that was the conclusion I reached when I read about these incidents in Shirer’s “rise and fall of the Third Reich“. Of course, there are always multiple causes for any event, especially complex global events like World War II. but Mussolini’s war in Greece was sufficient to delay Hitler’s invasion of Russia, and the resulting weather was sufficient to defeat Hitler’s army. I didn’t realize until I read your article that these kind of screw ups were such a common occurrence in their relationship.

my take on this is that the Hitler/Mussolini Bromance was one of the few interactions in Hitler’s life where he genuinely cared for and respected another human being, and compromised his own interests because of it. He felt a tremendous debt to Mussolini, because he relied so heavily on Mussolini‘s fascism to shape the image and oratory of his own party. Consequently, he granted Mussolini tremendous slack and went out of his way to help him clean up his messes. A horrifying black comedy could be written about the codependence of these two deranged megalomaniacs.