IB History Italian and German Foreign Policies Notes

Italy and Germany Dismantled Versailles Through Calculated, Escalating Aggression

Italy's Revisionism: The Mutilated Victory and Mussolini's Aims

1. The "mutilated victory." Italy entered the First World War in 1915 on the Allied side, promised Austro-Hungarian territory, Adriatic influence, and German colonies under the Treaty of London. The 1919 Paris Peace Conference awarded Italy South Tyrol, Trentino, Trieste, and Istria, but not every territory nationalists claimed, and nationalists led by the poet Gabriele D'Annunzio called the shortfall a "mutilated victory" (vittoria mutilata). D'Annunzio himself seized the port of Fiume by paramilitary force in 1919, showing how the grievance had already turned into direct action before Mussolini took power.
   1. The fate of Fiume: the 1920 Treaty of Rapallo made Fiume a free city rather than granting it to Italy outright, but Mussolini reopened the question once in power, and the 1924 Treaty of Rome formally transferred the city to Italy.
2. Mussolini's three aims. Coming to power in 1922, Mussolini inherited this grievance and built a foreign policy around it: making the Mediterranean an Italian sea (Mare Nostrum), building a colonial empire in East Africa, and asserting Italian dominance in the Balkans and Danube region. These ambitions directly threatened Britain and France, who controlled the Mediterranean exits at Gibraltar and Suez and had their own interests in the same regions.
   1. A parallel front: Mussolini also worked to expand Italian influence in Albania through loans, treaties, and political pressure, a slower and less confrontational route to the same regional ambitions.
3. Early tests of the League: Corfu and Fiume. In 1923 Mussolini used a border incident to bombard and occupy the Greek island of Corfu. The League of Nations secured only Greek compensation. In 1924 he secured Fiume itself through the Treaty of Rome. Both episodes taught Mussolini that aggression against the postwar order could succeed with only mild diplomatic consequences.

German Revisionism: Weimar Diplomacy and Hitler's Programme

1. Weimar's diplomatic route. The Weimar Republic (1919-1933) pursued treaty revision through negotiation: the Rapallo Treaty (1922) restored relations with the USSR, the Dawes Plan (1924) restructured reparations, the Locarno Treaties (1925) accepted Germany's western borders as final while leaving eastern borders open to peaceful revision, and Germany joined the League of Nations in 1926. By 1929 Germany had restored much of its international standing through entirely legal means, without a shot fired.
   1. One more concession: the Young Plan of 1929 further reduced and rescheduled German reparations, the last major diplomatic gain of Stresemann's gradualist strategy before his death that October.
2. Hitler's programme. Hitler set out different aims in Mein Kampf (1925) and his unpublished Secret Book (1928): destroying Versailles, uniting all German-speaking peoples (the Volksdeutsche), and conquering Lebensraum, living space, in Eastern Europe and the USSR. A.J.P. Taylor argued Hitler was an ordinary statesman reacting to circumstances. Most historians now reject this in favour of a genuine ideological programme.
3. Testing Western resolve, 1933-36. From 1933 Hitler withdrew Germany from the League and the disarmament conference, reintroduced conscription and revealed the Luftwaffe in March 1935 (condemned at the Stresa Conference but met with no action), then remilitarised the Rhineland in March 1936, a clear Locarno violation that France, though legally entitled to respond, chose not to act on. Each unpunished violation confirmed to Hitler that further expansion carried little risk.
   1. Two 1934-35 signals of that same pattern: a nonaggression pact with Poland in 1934 reduced the immediate risk of eastern conflict while Hitler still needed time to rearm, and the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement saw Britain unilaterally accept a limited German navy, undercutting the Stresa Front it had just joined.
4. Acceleration in 1938-39. In March 1938 Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss. In September 1938 Hitler demanded the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. The Munich Agreement (Britain, France, Germany, Italy) surrendered it without consulting Czechoslovakia. In March 1939 Hitler seized the rest of Czechoslovakia, abandoning the self-determination argument that had justified earlier moves and ending appeasement outright.

Convergence: The Rome-Berlin Axis and the Pact of Steel

1. Not natural allies. Mussolini initially saw Hitler as an imitator, and Italy actively blocked German expansion at first: in July 1934, when Austrian Nazis murdered Chancellor Dollfuss in an attempted coup, Mussolini mobilised four divisions on the Brenner Pass and the coup collapsed. The Stresa Front of April 1935 (Italy, France, Britain) was a genuine attempt to contain Germany and guarantee Austrian independence.
2. Abyssinia broke the alignment. Italy invaded Abyssinia in October 1935 seeking revenge for the 1896 defeat at Adwa and an East African empire. The League's sanctions excluded oil, Britain did not close the Suez Canal to Italian shipping, and the leaked Hoare-Laval Pact, which would have given Italy most of Abyssinia, caused public outrage and was abandoned, satisfying nobody. Italian forces captured Addis Ababa in May 1936 and Mussolini proclaimed an empire. Mussolini, now alienated from Britain and France, accepted Germany's offer of partnership instead.
3. From Axis to Pact of Steel. Germany and Italy formalised the Rome-Berlin Axis in October 1936, both backed Franco's Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), with Germany supplying the Condor Legion and Italy sending a still larger force of troops and aircraft. Italy joined the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1937 and left the League that December, and in May 1939 the Pact of Steel committed both states to automatic mutual military assistance in any war, offensive or defensive. Mussolini wanted a consultative pact but signed an unconditional alliance, against the advice of his own foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, and his military planners, who said Italy needed three more years to rearm.

Italy and Germany at War (1939-1941)

1. Non-belligerency, September 1939. When Germany invaded Poland, Mussolini declared non-belligerency rather than neutrality, citing military unpreparedness. Hitler did not object. German forces alone were sufficient for the Polish campaign.
2. Italy enters the war, June 1940. As Germany swept through Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, and France, Mussolini feared missing the spoils of victory and declared war on France and Britain on 10 June 1940, envisioning a "parallel war" of independent Italian campaigns in North Africa and East Africa. The reality was humiliating: Italian forces failed to advance against a collapsing France, were repelled in Egypt, and suffered major defeats in Greece and Ethiopia.
3. Dependency, 1941. By early 1941 Germany deployed Rommel's Afrika Korps to prevent an Italian collapse in North Africa and rescued Italian positions in the Balkans. The "parallel war" had become a dependent war. Germany's invasion of the USSR (Operation Barbarossa, 22 June 1941) opened the Eastern Front without forewarning Mussolini. Italy contributed the CSIR, later expanded into the ARMIR, eventually over 200,000 troops.