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A 'Peaceful' Mediterranean: What If Italy Had Stayed Neutral?

Part One: A Neutral Italy

“Despite Mussolini having given a speech in 1939 saying that, if Italy stayed neutral in the war Germany had begun Italy would lose its national dignity; in 1940 he had a huge policy reversal on the war. Under pressure from his own King and the leader of Italian troops in Ethiopia during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, Pietro Badoglio, Mussolini called off the plans for invasion after relenting over the fact that Italy was simply not prepared for war. Mussolini was also lucky in that the British and French diplomats in Italy offered him both French Djibouti and a ‘free-hand’ in Jugoslavia. He accepted these terms, though by the time they’d been offered he already had decided to be neutral in the war…”

- Italy During The Second World War; Wikipedia


“The Italian Invasion of Jugoslavia in 1941 began well, with Italian troops moving into the country both in the South through Albania and in the North through Istria. In the North the Italians managed to capture the city of Lubiana (or Ljubljana, as was the Slovene name for the city) within the first few weeks of fighting, whilst in the south the Italo-Albanian forces made good progress into Kosovo, using the nationalist sentiment of Albanians in the region to bolster their own forces…

However, just two months into the invasion and Italy became heavily bogged down against the Jugoslav army, which was stronger than Mussolini had thought it was going to be. For around 5 months all fronts remained relatively static, except for some minor guerrilla activity behind both the Italian front (primarily Slovenes) and the Yugoslav front (primarily Albanians in unoccupied Kosovo)…

It wasn’t until October when the Italians made some gradual process, the guerrilla forces in Kosovo allowed for the Italo-Albanian forces to slowly push into the eastern half of Kosovo, capturing Prishtina in October of 1941, and Albaniku in the early days of January 1942…

By the opening days of 1942 Italian forces in the North had occupied all of Slovenia, whilst another army had captured all of the Dalmatian coastline by May of 1942 after numerous naval attacks on the coast, in August of the same year this was followed up in Montenegro where the entire province was taken both by naval attacks and a land invasion from northern Albania…”

- Italian Forces in Jugoslavia; Stephen Andrew; 2001


“By the closing months of 1942 the Italian position in Jugoslavia had progressed only slightly, with the Italians only occupying Kosovo, Montenegro, Slovenia and the Dalmatian coastline. It was the Italians inability to attack any further east without heavy casualties that led to Mussolini writing to Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria, requesting Bulgarian support in Jugoslavia…

Boris III was initially wary; he’d managed to keep his nation out of the Nazi’s Axis to the north, and didn’t want to get dragged into a war in a nation that had proved hard for the Italians to penetrate. However with the promise that if he did support Italy then Mussolini would recognise a Bulgarian annexation of Macedonia, Boris III finally relented – this is usually seen as the turning point in the war…

Bulgaria attacked Jugoslavia in a surprise attack on 21 February with a force of 180,000 men, by the end of March Bulgarian troops had diverted enough troops from the Italian Front to allow for the Italians to take the western half of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, while Bulgaria had taken Macedonia with relative ease..

It was in the autumn of 1943 when Italian troops finally linked with Bulgarian troops and the two forces launched a joint attack northward into the heart of Jugoslavia – Serbia. Despite the harsh winter and the Jugoslav fighting spirit, the Italo-Bulgarian troops were at the walls of Belgrade by December, and peace was made in January 1944…

Italy gained Dalmatia, western Slovenia and Kosovo; whilst the Bulgarians won the prize they felt they now deserved – Macedonia…”

- The Triumph of Tsar Boris III; Pashanko Dimitroff; 1986


“The long-term plan for the Italian Empire was always to be unification with Italy to create a single, homogenous state under the rule of Mussolini. By the beginning of the war between the Anglo-French alliance and Germany the Italians made up 12% of the population in Libya, primarily along the Mediterranean coastline in the major cities…

Governor Italo Balbo, who realised the importance of making Libya an attractive place to live for Italian settlers, requested throughout the period from 1940-1944 for the sending of another 120,000 settlers from Italy. Mussolini attempted to accommodate this, though in the end he was only able to send 90,000 over the period. However this huge movement of peoples was enough to help prop up the Italians in Libya as it almost doubled their population there and increased the Italian population of Libya from 12% to 20.5%, a marked increase that allowed the colony, or as Mussolini called it the ‘Fourth Shore’, to flourish even further…

This ‘positive colonialism’ in Libya, where the native Libyans were treated with a degree of respect and the infrastructure of the colony was developed well, contrasts with the Italian colony of the Aegean Islands where in 1940 the Italians made up just 6.2% of the total colonial population, of which 80% lived in Rhodes. Unlike in Libya, however, the Italian Governor of the Aegean Islands, Cesare Maria de Vecchi, took a hard-line approach to non-Italians and made Italian the first language on the islands, making Greece only an optional language to learn…

As this vigorous Italianisation of the islands continued, many felt the need to leave the islands and by 1944, when the next Italian census was conducted, the Italian population had gone up to around 11,000 (bolstered by 1,500 settlers sent there), whilst the population of the colony as a whole had decreased from 129,315 to 114,743 as many Greeks fled to Greece. This migration led to the population of the Italians in the Aegean Islands increasing to become 9.6% of the population, now with 74% in Rhodes and over a quarter distributed amongst the remainder of the islands…”

- The Italian Empire; H. James Burgwyn; 1997


NOTE: This TL will not focus on Italy, merely the neutrality of Italy will spark off a series of events that will have huge impacts worldwide.
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