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wonder at things and think of all the work and effort and unlimited money that is used today to “destroy” and not so long ago there was no money or work and it seems so wrong somehow … [that] money and effort could always be found to pull down and destroy rather than build up.’ Mrs Last was middle-aged, but her children’s generation was determined that once the war was won, money would be found to create a more egalitarian society.

Churchill never defined credible war aims beyond the defeat of the Axis. When the tide of battle turned, this would become a serious weakness of his leadership and a threat to his domestic popularity. But in 1940–41 his foremost challenge was to convince his people that the war could be won. This became more difficult, rather than less, once the Luftwaffe was vanquished: thoughtful people recognised that the nation remained impotent to challenge German dominance of the Continent.

Hurricane pilot George Barclay described an intense discussion between young fliers and senior officers in his airfield mess on Sunday, 29 September 1940, and recorded their conclusions: ‘The British people are still fast asleep. They haven’t begun to realise the power of our enemies and that they have to give their “all” … That we need dictatorial methods to fight dictators … That we shall eventually win the war, but it will be a hell of a job and more so unless we pull ourselves together.’ The message, an eminently sensible one, was that the British must try harder. Many more frustrations, sorrows and defeats lay ahead, and George Barclay himself would lie dead in a desert funeral pyre before Hitler provoked into armed resistance a sufficiency of enemies to encompass his undoing.

The Mediterranean

1 MUSSOLINI GAMBLES

At the outbreak of war in 1939, Hitler had no intention of waging war in the Mediterranean, and asserted his determination not to commit German resources there. It was his fellow dictator Benito Mussolini who yearned to create an Italian lake, and on his own initiative launched the offensives which brought conflict to the region. In the year after the fall of France in June 1940, only in the African and Balkan theatres did Allied and Axis armies clash. Even after Germany invaded Russia in June 1941, the Mediterranean remained for three more years the focus of the Western Allied military contribution to the struggle against Hitler. All this was the consequence of Mussolini’s decision to become a protagonist in a struggle for which his nation was pitifully ill-equipped.

Hitler possessed in the Wehrmacht a formidable instrument for pursuing his ambitions. The Duce, by contrast, sought to play the warlord with incompetent commanders, unwilling soldiers and inadequate weapons. Italy was relatively poor, with a GDP less than half the size of Britain’s, and barely one-third per capita; it produced only one-sixth as much steel. The nation mobilised its economy less effectively for the Second World War than for the First. Even in the sunshine days of Mussolini’s relationship with Hitler, such was the Nazis’ contempt for their ally that 350,000 Italian workers in Germany were treated little better than slaves; Rome’s ambassador in Berlin was obliged to devote most of his energies to pleading for some amelioration of their working conditions. While Hitler cherished an enduring personal loyalty to Mussolini, whom he had once seen as a mentor, most Germans mistrusted and mocked Italy’s leader. Berliners claimed that whenever the Duce met the Führer, barrel-organ grinders played the popular tune ‘Du Kannst nicht Treue sein’ – ‘You Cannot be Faithful’. In 1936, when a foolish woman at a party asked Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg who would win the next war, he is alleged to have answered, ‘Madam, I cannot tell you that. Only one thing I can say: whoever has Italy on his side is bound to lose.’ There was a contemptuous joke in Nazi Party circles of Hitler’s lackey Wilhelm Keitel reporting, ‘My Führer, Italy has entered the war!’ Hitler answers, ‘Send two divisions. That should be enough to finish them.