Mussolini also wanted to plot French territory

Italy was not only intent on annexing Albania, but also threatening France, a western European power. This was not because Italy was very powerful, but because the appeasement policies pursued by Britain and France greatly stimulated Mussolini's appetite.

After the Munich Conference, Mussolini, who was bent on establishing an empire in the Mediterranean and Africa, could no longer hold back his aggressive ambitions.

On November 14, 1938, Italian Foreign Minister Ciano, in a letter to the Italian ambassador to Britain, for the first time openly declared that Italy's colonial claims to France were a matter of practical policy.

On November 30, as the Italian Parliament debated foreign policy, there was an anti-French demonstration in Italy, and the crowd chanted: "Tunisia! Corse! Savoie!" The Italian press also responded positively and made a lot of anti-French propaganda.

On 17 December, Italy formally notified the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the annulment of the Franco-Italian agreement of 7 January 1935 and the principle of coordinated operations between the Italian and German armed forces.

On 8 November 1938 and 8 January 1939, Mussolini spoke to Ciano twice about Italy's ambitions for French territory and french colonies.

His goals are:

Corsican was autonomous, independent, annexed; Tunisia became a place of italian minority emigration, the viceroy was autonomous, and was a protectorate of Italy; Djibouti's ports and railways were free and open, co-managed with France, and finally annexed; and the Suez Canal held most of the administrative power.

On March 26, 1939, Mussolini delivered a fiercely worded speech in which he again made his claim to the Mediterranean against France.

On 15 March, Mussolini was also very conceited that italy could fight alone if there was a war with France. The Italian Chief of the General Staff, Pariani, said that he would fight a local colonial war with France.

These Italian measures caused a lot of panic in France.

In November 1938, when Italy made a territorial claim to France, it saw it as a harbinger of a possible Italian attack on France in the near future, fearing that Germany would encourage Italy to use force to fulfill its claims against France, and that Germany would participate in the war as an Italian ally. The French believed that the Germans would attack the Netherlands, Switzerland and Tunisia at the same time.

After Germany annexed Czechoslovakia, many French feared that in preparation for the eastward advance, Germany might, with the help of Italy, crush France with all its strength in one fell swoop to consolidate its rear.

In addition, the Italian troops who helped Franco overthrow the legitimate Spanish government not only did not withdraw from Spain, but in April 1939 there were rumors that the Italian troops in Spain were still reinforcing.

As long as Italy maintained its presence on the Spanish mainland, in the Balearic Islands, and on the Italian islands of Sardinia, Sicily and Pantelleria, some of the main French lines of communication in mainland France and northwest Africa would be under Italian control.

France was most worried about the situation at this time: Germany attacked France from the northeast, while Italy attacked Tunisia from Ripolitaria on the one hand, and from the Pyrenees on the Spanish side to the French mainland on the other.

On 7 April, Italy invaded Albania, posing a direct threat to Greece. France is also very alarmed by this action by Italy. It feared that Italy would soon create an incident against Coben, Egypt, Gibraltar or Tunisia, and even saw an attack on Albania as merely a prelude to a general Italian-German offensive from the North Sea to Egypt.

As early as November 12, 1938, French Prime Minister Daladiy informed Army General Camerin that in 1939 the government would provide a special amount of 25 billion francs to prepare for war. Thus, together with a regular military budget of 15 billion, the total amounted to 40 billion francs.

On March 20, 1939, France promulgated a series of decrees, including measures such as giving priority to defense orders, guiding workers to participate in industry, and stipulating a system of 60 hours of work per week in the defense industry. On 31 March, the French parliament indefinitely extended the two-year service decree of 17 March 1936 and passed a bill authorizing the government to recruit reservists at any time.

On the evening of 9 April, the French Defence Council decided to redeploy most of the Atlantic Fleet to the Mediterranean, to send further reinforcements to Tunisia and French Somalia, and to concentrate the air force in areas where it was easy to bomb Italy.

That night, French Prime Minister Daladiy assured The British Ambassador to France Phipps that France would immediately declare war on Italy if Britain helped Greece resist an attack on any part of Greek territory.

At the same time, military cooperation between Britain and France has also been strengthened. On 22 March, Britain and France exchanged notes, stipulating the obligation to support each other in time of war, and guaranteeing military assistance to both sides in the event of a German attack on the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland. Thus the unwritten alliance between them was further established, and the Anglo-French military alliance was formally formed.

Since then, the British and French general staffs have held a series of talks, and the two sides have reached an agreement on how to cooperate in the event of war in Europe.

The Parties determine that:

The armed forces of the two countries will jointly fight against Germany and Italy; joint combat operations in a certain theater of operations will be under the unified leadership of the command of one side. In the event of war, Britain should take active action with the Navy and Air Force and send an expeditionary force to France; the planning of the battle on land was drawn up by the French General Command, and the British Expeditionary Force was under its command.

On 21 July, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sent a letter to Daladiy proposing the establishment of a wartime Allied Supreme Military Council, composed of two prime ministers and a minister. Subsequently, the British proposed the establishment of a Joint Operations Staff.

On 3 August, Daladi commissioned Camerin in drafting a reply agreeing to the establishment of the Allied Supreme Military Council, but proposed that representatives of the highest military authorities on both sides should be included; however, because france feared that the establishment of a unified command structure would subordinate itself to the British strategy, it advocated the establishment of the Allied Military Research Council rather than the Joint Operations Staff.

On 17 August, Britain agreed with France. But the Allied Supreme Military Council did not meet for the first time until September 12.