L'ora delle decisioni irrevocabili. Come l'Italia entrò nella seconda guerra mondiale

What drove Italy to enter the war, in 1940, alongside Hitler's Germany? Was there – as the common belief would have it – a true ideological affinity between the two nations allied with the Pact of Steel of May 1939 or rather a cordial understanding crossed by suspicions and fears (especially on the Italian side) and by mutual competition regarding hegemony over the Balkan-Danuban area? The book reconstructs in fact how Mussolini, through Ciano, then Foreign Minister, began negotiations with the United Kingdom, the outcome of which could have been Italy's permanence in its state of neutrality or even a reversal of alliances. The negotiations conducted by Ciano were, in reality, little more than a bluff. Mussolini’s real goal was to take on the role of negotiator, at a future peace table, to obtain a rebalance of power in the Mediterranean and territorial advantages for Italy in North and East Africa. However, when Roosevelt, after the collapse of the Allies on the French front, proposed himself as a mediator to keep Italy out of the conflict, the Duce declined the offer, receiving the threatening message from the White House that the United States would consider any change in the Mediterranean Balance of Power as detrimental to their national interest. Prophetic words that became reality in July 1943. Then, in fact, the ambitions of the tenant of Palazzo Venezia clashed with the reality of a Mediterranean that had become a stars and stripes “Mare nostrum”.