Robert Mallett - The Italian Navy and Fascist Expansionism, 1935-1940

CASS SERIES: NAVAL POLICY AND HISTORY

ISSN 1366-9478

Series Editor: Holger Herwig

The series will publish, first and foremost, fresh quality manuscripts by research scholars in the general area of naval policy and history, without national or chronological limitations. Furthermore, it will from time to time issue collections of important articles as well as reprints of classic works.

First published in 1998 in Great Britain by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon,
Oxon, OX14 4RN

and in the United States of America by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS
270 Madison Ave,
New York NY 10016

Transferred to Digital Printing 2005

Website http://www.frankcass.com

Copyright 1998 R. Mallett

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:

Mallett, Robert

The Italian navy and fascist expansionism, 1935-40. - (Cass series. Naval policy and history ; no. 7)
1. Italy. Marina militare - History - 20th century 2. Fascism Italy 3. World War, 1939-1945 - Naval operations, Italian 4. Italy - History, Naval 5. Italy - Politics and government - 1922-1945
I. Title
359.0094509043

ISBN 0-7146-4878-7 (cloth)
ISBN 0-7146-4432-3 (paper)
ISSN 1366-9478
ISBN 978-1-1367-1323-1 (ePub)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Mallett, Robert, 1961-

The Italian Navy and fascist expansionism, 1935-40 / Robert Mallett.

p. cm. - (Cass series-naval policy and history, ISSN 1366-9478 ; 7)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7146-4878-7 (cloth). - ISBN 0-7146-4432-3 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-1367-1319-4 (Kindle)

1. Italy-History, Naval-20th century. 2. Italy. Marina-History-20th century. 3. Sea-power-Italy-History-20th century. 4. Fascism-Italy. 5. Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935-1936-Naval operations. 6. World War, 1939-1945-Naval operations, Italian. 7. World War, 1939-1945-Campaigns-Mediterranean Sea. I. Title.
II. Series.
DG571.M255 1998
359.0094509043-dc21

98-22477
CIP

Typeset by Vitaset, Paddock Wood, Kent

Cover illustration: Admiral Cavagnari (Italy, third right) and Grand Admiral Raeder (Germany, third from left), 1939. Photograph courtesy of Associated Press.

Printed and bound by Antony Rowe Ltd, Eastbourne

1.Admiral Domenico Cavagnari

2.The battleship Conte di Cavour

3.The battleship Giulio Cesare

4.The battleship Conte di Cavour

5.The battleship Vittorio Veneto

6.The battleship Vittorio Veneto

7.The heavy cruisers Pola, Zara, Gorizia and Fiume

8.The heavy cruisers Fiume, Zara, Pola and Gorizia

9.The heavy cruisers Fiume and Zara

10.The heavy cruiser Trieste

11.Italian warships at Naples

12.Italian submarines at Naples

13.The Italian fleet at Naples

14.The naval base at Taranto

15.Italian cruisers and destroyers at sea

16.A special motor torpedo-boatvi

From the moment of its demise - and that of its Duce, Benito Mussolini - Fascist Italys history has been the subject of controversy. Fierce debates still rage over the essential questions of Italian foreign policy, especially in the period after 1933, and over the manner in which it entered the Second World War: over whether Mussolini had a predetermined imperial programme that hinged on dominating the Mediterranean, which he had nursed at least since 1922 if not before, or whether he merely improvised policy according to the turns of events, and whether his forays on the European political scene after 1934 were merely the expression of a politica del bluff or were based on calculation - or miscalculation. Force clearly played a part in all this, and so the history of the policies pursued by the three armed forces under Fascism, and of the relationship among them and the designs of Mussolini, must lie close to the heart of any such enquiries. And yet detailed, archivally based and scholarly studies of these issues written by Italians are few and far between, and in English they have hitherto been virtually unknown. Now, at least as far as naval history is concerned, that lacuna exists no longer.

Fascist Italy was never a totalitarian state, but Mussolinis political control over his generals and admirals was broadly secure. In Admiral Domenico Cavagnari, his chief of naval staff, he had a reliable functionary whose career outlasted that of his fellow heads of service: Cavagnari took up his post as professional head of the navy in May 1934 and remained at his desk until November 1940, when he was unseated as a result of the disaster at Taranto. As this book makes clear, Cavagnari bore a personal responsibility for a number of crucial decisions that shaped the Italian naval inventory and thus greatly influenced its fighting capabilities in 1940. A battleship admiral with something of a fixation on Jutland, he may well have played the decisive role in blocking the construction of aircraft carriers, thereby exposing the fleet to the full consequences of the limitations of the Italian Air Force. Nor did he have any time for the mezzi insidiosi -human torpedoes and MAS torpedo-boats - that might have enabled Italy to compensate for its over-all naval inferiority in the Mediterranean. His apparent ability to hold to a political view that directly conflicted with the basic postulates of the strategic planning for which he was responsible, as was the case in the spring of 1935, suggests that Cavagnaris limitations went beyond matters to do with battleships and bases.

Like many of his fellow officers, Cavagnari embodied the mixture of caution and ambition which seems to have been one of the defining characteristics of the armed forces high command under Fascism. The reasons for caution were well founded: Italys was always the weaker navy when confronting Great Britain - with or without France - and its geo-strategical position in the Mediterranean (mirrored by its position in the Red Sea) meant that it was confined to a sea whose exits it did not control. The consequences, laid out for the first time here in detail, were that the Italian Navy, aware of its many limitations, sought to avoid a direct confrontation with the Royal Navy at the height of the Abyssinian crisis in 1935, and again in 1939-40. As a consequence of his detailed exploration of the strategic situation during these years, Robert Mallett is able to demonstrate that the Italian Navy would almost certainly have been worsted had it fought in the summer of 1935, or at the time of the Czech crisis in the summer of 1938.