Could a bad natural disaster (earthquake on scale of Sicily 1903) keep Italy out of WW2?

raharris1973

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What do we think?

If an earthquake or volcanic eruption inflicted damage on the scale of the 1903 Sicily earthquake hit Italy in April or May 1940, could this preoccupy Mussolini and keep him from joining WWII, at least at that time?

I ask this because an earthquake has been brought up before as a deus ex machina to keep Italy out of WWI. Some fairly knowledgeable posters thought it could do the trick. Could a natural disaster serve as a similar device to keep Italy out of WWII ?
 

raharris1973

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Kalvan, kalvert, Michele, anybody?

I know we have discussed what it would take to keep Italy out of WWI, what about WWII?
 

Deleted member 1487

Italy was not ready for war and this would pretty much give them an excuse to bow out.
 
A major seismic or volcanic event and frankly Italy would have far better things to do than gamble on a war with Britain. Even if it does look like Britain will have to ask for terms from Germany. In fact if for example Vesuvius was to send pyroclastic flows down through Naples they'd probably be asking for British and French help with the relief efforts.
 
I would say so. Recovery from big disasters consumes a lot of resources, and Italy wasn't really ready to fight then.

What would removing Mussolini do at this point? It wouldn't take a huge quake to kill him if he were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Say a few bricks or a chunk of masonry falls right on top of him.
 
Per se, nothing else changing save that Italy is less ready for war?

No.

Remember, this isn't a war that's going to go on. It's already over. A matter of days at most. The French are defeated, the British can only admit they have to negotiate terms. Mussolini is declaring war in order to sit at that negotiation table, so that he'll gain something after having invested maybe "2,000 dead", no more. He has been quoted as saying (but in private): "I intend to declare war, not to make it". It's essentially that non-existing thing, a free lunch.

So if you are not actually making war, you don't need actual preparations, actual capabilities, actual readiness. And an actual disaster does not affect your decision either.

Now, if the earthquake changes something else apart from war readiness - for instance, if it kills Mussolini - then things obviously change, but this becomes simply another version of countless other threads based on "WI Mussolini dies before June 1940".
Short of killing Mussolini, the earthquake should have the effect of strengthening internal opposition to the war to the point that this can effectively bridle Mussolini. But it's hard to see how this could work. The anti-German elements among the party leadership might say, hey, this makes us unable to make war, but the reply would be the above one: we're not really going to make war.
 
I agree it would not keep Italy out of the war. Question would it keep Italy out of Greece?

I suppose it depends on just how much damage the earthquake does, well if it was bad enough the Brits might be in Tripoli before then!
 
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