Mussolini’s Parallel War

CHAPTER 5 · OCT 1940–JUN 1941 · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

Mussolini wants conquests of his own — a “parallel war” for a new Roman Mediterranean. It goes catastrophically: his invasion of Greece from Albania is thrown back into the mountains; the British cripple his fleet at Taranto with 21 obsolete biplanes (Japanese planners take careful notes); his army in Libya collapses.

The turn: Crete, May 1941 — a pyrrhic first.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.