1940. ITALY'S 'PARALLEL WAR.' PART I. FROM NON-BELLIGERENCE TO THE COLLAPSE OF FRANCE

Considerable discussion still prevails over the foreign policy goals of the Fascist regime, and over the interrelated question of the nature of that regime. In general, scholars and other commentators have divided into those who have interpreted Mussolini as the opportunist par excellence, preoccupied only with securing momentary propagandistic triumphs for the edification of domestic public opinion and the strengthening of the regime at home, and those who have seen the Duce and his policy as a more serious and dangerous phenomenon, analogous in some measure to Hitler and to National Socialist Germany's quest for Lebensraum.Despite Mussolini's armaments programs and expansionist aspirations, Italy's military and economic weakness compelled him to disengage Italy from her treaty obligation to fight at Germany's side in September 1939, and to take up the uncomfortable and potentially ambiguous position of "non-belligerent." Nevertheless, Mussolini in no sense gave up his program. If the war were to continue, he proposed to enter it as soon as Italy's preparations were reasonably complete, or German successes radically altered the military balance.In March, 1940, long before the shattering German victories in the West, and even before the German occupation of Denmark and Norway, Mussolini personally pledged his German counterpart that Italy would intervene as soon as the coming German offensive had shaken the Allies. With the Wehrmacht's triumphs in May and June, all obstacles to Italy's entry into the war--not least the lack of enthusiasm of the Italian public--fell away. Fear of arriving "too late," after the Germans had secured all the available booty, pervaded the Italian establishment. The Duce could at last move, and did so, entering the war in pursuit of his territorial "aspirations" in the Mediterranean, and in order to accomplish the domestic concomitant of his expansionist program--the "Prussianization" of the Italians and the elimination of Monarchy, Church, and "bourgeoisie." The dissertation carries the narrative down to the collapse of France and the signing of the Italo-French armistice. Part II will deal with the continuing war against Great Britain, the origins and planning of the Duce's foray against Greece, the disasters of November-December 1940, and the German assumption of control of the Mediterranean theater which marked the end of the 'parallel war' and of Italy's claim to great power status.This dissertation, which works from and attempts to confirm the second hypothesis, is the first half of a longer study dealing with the Italian war in 1940 (a war "parallel to that of Germany, to achieve our own objectives," as Mussolini described it). The dissertation begins by attempting to delineate some of the domestic limitations under which Mussolini operated, and which help account for the regime's frequent tactical shifts and expedients. Monarchy and Papacy in particular, although heavily compromised with the regime, offered obstacles to the pursuit of an adventurous foreign policy, obstacles which the Duce's German counterpart did not have to face. The dissertation then turns to Italian military policy in the late 1930's (the acid test of the "seriousness" of Mussolini's expansionism) and argues, against the currently prevailing view, that Mussolini and some of his military chiefs did make a genuine effort, at least from 1936 on, to prepare for a European war. Parallel to these military preparations, the goal of the regime's foreign policy in the late 1930's, as Mussolini emphasized in a number of secret programmatic utterances, was to transform the Mediterranean into an Italian lake, and Italy into a world power.