World War Two, How the World Changed Forever by Steven Vern

Author:Steven Vern [Vern, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2017-07-16T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5:

SOUTHEAST EUROPE

AND AFRICA

Benito Mussolini had come to power in Italy in the early 1920's, when Hitler and his party were meeting in basements in Munich. For some time, Hitler idolized the Italian leader, and copied much of the Duce's (the Italian for “Leader”) style, but by 1940, Mussolini and Italy were a distant second in power to Germany. This bothered the Italian leader in the extreme and he wanted to do something about it – desperately.

Italy declared war on France almost as the German invasion was ending and managed to grab for itself a chunk of French territory on the Italian border, the Riviera, a great place for overrated Italian officers to vacation.

Churchill, President Roosevelt in the United States, and other leaders called Mussolini a “jackal” for letting the Germans do the dirty work, then falling upon France as she died to rip off a piece of her corpse. Even their German allies were not impressed.

All of this rankled Mussolini, who wanted glory of his own. In September 1940, as the Germans tried to bomb England into surrender, the Italians attacked the British protectorate of Egypt from their colony of Libya. They also tried to push north into Egypt from Somalia and conquer the British colony of Kenya. In all of these endeavors, they failed – miserably.

The main battles took place in the deserts of Egypt and Libya. Here, nearly 150,000 Italian troops faced 30,000 British and Commonwealth (Australians, New Zealanders, Indians) soldiers, and were soundly defeated. Actually, as the Italians moved into Egypt, they were attacked and defeated by the smaller British Imperial force, whose spirit is captured in this famous photo of Australians on the attack:

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