Quick Take: Hitler & Mussolini Were Absolute Idiots

As soon as they arrived in Hell, they went straight to the quiet corner to ponder how they botched a dream scenario for Fascist expansion in the 1930s

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During World War II, Allied aerial assaults over Pompeii — with more than 160 bombs dropped — completely destroyed the site’s gallery and some of its most celebrated monuments. Over the years, 96 unexploded bombs have been found and inactivated; a few more, experts say, remain likely to be uncovered in areas not yet excavated.

You’d be surprised by how few people know this, and yet this the kind of thing that everyone would know by heart, that children would learn in school, had the Fascist powers won World War II.

They didn’t, though, luckily, so our children know other facts: they know about all the atrocities that the Axis committed, from the Holocaust to the attempted extermination and/or ethnic cleansing of various other nationalities and groups, including the millions upon millions of Chinese murdered by the Japanese.

We, thus, don’t dwell on details like this May 22, 1944, Life Magazine Picture of the Week, “Arizona war worker writes her Navy boyfriend a thank-you-note for the Jap skull he sent her”:

The British historian Lewis Namier once wrote that "the crowning attainment of historical study is to achieve an intuitive sense of how things do not happen." And I couldn’t agree more.

There’s nothing I dislike more than teleological historical narratives, explaining how things happened because there was no other possible future. So I’m here to tell you there was another possible future in World War II, one that was more terrifying than the one we got, without a question. And it’s important to understand how that future didn’t come about, and just how close the miss was.

When it comes to this subject, many people — especially those who pride themselves of being atheist, science-first types — believe in historical determinism: they will tell you that the Fascists were always doomed to lose.

In fact, the Fascists weren’t doomed to lose, at all. Looking closely at the facts, my conclusion is close to the opposite: the Fascists had all the cards to win World War II, and they only lost because they played a very strong hand very, very badly. And nobody is more to blame than their top two players: Adolf Hitler of Germany and Benito Mussolini of Italy.

This is wonderfully explained by none other than Henry Kissinger who, in his magisterial chapter on World War II in his classic “Diplomacy” (1994), notes that Hitler was, besides everything else, terrible at international geopolitics.

A self-taught provincial Austrian with no foreign languages and a pretty slipshod grasp of basic facts of history and geography, Hitler won a brilliant victory in the internal game of German politics, which he mastered, and then turned this victory into a rout by establishing a very strong state in record time (1933-39, six years, less than your typical U.S, Presidency) out of a defeated and bankrupted country.

A case can be made that Germany was ripe for a Fascist takeover, and pretty much any Fascist leader would have been able to accomplish that. Hitler was that guy, smart and effective while taking power. The problem, from Kissinger’s geopolitical point of view, is not there: the problem starts when he moved on to exert influence on the international stage, in the clumsiest possible manner.

As Kissinger explains, Hitler was the luckiest leader in German history. Germany may have been on its knees, or a similarly bad position, by 1933. But the Versailles treaty that left the country impoverished and set on revenge had also created the perfect opportunities for expansion and economic growth.

In 1914, Germany — outside of its moderately-sized colonial empire in Africa and tiny specks of Asia — shared borders with three large empires with which it had to deal very carefully (France, Austria-Hungary and Russia) and with four small, rich countries that didn’t provide much room for expansion, even if annexed (the Benelux countries and Denmark), and were in any case closely watched and protected by other powers.

By 1919, Germany was surrounded by weak, small countries that could be bullied, bought off, isolated, played off against each other, carved out and incentivized to do Germany’s billing: Poland, Czechoslovakia, the rump Austrian state, Hungary, Yugoslavia, the Baltic States… With just a little discretion, Hitler from 1933 could have taken full economic and political control of central Europe without the need to fire a single shot, much like Germany did in the 1990s as soon as the Iron Curtain fell and the Berlin government suddenly found it extremely important, indeed urgent and vital, to ensure that the Croat and Slovenian nationalists secured their own separate countries.

Instead of choosing moderation, Hitler as we all know went full steam ahead on every front. And still, even as he guaranteed that Germany would only receive absolute cold hostility from the democratic powers, he succeeded in a fashion: in early 1939, with the Czech Republic gone and Slovakia turned into a protectorate, with Spain in the hands of a thankful German ally, Hitler had — at least on the surface — secured one after another stunning diplomatic success, without getting Germany embroiled in a European war.

Hitler was clumsy and, because of a variety of reasons, he thought his luck would hold for ever. It didn’t. Even as he knew for a fact that…

1. Germany had no real need to invade Poland, much less to do so immediately. There was nothing of urgent strategic necessity for Germany in Poland.

2. Fascist-leaning Poland was, in many senses, a potentially powerful and useful German ally, one that could be easily bought off with German investment and aid, to be used if needed against Russia, Hitler’s ultimate enemy as he kept saying over and over again (and, again, such has been the strategy deployed by German governments since the 1990s). Ask any Pole about their military cooperation with Germany against Russia as we speak.

3. The deal finally agreed upon with the Soviet Union to divide Poland and keep the Soviets away from an alliance with Britain and France gave Stalin the green light not only to take a chunk of Poland, but also a chunk of almost-as-Fascist Romania (Bessarabia, modern-day Moldavia), and all of the solidly Fascistic (or at least hard-Right) Baltic States and almost-as-Fascist Finland.

4. And this Poland invasion would result on CERTAIN war against Britain and France, which had ABSOLUTELY NO APPETITE for war against Germany.

… Hitler still invaded Poland, setting off a timer that he didn’t need to set off. On August 25, just before that happened and when everyone knew that would happen, US ambassador Joseph Kennedy called upon the British PM, Neville Chamberlain, shocked by his haggard looks, and asked how things stood. Chamberlain replied, downcast: “It appears as if all my work has been of no avail.” The guarantee to Poland had not worked. “The thing that is frightful,” he stated, displaying tremendous foresight, ”is the futility of it all. After all, the Poles cannot be saved.” Now Britain could only wage a war of revenge, leaving Europe in ruins and her own position in the Far East progressively weakened.

Now, suddenly, Germany was at war against two great powers at the same time, and had a third great power (the Soviet Union) on its eastern borders, ready to wage war at a moment’s notice. Now Hitler knew he had no real choice other than getting the Western Allies out of the war first; or else he would have to knock the Soviets off before they could join the Western Allies in a large coalition against the biggest power of central Europe: and if he failed, as he did, all would be lost. As it was.

There’s an interesting, but rarely mentioned, aside to be cited regarding the Polish question: Poland, as a fellow Catholic authoritarian power, had been somewhat supportive of Franco’s 1936 coup in Spain. Poland’s embassy had been a place for refuge for noted Spanish conservatives, such as Gregorio Marañón, who were facing death by shooting squad or worse at the hands of their democratic opponents.

Franco was highly sympathetic to Poland, and Spain’s official press received the German assault on a fellow Catholic power pretty coldly, even going as far as to praise Pole heroism on the face of overwhelming odds. Hitler’s adventurism in Poland did much to weaken Franco’s initially strong support for National Socialism. By the time both leaders met in Hendaye, Oct 23, 1940, at the peak of Nazi success, Franco flatly refused to join the Axis, which eventually had very damaging consequences for the Fascist war effort, as Hitler feared.

(Poland wasn’t the only issue in Franco’s mind when he met Hitler: Franco repeatedly cited Mussolini’s hostility and provocations against Greece, soon to result in the disastrous Greco-Italian War of 1940-41, started five days after that summit, as another sign that the Axis “lacked seriousness.”)

Even though Spain eventually sent ONE DIVISION worth of volunteers to fight Soviet Russia (and the division’s members confessed to being appalled by the German treatment of Polish civilians whom they met along the way, and later by the similar treatment meted out to Russians by the Germans), Spain’s potentially war-deciding support for Hitler never materialized. As Stanley Payne wrote in his biography of Franco, a full perspective of the problems faced by Spanish neutrality may be obtained by comparing Spain’s attitude to Sweden’s, “which in certain respects accommodated German pressure to a greater degree than did Spain.”

For example, Sweden allowed the passage of German troops through its territory (which Spain denied), for long shipped large amounts of strategic raw materials to Germany only, and at times denied asylum to escaping Baltic Jews, while Spain opened its borders to those fleeing central Europe consistently and without exceptions, and kept trading with the Allies (and the Axis) throughout the war.

Spain could have very easily knocked down Gibraltar after perhaps a few weeks of direct artillery bombing (Gibraltar’s airstrip is literally within spitting distance from the Spanish border, if you are really, really good at spitting), shutting down the Mediterranean to British shipping, dooming Malta and most probably the British Middle East. A handful of Spanish infantry divisions would have been more than enough to push the issue in favor of the Axis in North Africa, allowing Iraq and Iran to join the Axis as they intended before they were invaded by the Allies, exposing the undefended Soviet underbelly to Islamic insurgencies and invasion.

In addition, Spain has massive coasts that could have been used to great effect as submarine bases — Italian submarines based in Mallorca terrorized Soviet shipping during the Spanish Civil War. Up to the Torch operation (the US-British invasion of Northern Africa) in November 1942, the prospect of Franco joining the war was the stuff of Churchill nightmares, and the understandings and compromises reached to avoid that outcome are the sole reason why Franco was allowed to remain in power after 1945.

Hitler’s invasion of Poland was truly a disaster for the Fascist International, as Franco feared: in a final twist of historical irony, it was the Soviet-controlled Polish government that presented the motion which put Spain under a UN embargo between 1946 and 1950.

Mind you, this is not an extravagant, minority opinion. As Lothrop Stoddard reports in his weird, fascinating little travel book “Into the Darkness: Berlin 1940,” this was the majority, consensus opinion of average Germans right after the war started:

Embattled Poland was the last local obstacle to Mittel-Europa. By a series of amazing diplomatic victories, Adolf Hitler had taken all the other hurdles without firing a shot. This led the average German to believe that the Fuehrer would complete the process without recourse to arms… Why, they asked, should Britain and France stick their noses into what was none of their business? Most Germans did not believe that the Western Powers would risk a general war over Poland. The German people was thus psychologically unprepared for what actually happened. When they found themselves suddenly plunged into a decisive struggle with the Western Powers, Germans were torn between two emotions: disgust at what they considered a stupidly needless war, and fear for the consequences which it might involve. All sorts of persons I talked with stigmatized the war as a tragic blunder. Some of them went so far as to criticize their Government for having acted too precipitately.

This Hitler four-dimension chess-playing, to me, doesn’t sound like evil genius. More like evil stupidity. And I haven’t said anything about the criminal, moronic policies that forced thousands of Germany’s most brilliant minds out of the country, and left them scheming to destroy his regime; the silly racism that still led Germany to treat even key allies, actual and potential, with disdain because they were insufficiently Aryan in the minds of semi-literate buffoons; the unfulfilled plans to invade even Catholic, Fascist-leaning Ireland (it sure looks like Hitler was really into invading fellow Fascist countries); and the contradictions in a mind that only wanted peace with Britain but first gave Britain no choice other than declaring war on him. And don’t get me started on Benito Mussolini.

Italy was no Germany in 1939, we all can agree on that. Italy was a significant European power, but it didn’t have a large enough industrial base, or an efficient enough state, to wage war for years against determined, powerful enemies.

Go tell that to Mussolini, who destroyed one of the world’s oldest Christian countries — Ethiopia — while claiming to act in the interests of the Church, who joined World War II only so he could get a small slice of southern France — because, yes, that’s what Italy is desperately in need of: more scenic coastline with pretty towns that attract tourists and few substantial businesses.

This is the ruler of a country with substantial interests and colonies in Africa who willingly went to war with Britain, the biggest power by far in Africa and the Middle East. This man couldn’t really be surprised when the British rolled over his colonial empire in a matter of months, really. But he won Nice, the French city.

Mussolini wasn’t a complete idiot because, on the brink of the German occupation of Paris in June 1940, he thought that Fascism was the wave of the future — a reasonable assumption that many intelligent people made at the time, just like many have embraced Wokism or other causes they don’t really believe in.

Even Nationalist China, under attack from the (Fascist) Japanese was also a Fascist-ic state, in love with Nazi Germany to the point that the youngest son of Chinese leader Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek in the old spelling) was sent to Germany to study and joined the Nazi-era German army, the Wehrmacht. This guy here:

Mussolini was an idiot because he did shoot himself on the foot so many times. In 1940, because he felt he didn’t have enough enemies in Britain (and Britain’s shadow partner of the time, the U.S., which was very obviously angling to get in the war sooner than later), Mussolini — like Hitler before him — decided to invade yet another Fascist-leaning country of limited strategic importance: Greece.

This was, from the Fascist point of view, idiotic enough by itself. Strategically, it only made sense for Italy to engage Greece if it guaranteed somebody else’s support: for example, that of also Fascist-leaning Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania or even Yugoslavia, which was as well close to fall in the Axis camp. Italy didn’t secure any support from anyone, and soon found itself in big trouble. All the while, let’s remember, while losing battle after battle against the British in Africa.

In fact, an argument can be made that Italy’s misadventures in Greece helped Turkey make up its mind AGAINST joining the war on the Axis side, a huge relief for the Allies, especially the Soviets, with no way to defend their southern flank against Turkish encroachment.

Turkey was extremely pro-Axis, and had every reason to get in a war fought against its traditional enemies, Russia and the Western powers that brought the Ottoman Empire down. As late as 1943, when it was becoming obvious to everyone that the Axis would lose the war, Churchill tried to convince Turkey to join the Allies and reap some gains out of it, and was completely rebuffed in the little-known Adana conference. He may have willingly forgotten all about Gallipoli, but they certainly hadn’t.

Even more importantly, Italy provided an opening for the British to launch an anti-Axis coup in Yugoslavia that forced Germany to invade yet another potential Fascist-leaning ally, so it could later invade Fascist-leaning Greece in early 1941, leading to a delay of weeks in the planned Barbarossa invasion of the Soviet Union — a delay that eventually left the German armies at the gates of Moscow before the Russian winter set, saving Russia from actual physical extermination: the aim of Hitler’s Generalplan Ost for the Eastern Slavs, even though Swastika-loving Ukrainians still don’t quite get it.

From the outside, by late 1941 anyone could have said that Mussolini and Hitler had gone from victory to victory. The Allies’ situation was indeed dramatic. But the Axis’ fumbling and stupidly had sowed the seeds for disaster, and disaster came for them, soon enough.

My point is that all of this wasn’t pre-determined. All of these were stupid decisions; any number of different decisions at keys point could have resulted in completely different outcomes. It wasn’t written on the stars that Democracy and Communism would inherit the world in 1945. History is just the result of human decisions, it’s not a mystical process governed by mysterious laws; history is what happens when idiots like Hitler and Mussolini get power.