The Pact of Steel

Since the Rome-Berlin Axis of 1936, Fascist Italy has drawn closer to Nazi Germany. But Mussolini takes care to keep his hands free: he played the mediator at Munich, and his son-in-law, the Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano, is wary of the German ally, whose repeated coups disquiet even Rome.

In the spring of 1939, Berlin presses to transform the rapprochement into a formal military alliance. The draft treaty, drawn up on the German side, is exceptionally binding: it commits each party to enter the war alongside the other, with no escape clause or condition.

Yet Italy is not ready for a major conflict: its economy is fragile, its armed forces poorly equipped, its Ethiopian venture and its intervention in Spain have exhausted it. To sign so rigid a pact is to bind the destiny of Italy to that of an unpredictable Germany. To hold to a more flexible understanding would preserve freedom of manoeuvre, but at the risk of vexing Hitler. Mussolini must decide. The signature, or its refusal, will commit the destiny of Italy for the decisive years ahead, and the place it will hold in the Axis camp.