On Feb 1, 2:40=A0pm, The Horny Goat wrote:
> ...if I were in the British government at
> that time I would have said "how on earth do they expect to hold
> Abyssinia with us firmly in control of Suez?"
In June 1940, after the rout in
France and Dunkirk, it didn't
look as though Britain was
"firmly in control" of anything.
Heck, the British couldn't even
hold Somaliland against a weak
Italian sortie from Abyssinia.
If Musso thought about what to do
if Britain didn't make peace at once,
he probably assumed that the Italian
army could take Egypt before the
British could take Abyssinia.
Hadn't the British army been destroyed
in France? If the Italian army moved
in force from Libya, surely the colonial
garrison in Egypt would be brushed aside.
He certainly didn't expect Britain to
send reinforcements to the Middle East,
at a time when Britain itself was faced
with invasion.
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