Free The Second World War by Antony Beevor

was hailed by the crowd of loyal Blackshirts, but most Italians were far from happy.
    The Germans were unimpressed by Mussolini’s attempt to bask in the Wehrmacht’s reflected glory. The state secretary at the Wilhelmstrasse saw their Axis partner ‘ as a circus clown rolling up the carpet after the acrobat’s performance and claiming the applause for himself’. Many more compared the Fascist leader’s declaration of war on a defeated France as the action of a ‘jackal’ trying to snatch part of the prey killed by a lion. The opportunism was indeed shameless, but it hid something worse. Mussolini had made his country the captive and the victim of his own ambitions. He realized that he could not avoid an alliance with the dominant Hitler, yet he persisted in his wishful thinking that Italy could pursue a separate policy of colonial expansion while the rest of Europe was involved in a far more deadly conflict. Italy’s weakness was to prove an utter disaster for itself and a grave vulnerability for Germany.
    On 27 September 1940, Germany signed the Tripartite Pact with Italy and Japan. Part of the idea was to deter the United States from intervening in the war, which was in a state of limbo after the failure to bring Britain to its knees. When Hitler met Mussolini at the Brenner Pass on 4 October, he reassured him that neither Moscow nor Washington had reacted dangerously to the announcement of the pact. What he wanted was a continental alliance against Britain.
    Hitler had intended to leave the Mediterranean region as an Italian sphere of interest, but he soon found after the fall of France that the issues were far more complicated. He had to try to balance the conflicting expectations of Italy, Vichy France and Franco’s Spain. Franco wantedGibraltar, yet he also sought French Morocco and other African territories. But Hitler did not want to provoke Pétain’s French State and its loyal forces in the country’s colonial possessions. It was far better from his point of view for Vichy France to police itself and the North African colonies in Germany’s interest as long as the war lasted. Once it was won, then he could give away France’s colonies either to Italy or to Spain. But Hitler, despite his apparently limitless power after the defeat of France in 1940, proved incapable that October of persuading his debtor Franco, his vassal Pétain or his ally Mussolini to support his strategy of a continental bloc against Britain.
    On 22 October, Hitler’s armoured train, the Führersonderzug Amerika , with its pair of engines in tandem and two flak wagons, halted at the station of Montoire-sur-le-Loir. There, he met Pétain’s deputy, Pierre Laval, who tried to obtain guarantees on the status of the Vichy regime. Hitler avoided giving any, while trying to recruit Vichy to a coalition against Britain.
    The gleaming carriages of the Amerika carried on towards the Spanish frontier at Hendaye, where he met Franco the next day. The Caudillo’s train had been delayed due to the dilapidated state of the Spanish railways, and the long wait had not put Hitler in a good mood. The two dictators inspected a guard of honour from his personal escort, the Führer-Begleit-Kommando, drawn up on the platform. The black-uniformed troopers towered over the pot-bellied Spanish dictator, whose smile, both complacent and ingratiating, seldom left his face.
    When Hitler and Franco began their discussions, the Caudillo’s torrent of words prevented his visitor from speaking, a state of affairs to which the Führer was not accustomed. Franco spoke of their comradeship in arms during the Spanish Civil War and his gratitude for all that Hitler had done, and evoked the ‘ alianza espiritual ’ which existed between their countries. He then expressed his deep regret for not being able to enter the war immediately on Germany’s side as a result of Spain’s impoverished condition. For much of the three hours, Franco rambled on about his life