ABSTRACT
Benito Mussolini declared war on France and Great Britain on 10 June 1940. For the Italian army, it was war again, the third time in the last five years. In late 1935, Mussolini launched the invasion of Ethiopia, and in the summer of 1936, he threw Italy into the Spanish Civil War. The invasion of Ethiopia was the first Fascist war, and arguably, the most popular war of Italian history since unification. Mussolini’s desire for a national, all-out war of aggression against Ethiopia, expressed in a secret memorandum in December 1934, could become a reality; it was just of question of time. Ethiopia and Spain did not only consume money: they also absorbed an extraordinary amount of weapons and equipment. In June 1940, the service had around 12,000 guns that served during the First World War, and only 2,497 guns manufactured after 1930.
