After establishing a fascist regime, Italy attacked Ethiopia (formerly known as Abyssinia) in 1935, which became a war in the early days of World War II. Although Ethiopia was a backward African country, it actually put the Italian army into a bitter battle with extremely backward weapons. Emperor Haile Selassie I ran to the League of Nations to complain about Italy's actions, but the appeasement of England and France soared to the extreme, and the request was only an embargo. The clown-like Mussolini's self-confidence exploded in an instant, and he thought that the Italian army was extremely powerful, and he fainted. Seeing that its ally, Germany, had swept through Western Europe and wiped out France in less than a year, he could not resist it.
Schematic diagram of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia
In June 1940, Hitler occupied Paris, France, and Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain surrendered and formed the puppet Vichy government. Hitler soon met with Mussolini and offered to give the Italian brothers 200 square kilometers of French territory. However, at this time, Mussolini was unusually skeletal, believing that such a "territorial expansion" had no dignity to speak of, so Prince Umberto, the front row of the armistice, led 325,000 Western Army Groups to attack the French army. Unexpectedly, the large-scale invasion of Italy not only did not make the 6 divisions in the French Alps take a step back, but was defeated by the French.
At the same time, during this period, Mussolini naively believed that France had surrendered and Britain was squeezed into the small land of the British Isles, which was naturally a good time to compete for the Anglo-French African colonies and wanted to take advantage of the fire (this is the "New Roman Empire Plan" mentioned in the previous article). As a result, 600,000 Italian troops were chased and beaten by 100,000 British troops, threw away their armor and fled.
Italian soldier in World War II
Of the 600,000 troops, 130,000 were captured. What's more, some soldiers raised their hands and surrendered without firing a single shot, including hundreds of generals. Our protagonist today also appeared.
Balbo was an Italian who had long embraced fascism. In 1922, he led the Blackshirts to march to Rome. As a result of Mussolini's promotion, in 1933 he was promoted to Field Marshal of the Air Force, where he worked to develop military and civil aviation. He was then transferred to Africa.
Marshal Balbo
On June 30, 1940, when the landplane of Marshal Balbo, the Italian governor to Libya, flew over the northeastern Libyan port of Tubrug, it was mistaken for an "enemy aircraft" by Italy's own anti-aircraft artillery and shot down, and Balbo went to heaven on the spot. To disguise the incident, the Italian military announced that he had been killed in an air battle with the British. Poor Balbo became the commander of the highest rank who was mistakenly wounded during World War II. His experience also reveals how poorly trained the Italian army is.
Mussolini's actions have since been described in our last article. It is really "the fighting power of the flowing water, the iron of Italy".