Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941

  In December Badoglio, made the scapegoat for the debacle in Greece, had been sacked. The military leaders, not just Badoglio, were resentful of the blame passed to them by Mussolini for a catastrophe that he had personally instigated. Mussolini’s own prestige was now affected, too, as his popularity fell with the sinking morale at home, worsening living standards and military setbacks. Ciano, well known to have been a leading promoter of the attack on Greece, became the target of much opprobrium, some, no doubt, really directed at his father-in-law. The first cracks–though as yet they posed no direct danger to Mussolini–were also beginning to show in the Fascist leadership, as old party potentates sought to distance themselves from the disasters and jockey for position.

  The decision to invade Greece swiftly proved a massive self-inflicted wound. The military situation could, as events rapidly showed, only be remedied by German help, precisely what Mussolini had wanted to avoid. From Hitler’s point of view, Greece was a sideshow. He had far bigger fish to fry. Molotov’s visit to Berlin in mid-November had concentrated his mind on the need to go ahead with the attack on the Soviet Union the following spring. By mid-December, what came to be known as ‘Operation Barbarossa’ was enshrined as a military directive. Greece was an unwelcome diversion. Hitler had wanted the Balkans to remain quiet, but he could not ignore the threat now posed, thanks to Mussolini’s inopportune adventure, of a threatening British military presence at a vulnerable point. Continued Italian gross incompetence and intensified British involvement compelled German military planners to pay close attention to operations in Greece.198 By the end of that November contingency plans had been worked out for the occupation of Greece, though Hitler had informed Ciano that Germany could not intervene before spring.199 When Hitler eventually decided, in March 1941, that a major operation would be necessary to evict the British from the whole of the Greek mainland, the German manpower involved was greater than initially imagined and could only be provided at the expense of the force intended to take care of the southern flank of ‘Barbarossa’.200 The Germans had not envisaged such costly involvement in Greece. The Italians had not wanted them there in the first place. But this was what Mussolini’s Balkan adventure had produced: a calamity for Italy, but wider consequences that had a bearing on the course of the war.

  V

  Looking back near the end of the war, as Germany’s inevitable and impending defeat loomed ever closer, Hitler attributed great blame to Mussolini’s Greek fiasco as the cause of his own subsequent catastrophe. ‘But for the difficulties created for us by the Italians and their idiotic campaign in Greece,’ he reportedly commented in mid-February 1945, ‘I should have attacked Russia a few weeks earlier.’ He believed that the delay in launching ‘Barbarossa’ had cost him victory in the Soviet Union. A few days later, along similar lines, he lamented that the ‘pointless campaign in Greece’, launched without warning to Germany of Italian intentions, ‘compelled us, contrary to all our plans, to intervene in the Balkans, and that in its turn led to a catastrophic delay in the launching of our attack on Russia. We were compelled to expend some of our best divisions there. And as a net result we were then forced to occupy vast territories in which, but for this stupid show, the presence of any of our troops would have been quite unnecessary.’ ‘We have no luck with the Latin races,’ he bemoaned shortly afterwards. The one friend among the Latins, Mussolini, took advantage of his preoccupation with Spain and France ‘to set in motion his disastrous campaign against Greece’.201

  As an explanation of Germany’s calamitous defeat in the Soviet Union this had little to commend it.202 The five-week delay in launching ‘Barbarossa’ was not in itself decisive. Probably, given the unusually wet weather conditions, a launch before mid-June would not have been feasible anyway. The reasons for the failure of ‘Barbarossa’ lay in the hubristic nature of the German war plans–as megalomaniac as they were barbaric–and in the planning flaws and resource limitations that bedevilled the operation from the start. The German descent on Greece in spring 1941, necessitated by the Italian shambles, did cause heavy wear and tear on tanks and other vehicles needed for ‘Barbarossa’, and also, as we have noted, reduced the forces on the southern flank of the assault. But, although the diversion of German resources into Greece just prior to the attack on the Soviet Union scarcely helped the latter enterprise, Mussolini’s foolishness did not undermine ‘Barbarossa’ before the operation started. It nevertheless had the most serious consequences for the Axis war effort in north Africa.

  In the autumn of 1940 this should have been the pivotal theatre. Italy’s position prior to launching a north African offensive would indeed have been far stronger had Tunis and above all Malta been taken after she had entered the war.203 The preparations for such steps had never been taken. Even so, the Italians still had numerical superiority over the British in the region, though this was rapidly to alter. Graziani deferred his advance repeatedly, aware that Italian strength was insufficient to mount the major offensive through Egypt that Mussolini was constantly urging and expecting. The Germans saw the importance of the sector and offered troops and equipment. The Italian military Supreme Command wanted to take advantage of the offer. It could have made the difference. But Mussolini refused.204 He was keen to keep the Germans at bay in what he saw as an Italian war theatre. Beyond that, from October onwards vital manpower and resources were directed, not at north Africa, but at Greece. Between October 1940 and May 1941, five times as many men, one and a third times as much matériel, three and a half times as many merchant ships and more than twice as many escort vessels were deployed on the Greek operation as in north Africa.205 The consequences of this diversion of resources, once the British offensive began in December, soon became all too evident.

  The implications were, in fact, immediately recognized by German strategists. The naval staff’s operational planners summed up the position already by 14 November 1940, little over a fortnight into the Greek debacle: ‘Conditions for the Italian Libyan offensive against Egypt have deteriorated. The Naval Staff is of the opinion that Italy will never carry out the Egyptian offensive’–even though this of course, far more obviously than an attack on Greece, had the potential to inflict serious damage on the British war effort, particularly if the Axis could have taken possession of the Suez area. The assessment continued:

  The Italian offensive against Greece is decidedly a serious strategic blunder; in view of the anticipated British counteractions it may have an adverse effect on further developments in the Eastern Mediterranean and in the African area, and thus on all future warfare…The Naval Staff is convinced that the result of the offensive against the Alexandria–Suez area and the development of the situation in the Mediterranean, with their effects on the African and Middle Eastern areas, is of decisive importance for the outcome of the war…The Italian armed forces have neither the leadership nor the military efficiency to carry the required operations in the Mediterranean area to a successful conclusion with the necessary speed and decision. A successful attack against Egypt by the Italians alone can also scarcely be expected now.206

  By mid-December it was a case not of the long-awaited offensive against Egypt, but of repairing the fall-out from the disastrous Italian collapse. Despite Rommel’s subsequent heroics in the desert campaign, with limited resources, the Italian failure and the alternative priorities for the deployment of German manpower and matériel meant that the crucial north African theatre was increasingly exposed to Allied might. To this unhappy state of affairs (from an Axis viewpoint), Mussolini’s decision to invade Greece at the end of October 1940 had made a major contribution.

  The most direct consequences of Mussolini’s fateful move were felt by Greece and Italy. The immediate casualties of the conflict unleashed by the Fascist dictator on 28 October numbered around 150,000 on the Italian side and 90,000 Greeks.207 For the Greeks, however, this was only the beginning of the misery. Three and a half years of occupation followed the German invasion of April 1941. Beyond
the repression of the conquerors, hyperinflation and malnutrition took a high toll. Around a hundred thousand people died of famine during the winter of 1941–2. Only a small fraction of Greece’s Jews survived Nazi round-ups and deportation to the death camps. Even liberation, in October 1944, brought no end to Greece’s suffering. The bitter aftermath of deep and intractable internal divisions that emerged during the occupation and surfaced fully after liberation was the country’s fierce civil war, which flared up in 1946 and lasted until 1949.208

  For Italy, the ill-fated invasion of Greece (with the attendant disasters of the sinking of the fleet at Taranto and the ignominious collapse in north Africa) signalled the end of great-power pretensions once and for all. The idea of a ‘parallel war’ to build Italy’s own imperium had been revealed as a chimera. Mussolini had, of course, been the chief ideologue as well as the political leader driving along this cause, but he had been able to build upon, and exploit, long-standing continuities in Italian ambitions to become a genuine great power. For although they were often anxious about the consequences of expansion and armed conflict, and voiced well-founded strategic and tactical reservations, the Italian establishment right up to the King had no principled objections to war in pursuit of empire and national grandeur. If Mussolini could have delivered a successful war, he would have encountered little opposition.

  Since the mid-1930s Italy had increasingly been pulled along in Germany’s wake. The impulsively devised attack on Greece, to pay Hitler back in his own coin for Romania and for earlier perceived insults when Italy had been condescendingly treated as a junior partner, was meant to wrest back the pride of independent action. Instead, it dragged Italy far deeper into humiliating subservience to Hitler’s Germany. The fact that Hitler, as a sop to Mussolini’s prestige, allowed the Italians to be a party to the Greek surrender, on 23 April 1941, that German arms had forced, could not hide the scale of Italy’s degradation.209 The cracks in the edifice of Italian Fascism now rapidly started to widen. The disastrous invasion of Greece had ‘put Mussolini at odds with his armed forces, shattered the fragile unity of the fascist hierarchy, disillusioned the Italian public and alienated the Italians from their German allies’.210 By 1943 the cracks were chasmic. The road to Mussolini’s deposition in July that year, instigated by the Fascist Grand Council that he himself had set up, now ran straight. The last, bloody phase of the war, with a restored Mussolini as a German puppet heading the savagely repressive Saló Republic as the Wehrmacht fought ferociously to hold on to the occupied northern part of Italy and fend off the advancing Allied armies pushing up from the south, was a terrible finale to the drama. The overture had been in two parts: the decision to intervene in the war in June 1940; then the decision to attack Greece in October 1940.

  Just as intervention in the war had been a foregone conclusion for Mussolini, so was the attack on Greece. He had been long set on making Greece a part of Italy’s expanding Mediterranean Roman Empire. If he had not attacked in late October 1940, he would probably have done so at the first opportunity that circumstances provided, possibly in spring 1941.211 Even so, the decision he took in autumn 1940 amounted to a fateful choice, where options were available. Supine and irresolute though they were, Mussolini’s military advisers did express unease at the logistical implications of an invasion at such short notice and at that time of year. The timing was not propitious, even as seen by Italian military leaders. The Germans were, as we have noted, aghast at what Mussolini had done. The attack, even if still intended for a later date, could, therefore, have been postponed. Given what happened in north Africa by the end of the year, had it been postponed it might never have taken place at all. And with Greece still independent and neutral, the British, their hands full in north Africa, might have refrained from an intervention that could only be seen as a threat by the Germans, not least to the Romanian oilfields. Greece might then have escaped German subjugation and occupation. The war in the Mediterranean could, therefore, have taken a completely different turn, had not Mussolini invaded Greece when he did.

  Mussolini obviously carries prime responsibility for the attack on Greece. He, after all, took the decision, alone, and without consultation, even of his own Fascist Grand Council. And he overrode the objections of Badoglio and the chiefs of staff. On 10 November, when the magnitude of the disaster was already beginning to unfold, Badoglio confronted Mussolini with his responsibility. He referred to the meeting on 15 October. ‘As a result of the statements of Ciano and Visconti Prasca,’ he declared, ‘you decided to attack on 26 October, a date which was subsequently changed to 28 October. We tried to make all possible preparations during this time. I have reviewed these facts to show that neither the general staff nor the army staff had anything to do with the plans that were adopted, which were entirely contrary to our method of procedure. This method is based on the principle of thorough preparation before action is taken.’212 It was a bold–but partly disingenuous–statement from a man aware that he would soon be made the scapegoat for the Duce’s impetuosity. For Badoglio had been less outspoken when the decision was taken. He had not repeated to Mussolini the stringent objections he had voiced to Ciano.213 The objections of the military chiefs had, in any case, been logistical rather than fundamental. These did not oppose an attack on Greece. They merely had worries about inadequate preparation. Ciano, and his inept henchmen in Albania, Jacomoni and Visconti Prasca, had not even shared these concerns. They had wholeheartedly backed the invasion. Ciano, as we have noted, had been the main proponent of an attack for months. And the underestimation of the Greeks had been as good as unanimous–even stretching to the King.

  While the main responsibility for the Greek debacle fairly lies with Mussolini, therefore, the dictator cannot be seen to carry the sole blame. Churchill’s pronouncement in December 1940 that ‘one man and one man alone’ had brought Italy ‘to the horrid verge of ruin’ was wartime rhetoric, not reasoned analysis.214 Other sectors of the power-elite in the Fascist regime were at the very least complicit in the decision. Fascist rule had, after all, over many years developed a system that not only elevated the leader to a cult-figure, but had placed decision-making entirely in his hands, abnegating all responsibility for decisions at any lower level.215 The politically corrupt system, as in the parallel instance of Nazi Germany, had at the same time rewarded subservience, servility, obsequiousness and sycophancy. Beyond that, all forms of political organization had been reduced to no more than a façade: representative bodies solely in outward appearance, but in reality no more than vehicles of propaganda and acclamation of the leader. Organized opposition, in a system that ran on the basis of divide and rule, career advance and material gratification at the dictator’s favour, was, therefore, as good as impossible to construct. The dictator had been told, repeatedly, that he was infallible; and he believed the blandishments. Others accepted, whether fawningly or cynically, the rules of the political game. When things worked out well, as they had done in 1936 with a cheap victory over a feeble enemy, they were happy to rejoice and take their share of the triumph. When things went badly, as they did in 1940 and thereafter, they sought to hide their share of the responsibility.

  They could do so only to themselves. The imbecility of Mussolini’s decision reflected the dictator’s severe personal shortcomings. But it was also the imbecility of a political system.

  5

  Washington, DC, Summer 1940–Spring 1941

  Roosevelt Decides to Lend a Hand

  We will say to England, we will give you the guns and the ships that you need, provided that when the war is over you will return to us in kind the guns and the ships that we have loaned to you…What do you think of it?

  President Roosevelt, 17 December 1940

  Without a lead on his part it was useless to expect the people would voluntarily take the initiative in letting him know whether or not they would follow him if he did take the lead.

  Henry Stimson, Secretary of War, 22 April 1941

 
Speaking in Boston on 30 October 1940, during his campaign for election to an unprecedented third term in office, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made a pledge to his audience. ‘And while I am talking to you mothers and fathers,’ the President stated, ‘I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign war.’1 It was seen as the most explicit commitment to American neutrality; to keeping the United States out of the war that gripped Europe and threatened a German defeat of Great Britain.

  Roosevelt was telling those listening what they wanted to hear. At the end of September, 83 per cent of those asked in a public opinion survey had favoured staying out of the war against Germany and Italy.2 Helping the British, whose backs had certainly been to the wall since the catastrophic defeat of the Allies at the hands of the Wehrmacht in May and June, by taking measures that fell short of entering the war was another matter altogether. But only 34.2 per cent of Americans in August 1940 supported doing more to help Britain fight Germany.3

  The British war effort, that desperate summer, had gained vital sustenance from the hope that America would soon join the war against Hitler’s Germany. Winston Churchill was desperately impatient for the United States to leave neutrality behind and actively back Britain’s cause. His entire strategic hopes rested upon the presumption of American entry into the war at some point. Some members of Roosevelt’s own Cabinet, too, were pushing the President for a more interventionist approach. At this stage, in autumn 1940, no one was advocating sending an American expeditionary force to fight in Europe, but there were other steps, short of full engagement, that would entail active intervention. With British shipping already threatened by German U-boats, Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, told the President and the Cabinet in December 1940 that ‘we ought to forcibly stop the German submarines by our intervention’. Nothing came of it. The President replied that ‘he hadn’t quite reached that yet’.4 Nor would he do so for some months.