On From Ally to Enemy

This is a fairly old-fashioned study of Franco-Italian relations in the interwar period, effectively from the Treaty of Paris in 1919 to the outbreak of World War II. The usual subjects are all here—Yugoslavia, Albania, and the Adriatic; Eritrea, Ethiopia, and the Red Sea; the Laval-Mussolini Accords; the Stresa Front; the Spanish Civil War; etc. There’s some nice coverage of Tunisia, which often is missed—a shame because Tunisia is the first foreign policy issue that unified Italy ever sparred with France over and would be critical in the Second World War.

The overarching argument, if there is one, appears to be that, as the “least” of the Great Powers, Italy sought ways to maximize its power by joining different combinations with other states. France was usually a part of these configurations, but Franco-Italian relations deteriorated during the Popular Front, especially over the war in Spain, and Mussolini sought allies in Germany instead. You would imagine that the Anschluss in 1938, concurrent with the Spanish Civil War, would sour Mussolini’s Italy toward Hitler—and it did, temporarily, but Germany was seen as a much more reliable ally than Britain or France.

Because this study is so dependent on the words and deeds of diplomats, armies, and high politicians, it seems to be missing a lot of the crucial social factors that guided Franco-Italian relations, but the book still holds up pretty well as an old-fashioned diplomatic history.