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2 results

  • Chapter 1 - Sowing the Seeds

  • from Part I - Diplomacy and Politics
  • Karine Varley, University of Strathclyde
  • Book:
    Vichy's Double Bind
    Published online:
    18 May 2023
    Print publication:
    01 June 2023, pp 15-31

  • Summary

    This chapter suggests that two key dimensions of French policy towards Italy before July 1940 presaged that developed by Vichy in the period thereafter. The first was an underestimation of the significance of ideology in Mussolini’s actions. The second was an overestimation of the French ability to control and manipulate the Italian government. The two strands led to an erroneous belief that the French government might be able to drive a wedge between Mussolini and Hitler and that the former might be induced to act as a moderating force on the latter. The armistice negotiations of June 1940 not only sealed the overwhelming domination of Germany but they also inaugurated an ambiguous relationship between Italy and France. The relatively moderate Italian terms were at odds with Mussolini’s ambitions and sent mixed signals about Italian intentions. The armistice negotiations sowed the seeds of a future French strategy of seeking to play the Germans off against the Italians, but it also marked the start of a French delusion about how much could be achieved from trying to divide the Axis.

  • Part I - Political power

  • Edited by Jay Winter, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the First World War
    Published online:
    05 December 2013
    Print publication:
    09 January 2014, pp 5-144

  • Summary

    The Great War was not only about acquiring territories, it was also about political beliefs, juridical norms, economic interests, within but also outside Europe, in a world still largely dominated by the major European powers. This chapter discusses the largely competitive and mutually influenced definition of war aims on both sides, and the secret and complex peace feelers and clandestine diplomacy which took place during the war. The immediate influence of Wilson, through the immediate weight of US economic power and its financial aid to the Allies, and the prospect of a serious military contribution from 1918, forced the warring nations to take Wilsonian principles into account in their definition of war aims. An inter-Allied conference in London at the beginning of December 1918 had settled the location for the Peace Conference and the broad lines of the programme, generally following the proposals of French diplomacy.