Hitler and Mussolini meet at the Berghof

On 19 January 1941 a special train carrying Benito Mussolini pulled into the small station of Puch, near Salzburg. Waiting for him on the snow-covered platform was Adolf Hitler with his closest military aides. From there the guests drove to the Berghof, Hitler’s Alpine residence on the Obersalzberg above Berchtesgaden. The talks lasted two days, 19 and 20 January. Taking part were the foreign ministers, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Galeazzo Ciano; the Chief of the Wehrmacht High Command, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel; the Chief of the OKW Operations Staff, General Alfred Jodl; and on the Italian side the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, General Alfredo Guzzoni, the military attaché in Berlin, General Efisio Marras, and General Antonio Gandin.

It was the two dictators’ first meeting since 28 October 1940, when Hitler had come to Florence and heard from the Duce that Italian troops had just attacked Greece. Since then Italy’s position had changed beyond recognition. Popular summaries say that at Berchtesgaden Hitler “agreed to provide assistance in North Africa”. That is a shorthand that needs filling out. Hitler had already decided to send German troops to Libya, and on 11 January he had confirmed the decision in Directive No. 22. What the Berghof meeting settled above all was how and when the help would arrive, and the second part of it, intended for Albania, was dropped. Most important of all, however, was what Hitler did not tell his ally.

Mussolini comes as a supplicant

Italy’s “parallel war”, fought alongside Germany but without it, had collapsed within two months. In Albania the Greeks had carried the war into enemy territory and held about a quarter of the country. In Libya the British Operation Compass had shattered the army of Marshal Rodolfo Graziani: on 5 January the fortress of Bardia had fallen, and British and Australian troops had closed the ring around Tobruk. Since December ever more insistent requests for German help had been coming from Rome, and General Marras’s admission to Keitel on 28 December that without the Reich’s support Italy would lose the whole of North Africa had been humiliating for Mussolini.

The Duce had long put off a meeting. Ciano noted in his diary on 5 January that he had proposed, through the ambassador in Berlin, Dino Alfieri, a meeting “between the twelfth and the nineteenth”, but that Mussolini “does not want to meet Hitler, burdened with so many defeats, until they have been at least partly made good”. On 10 January the German ambassador in Rome, Hans Georg von Mackensen, brought a proposed date from Hitler, and Sunday 19 January was agreed. That same day the Duce was in excellent spirits, because over the Sicilian Channel German dive bombers had badly damaged the British aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious. The mood soon passed, however. On 10 January, too, the Greeks took the Klisura Pass, and in the following days they renewed their attacks. On 16 January Mussolini, back from Apulia, where he had conferred at Foggia with the commanders from Albania, was, according to Ciano, “gloomy and pessimistic” and feared that he would meet Hitler “in a position of obvious inferiority”.

The Chief of the General Staff, General Ugo Cavallero, who since the end of December had also been personally commanding the troops in Albania, could not leave the front, as another Greek attack was under way. Guzzoni, whom Ciano could not stand, went to Germany in his place. On 18 January, the day of departure from Rome, news arrived that at Klisura the “Lupi di Toscana” Division, freshly shipped to Albania, had given way, leaving many prisoners in Greek hands. On the train the Duce kept saying that if anyone had predicted on 15 October what was going to happen, he would have had him shot.

Directive No. 22

Before Mussolini boarded his train, the decisions had already been taken in Berlin. On 9 January Hitler discussed the situation in Libya with his commanders, and on 11 January he signed Directive No. 22, “German Support for the Battles in the Mediterranean Area”. Its first sentence stated that the situation, in which England was throwing superior forces against the Reich’s allies, called for German assistance “for strategic, political and psychological reasons”. Tripolitania had to be held, and the danger of a collapse of the Albanian front averted.

The directive provided for three steps. The Commander-in-Chief of the Army was to prepare a “blocking force” (Sperrverband) capable of helping the Italians defend Tripolitania, particularly against English armoured divisions. It was to sail for Tripoli as soon as the shipment of an Italian armoured and a motorised division then under way had been completed, that is, from around 20 February. General Hans Geisler’s X Air Corps, transferred from Norway to Sicily, was to attack the British fleet and the sea lanes between the western and eastern Mediterranean, and from forward airfields in Tripolitania to strike at British ports and supply bases in western Egypt and Cyrenaica. Finally, forces of roughly corps strength, with the 1st Mountain Division and armoured units, were to be made ready for transfer to Albania. They were first to serve as a reserve in case of a new crisis, and later to help the Italian army group go over to the offensive, break through the Greek front and open from the rear the passes west of Salonika for Field Marshal Wilhelm List’s 12th Army advancing from Bulgaria. On 20 January the OKW gave these undertakings code names: the expedition to Libya became “Sonnenblume” (sunflower), the one to Albania “Alpenveilchen” (cyclamen).

The help, then, was not the fruit of the talks at the Berghof. Their purpose was to match German plans to Italian capabilities and – no less important for Hitler – to keep up the spirits of a faltering ally.

The talks of 19 January

Ciano, who had feared a cool reception and “veiled condolences”, noted with surprise that the welcome was cordial, and “spontaneously cordial” at that. Immediately after the arrival the two dictators sat down to talk in the presence of their foreign ministers. According to the German record kept by the interpreter Paul Schmidt, Hitler spoke mainly about what was worrying him, above all Vichy France. He trusted neither Marshal Philippe Pétain, nor General Maxime Weygand, whom he suspected of having pressed for the removal of Pierre Laval from the government in December 1940, nor General Charles Huntziger. He feared that any harsher move against Vichy would induce French North Africa to break with the mother country and go over to the English, which would also threaten Italian Tripoli.

From there he came back to Gibraltar. Its capture, he said, would solve all the problems in North Africa and put an end to “the magic of de Gaulle”, but Francisco Franco had backed out at the last moment, and months of preparation for Operation Felix had gone to waste. Hitler did not spare the Caudillo his contempt: he called him a mediocre officer raised to the top by chance, by temperament not a ruler but a subordinate, and wholly dependent on the Catholic Church into the bargain. At his request Mussolini, “after some hesitation”, agreed to try once more to persuade Franco in a personal meeting. To the assurances of Ramón Serrano Suñer, passed on by Ciano, that Spain would long since have been fighting had it received more grain, the Germans opposed a report by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris: the Spaniards wanted to enter the war only once England was already collapsing. Franco’s refusal of December still stood.

Hitler also spoke about the Balkans. He declared that if the British landed at Salonika, the Luftwaffe would immediately sink their transports, and that on no account would he allow a front to form there as in the First World War. He had given the Bulgarians to understand that Germany would march through their territory “one way or another”, while Yugoslavia had to be kept quiet with the promise of Salonika. He mentioned that because of Russia he had constantly to keep 80 divisions at the ready. Mussolini, for his part, as he later told Ciano, briefed Hitler on the situation in Italy, on the indecisive attitude of King Victor Emmanuel III and on the affair of Marshal Pietro Badoglio, whom he had had to remove in December. Hitler compared it with the affair of General Werner von Fritsch. The Duce came away with the impression that Hitler was loyal towards Italy, “very anti-Russian” and not very decided about his next steps against Britain. There was no more talk of a landing in England: Hitler explained that a failed invasion could not be repeated, and that as long as it had not taken place, England feared a “loaded pistol”. After a failure it would know that the pistol was empty. What Ciano chiefly remembered from his conversation with Ribbentrop was that the minister, hitherto always self-assured, no longer saw any possibility of ending the war before 1942.

Libya yes, Albania no

On 19 January Guzzoni presented the Italian assessment of the situation to Keitel. Albania was the most important theatre of the war. The front was not secure enough to rule out further Greek advances, but the Italians no longer feared losing Vlorë or Berat. They had 21 divisions there and intended to send three more, and to form from ten divisions, four of them Alpine, a strike group on the northern wing that would advance on Korçë and on into Greece. They admitted, however, that because of the limited capacity of the ports it would not be ready in less than two and a half months. In Libya they intended to hold Tobruk “as long as possible”, then the line of Derna and the edge of the Jebel Akhdar uplands, and as a last resort Tripoli itself. They believed that Tobruk would hold out for a good while yet and that the British would not move on Benghazi before it fell. An Italian armoured and a motorised division were then on their way to Tripoli, and the shipments were due to be completed around 20 February.

The German officers received these assurances with reserve. An OKW memorandum recorded that it was “very unlikely” that the Italians would manage to assemble the forces for an offensive in Albania in the time stated, and that it was not yet possible to say whether Cyrenaica could be held. Two days after this conversation the Australians stormed Tobruk, and on 22 January the fortress capitulated.

On German help, the arrangements were clear. The Italians welcomed “very warmly” the announcement that the 5th Light Division, formed from units of the 3rd Panzer Division, would be sent to Libya. Its shipment to Tripoli could begin between 15 and 20 February, and equipment could be sent earlier. The units for Albania, on the other hand, the Italians described as “desirable but not essential”. A corps could neither be shipped there nor supplied, since the Albanian ports and the single road were barely sufficient for the Italian army; at most one mountain division with light equipment might be considered, and not before March. The next day Hitler himself concluded that sending troops to Albania was not advisable for the time being. If a German division stood idle behind the front, it would look bad: the Italians in heavy fighting while the Germans looked on from the rear. If, on the other hand, it entered the fighting, the war in the Balkans would begin prematurely, before the Wehrmacht had managed to cross the Danube.

On 21 January the OKW set out the Berghof arrangements in an order supplementing Directive No. 22. Operation Sonnenblume was to begin as soon as possible, from around 15 February, and the force was not to be held in reserve but was to go into action wherever English armoured divisions appeared. Operation Alpenveilchen was reduced to the preparation of one mountain division without heavy equipment, and the decision whether it would go to Albania at all was postponed until the beginning of March. A transfer on the original scale would have made it impossible to supply the Italian divisions and would have wrecked their preparations for an offensive.

Hitler’s lecture

At 11 a.m. on 20 January Keitel and Jodl reported to Hitler on the results of the talks with the Italians, in the presence of the German general attached to the Italian high command, Enno von Rintelen. At noon, in a wider circle – with Mussolini, Ciano, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Jodl, Rintelen and Generals Guzzoni, Marras and Gandin – Hitler delivered a long lecture on the military situation. Ciano reckoned that he spoke for about two hours, mainly about the forthcoming intervention in Greece, treating the matter from the technical side but against the background of the whole political situation, and doing so “with exceptional mastery”. The Italian officers were impressed, and Guzzoni made no secret of his surprise at how well Hitler understood military matters.

Hitler explained that the troops being assembled in Romania had three tasks: the operation against Greece, the protection of Bulgaria against Russia and Turkey, and backing up the guarantee given to Romania. That was why they were far more numerous than an expedition against Greece alone would require. The concentration had to be carried out in secret, the Danube crossed as late as possible and the attack launched as early as possible, because as soon as the crossing began the British could strike from Greek airfields at the Romanian oilfields around Ploiești and at the bridge at Cernavodă. This meant that the offensive would not begin before March. Of England he said that the ultimate aim, a landing in the British Isles, still stood, but that Germany was in the position of a man with only one round in his rifle: if he missed, the situation would be worse than before. In the autumn three consecutive days of good weather had been lacking. The blockade of the Sicilian Channel by the air force was in his view only a “poor substitute” for Gibraltar.

He spoke at length about the Soviet Union. He assured his listeners that he did not fear America, even if it entered the war; a far greater danger was the “gigantic bloc of Russia”. Germany had advantageous political and economic agreements with the USSR, but preferred to rely on its own strength, which was why large forces stood on the Soviet border instead of working in the armaments industry. “As long as Stalin lives there is probably no danger; he is intelligent and cautious,” he said, according to the OKW memorandum, adding antisemitic remarks about who might take power after Joseph Stalin. The Russians, he claimed, interpreted agreements one-sidedly, as Lithuania and the absorption of the Baltic states showed; they kept making new demands, and in the age of aircraft they could turn the Romanian oilfields, on which the life of the Axis depended, into a “smoking heap of rubble”. He also mentioned that a Soviet démarche concerning the concentration of German troops in Romania would be rejected.

Finally Hitler turned to Romania. General Ion Antonescu had made a very good impression on him, but the division of power between the “leader of the state” and the leader of the Legion could not last in the long run: “cool reason” required that one of them should go. Mussolini took the view that Antonescu should assume full power, while Ribbentrop advised that he should govern not against the Legion but with its “good elements”, and that Horia Sima should be given a high office, for instance that of foreign minister. The very next day the Legionnaires’ rebellion broke out in Bucharest, and Hitler sided with Antonescu without hesitation.

What Hitler kept quiet about

Since 18 December 1940 Directive No. 21 had been in force, in which Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to prepare to crush the Soviet Union in a rapid campaign, with readiness by mid-May 1941. The troops being assembled in Romania, of which he had spoken at the Berghof, had their place in this plan: for him the campaign in Greece was a way of securing the southern flank before the war in the east. Neither on 19 nor on 20 January did Hitler say a word about this to his ally. He presented the forces on the Soviet border as a defensive necessity that was depriving industry of workers, and let it be understood that he would rather demobilise those divisions. Mussolini left convinced that Hitler was distrustful of Russia, unaware that he was preparing to attack it.

Such silences were nothing new in the relations between the two dictators. In October 1940, at the Brenner, Hitler had not mentioned sending troops to Romania, and Mussolini had repaid him by attacking Greece without warning. This time the disparity in strength was obvious, and Hitler had no intention of entrusting the Reich’s greatest secret to an ally whose high command and diplomacy were regarded in Berlin as leaky. The Italians learned of the attack on the USSR only on the night of 21–22 June 1941, from a letter Hitler had delivered to the Duce just as the German armies were moving off.

Ciano summed up the visit as “on the whole good”: there was “absolute solidarity” between the Axis countries and “we shall go together in the Balkans”, while Italy had been given the difficult task of bringing the “Spanish prodigal son” home. Mussolini returned on 21 January, as always after a meeting with Hitler, in excellent spirits. As early as 22 January, however, after the fall of Tobruk, Ciano told him bluntly that hopes of holding further positions in Cyrenaica were “dangerous illusions”.

Its place in the war

The Berghof meeting was the moment at which Italy, in practice, stopped waging a war of its own. Mussolini came as an ally pleading to be rescued and accepted the German plan in its entirety: German aircraft over the Mediterranean, German troops in Libya, a German offensive in the Balkans in which Italy was given a supporting role. The Balkans, which only that autumn the Duce had regarded as his own sphere, were from now on to be put in order by German hands.

The arrangements were quickly put into effect. On 6 February Hitler gave command of the German forces in Libya to General Erwin Rommel, who flew into Tripoli on 12 February. On 14 February the first units of the 5th Light Division disembarked there, and soon the whole corps was given the name Afrika Korps. Operation Sonnenblume, conceived as a defence of Tripolitania, turned into an offensive that in March and April 1941 took from the British almost the whole of the Cyrenaica they had won in Operation Compass, and began nearly two years of fighting in North Africa. Operation Alpenveilchen was never carried out. The Italian spring offensive in Albania, prepared in March, broke down, and the Albanian front was decided only by the German Balkan campaign, launched on 6 April 1941.

The plan that Hitler had entrusted to Mussolini at the Berghof, on the other hand, came to nothing. On 12 February the Duce met Franco at Bordighera, but the Caudillo again refused to enter the war, and Operation Felix against Gibraltar remained on paper. The most far-reaching consequences, though, flowed from what had been left unsaid at the Berghof. Although he learned of the attack on the USSR only at the last moment, Mussolini sent an Italian expeditionary corps to the Eastern Front as early as the summer of 1941, and later a whole army, which was destroyed on the Don in the winter of 1942–1943. An alliance in which one partner decided and the other learned of the decisions after the fact led in July 1943 to the Duce’s fall.