Eighty years ago, jealousy between the dictators helps spread the war into the Mediterranean

In one of the war’s most pointless follies Italy launched an invasion of Greece. It is hard to find any material justification for the move, on strategical or economic grounds. It is just conceivable that Mussolini imagined that Greece would cede the territory that he was demanding – on no legal or historical basis whatever – and grant him a bloodless victory. Otherwise it was aggression for the sake of aggression. The invasion of Albania in 1939 could - just – be viewed as a step to cement control of the Adriatic and exert pressure on Yugoslavia but Greece was no more than a senseless southern expansion of the Italian “empire.” The decision was in part due to Mussolini’s sense of inferiority towards Hitler, whom he felt subordinated Italy to German expansionary moves without consultation. Here he could play the same trick on Hitler. Futile as it was, the invasion of Greece expanded the geographical scope of the war into both the Balkans, which had been uneasily peaceful, and the M