Once more unto the breach ( 1941-43 part 1)
For the entire duration of 1940 in all the developed nations of the world, preparation for a new general conflict abounded while at the same time feebler and feebleer attempt to diplomatically keep the peace continued.
Frantic attempt to quickly upgrade the military equipment and enlarge the armed forces, together with massive civil defense exercises and the build up of warstock material were the norm of the day. In this race, the apparent ruler of Europe, the German Empire seemed a distant second as due to their unwillingness to fully burn their economy in such effort they started their rearming attempt later than the Entente and with less drive. The Germans main allies were not in a much better position, as Austria-Hungary united the lack of desire for such expediture (a tradition for the extremely spending avoiding Hapsburg burocracy) with internal instability, as the increasily authoritatian rule of Wien and the Magyarization effort of Budapest caused many minorities to protest even violenty against the government. The Ottoman Empire and the Tsardom of Bulgaria instead weren’t interested in any conflict as their interest were not menaced (or at least not enough to justify a very costly war) and the leaderships of this nations honestly thought that remaining neutral was an option if the Entente doesn’t attack them directly.
By the middle of 1941, even with the continous declarations of peacefull intention by everyone, only the king of the fools believed that war was not imminent.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was the internal political confusion in Germany due to the death of Emperor Wilhelm II and the ascension to the throne of his son; both Paris and London looked at the situation as the perfect occasion to give to Berlin an ultimatum, so the 2 June 1941 the French ambassador in Berlin gave to the German Prime Minister Kurt Von Schleicher a message from King Charles XI, this stated that unless the territory of Alsace-Lorraine were not given back to his rightfull owner, the French nation will have no other choice that declare war to take back what was hers, this declaration was also supported by the Russian and British ambassadors. As expected, the next day, in an unanimous vote the Reichstag refused such request and so the plague of war again was free to roam the european continent and even beyond.
The 4th of June, President of the council of ministers Giacomo Matteotti in the name of the italian government and people declared his ‘non belligerance’ in the current conflict and that the sacred inviolability of the national border will have been defended with all the necessary mean.
Like in the first Great War, neutrality don’t shielded the italian population by the consequences of the war as the trade become difficult not only for the direct peril of the fight between the two side but also due to a combination of hoarding of resources by both alliance soto increase their reserve and deny them to the enemy but also a slowing of the transports thanks to the belligerant taking the right to inspect and control even the neutral ships in case they transport material deemed to be destinated to their enemy. This last fact brought the italian government to send many protest and complains to all capitals...but if someone want to be fair, it was more a Quadruplice Alliance policy to be very strict with italian ships than an Entente one, as the latter enjoied much better relations with Rome and still hoped to bring her on her side (and in any case she was a great sources of workers and supply).
To contrastate this, the just formed government of national unity, decided to start immediately a politic of rationing many goods (food and coal in particular), giving to any italian the dreaded ‘carta annonaria’ a document that authorize the buying of food and other product in specific quantities so to better control the situation, such piece of paper will become the symbol of the period for many italians.
The great conundrum of Italy was again that they needed raw material to feed the industry for export (on both sides) but also support and feed his population; so while the best material was given to the factories that supplies the belligerant there were the necessity to support the rest of the nation. Luckyly one of the biggest export of Italy during this period was his own population, as both France and Germany requested a lot of guest workers to man their factories and farms while their own men were occupied in the fight. This at least relieved a lot of pressure from Italy (lot less mounth to feed and the money sent back home was very important) but hardly ended his problems and sufference.
To resolve or at least make the situation more bearable for the population a lot of initiative were started, like the creation of the ‘orti di guerra’ (basically the use of every piece of land available to grow food, from the land of the pubblic park to the terrance of private house to even bathtub) that were cultivated by private citizen or pubblic association, the treshing were done in the square of the cities in very patriottic manifestation and usually with the blessing of the harvest by the local priest or bishop. But the measure that together with the ‘carta annonaria’ really is intrinsecally associated to the period is the so-called Autarchy as all the combined effort of the government in coordination with the private sector to make Italy as independent as possible by imported material that was difficult to obtain in this trying times. That was attempted by both trying to increase the national production and support the use of alternative like rice, fish and rabbit even where it was not common but also to replace many goods with the so-called ‘surrogati’ like using barley or cicory to create a beverage to use instead of coffe, karkadè instead of tea and the use of synthetic replacement for cotton and gasoline. In general the biggest advantage that the autarchic measure created was a great expansion of the chemical sector, a general modernization of many industries and infrastructure (especially transport), but the fruit of all this were enjoyed by the italian population principally in the postwar period.
What greatly helped in the immediate was the closer link between Italy and the other neutral nation of Europe (Switzerland, Sweden, Greece and ironically Spain) by coordinating their effort in transporting goods in collective convoy and unified acquisition and increasing the trade between each other. This links become very important after the end of the war, when Italy found itself, almost by chance, at the center of a little block of neutral nations that were not very keen at enter or return in the German sphere of interest.
