Compare and contrast the foreign policies of Hitler and Mussolini.

• Antagonism to the Paris Peace Settlement/Versailles
• Germany treated unfairly/harshly
• Italy not receiving what they thought they had deserved
• They both had aims of the establishment of an Empire.
• Hitler wanted to rule the world or at least make Germany great again – lebensraum
• Mussolini wanted to rebuild Italy to be fit for a roman empire
• Both wanted autarky, self-sufficient
• Reference could be made to the two leaders’ attitudes to, and involvement, with the following:
• The Geneva Disarmament Conference 1933
• When Hitler became chancellor he left the Geneva naval conference and LoN – unfair that Germany could not rearm when France could
• Italy not interested in reducing its military spending
• The Stresa Front 1935;
• Was against Hitler’s revision of Versailles (rearmament)
• Italy was a member though not happy with Britain (naval)
• Abyssinia 1935:
• Italy invades and the LoN imposes sanctions. Germany, though, who was not a member of the LoN continued its trading with Italy.
• Spain 1936;
• Both Germany and Italy intervened in the Spanish civil war on the side of the Nationalists
• The Rome-Berlin Axis 1936;
• A commercial and friendship treaty. Start of close relationship between the two countries which ultimately led to Italy leaving LoN
• The Anschluss 1938;
• This time Mussolini did not stop Hitler as he had done in 1934 – even told Hitler in 1936 that he was happy for Austria to become a client state if Germany.
• Munich Conference 1938;
• Mussolini helped set up the Munich Conference to mediate between Germany and France and Britain over the crisis of Czechoslovakia and Sudetenland
• However, Hitler acted and occupied Czechoslovakia without informing Mussolini
• Aggression in 1939
•  In 1939 Italy tried to break free of being the junior partner in the relationship with Germany and increased its aggression to gain more power. Invaded Albania.
• Pact of Steel 1939
• Military alliance between Germany and Italy. More to Germany’s advantage as he was planning a war, but Mussolini did though hope that the German forces would support him in future Italian expansion 
• Campaigns in the Second World War in western and eastern Europe and North Africa.
• Mussolini’s campaigns during WWII were disastrous and needed support from German forces, who had more success in their campaigns
• The key date is 1936 as this is when Mussolini broke with Britain and France, choosing to ally with Hitler instead, although the aims of the leaders had different motivations.
• Historians
• Germany:
• A. Hillgruber: “Mein Kampf was stage-by-stage plan for Hitler”
• A. Adamtwaite: “Hossbach Memorandum is a guide of Hitler’s foreign ideas”
• Italy: 
• R. Bosworth: ‘even at its most aggressive, Fascist Italy behaved as though it were a nineteenth century power, replicating the land-grab for Africa indulged by the Greater Powers at the time'