In 1936, because Hitler had publicly and genuinely supported the Italian conquest of Ethiopia while the Western powers - the Brits, the French, and the small fry of Europe - privately accepted but publicly opposed it, Mussolini, out of pique and against the true preference of nearly everyone else in Italy's classe politique, refused to oppose Hitler's re-militarization of the Rhineland in utter defiance of Germany's treaty obligations to the Versailles victors who, thanks in part to the Duce's agitations twenty years before, included Italy.
One pigheaded buffoon can ruin things for tens, hundreds of millions.
Reading Milza and Berstein, Le fascisme italien, 1919-1945.
By the way, both the US and the USSR had refused to comply with the largely hypocritical and fake League of Nations sanctions against Italy, ostensibly aimed at punishing and stopping its war of conquest.
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