Under restraint

A war “parallel” to that of Germany. It was snowing at the Brenner on the morning of 18 March, as Mussolini waited “with a feeling of impatient pleasure” for Hitler's arrival. In the night, he told Ciano, a dream “had rent the veil of the future.” But Mussolini did not confide the details of that very personal revelation to his son-in-law. At the Brenner, Hitler opened with his usual prolix harangue, deriding the clumsiness of the British and the “defeatist, pacifist” fortifications of the French. He then came to the point. Either the coming offensive would so shake the West that “one last push” would bring collapse – Mussolini could then strike that blow at Germany's side – or the offensive might lead to a struggle of attrition that would gradually wear down the Allies: “for once Germany attacked, it would never let go.” In a protracted struggle, Italian intervention at the right moment could be “the last kilogram, that would cause the scales to tip irrevocably in favor of Germany and Italy.”