La guerra de Mussolini

Until the summer of 1940, while remaining closely aligned with Hitler, Mussolini remained carefully neutral. However, in the wake of the sudden and unexpected collapse of the French and British armies, the Duce declared war on the Allies in hopes of gaining territorial advantages in southern France and Africa. This decision turned out to be a terrible miscalculation, drawing Italy into a protracted and unwinnable war, condemning it to heavy casualties and an Allied invasion in 1943 that ushered in a terrifying new era for the country. This new book by John Gooch is the definitive chronicle of Italy's experience in war. From the invasion of Abyssinia to the arrest of Mussolini, Gooch brilliantly describes the nightmare of a country with too small an industrial sector, too incompetent leaders, and too many fronts to fight on. Everywhere -whether in the USSR, in the desert between Libya and Egypt, or in the Balkans- Italian troops had to face better equipped or more motivated enemies. The result was a war that did not correspond at all to the dreams of the Italian planners before the war, but to a series of desperate improvisations against Allies who could count on resources on a world scale and against which Italy proved powerless. This extraordinary book aptly shows the importance of Italy in the war, and highlights the brief rise and disastrous decline of her military campaigns.