had moments of genuine collegiality, and the former’s appreciation for the Italian dictator’s early triumphs never waned. But Chaplin’s comic satire had a real-life mirror. The two leaders and the countries they represented were an imperfect fit. A diplomatic troll might have scripted the chancellor’s first Italian visit, to Venice in June 1934. Problems began at the airport, where Hitler exited his plane wearing a drab khaki raincoat, only to be welcomed by Mussolini in full military dress. At their meeting, Mussolini tried to get by without an interpreter and so failed to understand much of what Hitler said. The next morning, Mussolini showed up for a parade thirty minutes late, then made a speech in Piazza San Marco that barely acknowledged Hitler’s presence. At lunch, a mischievous chef added salt to the Führer’s coffee. The German leader chose an afternoon boat tour to discuss the racial inferiority of Mediterranean peoples. Halfway through that evening’s reception, Mussolini walked out, and later, in a calculated leak to reporters, he compared his guest to Genghis Khan. Hitler thought of Victor, the Italian monarch, as “King Nutcracker.”
Over time, the personal dynamics improved, but not by much. Hitler became frustrated with Italy as an ally, and Mussolini was exasperated that, when conducting business, his German counterpart rattled off statistics like machine-gun fire and never seemed to shut up. Il Duce’s son-in-law noted at the time, “Hitler talks, talks, talks. Mussolini suffers—he, who is in the habit of talking himself, and who instead has to remain silent.” After one encounter, the two had to fly to Berlin in the Führer’s plane. As soon as they were aloft, Mussolini took his revenge by insisting—to Hitler’s white-knuckled terror—on piloting the aircraft.
The ugliness in Italian Fascism was displayed most graphically before the party took power, when its armed squads killed an estimated two thousand leftist rivals, and in Ethiopia, where Rome’s designated occupiers ran viciously and without a leash. In office, however, Mussolini did not feel called to conduct domestic purges of the type orchestrated by Hitler, and for all his tough words, he could still be shocked. In 1934, when Hitler ordered the murder of a hundred of his own supporters, Mussolini was astonished by his cruelty to onetime friends. A short time later, a Nazi assassination squad in Vienna shot the Austrian chancellor in the throat and sat around for three hours while he bled to death on a sofa. At the time, the chancellor’s wife and two young children were guests of Il Duce’s, staying at a villa close to his along the Adriatic coast. Mussolini went to the villa and, in halting German, personally conveyed to the widow the sad news of her husband’s homicide.
MUSSOLINI’S EGO LIFTED HIM TO THE PINNACLE OF POWER, THEN betrayed him. The man had such faith in his instincts, and believed so fully in what he heard himself say, that he failed to either seek or to take sound advice. For much of his tenure, he occupied Italy’s principal cabinet positions himself, as many as six simultaneously. Unlike Hitler, who left the bulk of hard work to others, Mussolini took pride in the art of government. He just wasn’t that good at it.
His most telling failure was in preparing Italy for what was to come. Nothing made him more eager than the expectation that his country would prove itself in conflict. “War is to a man what motherhood is to a woman,” he liked to say. Raising his fists for emphasis, he implored his countrymen to do what worthy Romans did: hate their enemies, steel themselves for battle, and offer their lives for the nation.
Playing Caesar, he regarded the conquest of Ethiopia as an auspicious start; and in March 1938, he ordered his air force to strike Barcelona on behalf of General Francisco Franco and the right-wing military in Spain’s Civil War. For two terror-filled days, liquid-air bombs pelted the city’s undefended streets, exploding trolleys and buses, flattening apartment buildings, breaking windows, and leaving rescue workers to scoop into baskets the human fragments they found on blood-spattered streets. Mussolini exulted that the time had come for Italians to “horrify the world by their aggressiveness … instead of charming it with their guitars.” He also hoped to impress the Germans who he said “love total, pitiless war.” If his goal was to generate horror, he succeeded. The pope demanded that the bombing stop. When the death toll climbed above thirteen hundred, so did Franco. So, even, did Hitler.
Beating up on soft targets was one thing, but after a decade and a half of Fascist rule, Italy was in no shape to fight a modern war against a capable foe. It didn’t have an adequate supply of men, planes, ships, guns, or even uniforms. Unlike Germany and Czechoslovakia, Italy had never invested in a serious domestic armaments industry. Mussolini had promised his people economic self-sufficiency, but his country remained dependent on imported coal and fertilizer and lacked the seaborne military clout to safeguard its ships and ports. The Ministry of War Production estimated that Italy might be ready for combat—in 1949. Mussolini knew all this but preferred his own truth. He was so quick to boast about the number of available army divisions that he cut in half the size of each, then forgot he had done so. Despite a 20 percent increase in population, the country was to mobilize fewer troops in World War II than it had in World War I.
In 1939, when Germany and Italy signed a mutual defense treaty, Mussolini urged Hitler to delay starting a conflict for several years. The Führer had no such intention. On August 22, he urged his senior officers to “close your hearts to pity. Act brutally. Eighty million people must obtain what is their right. Their existence must be made secure … I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war, no matter whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterward whether he told the truth.”
Early on September 1, fifty-six German divisions, supported by fifteen hundred aircraft, swarmed into western Poland, leaving the eastern half to be devoured by the Soviet Union. The Wehrmacht followed up in the winter and spring of 1940 by invading Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Hitler invited Mussolini to join in taking the next step, the invasion of France. Il Duce hesitated. Only after the Nazis had made a sieve out of the Maginot Line and entered Paris did Mussolini declare war. Typically, he made the decision without consulting his military staff—a costly mistake. His country had a large merchant fleet at sea, one-third of which was forced by the British to surrender with Italy barely firing a shot.
Mussolini hoped for a short war and a seat on the winning side of the table when peace returned and the plunder was divided. He told advisers that, to validate his claim for money and land, at least a thousand Italian troops must die in combat, but that meant his country would have to fight. He could have taken the initiative against the British in North Africa, but his military was reluctant to strike. Then the Führer double-crossed him by securing German access to Romania’s oil fields, which Italy also coveted. “Hitler always presents me with a fait accompli,” he complained to relatives. “This time I am going to pay him back in his own coin. He will find out from the newspapers that I have occupied Greece. In this way, the equilibrium will be re-established.”
This was Mussolini’s bright idea: to invade Greece. He did so—in October 1940—contrary to the warnings of his own generals and with no heads-up to his German ally. In his fantasies, he imagined a triumphant march into Athens that would stamp the Balkans with Italy’s brand and match Hitler’s grand entrances into Vienna, Prague, and Paris. When advisers pointed to the potential dangers, he told them not to worry, that he was privy to a secret: the top Greek officials had been bribed and would not fight. He was misinformed. The defenders trounced the poorly equipped Italian troops as Mussolini’s tanks got stuck in the mud, his planes couldn’t fly because of fog, and his ships couldn’t operate effectively due to high winds and heavy seas. Instead of advancing to Athens, the Italians were driven back, thirty miles into Albania. Within weeks, a sheepish Duce had to turn to Hitler for help. The German rescue operation forced Hitler to delay his invasion of the Soviet Union until June 1941, narrowing to four months the window Nazi troops had to reach Moscow before Russia deployed its most lethal weapon—winter.
AS THE WAR HE HAD LAUNCHED SPREAD ACROSS EUROPE, HITLER thought it would be a good plan to bring Franco and Spain into the contest on his side; Mussolini agreed. They viewed the Spanish general as a fellow autocrat who could help them to secure the Mediterranean and who could furnish battle-hardened troops for future