Italy Key Dates

Key dates:

• Italian involvement in Spanish Civil War - 1936

• Rome-Berlin Axis - 1936

  • Friendly pact

• Ant-Comintern Pact - 1937

  • Italy, Germany, Japan: two-front attack on the Soviets for fear of Communism - connection to the Tripartite Pact of 1940

• Italy leaves League of Nations - 1937

• Stresa front - 1935

  • Alliance between France, Britain and Italy aimed against Nazi Germany*

• Invasion of Albania - 1939

• The Pact of Steel - 1939

  • Military pact: If Germany goes to war, Italy goes with them

• Italy refusing to join the war - 1939

  • Mussolini had said that Italy wouldn’t be ready for war for another 3 years (they couldn’t afford it due to Abyssinian, Albanian and Spanish wars costing them money already), but discovered that Hitler was planning to invade Poland.

• Italy joing the war - 1940

  • Joined after 9 months of war

*Mussolini and Hitler’s dynamic changed often during the 1940s, as it was a sort of power struggle between the two.

• Policy of Appeasement: Hoare-Laval Pact of 1935

  • Initially secret pact between France and Britain to appease Hitler and Mussolini and bring an end to the Second Italo-Ethiopian War