War, not peace

On to Suez. The war against France was over. The war against Great Britain, as the Comando Supremo's 25 June bulletin announced dramatically, continued, and would continue until victory. The day of the French armistice, Ciano remarked encouragingly to Mackensen that “he scarcely believed that London would see reason in time– as was desirable in the interest of England itself as well as that of European civilization … the Führer, who had offered the British chances enough in the past, would then doubtless act with lightning-like speed, nor would Italy hold back.” The Italian military leadership would have agreed. On 25 June, Badoglio assured Balbo in Libya that the promised equipment was coming. The seventy medium tanks from the “Po” Army would enable Balbo to “dominate the situation.” The British, Badoglio judged, lacked “drive.”

That afternoon, Badoglio met the service chiefs to discuss the radically new strategic situation. He rambled inconclusively in a manner that suggested inability to formulate a coherent war plan even now that French collapse made action seem feasible even to him. In essence, however, he approved Cavagnari's reluctance to attack Malta, a question of “limited importance” best left to the Air Force. Italy's main effort against Egypt, which Badoglio now revived without a trace of embarrassment, would have to wait until the French North African colonies acknowledged Pétain's authority.