The Iron Eagle - The History of the Cold War

[El_Fodedor]

Bioweapons will just as likely kill the Russians as it would the Germans and even more so as the Germans would not hesitate to just kill any infected slav.

Possibly. But the point is that even if Russia doesn't have nukes they could use V-2 equivalents to deliver some payloads full of bioweapons to Germany proper. Only the possibility may do the trick of avoiding a nuclear extermination of the Russian State, which is a very high risk for not taking countermeasures against.

 

[El_Fodedor]

Considering what happened between 1943-1948, I would be surprised if they did not know how to use the war crimes bombs.

Do you mean the Russian Empire has nukes?

Brazil is not a member of the Linz Pact, integrations famously hated the German racial obsession and neo-pagan flair of Nazism. If anything it's more likely they would join the United States than join the Third Reich by now.

This is good. It doesn't make sense for Brazil to simply align with "The Aryans" and help them conquer the world. Even if the United States is a bad hegemon, there's no country in the world more antagonistic towards the very idea of the Nazi Ideology than Brazil.

Even the more hardcore integralists will have to think about the unspoken question sometime: "if they do conquer the world, they will exterminate us, won't they?"

 

[Fratsup]

Why would they use missiles? Those would most likely destroy the biological payload anyways. The best thing they can use is balloons like the Japanese did in WW2 and even then Japan did a poor job at it so why would Russia do any better. Really biblical weapons are just bad to use overall and not worth the trouble.

 

[skarosianlifeform]

I frankly expect Italy to try its best to secretly develop nukes (which would take some time but eventually bear fruit), while upping its chemical arsenal in the meantime, and once nukes are there, leave the Linz Pakt (with Spain in tow).

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

Do you mean the Russian Empire has nukes?

This is good. It doesn't make sense for Brazil to simply align with "The Aryans" and help them conquer the world. Even if the United States is a bad hegemon, there's no country in the world more antagonistic towards the very idea of the Nazi Ideology than Brazil.

Even the more hardcore integralists will have to think about the unspoken question sometime: "if they do conquer the world, they will exterminate us, won't they?"

No, but Stalin made sure to stockpile and use every single death tool Russia could use and unleash it against his enemies during the Civil War. The White Russians were once the lapdogs of the Japanese and literally neighbors of Manchuria, they too would be able to get the help of certain elements from Japan. The Red Army was no strange to chemical weapons (Tukhachevsky showed how its done by brutalizing Green armies back in the 20s), and I don't even need to tell that Nazi Collaborators would be quite willing to use a few gases of their own. All the factions had used chemical and, to some extent, biological weapons in the Civil War, the Empire inherited them all.

Your point on Brazil is precise, at most you have the odd antisemites led by the Barroso wing of the AIB but not even them buy the idea of a Germanic master race.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

I frankly expect Italy to try its best to secretly develop nukes (which would take some time but eventually bear fruit), while upping its chemical arsenal in the meantime, and once nukes are there, leave the Linz Pakt (with Spain in tow).

Mussolini hopes so too, especially considering what the Germans are doing in Algeria.

 

[Orwell]

Mussolini hopes so too, especially considering what the Germans are doing in Algeria.

Frankly, anyone would have to be braindead to not notice the red flag

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

Frankly, anyone would have to be braindead to not notice the red flag

I guess making your nuclear tests in Bedouin tribes and using them to study the effects of the fallout can be considered a red flag.

 

[Captain Homicide]

he claimed to some that it was none other than Hitler's spirit communicating with him

I’m imagining Hitler’s ghost appearing and chastising various members of the Nazi leadership when no one else is watching.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

I’m imagining Hitler’s ghost appearing and chastising various members of the Nazi leadership when no one else is watching.

One can almost imagine the sheer number of dark comedies which can be made with that.

 

[El_Fodedor]

One can almost imagine the sheer number of dark comedies which can be made with that.

"The Death of Hitler" on Netflix.

 

[Gabingston]

I'd be willing to bet a significant amount of money that the priest who was burned alive in that church will be canonized. It's about as clear a case of martyrdom as it gets.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

"The Death of Hitler" on Netflix.

Starring Steve Buscemi as Martin Bormamn!

 

[jasper the spectator]

Still trying to comprehend what in the hell just happened. Also Paul Wegener is now added in the Reich Power Struggle poll.

"The Death of Hitler" on Netflix.

This can be interpreted another way: A “The Death Of Stalin” esque movie about Hitler’s own death in this TL. The 4 way race in the Alps between Goebbels, Speer, Hess, and Himmler especially is purpose built for a dark comedy.

I'd be willing to bet a significant amount of money that the priest who was burned alive in that church will be canonized. It's about as clear a case of martyrdom as it gets.

If that doesn’t count as martyrdom idk what does.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

Still trying to comprehend what in the hell just happened. Also Paul Wegener is now added in the Reich Power Struggle poll.

This can be interpreted another way: A “The Death Of Stalin” esque movie about Hitler’s own death in this TL. The 4 way race in the Alps between Goebbels, Speer, Hess, and Himmler especially is purpose built for a dark comedy.

If that doesn’t count as martyrdom idk what does.

Finally someone noticed the comical race, yes the whole series of events which happened in the day Hitler died is meant to one day be adapted into a comedy.

Certainly there will be many martyrs coming in from the German Catholic Church from now on, I honestly doubt there would be something like Vatican II in this time.

And yes, the Poll is open again and while I can't remove the options who are already gone. I can add more. Wegener certainly is a top player now, if not The top player (at least while Hess is alive and useless).

 

[jasper the spectator]

Finally someone noticed the comical race

I’ll be frank, i’m surprised more people haven’t noticed it.
Interested to see how the Ural War goes. I’m guessing it’s gonna end as a stalemate given the Russians have gotten a decade to recover.

 

[Gabingston]

I’ll be frank, i’m surprised more people haven’t noticed it.
Interested to see how the Ural War goes. I’m guessing it’s gonna end as a stalemate given the Russians have gotten a decade to recover.

That's my guess too. One thing is for certain, though, the U.S. is definitely not going to just stand on the sidelines. I expect the U.S. to support Russia as much as they can without it causing WW3.

 

[jasper the spectator]

That's my guess too. One thing is for certain, though, the U.S. is definitely not going to just stand on the sidelines. I expect the U.S. to support Russia as much as they can without it causing WW3.

Given supporting Russia was one of the only things foreign policy related Huey did, i’m pretty sure he won’t back down here, unlike in 1951. Though that depends on whether he runs for a 3rd term, wins, and becomes TTL’s FDR.

Idk why, but this makes me think Goebbels is gonna attempt a Nazi cultural revolution soon. If any Nazi is gonna do it, it's gonna be him.

Does the German purge of the Church count as a cultural revolution, even if who started it falls more on Wegener and Axmann’s shoulders than Goebbels?

I'm probably wrong on this, but i'm guessing that means this universe is gonna end up with Fuhrer Heydrich unless Speer, Goebbels, or someone else beats him to it.

Wegener fits pretty squarely into the “someone else” category, i’ll say, even if it’s clear Heydrich is not beaten yet.
Also, I guess we’re never gonna know about Himmler’s fate, though i’m guessing he died in a Gestapo prison while everything between 1952 and 1958 was going down.

 

[andry2806]

Attacking the Church is a double-edged sword, on one side the Church was historically the biggest obstacle in the establishing of a totalitarian society, because it shares a lot of similarities with Party structures while propagating ideas outside of what the Party wants, while being so radicated that it's almost untouchable. Using the new, indoctrinated generation to finally attack them has a sense from a totalitarian POV. But on the other side, this is probably the point of fracture with Brazil, since Integralism is based on a Catholic society, and this attack to the Church is probably a step too far for Salgado and the whole Integralist leadership. This risks to bring Brazil into the US-UK camp (at least, in an agreement of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"), and in joining the embargo of Europe, which would be a disaster for Germany.

Inside the Linz Pakt, I fully agree on how this is going to be a point of fracture with the South, especially Spain, but I don't fully agree on Italy's response. Mussolini was an atheist, and fascism didn't have clerical undertones. The situation of the Church in Fascist Italy was quite similar to the one in Nazi Germany, with an aspiring totalitarian state forced to compromise with the Church and allow it to be a parallel society, alternative to the Party one. I have the impression that the Church and the state-church compromise in Italy was stronger that in Germany, so something like the 1957 purge would be difficult in Italy still, and a lot of young people would still grow up faithful Catholics, with Catholic principia, but I'm not fully convinced the Fascist state would publicly stand for the German Catholic Church and privately not approve.

The point of fracture between Italy and Germany IMO would be more in the early propaganda you mentioned to educate European society to reject American consumerism to aid autarky. The general thing is not a problem, autarky was a term first brought into the forefront of politics by Mussolini himself and Fascist Italy has generally tried to do so in a way. The problem is, how you mentioned, this continental project of social engineering is based solely on German and Nazi sensibilities and culture, with Latin countries being more alienated. Italy would want to walk its own direction on this. And then there's the whole fact that Italy sees itself as a peer and an independent ally of Germany, and it's probably the only state in the Pakt to do so, while Germany, I seem to understand, treats it just as just a bit more than the other members, an auxiliary of the German Empire.

I don't remember if you already had a section on Fascist Italy and what happened in it so I'm not really referring to you or your work in any way, but I want to add a personal note on it: a lot of Nazi victory TLs treat Italian Fascism as a softer partner for Berlin, a more "normal" dictatorship in the Nazi bloc. It was not. Fascism was a totalitarian ideology, in the exact same way Nazism is. Hell, Mussolini literally invented the concept of totalitarianism. The fascist regime wanted to rebuild Italian society in its image, it wanted to create a New Man, a Fascist man. The reasons it's perceived as so different and maybe "tamer" than Nazism are its much reduced exterminationism and the fact that the cultural superstructures it developed on were the ones of a people "warmer" and less bureaucratic than Germans, giving it less of the IMO most uncanny and terrifying side of Nazi Germany, the passionless and soulless bureaucrats in grey paramilitary attire organizing mass executions like they were organizing the supply of office stationery to the local welfare administration offices of a small province. But overall Fascist society would be more similar to Nazi Germany in a sense (though, it would definitely be less successful in terms of totalitarian penetration due to a stronger Church, historically lower efficiency of conversion, radicated Marxist resistance, and generally an higher tendency in Italians of just doing the fuck they want). This doesn't mean Italy and Germany will have to remain allies and the evergreen trope of Italy being the China to Germany's USSR and changing sides has to be shelved, just that tensions will happen due to conflicting interests, and any opening to the Allies would be an extremely utilitarian one like the visit of Nixon to China, with Italy's lower propension to exterminationism being enough for the hawks in DC and London to accept the compromise in the name of fucking over Germania. Fascism can still fall or maybe wither, it's just that it's not an automatism like other TLs assume.

 

[jasper the spectator]

I don't remember if you already had a section on Fascist Italy and what happened in it so I'm not really referring to you or your work in any way,

There was a Italy based chapter made back when the year began, here it is.

THE IRON EAGLE
MARE NOSTRUM

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"Why do we call the whole world's attention to the fact that we have no past? It isn't enough that the Romans were erecting great buildings when our forefathers were still living in mud huts; now Himmler is starting to dig up these villages of mud huts and enthusing over every potsherd and stone axe he finds. All we prove by that is that we were still throwing stone hatchets and crouching around open fires when Greece and Rome had already reached the highest stage of culture. We really should do our best to keep quiet about this past. Instead Himmler makes a great fuss about it all. The present-day Romans must be having a laugh at these relegations."

-Adolf Hitler​

The Italian nation was one with a long and proud history, one that even someone as German-centric as Hitler once admitted when asked about the ancestry of his nation's people. However, the times after the Unification in 1861 were not as kind as the Roman era, the initial wave of optimism in Italy faced a mixed reality, with millions migrating to America, especially from Southern Italy, from the lack of prospects in their own nation. In Sicily, the government's abandonment led to the rise of private criminal organizations that formed the Italian Mafia, one of the most feared and powerful in the world. In the industrial north, the constant conflict between the workers and factory owners led to the rise of powerful unions and syndicates that constantly paralyzed the economy in strikes, many of them being put down by local police. The liberal order in Italy showed some success in modernizing the nation, but Italy's natural lack of resources would lead them into seeking expansion in the so-called "Spazio Vitale", a concept similar to the German Lebensraum. The failed invasion of Ethiopia, one of the few times an African nation successfully fought back an European invader, was a national humiliation, while the Invasion of Libya on the other hand would show more success by capturing a mostly deserted land from a failing Empire, although such investment would prove quite fruitful later. The Italian government signed up a pact with the German and Austro-Hungarian governments to form a defensive alliance named "Tripartite Pact" or "Central Powers", directed mostly against France where Italy had ambitions over colonies such as Tunisia and Alpine territories. However, the greatest source of ambition for the Italian people was the concept of "Irredentismo", the desire to "finish" the unification of Italy by conquering the Austro-Hungarian territories of Southern Tyrol, Trentino, Istria, Trieste, and Dalmatia, to make the Adriatic sea a modern version of the "Mare Nostrum". That ambition, alongside the initial concept of the Tripartite pact being a defensive arrangement, led to Italy declaring neutrality at the start of the First World War, however that wouldn't last long as Italy joined the war in 1915... against the Central Powers.

The Irredentist ideals were used by the Entente, especially Britain and France, to stroke the war fervor in Italy and motivate it's entrance in the war. The Treaty of London, a secret agreement made between the three governments, formally recognized Italy's claims on Austro-Hungarian territory in a post-war victory, and under this promise the nation went into the most destructive conflict in Europe with a mixed enthusiasm in the population. An expected easy victory never came, instead over a million Italians were killed or missing, another million being captured or injured, with three years of brutal attrition warfare in the Alpine mountains and the Isonzo river. In 1917, anti-war socialists inspired in the Russian February revolution attempted to spark their own uprising in Turin and Milan, brutally crushed by Italian troops, yet it showed the exhaustion of the nation that suffered a catastrophic defeat at Caporetto that same year that threatened Venice itself. The fortunes of the war reversed in 1918 as the Italian army, under new leadership, managed to break the Austro-Hungarian lines at Vittorio Veneto, with the Habsburg army collapsing at last, the army returned in triumph as the people awaited the promised territories. Yet, at the peace negotiations, with the influence of President Woodrow Wilson and his principle of self-determination, the Treaty of London's promises were not delivered, with several territories promised to Italy being given instead to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The outrage in Italy created the expression "Vittoria Mutilata", Mutilated victory, many feeling that the sacrifice was about feeding Italian troops for sake of the Anglo-French lies, the nation felt a collective sense of betrayal that destroyed the Orlando government and brought an era of instability and economic chaos between 1919 and 1922, which would be used by Benito Mussolini, a former socialist and army corporal, to take power for himself.

After the Second World War, the feeling was not as intense, yet there were some that believed the soul of Italy was sold for victory, especially after the Italian entry into the Linz Pakt in 1945. Mussolini gambled the fate of his nation by allying with Adolf Hitler in 1939 and joining the war in June 1940 during the fall of France, and while publicly the victory was celebrated as the Kingdom of Italy expanded it's Spazio Vitale to the Alps and Corsica, keeping Greece and Croatia as protectorates, and expanding it's colonial holdings, it came with a cost. Italy was a nation that on one hand was trying to emphasize it's Autarky, Independence, and Pride, and on the other keep Germania satisfied and becoming more and more dependent on the New Order to sustain itself. Britain has continued it's embargo on members of the Linz Pakt after the war, and the continued British control of the Suez always put at risk that one of the lifelines of the Italian Empire could be cut the moment the Treaty of Lisbon was threatened. Somaliland, Djibouti and Tunisia brought in new subjects under the Italian banner, and alongside it brought colonial unrest, from French pied-noirs to Bedouin tribes. Greece proved to be more of a burden than a boon as the years went by, Croatia, while legally under the rule of the Duke of Aosta, Tomislav II, was ruled by the radical Ustache, a group with such atrocious actions that Hitler and the SS desired to distance themselves from, keeping only a subtle support for it's operations.

Fascism was always a movement of contrasts and paradoxes in Italy, sometimes jokingly described as "Whatever Il Duce said to his lovers in the bed". It isn't a far way of describing how the system worked, Nationalism, Anti-Communist, Anti-Liberalism, and Authoritarianism were the basics of the system since it's beginning, however the rest was still to be "in construction". Mussolini claimed that the strength of Fascism was exactly this, the fact that it was "pragmatic" and capable of adapting through times, different from "static" ideologies such as Marxism, that showed the influence of Futurism in Fascism, but also gave a blank cheque for Mussolini to Il Duce to change the rules of his own movement as he saw fit. While he once described Fascism as a movement exclusively Italian, he began to call it as an ideology that could be imitated in 1929, while before he described race as just a "feeling", now he made antisemitic laws shortly after breaking up his affair with his Jewish lover Margheritta Sarfatti. Differently to his German counterpart, Mussolini also did not possess total power in Italy, being limited by the power of the King Victor Emmanuel III, and his compromises with the church and the Italian conservative elite. That is shown how in the 1920s he greatly restricted the power of local Fascist leaders (Ras), keeping them subservient to the City Mayors, and how he relied on career bureaucrats such as Cesare Moro, over Fascist leaders in how to get things done. In 1936, after the Victory in Ethiopia, Mussolini attempted to "Rejuvenate" Fascism, bringing it back to it's more revolutionary roots, a process that was interrupted once war broke out.

The Italian foreign policy was also quite divergent, switching between London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin many times in the 1920-1930s. Other than the desire of expansionism into the Balkans and Africa, the only consistency was that Mussolini attempted to use the tactics that won him the power in Italy to win power in the world. He did not possess the same level of expansionistic ambitions as Hitler did, but there was the constant desire of making Italy a nation recognized as a Great Power, leading a bloc of Latin-Catholic nations from Lisbon to Vienna. In 1934, Mussolini opposed the Germans' first attempt of annexing Austria, supporting the local Austrofascists under Engelbert Dollfuss and the Fatherland Front against the local NSDAP, forging an alliance with Britain and France against German expansionism. That was a blow on Hitler, who admired Mussolini as a predecessor of himself, who taught many examples, the Beer Hall Putsch being made as an attempt to emulate the March on Rome, that the Führer would follow. However, everything changed in 1935 when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia, seeking to avenge the Italian defeat in 1896 and conquer one of the last independent African nations. Unexpectedly to Il Duce, his "allies" would condemn him in the League of Nations, with Pierre Laval having to resign for his attempt of allying with Rome at the time. That caused Italy to completely switch it's allegiances towards the Führer, basically giving a green light to the annexation of Austria in 1938, with Mussolini signing into the Anti-Commintern pact, breaking it's ironically good relations with the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s, and even creating antisemitic laws as a way to win over Hitler's favor. In the end, Italy sold it's soul to the devil in 1939 when signing the Rome-Berlin, and later Rome-Berlin-Tokyo "Pact of Steel", and from the moment Italy entered in June 1940, there was no turning back.

The performance of the Regio Esercito during the war, if one were to publicly ask any of the Generals or Fascists, was of a triumphant army that bravely captured Malta, a powerful navy that kept the British fleet in Alexandria, fought bravely from Albania to Somaliland. However, contrary to what many in the government wished, the people had two working eyes. The Invasion of Malta was one of the few successes of the war, only due to it's treacherous surprise and the support of the Luftwaffe, and the Italian troops bravely managed to defeat the understrength and outnumbered garrisons of Djibouti and Somaliland. But the Invasion of Greece and Egypt were mediocre to be generous, with the Italian army unable to push south of the Epirote mountains and forced back from Cyrenaica by the British forces despite the local advantage. Ultimately, it took the German intervention to save the Italian army in both stances, in fact the Italian East Africa was still under British occupation when the Treaty of Lisbon was signed, and the Italian ambitions for Egypt were given up in return for the territory. By the end of the war, Mussolini had hoped to make a massive triumph in the streets of Rome as a show of Italian strength, and indeed it happened but as a reminder, the Afrika Korps under General Rommel was also allowed to participate in the Triumphal parade in April. It was quite a sight to see Germans marching down the streets of Rome in a Roman-styled triumph, to many, especially to the men standing behind Mussolini in the parade, that sent a message they all knew but refused to admit: Italy was the junior party.

Ettore Bastico, Emilio de Bono, Ugo Cavallero, Cesare de Vecchi, Italo Balbo, Enzo Garibalti, Carlo Scorza, Galeazzo Ciano, Alessandro Pavolini, and Roberto Farinacci were some of the main figures of the Italian Fascist Government, and they were quite a distinct group of individuals all seeking power around Il Duce and/or his future position after his death. Basticowas one of the leading military figures of the war, besides of course the First Marshall of the Empire Benito Mussolini. Although he did not have the prestige and power of the elderly Emilio de Bono who was one of the original Quadrumvirs and Minister of the State. Ugo Cavallero, chief of the Supreme Military Command, lacked the prestige of the other two, and yet he was second only to Il Duce himself in the leadership of the Military. Vecchi and Balbo were both Governors and members of the Quadrumvirate, but only Balbo truly had popular appeal amongst the Italian people, sometimes nicknamed as the "Italian Göring" due to his leading status within the movement, serving as a blackshirt leader, as well as Airforce commander and one of it's leading pilots. Enzo Garibalti was the second man in charge of the Italian blackshirts besides Mussolini, who mostly left the task or micromanaging it for Enzo. Carlo Scorza was the Chief Secretary of the Party, being second only to Mussolini himself in the Fascist Hierarchy. Galeazzo Ciano was a special case, being Minister of Foreign affairs mostly thanks to his marriage with Mussolini's daughter, initially a man groomed to be the successor of Il Duce, however, their disputes during the war, which included a much diminished opinion of one another, alongside the fact Ciano was hated by much of the PNF's establishment left that succession much more ambiguous after the war. Alessandro Pavolini, Ciano's rival and Minister of Popular Culture, the Ministry of Propaganda in Italy, was one of the leading figures of the party, many times considering Mussolini as far too moderate in his compromises, calling for a strengthening of the Fascist movement in Italy. Roberto Farinacci was the most hardliner of the Party figures, known as an admirer of Adolf Hitler and being practically the only potential successor who supported the alliance with the Reich, Farinacci was a brutal leader of the Blackshirts and being largely responsible for implementing the Antisemitic laws in Italy since 1938.

The Italian economy was in no better shape than it was before the war, the gold reserves were at very low levels as spending skyrocketed in the pre-war years, just made worse by the sanctions enacted by the League of Nations in 1936. The economy in Italy was organized around Corporativism, with large Industrial conglomerates and a general reduction in the rights of workers despite the government promises of protecting said rights by mediating agreements between the Industrials and the State-owned Worker's Corporations. The Lira, the Italian currency, devalued greatly in the Pre-War years and it was all made worse by the war as the costs meant an increase in debt and inflation. The terrible situation of the Italian military armaments was being remedied during the conflict by the purchase of German weaponry, with growing weapons requests being made during the conflict to be diverted towards Greece and Northern Africa. All of that not counting the costly conflicts in Ethiopia and Spain in the 1930s, with the former proving to be a great drain in Italian resources due to the local resistance. But the death blow came with the Embargo, with the British and later the Americans declaring a cessation of trade with all members of the Linz Pakt, as the Italians lacked several necessary natural resources for it's industry, especially Coal, Steel, and Petroleum, it began to rely further on the Reich's resources, which only undermined the Italian independence that the regime declared so proudly.

Mussolini saw with apprehension how Hitler treated his allies, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Sweden and even Switzerland which served as an important banking gateway to the outside of "Festung Europa" suffered the wrath of the Führer. However, Italy was a different beast, being one of the few European Nations that could stand up to the German demands from time to time. Hitler still possessed great personal admiration for Mussolini, and the Duce's occasional visits were described as some of the few times Hitler was able to laugh. Besides, the Italian army and naturally defensible terrain would make sure any invasion would end up becoming the kind of attrition warfare the Wehrmacht spent the entire war avoiding, alienating Mussolini would also risk the Reich's influence in the Mediterranean sea. Token concessions to Italian companies were given in the Linz Pakt meeting, protectionist measures to avoid the German industrial invasion as the Reich's conglomerates continued to expand their own version of "Lebensraum" in Europe. But overall the Italian economy continued to suffer from it's Pre-War stagnation as they lose access to most of the World's markets, although there were growing ventures of the Italian companies towards Latin America, in both Brazil and Argentina. However, a great boon would come to the Italian economy in 1948 when the first oil fields in Libya were discovered in Zelten, a surveying expedition ordered by the Governor-General Italo Balbo and led by Geologist Ardito Desio discovered that the Regime was sitting on top of the largest oil reserves in Africa, far larger than the Romanian and Caspian fields combined. The expedition, which also discovered large aquifer networks under the Fezzan desert, had been temporarily halted by the beginning of the war, and now with it's continuation, Mussolini's discovery of the black gold would not just change the fate of Libya, but gave Italy the much-needed economical boom to revitalize it's economy and regime. Most importantly, the Reich's companies ended up prevented from engaging in the oil boom due to the Linz Pakt restrictions, which instructed that only Italian companies could exploit the Italian colonial resources. What was supposed to be just a token concession, proved to be a disastrous error in the long term, and Italy now possessed a powerful bargaining chip.

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The Italians were also not willing to completely serve the wills of the Pakt, and that was shown in the Levantine War and the treatment of Jews. The Italian control of Djbouti was a Sword of Damocles aiming at the heart of the Allies' only connection towards the Mediterranean sea. As it could potentially close down the Gulf of Aden to hostile ships, or at the very least threaten incoming armaments ships, as well as the Italian control over much of the Eastern Mediterranean such as Crete. However, Mussolini not just did allow the free passage of Allied munitions ships but there were even Italian weapons being delivered to Israel and Jordan in secret, while he publicly declared support for Saadeh's crusade alongside the rest of the Linz Pakt. Truth is that Mussolini feared Saadeh's planned expansionism into the Suez Canal, which would leave an ally of the Reich threatening one of the two passages outside of the Mediterranean and the Italian access to it's Eastern African colonies and the Indian Ocean. The matter of Antisemitism was another point of divergence between the Reich and the Impero: While antisemitic laws were enacted in 1938, there was a lack of enthusiasm by many, excluding Farinacci and his Germanophile clique, to actually pursue them. Balbo, for instance, condemned the Antisemitic laws and allowed Jewish settlements in Italian North Africa, even offering refugees a safe heaven in case Tel Aviv fell to Saadeh's troops. Ciano used his connections as Foreign minister to facilitate the emission of visas to those seeking to escape Festung Europa, and Italy was one of the few nations that did not turn in it's Jewish population to the Reich. It was a constant source of frustration to the SS that thousands of Jewish refugees fled towards Il Duce's dominion, which was still outside their jurisdiction, although Heydrich did use his office as head of the Interpol to arrest many who escaped into Italy and other Mediterranean nations. To Mussolini, this wasn't something he did out of love for the Jews, but as a demonstration of Italian independence, which both Portugal and Spain followed by shielding their local Jewish populations against the Reich. There was an informal "Bloc" between these three nations, and the relationship between Italy and France began to be repaired after the rise of Laval, the man who previously tried to ally with Mussolini in 1936.

Mussolini was getting older by the late 1940s, reaching the age of 66 by the end of the decade, yet he was still relatively healthy, and many expected him to continue leading Italy. However, the de jure leader of Italy continued to be the King of the "Italian Empire", a contradictory title as Victor Emmanuel III never took the Title of Emperor, and that was a different case. At the age of 79 on the 10th of November, a day before his 80th birthday, the King of Italy died of a Pulmonary Congestion, a grand state funeral was made with a procession attended by foreign leaders and royalty, it was one of the rare instances where the tensions between the nations were calmed down. King Edward VIII of Britain was caught in the awkward ceremony standing near the aging Führer Adolf Hitler in one of his last visits outside of the Reich, to make matters worse, the American Vice-President was at the ceremony, alongside the young Tsar Simeon II, the elderly Christian X of Denmark who would die just a few months afterwards, President Carmona of Portugal, Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain and others. As soon as the funeral ended, the visitors quickly left to their home nations, although Edward spent some time discussing with the new Italian leader Umberto II and Hitler met with Mussolini in the Palazzo Venezia. Umberto meet with Mussolini, and in a short meeting confirmed him once again as Prime Minister of Italy, taking in the Title of Emperor of the Italian Empire. Il Duce expected that the new King would be a figure as malleable as his father, however, the younger Monarch had his own ambitions, and while he played into Mussolini's game for now, he was certainly not the same beast as his father.

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