Editing Victor Emmanuel III (section)

===World War II===
====Pact with Germany====
Under the terms of the [[Pact of Steel]] signed on 22 May 1939, which was an offensive and defensive alliance with Germany, Italy would have been obliged to follow Germany into war in 1939.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 136}} As the Pact of Steel was signed, the German Foreign Minister, [[Joachim von Ribbentrop]], told Mussolini that there would be no war until 1942 or 1943, but the Italian ambassador in Berlin, Baron [[Bernardo Attolico]], warned Rome that the information he was hearing from sources in the German government suggested that Hitler was intent on seeing the Danzig crisis escalate into war that year.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 136}}  Between 11 and 13 August 1939, the Italian Foreign Minister, Count [[Galeazzo Ciano]], visited Hitler at the Berghof, and learned for the first time that Germany was definitely going to invade Poland later that same summer.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 137}}  Mussolini at first was prepared to follow Germany into war in 1939, but was blocked by Victor Emmanuel.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 137}}  At a meeting with Count Ciano on 24 August 1939, the king stated that "we are absolutely in no condition to wage war"; the state of the ''Regio Esercito'' was "pitiful"; and since Italy was not ready for war, it should stay out of the coming conflict, at least until it was clear who was winning.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 137}}  More importantly, Victor Emmanuel stated that as the king of Italy he was the supreme commander-in-chief, and he wanted to be involved in any "supreme decisions", which in effect was claiming a right to veto any decision Mussolini might make about going to war.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 137}}  On 25 August, Ciano wrote in his diary that he informed a "furiously warlike" Mussolini that the king was against Italy going to war in 1939, forcing ''Il Duce'' to concede that Italy would have to declare neutrality.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 137}}  Unlike in Germany where officers from 1934 onward took an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler, officers of the ''Regio Esercito'', ''Regina Marina'' and the ''Regia Aeronautica'' all took their oaths of loyalty to the king, not Mussolini.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 139}}  The vast majority of the Italian officers in all three services saw Victor Emmanuel as opposed to Mussolini as the principal locus of their loyalty, allowing the king to check decisions by Mussolini that he disapproved of.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 139}}

Italy declared neutrality in September 1939, but Mussolini always made it clear that he wanted to intervene on the side of Germany provided that this would not strain Italy's resources too much (the costs of the wars in Ethiopia and Spain had pushed Italy to the verge of bankruptcy by 1939).{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | pp = 146–148}}  On 18 March 1940, Mussolini met Hitler at a summit at the Brenner Pass and promised him that Italy would soon enter the war.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 148}}  Victor Emmanuel had powerful doubts about the wisdom of going to war, and at one point in March 1940 hinted to Ciano that he was considering dismissing Mussolini as Ciano wrote in his diary: "the King feels that it may become necessary for him to intervene at any moment to give things a different direction; he is prepared to do this and to do it quickly".{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 151}}  Victor Emmanuel hoped that a vote against Italy entering the war would be registered in the Fascist Grand Council, as he knew that the ''[[Gerarca|gerarchi]]'' [[Cesare Maria De Vecchi]], [[Italo Balbo]] and [[Emilio De Bono]] were all anti-war, but he refused to insist upon calling the Grand Council as a precondition for giving his consent to declaring war.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 287}}  On 31 March 1940, Mussolini submitted to Victor Emmanuel a long memorandum arguing that Italy to achieve its long-sought ''spazio vitale'' had to enter the war on the Axis side sometime that year.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | pp = 149–150}} However, the king remained resolutely opposed to Italy entering the war until late May 1940, much to Mussolini's intense frustration.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | pp = 150–151}}  At one point, Mussolini complained to Ciano that there were two men, namely Victor Emmanuel and [[Pope Pius XII]], who were preventing him from doing the things that he wanted to do, leading to state he wanted to "blow" the Crown and Catholic Church "up to the skies".{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 153}}

====Joining the Axis====
Victor Emmanuel was a cautious man, and he always consulted all of the available advisors before making a decision, in this case, the senior officers of the armed forces who informed him of Italy's military deficiencies.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | pp = 288–289}}  On 10 May 1940, Germany launched a [[Battle of France|major offensive into the Low Countries and France]], and as the Wehrmacht continued to advance into France, the king's opposition to Italy entering the war started to weaken by the second half of May 1940.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 153}}  Mussolini argued all through May 1940 that since it was evident that Germany was going to win the war that here was an unparalleled chance for Italy to make major gains at the expense of France and Britain that would allow Italy to become the dominant power in the Mediterranean.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | pp = 152–153}} On 1 June 1940, Victor Emmanuel finally gave Mussolini his permission for Italy to enter the war, though the king retained the supreme command while only giving Mussolini power over political and military questions.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 153}}  The delay between the king's permission to enter the war and the declaration of war was caused by Mussolini's demand that he have the powers of supreme command, an attempt to take away a royal prerogative that Victor Emmanuel rejected, and was finally settled by the compromise of giving Mussolini operational command powers.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 291}}

On 10 June 1940, ignoring advice that the country was unprepared, Mussolini made the fatal decision to have Italy enter [[World War II]] on the side of [[Nazi Germany]]. Almost from the beginning, disaster followed disaster. The first Italian offensive, [[Italian invasion of France|an invasion of France]] launched on 17 June 1940, ended in complete failure, and only the fact that France signed an armistice with Germany on 22 June, followed by another armistice with Italy on 24 June allowed Mussolini to present it as a victory.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 160}}  Victor Emmanuel sharply criticized the terms of the [[Franco-Italian Armistice]], saying he wanted Italy to occupy [[French protectorate of Tunisia|Tunisia]], [[Corsica]], and [[Nice]], though the fact the armistice allowed him to proclaim a victory over France was a source of much pleasure to him.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 292}}  In 1940 and 1941, Italian armies in [[Operation Compass|North Africa]] and in [[Greco-Italian War|Greece]] suffered humiliating defeats. Unlike his opposition over going to war with major powers like France and Britain (who might actually defeat Italy), Victor Emmanuel blessed Mussolini's plans to invade Greece in the fall of 1940, saying he expected the Greeks to collapse as soon as Italy invaded.{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 175}}  Through the ''carabinieri'' (para-military police), Victor Emmanuel was kept well informed of the state of public opinion and from the autumn of 1940 onward received reports that the war together with the Fascist regime were becoming extremely unpopular with the Italian people.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 295}}  When Mussolini made Marshal [[Pietro Badoglio]] the scapegoat for the failure of the invasion of Greece and sacked him as Chief of the General Staff in December 1940, Badoglio appealed to the king for help.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 294}}  Victor Emmanuel refused to help Badoglio, saying that Mussolini would manage the situation just always as he had in the past.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 294}}  In January 1941, the king admitted to his aide-de-camp, General [[Paolo Puntoni]], that war was not going well and the Fascist regime was becoming very unpopular, but he had decided to keep Mussolini on as a prime minister because there was no replacement for him.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 294}}  Because the king had supported Fascism, he feared that to overthrow the Fascist system would mean the end of the monarchy as the anti-Fascist parties were all republican.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 294}}

During the [[invasion of Yugoslavia]] in April 1941, Victor Emmanuel moved to a villa owned by the Pirzio Biroli family at [[Brazzacco]] in order to be close to the front.<ref>{{cite book |last=Cervi |first=Mario |author-link= Mario Cervi |title=The Hollow Legions. Mussolini's Blunder in Greece, 1940–1941 |trans-title= Storia della guerra di Grecia: ottobre 1940 – aprile 1941 |others=trans. Eric Mosbacher |year=1972 |publisher= Chatto & Windus |location=London |isbn= 0-7011-1351-0 |page= 279}}</ref> In May 1941, Victor Emmanuel gave permission to his unpopular cousin, [[Prince Aimone, Duke of Aosta |Prince Aimone]], to become [[List of rulers of Croatia#King of the Independent State of Croatia (1941–1943)|King of Croatia]] under the title Tomislav II, in an attempt to get him out of Rome, but Aimone frustrated this ambition by never going to [[Independent State of Croatia|Croatia]] to receive [[Crown of Zvonimir|his crown]].{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 294}}  During a tour of the new provinces that were annexed to Italy from Yugoslavia, Victor Emmanuel commented that Fascist policies towards the Croats and Slovenes were driving them towards rebellion, but chose not to intervene to change the said policies.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 294}}  On 22 June 1941, Germany launched [[Operation Barbarossa]], the invasion of the Soviet Union. Mussolini had the king issue a declaration of war, and sent an [[Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia|Italian expeditionary force to the Eastern Front]], through Victor Emmanuel was later to claim that he wanted only a "token" force to go to the Soviet Union, rather than the 10 divisions that Mussolini actually sent.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 296}}

In late 1941, [[Italian East Africa]] was lost. The loss of Italian East Africa together with the defeats in North Africa and the Balkans caused an immense loss of confidence in Mussolini's ability to lead, and many Fascist ''gerarchi'' such as [[Emilio De Bono]] and [[Dino Grandi]] were hoping by the spring of 1941 that the king might sack him in order to save the Fascist regime.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | pp = 294–295}} In the summer of 1941, the ''carabinieri'' generals told the king that they were prepared to have the ''carabinieri'' serve as a strike force for a coup against Mussolini, saying if the war continued, it was bound to cause a revolution that would sweep away both the Fascist regime and the monarchy.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 296}}  Victor Emmanuel rejected this offer, and in September 1941, when Count Ciano told him the war was lost, blasted him for his "defeatism", saying he still believed in Mussolini.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 29}}  On 11 December 1941, Victor Emmanuel rather glibly agreed to Mussolini's [[Italian declaration of war on the United States|request to declare war on the United States]].{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 296}}  Failing to anticipate the American "Europe First" strategy, the king believed that the Americans would follow an "Asia First" strategy of focusing all their efforts against Japan in revenge for Pearl Harbor, and that declaring war on the United States was a harmless move.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 296}}  The king was pleased by the news of Japan entering the war, believing that with Britain's Asian colonies in danger that this would force the British to redeploy their forces to Asia and might finally allow for the Axis conquest of Egypt.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 296}}  Marshal [[Enrico Caviglia]] wrote in his diary that it was "criminal" the way that Victor Emmanuel refused to act against Mussolini despite the fact that he was clearly mismanaging the war.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 296}}  One Italian journalist remembered that by the fall of 1941 he did not know anyone who felt anything other than "contempt" for the king who was unwilling to disassociate himself from Fascism.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 296}}

The British historian [[Denis Mack Smith]] wrote that Victor Emmanuel tended to procrastinate when faced with very difficult choices, and his unwillingness to dismiss Mussolini despite mounting pressure from within the Italian elite was his way of trying to avoid making a decision.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 299}}  Moreover, Victor Emmanuel had considerable respect for Mussolini, who he saw as his most able prime minister, and appeared to dread taking on a man whose intelligence was greater than his own.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 302}}  In a conversation with the papal nuncio, the king explained that he could not sign an armistice because he hated the United States as a democracy whose leaders were accountable to the American people; because Britain was "rotten to the core" and would soon cease to be a great power; and because everything he kept hearing about the massive losses sustained by the Red Army convinced him that Germany would win on the Eastern Front at least.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | pp = 302–303}}  Another excuse used by Victor Emmanuel was that Mussolini was allegedly still popular with the Italian people and that it would offend public opinion if he dismissed Mussolini.{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 301}} The Vatican favoured Italy exiting the war by 1943, but papal diplomats told their American counterparts that the king was "weak, indecisive and excessively devoted to Mussolini".{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 303}}

====Disillusionment with Mussolini====
In the summer of 1942, Grandi had a private audience with Victor Emmanuel, where he asked him to dismiss Mussolini and sign an armistice with the Allies before the Fascist regime was destroyed only to be told to "trust your king" and "stop speaking like a mere journalist".{{Sfn | Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 296}}  Grandi told Ciano that the king must be either "crazy" and/or "senile" as he was utterly passive, refusing to act against Mussolini.{{Sfn |Mack Smith | 1989 | p = 296}}  In late 1942, [[Italian Libya]] was lost. During [[Case Anton|Operation Anton]] on 9 November 1942, the unoccupied part of France was occupied by the Axis forces, which allowed Victor Emmanuel to proclaim in a speech at long last [[Italian occupation of Corsica|Corsica]] and Nice had been "liberated".{{Sfn | Kershaw | 2007 | p = 297}}  Early in 1943, the ten divisions of the "[[Italian Army in Russia]]" (''Armata Italiana in Russia'', or Armir) were crushed in a side-action in the [[Battle of Stalingrad]].  By the middle of 1943, the last Italian forces in [[Tunisian Campaign |Tunisia]] had surrendered and [[Allied invasion of Sicily |Sicily had been taken by the Allies]].  Hampered by lack of fuel as well as several serious defeats, the [[Regia Marina|Italian Navy]] spent most of the war confined to port.  As a result, the [[Mediterranean Sea]] was not in any real sense Italy's ''[[Mare Nostrum]]''.  While the [[Regia Aeronautica |Air Force]] generally did better than the Army or the Navy, it was chronically short of modern aircraft.