Currently reading books about this guy. Not that bad of a leader,

>>2814847

Choosing to side with Hitler was undoubtedly his greatest mistake. Although in fairness, he had told Hitler that Italy wasn't remotely prepared to fight another war yet. Hitler went all Leroy Jenkins and screwed everything up.

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>>2814847
comes into power in 1922, has literal decades to improve army and economy, 1939 comes along, army is useless again.

>>2814847
He just should have stayed neutral, like Franco.
His idea's of restoring Roman Empire were retarded.

>>2814863
ITALY HAZ HER EMPIRE.

>>2814847
He got btfo by Greece (i.e. the true Romans)

>>2814863
>He just should have stayed neutral

Could he?

>>2814847
>quite a decent
Matteotti would disagree. He was just another shitty evil dictator.

>>2814879

Franco stayed neutral and nobody ever bothered him.

>>2814847
If Mussolini had decided to remain neutral when Hitler started sperging out, could he have avoided the war altogether?

Did Hitler respect him enough to not consider his neutrality treacherous? Judging from their interactions I'd say no.

Once Hitler had real power and was able to start his invasions, he treated Italy as nothing more than a means to an end.

>>2814847
He's literally a cartoon villain.

>>2814857
>another war
Are you shtting me? He decided to invade Greece on his own. He declared war on France and the UK knowing that in order to have his "New Roman Empire" he would have to remove them from Egypt, Tunisia,etc.
You're all idiots.

>>2814909

Hitler considered pretty much any right-wing dictator who didn't side with him to be a traitor. He was furious with Franco throughout the entire war, although he couldn't really do anything about it.

>>2814867
>the true Romans
Uh no sweetie, that'd be Russia

>>2814900
At least the Spaniards fought their civil war very recently and could not have been less ready for another war

>>2814943
That's a funny way of spelling Turkey

>>2814927
He thought UK and France would soon sue for peace in 1940, so he could get some territory in the peace treaty that followed. He didn't actually expected that the war would go on for long.

>>2814959
Well surely he is a, dare I say it >bad leader.

>>2814965
He was a decent leader, just got too eager and went way over his head and got really unlucky in Greece and Egypt which made him a permanent Hitler's bitch.

>>2814972

>Gets country involved in two world wars
>Good leader

And yes, Mussolini was instrumental in getting Italy involved in WW1.

>>2814972
The economy was OBJECTIVELY worse under him than matteolei (people felt better off though)

>tfw political uniforms will never be back in style.

>>2814900
Hitler didn't want him to join to begin with

>>2814959
Like Hitler (as we know from the Hitler/Mannerheim recordings) he failed to grasp how much war materiel and money FDR would send Britain and the USSR.

>>2815058

Then why did Hitler send aid for Franco earlier on?

Did he even deserve the death he got?

>>2815068

That depends entirely on your view of the death penalty.

>>2815068
No
He just should have been exiled, not tortured, beaten, castrated and hung.

>>2814847
His mistake was joining the war too early despite his generals saying that the army wouldnt be ready for war for atleast another year

>>2815092
>>2815068
he had already been dead when they mutilated his body. partisans had executed him the previous day by firing squad

>>2815067
If you mean during the civil war, it was to make sure the communists didn't get Spain. But Franco's Spain was in bad shape due to the destruction of the civil war. Hitler knew that having Spain enter the war would result in Germany having to defend it like they did with Italy, and the allies would have invaded from Italy, normandy, and Spain. Spain is just a big liability.

Also hitler disliked Franco. Hitler talked shit about him to Mussolini

I know the /pol/tards will come out of the woodwork for this, but another way he was a bad leader was his betrayal off the Italian Jews. Jewish Italians had in fact been a great source of support for Mussolini, yet when Hitler came calling he sold them out like a coward.

>>2815244

German Jews would have supported Hitler as well if he hadn't been so damn insistent on making them the designated scape-goat. Plenty of Jews fought for Germany in WW1 and would have likely done it again if they hadn't been persecuted.

>>2815262
I honestly doubt it. Jews are part of a large psuedo-hivemind designed to destroy nations and support judeo-bolsheivik regimes worldwide.

There's no way they'd support Hitler

>>2815293
What if I told you that every Jew is just one person, but they use Judeo-bolshevik-banking to seem like many. Israel is just one jew

>>2815138
>The Metting at Hendaye
Hitler wanted Franco in, to cut the Brits off from the Mediterranean

>>2815321
But the negatives of having another possible front far outweighs the British entering the Mediterranean. If Spain had joined, the war would've presumably ended in 1944

What did he even achieve? Only thing I can really think of is draining the Pontine Marshes and stopping malaria.

>>2815378

He made the trains run on time?

>>2815244
Didn't he only do that after the establishment of the Italian Socialist Republic, which was just a German puppet state?

I remember watching a documentary where Mussolini was quoted as saying he never doubted Italian jews' dedication to Italy.

After Mussolini was ousted and the ISR was established, he was even more of a puppet than he had previously been. It could probably be argued that the only reason he sent the Jews away was because the SS were the only ones really in charge at that point.

While we're on the subject, is there any possible timeline where Hitler surrenders most of his conquered territories and Germany remains Nazi after the war?

Or did anyone really care if Hitler surrendered at that point? Were the Soviets going to steam roll him no matter what he said or gave up?

If Mussolini decided to oppose the Nazi's after they assasinated the Austrian Chancellor, could he have gotten Britain or France or anybody to help in a war against Germany?

>>2815435

None that Hitler would realistically agree with. If someone else was in power I could see Germany end up keeping Czechoslovakia/western Poland after the fall of France, maybe even installing a Fascist regime in France to further legitimize Fascism/Nazism, but that would be the best possibility.

>>2815435
>Were the Soviets going to steam roll him no matter what he said or gave up?

The Soviet invasion was inevitable sooner or later.

If Hitler was smart, like he wasn't he'd kiss some Frenchie & British ass and convince them that they need to stand up together against Stalin and the USSR and shit all the blame for everything on to the communists instead of on the Jews, The Germans wouldn't mind they just needed SOMEONE to blame and a commie is as good of a target as a Jew.

>>2815418
You had places like Denmark that managed to save their captured Jews despite being under Nazi occupation, and Mussolini even had the additional advantage of being an ostensible ally. He could have saved plenty of innocents by dragging his feet and making it a general hassle for the Germans.

>>2815321
You guys forget 200,000 Spanish served in the Blue Legion.

>>2814847
Maybe

Love sources on great leaders.

>>2816223
>The Soviet invasion was inevitable sooner or later.
Why and says who? Germany and USSR should have had an alliance against the liberal West and just had a cold war with each other after the West had lost.

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In short I would argue that he made an excellent domestic leader but his diplomatic flip - flopping and obsession with literally recreating the Roman Empire screwed everything up.

>>2814949
That's a funny way of spelling Germanics of sub-saharan African descent living in the Holy Roman Empire

>>2814847
>Not that bad of a leader,

Not that good either indeed he is pretty meh by the standards of that era. Although for awhile he displayed a combination of dipolmatic greatness and luck which quickly petered out.

>To be honest the biggest mistake he ever committed is being on the losing side.

Or destroying Italian agriculture out of a failed desire for aurtarky or getting into a pointless and stupid war with Ethiopia that did nothing but drain Italy of blood and gold or joining a war before his country and military were even half ready in an attempt to get parts of France or killing syndicalism and corporatism in an attempt to hide the fact he was only the second most powerful man in Italy or abandoning his skillful manipulation of France, Germany and the UK ect.

>>2815058
That changed real quickly though

>>2814863
He should have stood against Germany in 1938 and galvanize the Allies into squashing the little Nazi bug before it could become a true threat to Europe.

>>2815378
He was the lead singer in Pink Floyd for a while (1921-1924)

>>2816155
Yes, the allies offered Italy to join them up to the day Mussolini joined Hitler. The problem for Mussolini was that fascism was about seizing the global means of production from the bourgeois nations, England, Germany, France, America, etc. So he could go against National Socialists and join the bourgeois northern nations, or hope that Hitler gives him a slice of the pie. He made the wrong move, should've done a Franco and played both sides.

>>2817806
yep

>>2817724
The Soviet Union is literally the nation of the Devil, only a madman would choose it over Britain and France.

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>>2819300
>only a madman
I mean...
If he hadn't had such an autistic hatred of Slavs and other forms of socialism then he might have won.

>>2819309
Slavs are the natural enemy of human civilization.

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>>2814863
i agree

he already got Ethiopia, whole of Lybia and Albania, he should've just stopped there and kept friendly relations with his former allies France and Britain, he knew they ran the show, he should've used them to his advantage and not go full "italy is stronk independent empire who don't need no anglo", he was thinking like a german instead of a sneaky italian

>>2814909
He probably would have invaded Italy before Russia to 'Save the ethnic Germans in south Tyrol'

>>2817862
That's a funny war of spelling Anglo-Saxons

>>2819466

> t. anti-white, anti-european, ((shitskin))

>>2814879
Yes, he could.
He explicitly stated multiple times that he joined the war to claim even more colonies, thinking that this war would have been over in a matter of months.

>>2821128
t. Feodor Dikovskii

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>>2814847

>regime built on the bludgeon and castor oil
>look up cator oil "torture"

was mussolini and the italian fascists basically into scat?

>>2819309
>autistic hatred of Slavs
Fuck off Grzegrozgsz, Poles are not Slavs.

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>>2814909
Hitler loved Mussolini ever since he came to power. Half the shit he did before prison was inspired by him and all the shit he did after prison was inspired by him. He wrote about him in his book. He took a huge political risk in constantly renouncing SouthTyrol.

Hitler would have respected Italian Nuetrality as long as the allies did. The only reason he didn't respect neutrality was in cases of military necessity.