Mussolini, Benito (1883–1945) once more He hoped the Western powers would acquiesce in his brutal conquest of a faraway African country for which they cared little When they did not simply accept or recognize the Italian conquest of Abyssinia, and instead imposed partial sanctions on Italy through the League of Nations, Mussolini was furious He never again contemplated a military or diplomatic alliance with the Western democracies However, he was not yet ready to seek a German alliance or accept Hitler’s hegemony over Europe Reynolds Salerno and other historians argue that Mussolini turned decisively against the Western Allies in 1935 He did not yet subordinate policy to suit the ambitions and plans rapidly unfolding in Berlin, but he clearly turned in that direction Why? Because Germany was the only potential partner for an aggressive policy of Italian expansion in the Mediterranean at the expense of France and Britain Italy’s main enemy on land was always France, the Great Power with which Italy shared a border and whose North African colonies Mussolini coveted Yet, his major ambition was to displace Britain as the dominant naval power in the Mediterranean and beyond, into the Indian Ocean He threatened to challenge and ultimately to break Britain’s strategic hold on key bases in Gibraltar and Malta At different times he threatened to seize Corsica and Nice from France, as well as strategic bits of Switzerland While he lacked the naval, land, or air assets to achieve those goals, it was not all mere empty boasting Rather, such threats represented his real territorial and geopolitical aspirations to make Italy the dominant power in the Mediterranean and to control the eastern coast of Africa and the Indian Ocean Mussolini thus began a sequence of what he saw as opportunistic aggressions in 1935, as the international situation started to change, he thought in favor of the “virile” fascist powers His decision for war, not his supposed diplomatic brinkmanship, speaks loudly against the attempts of revisionist historians’ to portray Mussolini as a balance of power statesman, carefully weighing Italy’s rights and interests in a dangerous international situation In fact, Mussolini turned to naked aggression to solve a deepening malaise within Italian fascism, to deflect attention away from the crisis and travails of the Great Depression into superficial martial glory by conquest of a militarily backward African nation Italy faced a core strategic and material problem that Mussolini neither fully recognized nor overcame Italy was not, as its generals and admirals constantly reminded and advised “Il Duce,” even close to becoming a military or economic equal to Britain, France, and Nazi Germany His imperial plans thus always overreached the real capabilities of the Italian armed forces and economy The Army was barely a modern force and had mostly outdated equipment For example, the standard rifle dated to service at Adowa The Italian Navy was grossly outgunned by the Mediterranean fleets of Britain and France Some within the Comando Supremo were so concerned about the disjuncture between Mussolini’s policy and Italy’s capability that they actively sought to sabotage his more reckless adventures The economy was under severe war strain from 1935 until its utter collapse in 1942, and never achieved production of key weapons systems sufficient even to replace battlefield losses Italy would never effectively compete with the production of the true Great Powers in the coming world war It could barely handle or 756