiny have burdened me with responsibilities . . . Responsibilities form the essence of mission. And I am constrained to go on to the very end until the mission that transcends me is fulfilled.2

The ultimate goal was to invigorate the race and forge the new Fascist man. From mystical nationalism and Futurist yearnings, Mussolini cultivated a strange me´ lange of fatalism and voluntarism, of contempt for the masses, and an irrational belief in their redemption through spilled blood.

226

Conclusion

The Italian people refused to live up to his heroic standards. They were tired of military adventures, appalled by the alliance with Germany, and offended by Mussolini’s racial laws against Jews that ran counter to their country’s humanitarian traditions. The Duce turned on his ‘‘nation of sheep,’’ searching for the means to forge a nation of 60 million warriors, for, in his view, a brutal awakening was needed, perhaps by means of war. But Mussolini’s disappointment over his people’s inability or unwillingness to be transformed into an armed camp was frequently tempered by second thoughts. Furthermore, he did not enjoy being led around by the nose by the Fu¨ hrer. The Duce would be the one to choose the time and place for war, not Hitler. Yet, in choosing the moment, his war—given Italian weakness—would have to be already won by the Third Reich. Thus, Mussolini drew back from intervention after Germany’s attack on Poland from fear that an expanded war would bring down his country and destroy his regime. Pragmatism still held the upper hand over visceral reaction, impulsiveness, and ideology. Frustrated by inaction, however, Mussolini was an unhappy warrior. He resented those, like Ciano, who whispered that Italy had better stay out of war permanently or even come in on the side of the Allies. The very thought that the Germans were denouncing him as a traitor for his declaration of nonbelligerency threw him into rage and humiliation. Fascism and the regime, Mussolini believed, quivered in the balance; his ‘‘new civilization’’ and Italy’s ‘‘historical mission’’ still remained unfulfilled aspirations. Beyond Mussolini’s fierce struggle between megalomania and reason was the irrefutable reality that Italy in 1939 had been reduced to a military, diplomatic, and economic paraplegic. Mussolini’s twin goals of revisionism and imperialism were devoid of real success, and his country was seriously drained by its enormous military outlays in Ethiopia and Spain. The Italian empire, such as it was, was vulnerable to British sea power, the Danube region rested in the hands of Germany, and the Soviets challenged Italy in the Balkans. Furthermore, a fixation peculiar to Mussolini obstructed clear thinking. He was not free, as Italy’s leaders had been in 1914–1915, to choose between neutrality and war. In his mind, the option of making a calculated choice for war on either side simply did not exist in 1939. Italy in 1914 had decided not to go to war, but this memory strengthened Mussolini’s inclination toward war. Fascist Italy would not repeat the cowardice of liberal Italy. The nonbelligerency of September 1939, therefore, did not have anything to do with the ambiguous neutrality of 1914. Hounded by the comparison, Mussolini strained against his own fears to enter the war and thus to dispel this nightmare. Doubtless, the history of 1914 was for him a persuasive argument to avoid a break with Germany. During the period of the phony war, Mussolini contemplated fighting a ‘‘parallel war’’ to secure his own objectives outside Hitler’s European domain but still under Germany’s military umbrella. True, he felt an ideolog-

Conclusion

227

ical camaraderie with Hitler insofar as they both presided over ‘‘virile’’ dictatorships in mortal combat with the ‘‘effete’’ democracies, but the NaziSoviet Pact reminded Mussolini that Italy’s interests did not converge with Germany’s and that Italy was not prepared for war. Furthermore, he understood that a total German victory in tacit partnership with the Soviet Union would radically transform Europe to Italy’s detriment. These were wake-up calls that curbed Mussolini’s bellicosity. Nonetheless, since the Duce refused to renounce his ambitions in the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, he left himself only one alternative: expanding the political space and role of Italy within the Axis. Having closed himself off from the Western Powers, Mussolini hoped that his fellow dictator would not be offended if he pushed Italy forward as a mediator with a decidedly pro-German slant, or, on the sly, contrived a Balkan bloc of neutrals to contain Germany’s Drang nach Su¨ dosten. As late as March 1940, he was still hopeful of presiding over a ‘‘second Munich’’ that would end the conflict short of German domination over Europe. Had Germany not invaded France, Italy’s nonbelligerency might have gone on indefinitely. But Hitler’s quick victories in France changed everything. Mussolini was now confronted with a painful reality. No more could he entertain the idea of a ‘‘peace conference’’; Hitler would have none of it. As the French staggered to defeat and with Britain’s capitulation seemingly imminent, Mussolini thought it madness to defy the Fu¨ hrer. Better to join up before it was too late. By attacking France, Mussolini sealed his own fate; he would go down in history as Europe’s most notorious jackal. Hitler’s dizzying victories in France undoubtedly gave Mussolini the final push to intervene, but his tangled feelings about the Fu¨ hrer and the Third Reich created deep ambivalences. Unquestionably, Mussolini and Hitler had much in common. Both indulged in a mysticism of empire and race, glorified jackboots, and throve on guns and iron discipline. They exalted in military reviews and parades, with the leader expounding higher truths to exhilarated masses. The aura they presented of invincible ruthlessness captured the imagination of people in both countries who were disillusioned with democracy and fearful of the Bolshevik menace. The two dictators also found an affinity in hate. As consummate misanthropes, they despised humanitarian values and the democratic creed. Hitler, grounded on the canons of ‘‘Blood and Soil,’’ vowed to avenge Germany’s defeat in World War I, overthrow the ‘‘shackles’’ imposed by the victorious Allies, and achieve Lebensraum in the Ukraine. Mussolini was motivated by bitter resentment over the refusal of the erstwhile Allies at the Paris Peace Conference to grant Italy its just rewards following a long and costly conflict. It would be a mistake to underestimate how profoundly the vittoria mutilata had penetrated Mussolini’s psyche, conditioned his diplomacy, and enabled him, playing on the resentments of Italy’s frustrated nationalism, to gain popular support. As a result, Mus-

228

Conclusion

solini never seriously considered renewing the wartime alliance with the Allies. He neither pondered a truly impartial mediator’s role nor tried to establish a sound working relationship with Great Britain. Likewise, he could never overcome his deeply held conviction that France was Italy’s inveterate enemy, no matter how long a shadow Hitler cast over Europe. If the Duce had ever mused on a revolutionary change in his diplomacy, such as a resurrection of the Stresa Front, he could hardly do so after the Anschluss, for by then he lacked any exit from the ‘‘iron cage’’ of Germany’s awesome military might.3 Neither Hitler nor Mussolini considered their shared values to be a blood vow of solidarity. Hitler continued to esteem the Duce but lied to him, while Mussolini, underneath the platitudes, felt a contempt, mixed with horror and fear, toward the Fu¨ hrer. With a few notable exceptions, Fascists and Nazis simply did not like each other. The rank and file of one pointed out invidious traits of the other and emphasized the ideological differences between them. True, in the last years, Mussolini strove to make Italy over in the image of Nazi Germany, capped by the passage of racial laws against the Jews, but, given the choice and immensely more power, the Duce would have done without an Axis. Instead, he would have avenged himself against the Western Democracies, enlarged the Italian empire, and barred Germany from the annexation of Austria. Mussolini chose to link Italy’s fate with Germany at the moment of truth from a position of weakness, as the lesser of several evils. This fateful decision was the outgrowth of a diplomatic calculation that had been flawed over the years by amateur diplomacy, the personalization of international politics, overweening ambition, and Fascist ideology. Given Mussolini’s convictions about war and empire-building, he was incapable of crafting a foreign policy of limited aims consonant with Italy’s paucity of natural resources and its underdeveloped industry that could not supply the armed forces with the sinews of modern warfare on a large scale. Hitler, on the other hand, dealt with Mussolini from a position of overwhelming strength; he did not need Italy as an ally. With a mighty war machine and a militarized nation at his beck and call, he enjoyed having the Duce on board for sentimental reasons, as a fellow dictator once considered an inspiration and beacon of light. No matter what the power disparities between their two countries or how much they actually looked forward to fighting together as brother dictators, Mussolini and Hitler were attracted to each other by a shared fascination with war and a relentless urge to dominate. But Mussolini was driven by old-fashioned imperialist impulses rather than the desire for increased living space because of a supposed racial superiority, and so he did not dream, as did Hitler, of annihilating his European enemies. Whereas Nazi Germany’s goal was to declare Aryan supremacy over the corpses of lesser races, Mussolini’s expansionist ambitions were more conventional: Tunisia, Malta, Corfu, Cyprus, Egypt, and predomi-

Conclusion

229

nance in the Mediterranean and Adriatic. While Hitler took mass killing to a level not seen since Attila the Hun—a Holocaust against the Jews, euthanasia programs, the mass murder of political opponents, and Lebensraum at the expense of peoples considered racially inferior—Mussolini’s terrorism was far more sporadic and limited to political opponents singly or in small groups; his anti-Semitism, though vicious, never reached a Final Solution. (At the same time, one should not forget the atrocities committed by Fascist Italy against the conquered peoples of Libya and Ethiopia.) Although Mussolini frequently talked about fiercely fought campaigns against the British fleet and Italian Lebensraum in the Balkans, he was not irresistibly attracted to the Nazi regime; no ideological magnet drew the Fascist and Nazi regimes together. It was rather the bitter realization of Italy’s impotence that finally propelled the Duce into the arms of Hitler in June 1940. No longer could Mussolini stand the tension of ongoing nonbelligerency, a status that stirred fears of German revenge and of Italy’s exclusion from distribution of the colonial spoils of the despised British and French, who seemed on the verge of a catastrophic defeat. The terrible truth that Mussolini chose to suppress was that, even in an Axis victory, Italy was bound to lose. Whatever zones of influence Mussolini gained in the Balkans, Africa, or the Mediterranean would have to be shared with a vastly more powerful Germany. Italy could never be anything other than the Third Reich’s satellite, wholly dependent on the Fu¨ hrer’s pleasure. But, given Mussolini’s imperialist ambition to secure true national independence through a ‘‘window on the ocean,’’ an ambition fortified by his desire to test the mettle of his regime in war, there was no exit from these dilemmas save intervention on the side of Hitler’s Germany. By tying himself to Hitler’s war chariot, Mussolini sacrificed the national interests of his country to the survival of the Fascist regime and of himself as Italy’s Duce. After the collapse of France, Mussolini’s descent into war was merely a question of timing, his ‘‘appointment with history’’ realized. NOTES 1. Quoted in MacGregor Knox, ‘‘Foreign Policy and its Wars,’’ 358. 2. Quoted in De Felice, Mussolini il duce, 2: 690. 3. Di Nolfo’s colorful term. Ennio Di Nolfo, ‘‘Mussolini e la decisione italiana di entrare nella seconda guerra mondiale,’’ in L’Italia e la politica di potenza in Europa 1938–1940, ed. Ennio di Nolfo, Romain H. Rainero, and Brunello Vigezzi (Milan: Marzorati, 1986).

Bibliography PRIMARY SOURCES This study is based on archival materials, printed collections of documents, and books and articles published during or after World War II. Unpublished archival materials were consulted in the Archivio storico del ministero degli affari esteri (Rome), the Public Record Office (London), and the Ministe`re des Affaires E´ trange`res (Paris). A complete set of the Grandi Diaries, 1929–1932, can be found at Georgetown University.

PRINTED COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS The prime source of information on Italy’s foreign policy between the wars consists of I documenti diplomatici italiani, series 6–9 (1918–1940). This documentary collection, still incomplete for series 8, is compiled largely from the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome. Also quite useful are the Documents diplomatiques Franc¸ ais, 1932–1940; Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945; Foreign Relations of the United States; and Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939. By far the most important of the memoir materials are the Ciano diaries. Although they must be handled with some care, the diaries provide insights into Ciano’s character and Mussolini’s diplomatic style—his unpredictable mood changes, vacillations, and determination to wage war.

232

Bibliography

SECONDARY WORKS CITED IN FOOTNOTES IN THIS BOOK A´ da´ m, Magda, Gyula Juha´ sz, Lajos Kerekes. Allianz Hitler–Horthy–Mussolini: Dokumente zur Ungarischen Aussenpolitik 1933–1934. Budapest: Akade´ miai Kiado´ , 1966. Albrecht-Carrie´ , Rene´ . Italy at the Paris Peace Conference. Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1966. Aloisi, Baron Pompeo. Journal: 25 juillet 1932–14 juin 1936. Paris: Plon, 1957. Anfuso, Filippo. Da Palazzo Venezia al Lago di Garda (1936–1945). Bologna: Capelli, 1957. Baer, George W. The Coming of the Italian–Ethiopian War. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967. ———. Test Case: Italy, Ethiopia, and the League of Nations. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1976. Barros, James. The Corfu Incident of 1923. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965. Bartalits, Laszlo Lajos Sandor. Hongarije en de Anschluss 1918–1938. Tilburg: Hianotten, 1968. Boccianti, G. Verso gli accordi Mussolini–Laval: Il ravvicimento italo-francese fra il 1931 e il 1934. Milan: Giuffre`, 1984. Bolech Cecchi, Donatella. Non bruciare i ponti con Roma. Milan: Giuffre`, 1986. Bosworth, Richard. Italy and the Approach of the First World War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983. Bottai, Giuseppe. Diario 1935–1944. Milan: Rizzoli, 1989. Braunthal, Julius. The Tragedy of Austria. London: Gollancz, 1948. Brundu Olla, Paola. L’equilibrio difficile: Gran Bretagna, Italia e Francia nel Mediterraneo (1930–1937). Milan: Giuffre`, 1980. Burgwyn, H. James. Il revisionismo fascista. Florence: Feltrinelli, 1979. ———. ‘‘Conflict or Rapprochement? Grandi Confronts France and its Prote´ ge´ Yugoslavia.’’ Storia delle relazioni internazionali 1 (1987): 74–95. ———. ‘‘La troika danubiana di Mussolini: Italia, Austria e Ungheria, 1927– 1936.’’ Storia contemporanea 31, no. 4 (August 1990): 617–86. ———. The Legend of the Mutilated Victory: Italy, the Great War, and the Paris Peace Conference, 1915–1919. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993. Cannistraro, Philip V. ‘‘Per una storia dei fasci negli Stati Uniti.’’ Storia contemporanea 35, no. 6 (December 1995): 1061–1144. Cannistraro, Philip, and Brian R. Sullivan. Il Duce’s Other Woman. New York: Morrow, 1993. Cantalupo, Roberto. Fu la Spagna: Ambasciata presso Franco (febbraio–aprile 1937). Milan: Mondadori, 1948. Carocci, Giampiero. La politica estera dell’Italia fascista. Bari: Laterza, 1969. Cassels, Alan. ‘‘Mussolini and German Nationalism 1922–1925.’’ Journal of Modern History 35, no. 2 (June 1963): 137–57. ———. Mussolini’s Early Diplomacy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970. Chabod, Federico. Italian Foreign Policy: The Statecraft of the Founders (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966).

Bibliography

233

Charles-Roux, Franc¸ ois. Souvenirs diplomatiques: Une grande ambassade a` Rome. Paris: Fayard, 1961. Ciano, Count Galeazzo. The Ciano Diaries, 1939–1943. Edited by Hugh Gibson. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1946. ———. Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers. Edited by Malcolm Muggeridge and translated by Stuart Hood. London: Oldham’s Press, 1948. ———. Ciano’s Diary, 1937–1938. Edited by Malcolm Muggeridge and translated by Andreas Mayor. London: Methuen, 1952. Clarke, J. Calvitt, III. Russia and Italy against Hitler: The Bolshevik-Fascist Rapprochement of the 1930s. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991. Cliadakis, Harry. ‘‘Neutrality and War in Italian Policy, 1939–1940.’’ Journal of Contemporary History 9 (1974): 171–90. Collier, Richard. Duce! A Biography of Benito Mussolini. New York: Viking Press, 1971. Colton, Joel. Le´ on Blum: Humanist in Politics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966. Coverdale, John F. Italian Intervention in the Spanish Civil War. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975. D’Amoia, Fulvio. Declino e prima crisi dell’Europa di Versailles. Milan: Giuffre`, 1967. De Felice, Renzo. Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo. Turin: Einaudi, 1972. ———. Mussolini il duce. Vol. 1. Gli anni del consenso 1929–1936. Turin: Einaudi, 1974. ———. Mussolini il duce. Vol. 2: Lo Stato totalitario 1936–1940. Turin: Einaudi, 1981. ———. Mussolini e Hitler: I rapporti segreti, 1922–1933. Florence: Le Monnier, 1983. Dilks, David N. ‘‘British Reactions to Italian Empire-Building, 1936–1939.’’ In Italia e Inghilterra nell’eta` dell imperialismo, edited by Enrico Serra and Christopher Seton-Watson, 165–94. Milan: ISPI, 1990. Di Nolfo, Ennio. Mussolini e la politica estera italiana (1919–1933). Padua: CEDAM, 1960. ———. ‘‘Mussolini e la decisione italiana di entrare nella seconda guerra mondiale.’’ In L’Italia e la politica di potenza in Europa (1938–1940), edited by Ennio Di Nolfo, Romain H. Rainero, and Brunello Vigezzi, 19–38. Milan: Marzorati, 1988). Douglas, Roy. ‘‘Chamberlain and Eden 1937–38.’’ Journal of Contemporary History 13, no. 1 (January 1978): 97–116. D’Ovidio, Francesco Lefebvre. L’intesa italo–francese del 1935. Rome: privately published, 1984. Duroselle, Jean Baptiste. La De´ cadence (1932–1939). Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1979. Eden, Anthony. Facing the Dictators, 1923–1938. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. Edmondson, C. Earl. The Heimwehr and Austrian Politics 1918–1936. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1978. Franc¸ ois-Ponc¸ et, Andre´ . Au palais Franc¸ aise: souvenirs d’une ambassade a` Rome, 1938–1940. Paris: Fayard, 1961.

234

Bibliography

Garzia, Italo. Pio XII e l’Italia nella seconda guerra mondiale. Trent: Morcelliana, 1988. Gehl, Ju¨ rgen. Austria, Germany, and the Anschluss, 1931–1938. London: Oxford University Press, 1963. Grandi, Dino. Il mio paese. Bologna: Mulino, 1985. ———. La politica estera dell’Italia dal 1929–1932. Rome: Bonacci, 1985. Guerri, Giordano Bruno. Galeazzo Ciano. Milan: Bompiani, 1979. Haas, Karl. ‘‘Die Ro¨ mische Allianz, 1934.’’ In Der Ma¨ rz 1933: vom Verfassungsbruch zur Diktatur, edited by E. Fro¨ schl and H. Zoitl, 69–92. Vienna: Volksbuchhandlung, 1984. Hoptner, J. P. Yugoslavia in Crisis 1934–1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1963. Hull, Cordell. The Memoirs of Cordell Hull. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1948. Jarausch, Hugo. The Four Power Pact 1933. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966. Jordan, Nicole. The Popular Front and Central Europe: The Dilemmas of French Impotence, 1914–1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Kent, Peter C. The Pope and the Duce. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981. Kerekes, Lajos. Abendda¨ mmerung einer Demokratie: Mussolini, Go¨ mbo¨ s und die Heimwehr. Vienna, Frankfurt, Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1966. Kindermann, Gottfried-Karl. Hitler’s Defeat in Austria 1933–1934. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988. Kitchen, Martin. The Coming of Austrian Fascism. London: Croom Helm, 1980. Knox, MacGregor. Mussolini Unleashed 1939–1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. ———. ‘‘Conquest, Foreign and Domestic, in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.’’ Journal of Modern History 56, no. 1 (March 1984): 1–57. ———. ‘‘I testi ‘aggiustati’ dei discorsi segreti di Dino Grandi.’’ Passato e Presente 13 (gennaio–aprile 1987): 97–117. ———. ‘‘Foreign Policy and its Wars: An ‘Anti-Anti-Fascist’ Orthodoxy?’’ Contemporary European History 4, no.1 (1995): 347–65. Lagardelle, Hubert de. Mission a` Rome: Mussolini. Paris: Plon, 1955. Lamb, Richard. The Ghosts of Peace 1935–1945. Salisbury, England: Michael Russell, 1987. Large, David Clay. Between Two Fires. New York: Norton, 1990. Lowe, C. J., and F. Marzari. Italian Foreign Policy 1870–1940. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975. Luciolli, Mario. (Mario Donosti, pseud.). Mussolini e l’Europa: La politica estera fascista. Rome: Leonardo, 1945. Mack Smith, Denis. Mussolini’s Roman Empire. London and New York: Longman, 1976. Magistrati, Massimo. L’Italia e Berlino (1937–1939). Verona: Mondadori, 1956. Malagodi, Olindo. Conversazioni della guerra, 1914–1919. 2 vols. Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1960. Marks, Sally. ‘‘Mussolini and the Ruhr Crisis.’’ International Historical Review 8, no. 1 (February 1986): 56–69. Marzari, Frank. ‘‘Projects for an Italian-led Balkan Bloc of Neutrals, September– December 1939.’’ Historical Journal 13, no. 4 (1970): 767–88.

Bibliography

235

Michaelis, Meir. ‘‘Il Conte Galeazzo Ciano di Cortellazzo quale antesignano dell’asse Roma-Berlino.’’ Nuova rivista storica (January–June 1977): 116– 49. ———. Mussolini and the Jews. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1978. ———. ‘‘Italy’s Mediterranean Strategy, 1935–1939.’’ In Britain and the Middle East in the 1930s, edited by M. J. Cohen and M. Kolinsky, 41–60. London: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Migone, Gian Giacomo. Gli Stati Uniti e il fascismo. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980. Mommsen, Wolfgang, and Lothar Kettenacker, eds. The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983. Mori, Renato. Mussolini e la conquista dell’Etiopia. Florence: Le Monnier, 1978. Ne´ re´ , Jacques. The Foreign Policy of France from 1914 to 1945. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975. Noe¨ l, Le´ on. Les illusions de Stresa: L’Italie abandonne´ e a` Hitler. Paris: E´ ditions France-Empire, 1975. Nuti, Leopoldo. ‘‘I problemi storiografici conessi con l’intervento italiano nella seconda guerra mondiale.’’ Storia delle relazioni internazionali 2 (1985): 369– 91. Parker, R.A.C. Chamberlain and Appeasement. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Pastorelli, Pietro. Italia e Albania 1924–1927. Florence: RSPI, 1967. Peters, Anthony R. Anthony Eden at the Foreign Office, 1931–1938. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1986. Petersen, Jens. Hitler e Mussolini. Bari: Laterza, 1975. ———. ‘‘Il Mussolini di Renzo De Felice.’’ Passato e presente 1 (1982): 10–23. Post, Gaines, Jr. Dilemmas of Appeasement: British Deterrence and Defense 1934– 1937. Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell University Press, 1993. Pratt, Lawrence. East of Malta, West of Suez: Britain’s Mediterranean Crisis, 1936– 1939. London: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Quartararo, Rosaria. ‘‘Le origini del piano Hoare–Laval.’’ Storia contemporanea 8, no. 4 (December 1977): 749–90. ———. Roma tra Londra e Berlino: La politica estera fascista dal 1930 al 1940. Rome: Bonacci, 1980. Robertson, Esmond M. Mussolini as Empire-Builder: Europe and Africa, 1932– 1936. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977. ———. ‘‘Mussolini and the Rhineland.’’ European Studies Review 7 (1977): 409– 35. Rusinow, Dennison I. Italy’s Austrian Heritage 1919–1946. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1969. Sadkovich, J. J. Italian Support for Croatian Separatism, 1927–1937. New York: Garland, 1987. ¨ sterreich. Munich: J&V, 1979. Schausberger, Norbert. Der Griff nach O Schmidt, Paul. Statist auf Diplomatischer Bu¨ hne 1923–1945. Bonn: Athena¨ um, 1950. Schreiber, Gerhard, Bernd Stegemann, and Detlef Vogel. Germany and the Second World War. Vol. 3: The Mediterranean, South-east Europe, and North Africa 1939–1941. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1995. Schuschnigg, Kurt von. Austrian Requiem. New York: Putnam, 1946.

236

Bibliography

Segre, Claudio. ‘‘Liberal and Fascist Italy in the Middle East, 1919–1939: The Elusive White Stallion.’’ In The Great Powers and the Middle East 1919– 1939, edited by Uriel Dann, 199–212. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988. Seton-Watson, Christopher. ‘‘The Anglo-Italian Gentleman’s Agreement of January 1937 and its Aftermath.’’ In The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by Wolfgang Mommsen and Lothar Kettenacker. London: Allen & Unwin, 1983. Shorrock, William I. From Ally to Enemy: The Enigma of Fascist Italy in French Diplomacy. Kent, Ohio, and London: Kent State University Press, 1988. Smyth, Denis. ‘‘Duce Diplomatico.’’ Historical Journal 21, no. 4 (December 1978): 981–1000. Stafford, P. ‘‘The Chamberlain-Halifax visit to Rome: a reappraisal.’’ English Historical Review 98 (January 1983): 61–100. Starhemberg, Prince Ernst Ru¨ diger. Between Hitler and Mussolini. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1942. ¨ sterreichs im Jahre 1934.’’ In Stuhlpfarrer, Karl. ‘‘Zur Aussenpolitischen Lage O Februar 1934, edited by E. Fro¨ schl and H. Zoitl, 451–62. Vienna: Volksbuchandlung, 1984. Susmel, Edoardo and Duilio, eds. Opera omnia di Benito Mussolini. Florence: La Fenice, 1956. Tamaro, Attilo. Venti anni di storia, 1922–1943. 3 vols. Rome: Tiber, 1955. Taylor, Telford. Munich: The Price of Peace. New York: Vantage Books, 1980. Toscano, Mario. The Origins of the Pact of Steel. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967. ———. Storia diplomatica della questione dell’Alto Adige. Bari: Laterza, 1967. Troebst, Stefan. Macedonien und die Ma¨ chte 1922–1930. Cologne and Vienna: Bo¨ hlau Verlag, 1987. Tuninetti, D. M. La mia missione in Austria, 1937–1938. Milan: C.E.B.E.S., 1946. Vansittart, Sir Robert. The Mist Procession. London: Hutchinson, 1958. Varsori, Antonio. ‘‘Italy, Britain and a Separate Peace 1940–43.’’ Journal of Italian History 1, no. 3 (1981) Wandycz, Piotr S. The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 1926–1936. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988. Weinberg, Gerhard L. The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany 1937–1939. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Welles, Sumner. The Time for Decision. New York: Harper, 1944. Wiskemann, Elizabeth. The Rome-Berlin Axis. 2d ed. London: Collins, 1966.

Index Adua, battle of, 1896, 67, 111, 118, 125, 127, 130, 159, 195 Albania, 2–3, 7, 15–16, 20, 23–25, 63, 74, 82, 108, 110, 125, 155–56, 202, 209, 217; treaty of Tirana with Italy 26 November 1926, 41; pact with Italy 22 November 1927, 42; invasion of by Italy April 1939, 188–91 Albertini, Luigi, 136 Alexander (Karageorgevic´ ), King of Yugoslavia, 26, 48, 74, 79, 108 Alfieri, Dino [Italian Minister for Popular Culture, 1936–1939; Ambassador to the Holy See, 1939–1940; Ambassador to Berlin, 1940–1943], 131, 142 Aloisi, Pompeo [Baron, Chief of Cabinet, Italian Foreign Ministry, and representative to the League of Nations, 1932–1936], 83–84, 127, 130, 133, 141 Alto Adige, 75, 107, 154. See also South Tyrol Anfuso, Filippo, Chief of Cabinet, Italian Foreign Ministry, 210 Anschluss (union of Austria with Ger-

many), xiv, 61–63, 66, 73, 76, 88, 90, 110, 112, 114–15, 119, 139–42, 147, 151, 164, 166, 168, 173–74, 176, 187, 208–9, 224; Mussolini and the Locarno negotiations, 27–32; Mussolini’s efforts to defend against, 98, 103–8, 142–43, 153–56, 164– 69, 203, 208; Hitler and, 76, 91–93, 97, 102, 139–40, 150, 164, 166–68 Anti-Comintern Pact, 158, 184, 188, 193 Attolico, Bernardo, Italian Ambassador, Berlin, 1935–1940, 131, 200– 201 Auriti, Giacinto, Italian minister, Vienna, 51 Austria, Federal Republic of: Italy and Locarno negotiations 1925, 27–32; Italy and the Customs Union negotiations with Germany, 61–64; battleground between Italy and Germany, 76– 79; Gentleman’s Agreement with Germany 11 July 1936, 139–43; annexation by Germany, March 1938, 166–68. See also Anschluss Austria-Hungary, The Dual Habsburg Monarchy, 3, 5–6, 8–9

238

Index

Austrian Socialist Party, 77–78, 87–88, 91–93, 97, 104–5, 223 Avenol, Joseph, 177–78 Averescu, General Alexander, Premier of Romania, 1926–1927, 37–39

Badoglio, General Pietro [Chief of Italian General Staff, 1925–1940; Italian prime minister after dismissal of Mussolini July 1943], 43, 120, 129– 30, 132, 134, 136, 203, 216 Baker, Ray Stannard, 13 Balbo, Italo [Chief of the Italian Air Force, 1926–1933; governor of Libya, 1934–1940], 187 Baldwin, Stanley, British Prime Minister, 1935–1937, 115, 130 Balearic Islands, 148–50, 163, 185 Balfour, James Arthur, British Foreign Secretary, 1916–1919, 7 Barthou, Louis, French Foreign Minister, 1934, 104, 106–9 Bastianini, Giuseppe, Ambassador to London, 1939–1940, 142 Baudouin, Paul, 185–86 Beaumarchais, Maurice, French Ambassador, Italy, 1928–1932, 43, 67 Benesˇ , Eduard [Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, 1918–1935; President of Czechoslovak Republic, 1935–1938], 25, 29, 80, 168, 177–78 Berthelot, Philippe, Secretary General of the French Foreign Ministry, 1925–1933, 67 Bethlen, Count Istva´ n, Hungarian prime minister, 1921–1931, 39, 49, 72 Blum, Le´ on, French Prime Minister, June 1936–July 1937, March–April 1938, 142, 147, 149, 174 Bocchini, Arturo, Chief of Police, 1926– 1940, 135 Bolı´n, Luis, 148 Bonaccorsi, Arconovaldo, 150 Bonnet, Georges, French Foreign Minister, 1938–1939, 174, 188, 192 Bottai, Giuseppe, Italian Minister of

Education, 1936–1943, 187, 206, 208, 210 Briand, Aristide, French Foreign Minister, 1925–1932, 27, 30–32, 41, 43, 59, 61 Bulgaria, 36–38, 40, 43, 45–46, 74, 79, 209 Buresch, Karl, 72 Canaris, Admiral Wilhelm, head of German Intelligence Service, 131, 135, 151 Cantalupo, Roberto, Italian Ambassador, Madrid, 1937, 153 Caporetto, battle of, 1917, 2, 4 Cavallero, Ugo, 194 ‘‘Cavallero Memorandum,’’ 194, 200 Chamberlain, Sir Austen, British Foreign Secretary, 1924–1929, xvi, 36, 40–42, 45–46, 53 Chamberlain, Neville, British Prime Minister, 1937–1940, 160, 166, 168, 175, 177, 188, 200, 215, 224; conversation with Grandi 18 February 1938, 165; Czechoslovak crisis 1938, 175–81; meeting with Mussolini in Rome 11 January 1939, 184– 85; attitude toward Italy, 190 Chambrun, Charles de, French Ambassador, Rome, 133, 174 Charles-Roux, Franc¸ ois, French Ambassador, Holy See, 1926–1940, 215 Christov, Georgi pop, 45 Churchill, Winston Spencer, British Prime Minister, 1940–1945, xvi, 213– 16 Ciano, Count Galeazzo [Minister of Propaganda 1933–1936; Italian Foreign Minister 1936–1943], 131, 149, 157, 164, 176, 182–85, 191–92, 226; character of, 145–46; relationship with Mussolini, 169; appointment as foreign minister June 1936, 142, 145; urges Mussolini to intervene on Franco’s side in Spanish conflict, 148, 153, 159–60, 164; tilt toward Hitler, 151, 155, 162; dislike of Austria, 154, 156, 158, 164; rap-

Index prochement with Yugoslavia, 155– 56; signs anti–Comintern Pact 6 November 1937, 158; views on the Anschluss crisis of February–March 1938, 164–65, 167; attitude toward the Czechoslovak crisis, 174–81; urges invasion of Albania, 188–91; talks with Stoyadinovic, 189; negotiations with von Ribbentrop in Milan for Pact of Steel May 1939, 193–94; estrangement from Germany, 186– 87, 191; meets with Hitler and von Ribbentrop in Salzburg and Berchtesgaden 11 and 12 August 1939, 201–2; reactions to Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, 203; visit with Hitler 1 October 1939, 207; pursuit of Balkan league, 207; addresses Italian Chamber 16 December 1939, 208–9; meeting with Sumner Welles, 210 Clemenceau, Georges, French Prime Minister, 1917–1920, 8, 11–13 Colosomo, Gaspare, 11 Contarini, Enrico, 21, 25, 28, 30, 38, 57 Cooper, Duff, 166 Corfu Incident, 21, 23–24 Corradini, Enrico, 19 Cortese, Paolo, 74 Crispi, Francesco, 101 Croatia, 5, 14, 74; Italian support of separatism, 46–47, 108, 110, 112, 155–56; German threats to, 186–87, 190; Mussolini’s designs on 1939– 1940, 199, 201, 203, 207 Croce, Benedetto, 136 Curtius, Julius, 63, 66 Customs Union, 61–64, 66 Czechoslovakia, 16, 20, 25, 27, 39, 62, 94, 151, 169, 201, 224; Mussolini’s attitude toward, 139; crisis with Germany, 177–81; fate of, 184, 186 Daladier, E´ douard, French Prime Minister, 1938–1940, 174, 179, 200; at Munich, 180; hard line against Italy, 183–86, 188; radio address of 29

239

March 1939, 188–90; authorizes talks with Italy 3 May 1939, 192; offers concessions to Italy, 215 D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 14–16 De Bono, Emilio, 68, 101–2, 125, 127– 29 De Bosdari, Alessandro, 29 De Felice, Renzo, xvi–xvii, 58, 174 Delbos, Yvon, French Foreign Minister, 1936–1938, 166 Dollfuss, Englebert, Chancellor of Austria 1932–1934, 72–73, 76, 79, 96– 98, 102–5, 107, 223 talks with Mussolini at Riccioni 1933, 90 Doumergue, Gaston, 28 Drang nach Su¨ dosten, 62, 64, 76, 112, 189, 207, 223, 227 Drummond, Sir Eric, 120 Easter Accords of 16 April 1938, 167– 68, 173–74, 176, 179, 182, 184, 191, 223 Eden, Anthony [British Minister for League of Nations Affairs 1935; Foreign Secretary 1935–1938], 110, 113, 115, 118, 126–27, 130, 150– 51; visit to Rome June 1935, 116– 17; attitude on sanctions, 133–35; attitude toward Mussolini, 160, 164– 65; rift with Chamberlain, 161, 164– 67 Ethiopia, xiv, 67–68, 75, 80–82, 84, 94, 101–21, 145–47, 149, 152, 155, 160, 162–65, 222, 224. See also Mussolini, Benito Farinacci, Roberto, 163, 214 Fascist Grand Council, 214; meetings of: 5 February 1929, 60; 26 May 1935, 115; 18 December 1935, 129– 30; 4 February 1939, 185; 1 September 1939, 205; 7 December 1939, 208; 24–25 July 1943, 217 Fatherland Front, 88, 90–91, 93–95, 97, 103, 140–41 Federzoni, Luigi [Italian Minister of Colonies, 1922–1924; of Interior, 1924–1926], 187

240

Index

Fey, Major Emil, 77, 91–97, 103 Flandin, Pierre-E´ tienne, French Foreign Minister, 1936, 130–34 Four Power Pact 1933, 87, 98, 102, 134, 173 France: Italian claims on, 43–44, 60– 61, 182–83, 185–86; rivalry with Italy, 6–9, 25, 35; Locarno treaty 1925, 28–32; Franco-Yugoslav Treaty 11 November 1927, 41, 73; and disarmament, 83–85; FrancoItalian Agreement of 7 January 1935, 110–11; Stresa Conference April 1935, 113–15; economic sanctions against Italy, 125–30; Spanish Civil War and, 149–50; Italian declaration of war on, 216 Franco y Bahamonde, Francisco, dictator of Spain, 1939–1975, xvi, 142, 174, 176, 185–86, 188, 224; uprising 17 July 1936, 147–48; Italian help to, 149–53, 155, 161–63, 186, 188 Franc¸ ois-Ponc¸ et, Andre´ [French Ambassador in Berlin, 1931–1938; Rome, 1938–1940], 180, 182, 188, 192, 215–16 Franco-Soviet Pact, 132, 134 Frank, Hans, 147 Frank, Ivo, 47 Galli, Carlo, 47 Garibaldi, Ezio, 128 Gayda, Virginio, editor, Giornale d’Italia, 154 Gentleman’s Agreement (Abkommen) between Germany and Austria 11 July 1936, xiv, 139, 142, 147, 151, 153–54, 223–24 Gentlemen’s Agreement between Italy and Britain 2 January 1937, 142, 150, 152, 161, 167, 190, 223 Germany: and Locarno 1925, 27–32; customs union project, 61–64; hostility toward Austria, 76–79, 95–98; remilitarization of the Rhineland, 133–35; military intervention in Spain, 151–53; annexation of Aus-

tria, 164, 166–67; dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, 173–82; seizure of Prague, 186; Pact of Steel with Italy, 193–95; aggression against Poland, 199–205; and World War II, 207–18 Ghigi, Pellegrino, Italian minister in Vienna, 1938, 158 Giardino, Gaetano, 25 Giolitti, Giovanni, 15 Go¨ mbo¨ s, Julius, Hungarian Prime Minister 1932–1936, 72, 79, 87, 90– 91, 98, 109, 112, 139–40, 142, 156; meetings with Mussolini: November 1932, 73; July 1933; 89; disparagement of Dollfuss, 92, 94; approaches to Hitler, 89 Go¨ ring, Hermann, German Minister for Air and Commander in Chief of German Air Force, 78, 84, 152–53, 158, 175, 191 Graham, Sir Ronald, British Ambassador in Rome, 59, 84 Grandi, Dino [Italian minister of Foreign Affairs, 1929–1932; Italian Ambassador in London, 1932–1939], 54, 71, 101, 107, 111, 117, 119, 128, 135, 146, 187, 204, 206, 214, 217–18, 225; diplomatic Realpolitiker, 57–59; ambiguities toward France and Yugoslavia, 59–61; reaction to the German-Austrian Customs Union project, 61–64; views of Hitler and Germany, 64–65; urges invasion of Ethiopia 1932, 66–68; rivalry with Ciano, 160, 164; meetings with Chamberlain and Eden 18 February 1938, 164–66; urges Chamberlain to contact Mussolini September 1938, 179 Graziani, Rodolfo, viceroy of Ethiopia, 1936–1937, 130, 136, 138 Great Britain: Corfu invasion and, 23– 24; Locarno negotiations, 27–32; disarmament, 80–85; Stresa Front, 112–15; Ethiopian war, 115–21, 125– 30; Spanish Civil War, 149–50, 161– 62; Anschluss and, 165–66; Munich

Index crisis, 178–81; outbreak of World War II, 210, 213–15 Guadalajara, battle of, 1937, 159–60, 163 Guariglia, Raffaele [Political Director, Italian Foreign Office 1926–1932; Ambassador, Paris, 1938–1940], 101, 119, 215 Habicht, Theodor, German Inspector of Austrian Nazis, 88, 90–92, 95, 103 Habsburg, Otto von, 139 Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, 1930–1974, 109–11, 136–37 Halifax, Viscount, British Foreign Secretary, 1938–1940, 185, 188, 205, 214–15 Hankey, Sir Maurice, 166 Hassell, Ulrich von, German Ambassador in Rome, 1932–1938, 76, 95– 96, 131, 133, 142 Heimwehr, 72, 78, 88, 90, 103, 105, 223; origins, 48–49; internal dissidents, 49, 51; Italian support of, 48, 50–51; eclipse of, 139–40, 142 Henderson, Arthur, 58, 61 Herriot, Edouard, French Prime Minister, 1924–1925, 1932, 67–68, 119 Hesse, Philip Prince of, 179 Himmler, Heinrich, 135, 137 Hindenburg, Paul von, 64 Hirtenberg Weapons Affair, 76–77 Hitler, Adolf, German Fhrer and Reich Chancellor, 1933–1945, 55, 68, 73, 78, 87–89, 103–6, 109, 112–15, 120, 126, 136–37, 141–42, 145, 147, 151, 182–85, 187–89, 199; arrival in power, 75, 81; determination to annex Austria, 76; pressure on Dollfuss, 91–93; meets with Mussolini at Venice June 1934, 97; attitude toward Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, 130; remilitarizes the Rhineland 7 March 1936, 133–35, 139; Gentleman’s Agreement with Austria, 139–40, 150; meeting with Ciano October 1936, 151–52; intervention in Spain, 162; receives Mus-

241

solini in Berlin September 1937, 156– 58; receives Schuschnigg at Berchtesgaden February 1938, 164; marches into Austria March 1938, 166–68; visit to Italy 3–9 May 1938, 174–76; instigates crisis with Czechoslovakia and Munich conference September 1938, 177–82; seizes Prague 15 March 1939, 186, 191; hostility toward Poland, 191–93; Pact of Steel, 194–95; meetings with Ciano 12 and 13 August 1939 at Salzburg and Berchtesgaden, 201–2; threats against Poland, 200–203; Nazi–Soviet Pact, 204; receives letter from Mussolini 25 August 1939, 203–4; war against Poland, 206; attitude toward Italian nonbelligerency, 205, 207–9; receives Mussolini’s letter of 5 January 1940, 210–11; letter to Mussolini 8 March 1940, 211; meets Mussolini at Brenner 18 March 1940, 211–12; correspondence with Mussolini during spring 1940, 213–14; orders rescue of Mussolini, 217–18; comparison with Mussolini, 223–29 Hoare, Sir Samuel, British Foreign Secretary, 1935, 116, 118–20, 125, 128– 29, 131–32, 135 Hoare-Laval Plan 7 December 1935, 125–32 Horthy, Miklo´ s von Nagyba´ nya, Regent of Hungary, 1920–1944, 93 House, Edward (Colonel), 5, 12 Hungary, 5, 9, 14, 16, 20, 62, 76, 79, 82–83, 91, 104, 109, 112, 125, 139, 152, 156–57, 177; relations with Italy, 39–40, 87–89, 93–94; revisionism, 72–73 Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), 37, 45–46 Italy: and the Great War, 1–4; Paris Peace Conference, 4–14; Corfu invasion, 23–24; Locarno treaty 1925, 27–32; Four Power Pact and disarmament 1933, 82–85; Rome

242

Index

Protocols Bloc, 94–97, 104–9; Stresa Front, 112–15; Ethiopian war, 125, 129–30, 132–36; League sanctions against, 118–20, 125–30, 132–35; intervention in Spanish civil war, 147–51, 158–64; Rome-Berlin Axis, 156–58, 160, 164–66, 169, 173–96, 199–218; Munich crisis 1938, 173– 82; invasion of Albania 1939, 188– 91; Pact of Steel May 1939, 191–95; military discussions with Germany 1939, 199–207; intervention in World War II, 207–16. See also Mussolini, Benito Japan, 128, 158, 160, 182, 184, 193, 225 Jouvenel, Henri de, French Ambassador, Rome, 1933, 75, 82 Ka´ rolyi, Gyula, 72 Kemal, Mustapha, 14, 21–22 Lausanne Conference, 1922–1923, 22 Laval, Pierre [French Prime Minister, 1931–1932, 1935–1936; Foreign Minister 1934–1935], 66, 75, 108–9, 115, 147, 188; signs agreement with Mussolini January 1935, 110–12; Hoare-Laval Agreement 7 December 1935, 125–32; view on League action against Italy, 116–20; exchange of letters with Mussolini, 130 League of Nations, 20, 32, 40, 61, 106, 112–13, 116, 145–47, 152–55, 160–61, 168, 175, 177; Mussolini’s attitude toward, 71–72, 80, 102, 117, 161; Corfu incident, 23–24; Grandi and, 58–59; Austria, 77, 79, 88, 92–93, 106–7, 109–10; Germany, 82, 84, 102, 135; Ethiopia, 107, 112; sanctions against Italy, 118, 125–27, 133–35; Committee of Five, 118–19, 127; Committee of Eighteen, 125 Le´ ger, Alexis, Secretary General French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1933– 1940, 130, 215

Ley, Dr. Robert, 209 Liapcˇ ev, Andrei, Bulgarian Premier, 1926–1931, 37, 45–46 Little Entente, 25, 29, 36–41, 44, 48– 49, 72, 75, 77, 80, 82, 84–85, 87– 91, 94, 96, 104, 106–9, 112, 140, 155–56, 168 Lloyd George, David, British Prime Minister, 1916–1922, 11–12 Locarno Treaty 1925, 27, 31–32 Loraine, Sir Percy, British Ambassador, Rome, 1939–1940, 204, 215 MacDonald, Ramsay J., British Prime Minister, 1929–1935, 58, 83–84, 115 Macek, Vladko, 47 Mackensen, Hans Georg von, German Ambassador, Rome, 1938–1943, 187, 214 Maffey Report, 117, 120 Magistrati, Massimo, Counselor at Italian Embassy in Berlin, 200 Matteotti, Giacomo, Italian Socialist, 27, 147 Mazzotti, Vittorio, 47 Mihailov, Ivan, 45 Miklas, Wilhelm, President of Austria, 91 Montgomery, General Bernard, 217 Morreale, Eugenio, Italian Press Attache´ in Vienna, 47, 51, 92 Mussolini, Benito, Italian prime minister and Duce of Italian Fascism, 1922–1943: nature of foreign policy, xi–xiii, 17–19, 21, 71–72, 221–22; revisionist policies, 21, 51–55; imperialism, 22, 101–21, 125–43; Lausanne Conference, 22–24; Corfu incident, 23–24; Locarno conference and the Anschluss question, 27–32; attempted breakup of Yugoslavia, 44– 48; insurrectionary plots with the IMRO, 44–46; support of Croatian terrorists, 46–48; subsidizes the Heimwehr, 48–51; discussions with Starhemberg, 50, 90; appointment of Grandi as foreign minister 1929, 58;

Index differences with Grandi, 64–66; pressure on Dollfuss, 76–79; meeting with Go¨ mbo¨ s November 1932, 73; meeting with Dollfuss at Riccione August 1933, 90; reaction to Hitler’s coming to power, 76; the Four Power Pact, 80–85; Jouvenel mission, 82–83; disarmament negotiations, 83–85; directs destruction of Austrian Social Democracy, 87–93; Rome Protocols Bloc, 94–97; meeting with Hitler June 1934, 97; reaction to the assassination of Dollfuss, 98; troubled relationship with Schuschnigg, 103–7; visits with Schuschnigg: August 1934, 103–4; November 1934, 105, 107; connection with the assassination of Barthou and King Alexander, 108; plans invasion of Ethiopia, 109; meeting with Laval in Rome 4–7 January 1935, 110–11; Stresa Conference April 1935, 112–15; meeting with Schuschnigg May 1935; discussions with Eden in Rome 24–25 June 1935, 115–16; Hoare-Laval plan, 125–32; reaction to Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland, 133–35, 139; meetings with Starhemberg March and May 1936, 140; declaration of the Empire 9 May 1936, 136; meeting with Schuschnigg 5–6 June 1936, 141; appoints Ciano foreign minister 9 June 1936, 142; reaction to the Austro–German Gentleman’s Agreement 11 July 1936, 142–43; intervention in the Spanish conflict, 148–50; speech at Milan 1 November 1936, 152; receives Go¨ ring in Rome January 1937, 152–53; reaction to Italy’s defeat at the battle of Guadalahara, 155; meets with Schuschnigg in Venice April 1937, 153–54; rapprochement with Yugoslavia, 155–56; visit to Germany September 1937, 156–58; acquiescence in Anschluss March 1938, 164– 69; receives Hitler in Rome, 3–9

243 May 1938, 174–75; issues ‘‘Manifesto of the Race’’ July 1938, 176; Czechoslovak crisis, 177–79; presides over Munich Conference September 1938, 180–82; speech before Chamber of Fasces and Corporations 30 November 1938, 182–83; talks with Chamberlain in Rome January 1939, 184–85; Fascist Grand Council speech 4 February 1939, 185–86; reaction to Germany’s occupation of Prague March 1939, 186–87; addresses Blackshirts 26 March 1939, 187; invasion of Albania April 1939, 188–91; receives Go¨ ring in Rome 14–17 April 1939, 191–92; Pact of Steel May 1939, 191–95; correspondence with Hitler August 1939, 199–207; letter to Hitler 25 August 1939, 203–4; address Fascist Grand Council 7 December 1939, 208; letter to Hitler 5 January 1940, 209; addresses Council of Ministers 23 January 1940, 210; meets Hitler at Brenner 18 March 1940, 211–12; memorandum of 31 March 1940, 212; weighs intervention, 213–16; enters war 10 June 1940, 216–18; fall from power, flight, and execution, 217–18

Nazi-Soviet Pact 23 August 1939, 203– 4, 207–8, 210–11 Nettuno Conventions 20 July 1925, 26, 42 Neurath, Baron Konstantin von [German Ambassador, Rome, 1921– 1930, Foreign Minister, 1932–1938], 44, 65, 156 Nincˇ ic´ , Momcˇ ilo, Yugoslav Foreign Minister, 1924–1927, 25–26 Nitti, Francesco Saverio, Italian Prime Minister, 1919–1920, 14–15 Noli, Fan, 26 Nyon Conference, 161–62 Orlando, Vittorio Emanuele, Italian Prime Minister, 1917–1919, 5, 11,

244

Index

14; rivalry with Sonnino, 8; aims at the Paris Peace Conference, 10, 12– 13 Pact of London 1915, 1–12, 15, 18– 19, 22, 24–25, 28 Pact of Rome 24 July 1924, 25–26, 43 Pact of Steel (Italo-German military alliance), 22 May 1939, xv, 191–95, 199–200, 202–5 Paganon, Joseph, 68 Papen, Baron Franz von, Hitler’s special envoy to Austria, 78, 95–96, 103, 105, 107, 132, 139, 140–41 Pariani, Alberto, Italian Undersecretary for War, 1936–1939, 189 Paris Peace Conference, 1919, 2–3, 7– 8, 19, 190, 227 Pasˇ ic´ , Nikola, Serbian Prime Minister, 24 Paul, Prince, 156, 189 Paul-Boncour, Joseph, French Foreign Minister, 1932–1934, 1938, 75, 90 Pavelic´ , Ante, Croat terrorist leader, 47– 48, 75, 108 Percˇ ec, Gustav, 48 Perth, The Earl of, British Ambassador, Rome, 1933–1939, 179, 188 peso determinante (decisive weight), xiv, xvi, 58, 61, 63, 68, 72, 132, 135, 166, 173, 184, 206, 210, 212, 221, 223–24 Petacci, Clara, 218 Peterson, Maurice, 128 Picasso, Pablo, 163 Pilotti, Massimo, 117 Pius XI, Pope, 1922–1939, 149, 174, 176–77 Poincare´ , Raymond, French Premier, 1922–1924, 1926–1929, 22, 32 Poland, 27, 81, 104, 110, 156, 177, 181, 186, 199–200, 207; crisis with and invasion by Germany, 191–95, 100–105, 208, 210, 212 Popolo d’Italia, Mussolini’s official organ, 47, 117, 131, 178

Preziosi, Gabriele, Italian Minister in Vienna, 92, 140 Primo de Rivera, Miguel, 147 Protogerov, Alexanduˇ r, 45 Radic´ , Stepan, 26 Rapallo, Treaty of, 1920, 16, 24 Renzetti, Giuseppe, Italian ConsulGeneral in Berlin, 66 Reynauld, Paul, French prime minister, 1940, 213, 215 Rhineland, remilitarization of, 132, 135, 139, 147, 165–66 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, German Foreign Minister, 1938–1945, 158, 177, 179–84, 186–87, 189, 191–94, 200–202, 204, 210–11 Ricciardi, Giulio, 51 Rintelen, Dr. Anton, Austrian Minister, Rome, 77, 91, 96 Rochira, Ubaldo, 47 Romania, 14, 16, 20, 25, 36–40, 63, 104, 110, 156, 190, 199 Rome Protocols Bloc, 94–97, 104, 109, 139–40, 167 Rommel, General Erwin, 217 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, President of the United States, 1933–1945, 179, 213, 215–16 Rosselli brothers, 174 Rothermere, Lord, 51 Ruhr, occupation of 1923, 22–23 Runciman, Lord Walter, Head of Mission to Czechoslovakia, 1938, 177– 78, 183 Saint Jean de Maurienne agreement 1917, 7 Saint-Quentin, Rene´ de, 128 Salata, Francesco [Director Italian Institute in Vienna; Italian Minister in Vienna], 140, 142, 151, 157 Sarfatti, Margherita, 136, 157 Sarkotic´ , General von Lovcen Stjepan, 47 Sarraut, Albert, 130 Schmidt, Guido, Head of Austrian Foreign Office, 151, 158

Index Schober, Johannes [Austrian Chancellor, 1929–1930; Foreign Minister, 1930–1931], 50–51, 62 Schuschnigg, Dr. Kurt von, Austrian Chancellor, 1934–1938, 91, 93, 105, 112, 153, 223; uneasy relationship with Mussolini, 105–7, 135, 155; rivalry with Starhemberg, 103, 139; meetings with Mussolini: August 1934, 103–4, 17 November 1934, 107, 11 May 1935, 115; discussion with von Papen, 132, 140; meeting with Mussolini 5–6 June 1936, 141; signs Gentleman’s Agreement with Germany 11 July 1936, 142, 150, 152; meeting with Mussolini at Venice April 1937, 153–54; meeting with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, 164; loses Italian support in Anschluss, 165–68 Seipel, Dr. Ignaz [Austrian Chancellor, 1926–1929; Foreign Minister, 1930], 49–50, 62 Se`vres, Treaty of, 1920, 21 Sforza, Count Carlo, Italian Foreign Minister, 1920–1921, 15–16, 27, 62 Sibilia, Enrico, 90 Simon, Sir John, British Foreign Secretary, 1931–1935, 83, 111–13, 118 Skorzeny, Otto, 217 Smith, Denis Mack, xvi Sonnino, Baron Sidney, Italian Foreign Minister, 1914–1919, 3, 189, 221; political creed, 4, 6, 15; wartime leader, 3; rivalry with Orlando, 8; aims of at the Paris Peace Conference, 5, 9–14 South Tyrol, 9, 19, 27–30, 49, 51–53, 63, 73, 76, 78, 81, 142, 155, 169, 174–75, 184, 208. See also Alto Adige Soviet Union, 27, 31, 38, 41, 80–81, 104, 106, 139, 149, 161, 190, 193– 95, 200, 203, 207–9, 212, 225 Spain, xiv, 142, 173, 191, 199, 202; Italy’s intervention in, 148–49; Franco’s insurrection, 147

245

Spanish Civil War, Italy and, 148–51, 158–64, 176, 180–82, 184–85, 188, 224 Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich, General Secretary of Central Committee of Communist Party, USSR, 80–81, 162–63, 193–94, 207–9, 217 Starace, Achille, 214 Starhemberg, Prince Ernst Ru¨ diger, Heimwehr leader in Austria, 72–73, 87, 91, 102, 133, 139; plots coup d’e´ tat, 50; rivalry with Dollfuss, 90– 97; rivalry with Schuschnigg, 102–3, 139–40; meetings with Mussolini: July 1930, 50, February 1933, 77, September 1933, 90, May 1936, 140; dropped by Mussolini, 142 Steidle, Dr. Richard, 90 Stojadinovic´ , Milan, Yugoslav Prime Minister, 1935–1939, 155–56, 189– 90 Stresa Conference 1935, 112–15 Stresa Front, 131, 133, 139, 143, 145, 167–69, 173, 176, 224 Stresemann, Gustav, German Foreign Minister, 1923–1929, 27–29, 44, 51– 52 Suvich, Fulvio, Italian Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, 1932–1936, 71, 94, 103, 129, 133, 142, 146; visit with Hitler 12–13 December 1933, 91–92; visit with Dollfuss January 1934, 92; distrust of Germany, 131– 32 Tardieu, Andre´ , 12, 67–68 Tellini, Enrico, 23 Tittoni, Tomaso, Foreign Minister, 1919–1920, 14–15 Tittoni-Venizelos Agreement 20 July 1919, 15 Titulescu, Nicholas, 80, 146 Trumbic´ , Ante, 12 Tuninetti, D. M., 153 Turkey, 6–7, 15, 146, 195, 208 United States, 3–5, 10, 12–13, 58–59, 65, 67–68, 128, 217

246

Index

Ustasˇ a, 74–75, 77, 112

Vansittart, Sir Robert, Permanent Undersecretary of the British Foreign Office, 1930–1938, 113, 116, 118, 128, 158 Vaugoin, Karl, 50 Vecchiarelli, Carlo, 47 Venizelos, Eleutherios, 11, 15 Versailles, Treaty, 1919, 13, 22, 43, 52, 54 Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, 1900–1946, 18, 187, 192, 203, 212– 13, 216–17 Vittoria mutilata (mutilated victory), xi, 3, 54, 126, 221, 227

Walwal, incident of, 109 Welles, Sumner, American Undersecretary of State, 1937–1943, 210–11 Weygand, General Maxime, 75 Wilson, Woodrow, President of the United States, 3–13, 15 Winter, Karl Ernst, 168 Yugoslavia, 3–5, 9–11, 13–16, 35, 37– 44, 46–48, 53–54, 59–60, 63, 68, 82, 146, 152, 155–56, 201, 203, 207–8, 212, 214 Zeila plan, 116, 118 Zingarelli, Italo, 47 Zogu, King of Albania, 26, 40–43, 45, 189–90

About the Author H. JAMES BURGWYN is Professor of History at West Chester University. He is the author of Il revisionismo fascista and The Legend of the Mutilated Victory: Italy, the Great War, and the Paris Peace Conference, 1915–1919 (Greenwood Press, 1993).