Why did Mussolini ally with the G*rmans? Why didn't he just stay neutral like Franco?

>invade Ethiopia, gassing thousands against conventions, get a slap on the wrist from the League of Nations

>Germany supported italy

Germans literally gave the Ethiopians weapons and shit because the Italians publicly protested Anschluss.

>Be japan
>Fabricate railway incident
>invade China
>League of Nations protests
>just leaves lmao.

It seemed like an easy win.

Britain and France were on the run, Italy was geographically well positioned to expand into French North Africa and British Egypt. Mussolini just didn't account for Italian armies falling apart at the slightest sign of resistance.

Just like Hitler, Mussolini was great at doing the whole political cult leader bit but shit at statesmanship, diplomacy, geopolitics, grand strategy, and so on. These were people who had talent at coming to national power, but lacked talent when it came to using that power.
To put it bluntly, both Mussolini and Hitler sold people a load of shit but couldn't deliver, and made mistakes that not only seriously injured their nations, but also literally cost both of them their lives.
However, this does not explain the specific nature of Mussolini's stupidity. Hitler was a genuine fanatic. Not necessarily in the way he presented himself to be, but in some way. It is possible to imagine Mussolini actually enjoying himself with a woman. It is very difficult to imagine Hitler doing this. Mussolini was a career politician, granted, and had been a socialist at one point, but he lacked a certain edge that Hitler possessed. Had Mussolini been Hitler, I'm not sure that he would have ever been taken captive alive. I suspect that perhaps Hitler exerted some charismatic power on Mussolini. Mussolini, the original fascist, struggled to remain on top but eventually succumbed to the magnetic pull of Hitler's greater fanaticism, that tremendous almost demonic charisma that many people associate with the Hitler experience, and which retains a certain pull even to our day despite the utter failure, in every possible sense, of his leadership.
In short, Mussolini turned out to be a beta and succumbed to the homoerotic pull of Hitler.
In any case, that's my intuition. I must admit I do not have the answers.

Let's invade to stalingrad they said. It will be easy they said.

"You only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down,"

The question should be what Hitler hoped to gain from allying with fucking Italy

It helped the Nazi myth to ally with the OG fascists, and Hitler was looking for any allies he could get. Well, any allies he could get without abandoning his ambitions, I should say.

they knew, Italy warned Germany that they weren't ready for a war lacking both equipment and proper training.
Mussolini only entered because he bet on the war ending soon and didn't want to be cut out of the peace talks.

...

More like put troops on the border and forced Hitler to desist

What blows my fucking mind is how he and Hitler only ever invaded the countries most likely to turn fascist themselves.

Daily reminder that Mussolini is literally in heaven
gloria.tv/article/JnGGTMcAdt8U1UWtocbnkCHAN

Italy was still afraid of an invasion from Austria or Yugoslavia (they even made a plan with Hungary to outflank Yugoslavia in case they tried to invade Italy) and they were also worried about loosing Eritrea to the french or the anglos (though it was unlikely, since while Italy thought of it as a great way to expand their economy, the other countries simply saw it as what it was: a useless wasteland), but by allying with germany all those worries disappeared, as other countries would be too afraid of causing a war with Germany by attacking Italy.
There was also the Tripartite Pact, but it was all talk and no action.
As for why Mussolini decided to join the war by invading France in 1940, it was because Italy saw it as a great chance to get some free gains, since France was about to fall, but crossing the Alps guarded by the french proved quite lethal.

Hitler got a pass for years you dumb nigger, for literally occupying Czechoslovakia among other things.
Mussolini declared war on Greece in 1940, when war with Germany was well underway.

You're also forgetting the thousands of civilian deaths caused by Italy in Yugoslavia, and that the UK and USA played devil's advocate and supported Italy while giving cover to its war criminals (who had the grace of dying in their own beds in their comfy homes) as they saw it as a more valuable country against a possible soviet invasion (operation Gladio) than Yugoslavia.
They're also responsible for the whole "italiani, brava gente" stereotype pushed in the balkans and the rest of the world, which saw Italy as yet another victim of the inhumane nazi regime.
Many journalists and historians were interrupted during their researches for Italy's war crimes, until the 2.000.

Probably still butthurt that Italy was jewed out of its promised rewards for the first world war by the allies.

>which saw Italy as yet another victim of the inhumane nazi regime
I mean, they kinda become victims later, too. It was their own fault though

>dictatorship
>it's their fault the dictator was retarded

>plan to capitulate and switch sides
>krauts catch wind of this and decide to solve this problem rather swiftly
Italy a good boy, he dindu nuffin

Mussolini had ambitions which needed the defeat of Britain and France (wanting Egypt, Corsica, Tunisia) and he believed he would essentially just have to join the war to get what he wanted and when he saw Germany's quick success he feared missing out and joined. Also the negative reactions by Britain and France to Ethiopia drove him to Germany and he did feel confident in taking them because of his success in Ethiopia and Spain.

I just assumed we were talking about the general population

>switch sides
Italy quite literally split in two and went into a civil war.
Granted, the RNS was a puppet state.

Italy would have been punished too if only the world wasn't too busy laughing at their pathetic attempts to build an empire.

Why did Mussolini only want to expand in Europe and Africa? Was he not interested in Asia besides maybe the Middle East

"it is humiliating to sit idly when others are writing history, it matters little who wins"- mussolini

I'd rather we didn't end up looking as the incompetent, generic imperialistic western faggots who only care about expanding their territory and waging war against other countries.

Any good books on the subject? I'd rather they be in English, my Italian is not good enough to read a military treaty yet.

And attacking your historic friend France. Didn't Benny say that he needed a few thousand dead men to sit on the negotiating table when he attacked France? What a fucking asshole.

Partly because he wanted to grab ez clay
Partly because he was worried about Italy looking like an unreliable ally two wars in a row
Partly to have greater influence and ability to reign in Hitler's excesses in a post war world

He likely would have been a major player when Hitler eventually either died or became incapacitated and the Wehrmacht rose against the NSDAP structures. That's assuming the Axis won the war of course.