@Imperious:
If they spent the wasted year consolidating the Medd., Rommel could be transfered to the Russian front and would have found a way to bring victory in 1941. Just dump Von Leeb and Bock and keep Rommel and Manstein thats all they needed to finish off the Russians.
The Italians were good soldiers but were not ready for war until 1943 and were under the assumption that Hitler was not going to start a general war before that time. Probably it would be best to have stayed out of war until that time and let Germany carry the ball, but Mussolini said “he needed 10,000 deaths to gain a seat at the peace table” and that hubris proved his undoing. That was the problem all whole time because Il duce was jealous of Hitlers success and wanted a piece of it when his nation was not ready for war.
Franco was more pragmatic and thoughtful waiting till it was clear that Germany was gonna win the war, before committing to her. And the Spanish under Franco saved fascism from extinction till 1977.
Agree IL. Mussolini entered war in the convinction that it was finishing and want to partecipate as a winner to the peace treaty to receive what Italy did not received at the end of First World War, when Italy was expelled from the sharing of the ex-German Colony, that was grabbed by French and UK. The idea of the “Vittoria Mutilata” (Mutilated Victory) was one of the propaganda theme used by Mussolini when he took power.
I do not want to be pedant but exactly Mussolini said that he need “some thousand deaths to seat at the peace table next to the winners”.
His intention were clear. Mussolini was erroneously convinced that the fall of the French Army, the one that stopped the German Army in WWI, was the signal that the Germany has won the war. He did not believe that UK alone and only with its Fleet could have countered Germany. Moreover, he declared to Grandi (another fascist hierarch) that he did not believe that USA have transformed their peace industry in a war machine, making another great evaluation error.
Mussolini entered the war convoinced that war is finishing. For this reason Italy was completely unprepared. Lybia was not strengthened before the war start. Malta was not conquered on the first day of the war, as it should have been. Italian mercantile ships were leaved in foreign ports and not recalled, and were interned. Marina, Esercito and Aereonautica were higly under organic, without supply piled, without operational plan etc. Italian soldiers fought well (alpini in Russia, Ariete at Tobruk, Folgore at El Alamein, Italian seamen in the daily convoy escorts to Lybia, Frogmen in the port of Alexandria) but they were always in disadvantage, quantitatively and qualitatively.
Mussolini entered the war to receive something from Hitler, the winner according to the Duce, for avoiding that Italy will suffocate in an Europe completely under the German domain.