The limits of abstention

“Verrat!” By the morning of 1 September, despite the agitation of the preceding days, Mussolini was temporarily calm. He solicited from Hitler a message publicly releasing Italy from its obligations, then composed with Ciano the resolution declaring Italy's nonbelligerency. The Council of Ministers promulgated it that afternoon at a meeting in which Mussolini surveyed the situation in his habitual off-the-record speech. Despite rumors of “fantastic” plans to descend on the Po valley prepared by “those Gascons on the French General Staff,” he was nevertheless confident that for the moment, at least, the belligerents would leave Italy alone. But he was far from happy. One witness noted that for Mussolini neutrality was “a failure, a betrayal.” Another recalled him muttering to himself “Verrat! Verrat! [Betrayal! Betrayal!].” Mussolini had the “mortified expression of one who was doing something popular against his will.” Even Starace and the minister of popular culture, Dino Alfieri, the most conspicuous war enthusiasts of the previous weeks, congratulated Ciano on his part in Mussolini's decision.

The Allies were equally relieved. Earlier in the year the British had contemplated a “knock-out blow” against Italy on the assumption that it would join Germany at the outset. But despite crushing Allied naval superiority in the Mediterranean, French enthusiasm for an immediate offensive against Libya with their North African army had oscillated wildly in the months before war.