Benito Mussolini Liveblogs World War II: June 10, 1941
Benito Mussolini:
June 10, 1941: Comrades, this is a memorable, solemn day. It is just a year since our entrance into the war. A year filled with events, giddy, historical developments. A year during which Italian soldiers on land, sea and in the sky fought heroically, mostly on the fronts of Europe and Africa.... No one doubts any longer, in the light of unquestionable published documents, that between Italy and Greece there should be a rendering of accounts. At Athens, newspapers begin finally to disclose the criminal backstage of Greek policy. Since August, 1940, I had proof that Greece no longer was keeping even the appearance of neutrality.... It is absolutely mathematical that in April, even if nothing had happened to change the Balkan situation, the Italian Army would have overcome and annihilated the Greek Army. It is necessary to state honestly that many Greek detachments fought courageously.... It is sad to affirm, furthermore, that the Greek Army would not have held for six months without the aid of England. The Greek Army was fed, supplied and armed by the English. Aviation was English. Anti-aircraft and artillery also were English. Not less than 60,000 English were in services and special groups flanking the Greek Army.
Material aid furnished by Turkey was modest. Its value did not amount to 2,000,000 Turkish pounds.
While Italian troops were pushing to liquidate the Greek Army Yugoslavia revealed through a coup d’etat its real sentiments. The Axis war against Yugoslavia, therefore, was rendered inevitable. Axis armies acted together with lightning rapidity. While the Second Army of the Alps was moving down along the Dalmatian Coast with forced marches which tried the resistance of our soldiers, the Greeks, with a ruse in the authentic style of Ulysses tried at the end to hold us on the Albanian frontier by offering an armistice to the Germans and not to us.... Regarding Yugoslavia, it revealed almost immediately the inconsistency and, it may be said falsity, of its state organism in the third mosaic State artificially created at Versailles. With exclusively anti-Italian functions it falls into pieces at the first shock. The Yugoslav Army for which Paris and the Little Entente circle had created a reputation of invincibility . . . was put out of action with the first blows. The English still made a few appearances on battlefields, but... found Hellenic soil also burned under their feet and they abandoned-fleeing by the usual sea route-dying Greece....
If Spain and Turkey are out of the fighting there is one transoceanic State which seems likely to enter it. It is well that it be known that American intervention does not bother us excessively. A specific declaration of war would not change the present situation, which is one of de facto war.... When it is desired to be called a dictator in the pure classical meaning of the word, Sulla is cited. Sulla appears to us a modest amateur compared with Delano Roosevelt.
By agreement with the German command, almost all of Greece, including Athens, will be occupied by Italian troops. This lays a very serious problem before us, especially from the point of view of food, but we shall face it seeking to alleviate as far as possible miseries inflicted upon the Greek people by their governors subordinated to London and having in mind that Greece re-enters into Italy’s vital Mediterranean space...
