Source I

Speech by Benito Mussolini at the Campidoglio, Rome, 9 May 1936, announcing the conquest of Ethiopia.

Ethiopia is Italian! ... With the annexation of Ethiopia, Italy has at last obtained its place in the sun. The Italian people have created the Empire with their blood. They will fertilise it with their work and defend it against anyone. Will you be worthy of it? This is the cry of Italy, which at the moment of its greatest victory renews its faith in the Duce, its Founder and its Leader, in the name of the fallen, in the name of those who suffer and work. It is the cry of Italy, the cry of fascism, the cry of a people which has no fear and no hesitation, a people which marches and which will always march.

Source J

Italian propaganda poster from 1935, showing a large Roman eagle bearing a fasces symbol spreading its wings over a map of East Africa, with Ethiopian territory coloured in Italian national colours. The caption reads: "L'Impero — La Civiltà Fascista" ("The Empire — Fascist Civilisation").

Source K

Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, address to the League of Nations, Geneva, 30 June 1936.

I, Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, am here today to claim that justice which is due to my people, and the assistance promised to it eight months ago, when fifty nations asserted that aggression had been committed in violation of international law. There is no precedent for a head of state himself speaking in this Assembly. But there is also no precedent for a people being victim of such injustice and of the inaction of the League of Nations in the face of a war of conquest. God and history will remember your judgment. It is not merely a question of the settlement of Italian aggression. It is collective security; it is the very existence of the League of Nations; it is the confidence that each state is to place in international treaties.

Source L

Historian R.J.B. Bosworth, Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, published 2005.

The Ethiopian war was the high-water mark of fascist Italy's international ambitions. It appealed to deep currents in Italian nationalism, the humiliation of Adwa in 1896, when an Italian army had been routed by Ethiopian forces, remained a wound in the national psyche. For Mussolini, Ethiopia was also a test of the fascist ideology of violence, expansion and national renewal. The relatively easy military victory, achieved through the use of poison gas, aerial bombardment and vastly superior firepower against an adversary equipped with spears and rifles, gave a false sense of Italian military capability that would prove catastrophic later. More damagingly, the war isolated Italy diplomatically, pushing Mussolini towards dependence on Hitler at precisely the moment when he might otherwise have remained a counterweight to German expansion.

Source I

Speech by Benito Mussolini to the Italian Grand Council, Rome, December 1936, on Italian involvement in the Spanish Civil War.

Italy's intervention in Spain is not an act of aggression. It is a crusade. When General Franco raised the flag of revolt against the Bolshevik forces that had turned Spain into a field of disorder and ruin, Italy responded to his appeal. We are fighting in Spain not for territorial conquest but for an idea: the idea that a European nation has the right to choose its own government without foreign interference from the Communist International. Italy will not stand by while Marxism extinguishes civilisation on the Iberian peninsula. The Rome-Berlin Axis grows stronger with each passing month. We are building a new Europe, and Spain is one of its first battles.

Source J

British political cartoon published in the Daily Herald, October 1936, showing Mussolini and Hitler as puppet masters operating marionettes dressed as Spanish Nationalist soldiers above a map of Spain, while a figure representing the Non-Intervention Committee sits beneath with its eyes covered.

Source K

Statement of the Non-Intervention Committee, London, 9 September 1936.

The Governments subscribing to this agreement have agreed to prohibit all export, re-export, and transit to Spain of arms, ammunition, and implements of war. They recognise that the internal conflict currently taking place in Spain is a Spanish matter, and that foreign intervention on either side risks transforming a civil conflict into a wider European confrontation. The Governments are united in their desire to prevent the Spanish conflict from becoming a cause for a general European war and in their hope that the Spanish people will be permitted to resolve their differences without external interference.

Source L

Historian Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, published 2006.

Mussolini's intervention in Spain was driven by a mixture of ideological, strategic and prestige considerations. Fascist Italy could not allow a leftist republic on its Mediterranean flank, a victory for the Popular Front would undermine the fascist model across Europe. But Mussolini also saw Spain as a training ground for Italian forces and an opportunity to project Italian power into the western Mediterranean, challenging British and French naval dominance. In the end, the intervention proved enormously costly in men and materiel, tied down Italian forces for three years, and delivered strategic gains that were far less significant than Mussolini had imagined.

Source I

Speech by Benito Mussolini from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia, Rome, declaring war on Britain and France, 10 June 1940.

Fighters of land, sea and air! Blackshirts of the revolution and of the Legions! Men and women of Italy, of the Empire and of the Kingdom of Albania! Listen! The hour destined by fate is sounding for us. The hour of irrevocable decision has come. We are entering the lists against the plutocratic and reactionary democracies of the West who have always hindered the advance and often bloodily threatened the very existence of the Italian people. A people of forty-five million souls is not truly free if it does not have free access to the ocean. Italy cannot remain absent from this struggle which will decide the course of history for a century. Our conscience is clear, our will firm, our spirit inflamed. Victory will be ours!

Source J

British political cartoon published in the Evening Standard, June 1940, showing Mussolini as a small, plump figure in military uniform diving into a swimming pool labelled "War" from a high diving board, while at the bottom of the pool lurks the shadow of a shark. A crowd of onlookers bears expressions of contempt. The caption reads: "Better Late Than Never?"

Source K

Private diary entry of Winston Churchill, 11 June 1940, the day after Mussolini's declaration of war.

Italy has entered the war. I am not surprised. Mussolini has watched the German advance across France with growing excitement, like a jackal following the lion's kill. He wants his share of the carcass. He has timed his entry to come as France collapses, so that he may claim a share of the victory at the peace table without enduring any of the fighting. This is not courage, it is opportunism of the most contemptible kind. He has thrown in his lot with Hitler at the precise moment when it looked safe to do so, not because of conviction but because of greed. The Italian army is in no state to fight a serious war. He may yet regret his decision.

Source L

Historian MacGregor Knox, Mussolini Unleashed 1939-1941: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy's Last War, published 1982.

Mussolini's declaration of war in June 1940 was in large part the product of his belief, widely shared in Rome, that France was finished and that Germany had effectively won the war in the west. To stand aside would have meant accepting a peace settlement dictated by Hitler in which Italy had played no part and could make no claims. The decision was also driven by ideology: the war against the "plutocratic democracies" was, in Mussolini's worldview, the logical culmination of the fascist revolution. But behind the rhetoric lay a military reality that Mussolini chose to ignore. The Italian armed forces were chronically underequipped, short of raw materials and oil, and had barely recovered from the demands of the Spanish Civil War and Albanian campaigns. The entry into the war exposed these weaknesses rapidly.

Source I

Official Italian ultimatum to the Albanian government, delivered by Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano, 25 March 1939.

The Italian Government requests that the Albanian Government consent to the following: the right of Italy to station military garrisons at strategic points throughout Albanian territory; the union of Albanian and Italian military commands; and the grant of full administrative authority to Italian representatives in economic matters. These requests are made in the spirit of the Tirana Pact of 1927 and in recognition of the special relationship between Italy and Albania. The Italian Government is confident that the Albanian Government will understand that the acceptance of these conditions is the natural consequence of Italian interests in the Adriatic and in the Balkans. Failure to comply will be met with appropriate measures.

Source J

British political cartoon published in the News Chronicle, April 1939, showing Mussolini in Roman armour leading an Italian fleet towards a small figure representing Albania standing on a rock in the Adriatic, with the caption "A New Roman Conquest."

Source K

Statement by the British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax to the House of Lords, 13 April 1939, following the Italian invasion and annexation of Albania.

His Majesty's Government views with great concern the developments in Albania. The Albanian people have been deprived of their independence by an act of unprovoked aggression. We take note that Italy has given assurances that no threat to Greece or Yugoslavia is intended. His Majesty's Government expects those assurances to be honoured. In the meantime, His Majesty's Government is consulting with France and other powers as to the appropriate response. We wish to make clear that the independence of states in the eastern Mediterranean is a matter in which Britain has a direct and vital interest.

Source L

Historian MacGregor Knox, Common Destiny: Dictatorship, Foreign Policy and War in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, published 2000.

The annexation of Albania in April 1939 was less a carefully planned strategic masterstroke than a reactive and somewhat panicked response by Mussolini to the annexation of Bohemia by Germany in March 1939. Mussolini had not been informed of Hitler's move in advance and was humiliated. Albania, which had long been an Italian economic and military protectorate, was seized to demonstrate that Italy too could act unilaterally and decisively. In geopolitical terms, the annexation gave Italy a foothold across the Adriatic and a base for operations into the Balkans, but it also alarmed Greece and Yugoslavia and prompted Britain to issue guarantees to both states, ultimately extending Britain's defence commitments in a region where it had little capacity to act.

Source I

La domenica del Corriere, weekend supplement of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, depicting Italian Blackshirts in action against Abyssinian forces, January 1936.

Source J

Memorandum from Marshal Badoglio, Chief of General Staff to Mussolini, December 1934.

The problem of Italian-Abyssinian relations has very recently shifted from a diplomatic plane to one which can be solved by force alone ... The obj ect ... is nothing more or less then the complete destruction of the Abyssinian army and the total conquest of Abyssinia. In no other way can we build the Empire ... The speedier our action the less likely will be the danger of diplomatic complications. In the Japanese fashion there will be no need whatsoever officially for a declaration of war and in any case we must always emphasise the purely defensive character of operations. No one in Europe would raise any difficulties provided the prosecution of operations resulted rapidly in an accomplished fact. It would suffice to declare to England and France that their interests would be recognised.

Source K

Ruth Henig. The Origins of the Second World War 1933-41 ( 1985).

Since his ascension to power in 1 922, the Fascist leader had made no secret of his ambition to raise Italy's status as a European power by increasing its influence around the Mediterranean and by expanding its empire. Unlike Japan, however, Mussolini lacked a strong economic base and well-equipped, effective military forces, and the onset of the Depression made it even harder for him to secure them. Thus he aimed in the short term to seek glorious expansion on the cheap, possibly in Africa at the expense of Abyssinia, but for that he needed the agreement, or at least tacit consent, of Britain and France ... Mussolini was inclined more and more towards the prospect of a glorious, short, triumphant war of conquest.

Source L

Martin Blinkhorn. Mussolini and Fascist Italy, (1984).

The conquest of Ethiopia represented Mussolini's accomplishment of what had been an Italian nationalist dream for half a century. Neither the problems of the depression nor the African interests of certain industrial pressure groups were sufficient to dictate it. Existing colonies were failing to attract the millions of potential emigrants beloved of fascist propaganda, and were proving unrewarding to the few thousand who actually settled there; moreover, their administration, policing and economic infrastructures constituted a considerable drain on the Italian treasury. The explanation for the attack on Ethiopia thus lies in fascism and its Duce. The fascist need for excitement, conflict and dramatic success was perfectly personified in Mussolini himself and sanctified by the puerile machismo of the Duce cult. Other dictators such as Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal constructed personal cults on the appeal of stability and lack of excitement. Neither Mussolini's personality nor the psychology of fascism rendered such a thing conceivable.