Question: Did Hitler cop out of his failure and push the blame onto Mussolini?
About the article "Operation Barbarossa", section "Events".

Candidate passages:
On 28 June 1942, Bock's offensive split the Russian front into fragments on either side of Kursk.
Three armies (Weich's 2nd Army, Hoth's 4th Panzer, and Paulus' 6th Army) — along with 11 "Panzer" Divisions — fanned out toward Voronezh and the Don River.
Paulus' "Panzer" Divisions reached the Don on either side of Voronezh on 5 July.
The Russians created a "Voronezh Front" under Vatutin, who reported directly to Moscow.
Bock wanted to eliminate Vatutin's forces before extending his own flank too deeply into the yawning void created by the strength and speed of the German offensive.
Hitler was not pleased with Bock's plan to delay the push toward Stalingrad.
On 15 July, Hitler would blame him for the failure of "Operation Braunschweig", the second part of the German offensive in Russia, and retire him indefinitely.
The command of Army Group South was given to Maximilian von Weichs.
While privately opposing the atrocities being committed against Soviet civilians, Bock never protested directly to Hitler, although at one time, he had a subordinate file a formal complaint (""Meine Herren, ich stelle fest: Der Feldmarschall von Bock hat protestiert"!
" — "gentlemen, I state: The field marshal von Bock has protested").
His nephew, Henning von Tresckow, tried in vain to win him for the military resistance against the Hitler regime.
When his staff officers planned the assassination of Hitler during a visit to his Army Group, Bock intervened.
On the other hand, he did not report the conspirators either.
One of the reasons for Bock's dismissal is believed to have been his expressed interest in supporting the Russian Liberation Movement, which Hitler was categorically against. 
In 1932, Gyula Gömbös and the Party of National Unity rose to power in Hungary, and immediately sought alliance with Italy.
Gömbös sought to end Hungary's post-Treaty of Trianon borders, but knew that Hungary alone was not capable of challenging the Little Entente powers by forming an alliance with Austria and Italy.
Mussolini was elated by Gömbös' offer of alliance with Italy, and both Mussolini and Gömbös cooperated in seeking to win over Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss to joining an economic tripartite agreement with Italy and Hungary.
During the meeting between Gömbös and Mussolini in Rome on 10 November 1932, the question came up over the sovereignty of Austria in regards to the predicted inevitable rise of the Nazi Party to power in Germany.
Mussolini was worried over Nazi ambitions towards Austria, and indicated that at least in the short-term he was committed to maintaining Austria as a sovereign state.
Italy had concerns over a Germany with Austria within it, laying land claims to German-populated territories of the South Tyrol (also known as Alto-Adige) within Italy that bordered Austria on the Brenner Pass.
Gömbös responded to Mussolini by saying that as the Austrians primarily identified as Germans, that the Anschluss of Austria to Germany was inevitable, and advised that it would be better for Italy to have a friendly Germany on the border of the Brenner Pass than a hostile Germany bent on entering the Adriatic.
Mussolini replied by expressing hope that the Anschluss could be postponed as long as possible until the breakout of a European war that he estimated would begin in 1938.
In 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany.
His first diplomatic visitor was Gömbös.
In a letter to Hitler within a day of his being appointed Chancellor, Gömbös told the Hungarian ambassador to Germany to remind Hitler "that ten years ago, on the basis of our common principles and ideology, we were in contact via Dr. Scheubner-Richter".
Gömbös told the Hungarian ambassador to inform Hitler of Hungary's intentions "for the two countries to cooperate in foreign and economic policy".
Hitler had long advocated an alliance between Germany and Italy since the 1920s.
Shortly after being appointed Chancellor, Hitler sent a personal message to Mussolini, declaring "admiration and homage" and declaring his anticipation of the prospects of German-Italian friendship and even alliance.
Hitler was aware that Italy held concerns over potential German land claims on South Tyrol, and assured Mussolini that Germany was not interested in South Tyrol.
Hitler in "Mein Kampf" had declared that South Tyrol was a non-issue considering the advantages that would be gained from a German-Italian alliance.
After Hitler's rise to power, the Four Power Directorate proposal by Italy had been looked at with interest by Britain, but Hitler was not committed to it, resulting in Mussolini urging Hitler to consider the diplomatic advantages Germany would gain by breaking out of isolation by entering the Directorate and avoiding an immediate armed conflict.
The Four Power Directorate proposal stipulated that Germany would no longer be required to have limited arms and would be granted the right to re-armament under foreign supervision in stages.
Hitler completely rejected the idea of controlled rearmament under foreign supervision.
Mussolini did not trust Hitler's intentions regarding Anschluss nor Hitler's promise of no territorial claims on South Tyrol.
Mussolini informed Hitler that he was satisfied with the presence of the anti-Marxist government of Dollfuss in Austria, and warned Hitler that he was adamantly opposed to Anschluss.
Hitler responded in contempt to Mussolini that he intended "to throw Dollfuss into the sea".
With this disagreement over Austria, relations between Hitler and Mussolini steadily became more distant.
Hitler attempted to break the impasse with Italy over Austria by sending Hermann Göring to negotiate with Mussolini in 1933 to convince Mussolini to press the Austrian government to appoint members of Austria's Nazis to the government.
Göring claimed that Nazi domination of Austria was inevitable and that Italy should accept this, as well as repeating to Mussolini of Hitler's promise to "regard the question of the South Tyrol frontier as finally liquidated by the peace treaties".
In response to Göring's visit with Mussolini, Dollfuss immediately went to Italy to counter any German diplomatic headway.
Dollfuss claimed that his government was actively challenging Marxists in Austria and claimed that once the Marxists were defeated in Austria, that support for Austria's Nazis would decline.
In 1934, Hitler and Mussolini met for the first time, in Venice.
The meeting did not proceed amicably.
Hitler demanded that Mussolini compromise on Austria by pressuring Dollfuss to appoint Austrian Nazis his cabinet, in which Mussolini flatly refused the demand.
In response, Hitler promised that he would accept Austria's independence for the time being, saying that due to the internal tensions in Germany (referring to sections of the Nazi SA that Hitler would soon kill in the Night of the Long Knives) that Germany could not afford to provoke Italy.
Galeazzo Ciano told the press that the two leaders had made a "gentleman's agreement" to avoid interfering in Austria.
Several weeks after the Venice meeting, on 25 June 1934, Austrian Nazis assassinated Dollfuss.
Mussolini was outraged as he held Hitler directly responsible for the assassination that violated Hitler's promise made only weeks ago to respect Austrian independence.
Mussolini rapidly deployed several army divisions and air squadrons to the Brenner Pass, and warned that a German move against Austria would result in war between Germany and Italy.
Hitler responded by both denying Nazi responsibility for the assassination and issuing orders to dissolve all ties between the German Nazi Party and its Austrian branch, which Germany claimed was responsible for the political crisis.
Italy effectively abandoned diplomatic relations with Germany while turning to France in order to challenge Germany's intransigence by signing a Franco-Italian accord to protect Austrian independence.
French and Italian military staff discussed possible military cooperation involving a war with Germany should Hitler dare to attack Austria.
As late as May 1935, Mussolini spoke of his desire to destroy Hitler.
Relations between Germany and Italy recovered due to Hitler's support of Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, while other countries condemned the invasion and advocated sanctions against Italy. 
Mussolini and Hitler were not always allies.
While Mussolini wanted the expansion of fascist ideology throughout the world, he did not initially appreciate Hitler and the Nazi Party.
Hitler was an early admirer of Mussolini and asked for Mussolini's guidance in how the Nazis could pull off their own March on Rome.
Mussolini did not respond to Hitler's requests; he did not have much interest in Hitler's movement and regarded Hitler to be somewhat crazy.
Mussolini did attempt to read "Mein Kampf" to find out what Hitler's Nazism was but was immediately disappointed, saying that "Mein Kampf" was "a boring tome that I have never been able to read" and claimed that Hitler's beliefs were "little more than commonplace clichés.
"Hitler and the Nazi Party in 1922 had praised the rise to power of Benito Mussolini, and sought a German-Italian alliance.
Upon Mussolini's rise to power, the Nazis declared their admiration and emulation of the Italian Fascists, with Nazi member Hermann Esser in November 1922 saying that "what a group of brave men in Italy have done, we can also do in Bavaria.
We’ve also got Italy’s Mussolini: his name is Adolf Hitler".
Hitler in the second part "Mein Kampf" ("The National Socialist Movement," 1926) contains this passage:In 1931, Hitler in an interview spoke admirably about Mussolini, commending Mussolini's racial origins as being the same as that of Germans, and claimed at the time that Mussolini was capable of building an Italian Empire that would outdo the Roman Empire, and that he supported Mussolini's endeavors, saying:Mussolini had personal reasons to oppose antisemitism: his longtime mistress and Fascist propaganda director Margherita Sarfatti was Jewish.
She had played an important role in the foundation of the Fascist movement in Italy and promoting it to Italians and the world through supporting the arts.
However, within the Italian Fascist movement, there were a minority who endorsed Hitler's antisemitism.
These included Roberto Farinacci and Julius Evola, who represented the far-right wing of the Party.
There were also nationalist reasons why Germany and Italy were not immediate allies.
Habsburg Austria (Hitler's birthplace) had an antagonistic relationship with Italy since it was formed, largely because Austria-Hungary had seized most of the territories once belonging to Italian states such as Venice.
Italian irredentist claims sought the return of these lands to Italian rule ("Italia irredenta").
Although initially neutral, Italy entered World War I on the side of the Allies against Germany and Austria-Hungary when promised several territories (Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, Trieste, Istria and Dalmatia).
After the war had ended, Italy was rewarded with these territories under the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
In Germany and Austria, the annexation of Alto Adige/South Tyrol was controversial, as the province was made up of a large majority of German speakers.
While Hitler did not pursue this claim, many in the Nazi Party felt differently.
In 1939 Mussolini and Hitler agreed on the South Tyrol Option Agreement.
(When Mussolini's government collapsed in 1943 and the Italian Social Republic was created, Alto Adige/South Tyrol was annexed to Nazi Greater Germany, but was restored to Italy after the war). 
Despite his earlier agreement with Hitler, Röhm still clung to his vision of a new German army with the SA at its core.
By early 1934, this vision directly conflicted with Hitler's plan to consolidate power and expand the Reichswehr.
Because their plans for the army were mutually exclusive, Röhm's success could only come at Hitler's expense.
Moreover, it was not just the Reichswehr that viewed the SA as a threat.
Several of Hitler's lieutenants feared Röhm's growing power and restlessness, as did Hitler himself.
As a result, a political struggle within the party grew, with those closest to Hitler, including Prussian premier Hermann Göring, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler, and Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess, positioning themselves against Röhm.
While all of these men were veterans of the Nazi movement, only Röhm continued to demonstrate his independence from, rather than his loyalty to, Adolf Hitler.
Röhm's contempt for the party's bureaucracy angered Hess.
SA violence in Prussia gravely concerned Göring, Minister-President of Prussia.
Finally in the spring of 1934, the growing rift between Röhm and Hitler over the role of the SA in the Nazi state led the former Chancellor, General Kurt von Schleicher, to start playing politics again.
Schleicher criticized the current Hitler cabinet while some of Schleicher's followers such as General Ferdinand von Bredow and Werner von Alvensleben started passing along lists of a new Hitler Cabinet in which Schleicher would become Vice-Chancellor, Röhm Minister of Defence, Heinrich Brüning Foreign Minister and Gregor Strasser Minister of National Economy.
The British historian Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, who knew Schleicher and his circle well, wrote that Bredow displayed a "lack of discretion" that was "terrifying" as he went about showing the list of the proposed cabinet to anyone who was interested.
Although Schleicher was in fact unimportant by 1934, increasingly wild rumours that he was scheming with Röhm to reenter the corridors of power helped stoke the sense of crisis.
As a means of isolating Röhm, on April 20, 1934, Göring transferred control of the Prussian political police (Gestapo) to Himmler, who, Göring believed, could be counted on to move against Röhm.
Himmler envied the independence and power of the SA, although by this time he and his deputy Reinhard Heydrich had already begun restructuring the SS from a bodyguard formation for Nazi leaders (and a subset of the SA) into its own independent elite corps, one loyal to both himself and Hitler.
The loyalty of the SS men would prove useful to both when Hitler finally chose to move against Röhm and the SA.
By May, lists of those to be "liquidated" started to circulate amongst Göring and Himmler's people, who engaged in a trade, adding enemies of one in exchange for sparing friends of the other.
At the end of May, two former Chancellors Heinrich Brüning and Kurt von Schleicher received warnings from friends in the "Reichswehr" that their lives were in danger, and they should leave Germany at once.
Brüning fled to the Netherlands while Schleicher dismissed the tip-off as a bad practical joke.
By the beginning of June, everything was set, and all that was needed was permission from Hitler.
Demands for Hitler to constrain the SA strengthened.
Conservatives in the army, industry, and politics placed Hitler under increasing pressure to reduce the influence of the SA and to move against Röhm.
While Röhm's homosexuality did not endear him to conservatives, they were more concerned about his political ambitions.
Hitler for his part remained indecisive and uncertain about just what precisely he wanted to do when he left for Venice to meet Benito Mussolini on June 15.
Before Hitler left, and at the request of Presidential State Secretary Otto Meißner, Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath ordered the German Ambassador to Italy Ulrich von Hassell — without Hitler's knowledge — to ask Mussolini to tell Hitler that the SA was blackening Germany's good name.
Neurath's manoeuvre to put pressure on Hitler paid off, with Mussolini agreeing to the request (Neurath was a former ambassador to Italy, and knew Mussolini well).
During the summit in Venice, Mussolini upbraided Hitler for tolerating the violence, hooliganism, and homosexuality of the SA, which Mussolini stated were ruining Hitler's good reputation all over the world.
Mussolini used the affair occasioned by the murder of Giacomo Matteotti as an example of the kind of trouble unruly followers could cause a dictator.
While Mussolini's criticism did not win Hitler over to acting against the SA, it helped push him in that direction.
On June 17, 1934, conservative demands for Hitler to act came to a head when Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, confidant of the ailing Hindenburg, gave a speech at Marburg University warning of the threat of a "second revolution".
Privately, von Papen, a Catholic aristocrat with ties to army and industry, threatened to resign if Hitler did not act.
While von Papen's resignation as vice-chancellor would not have threatened Hitler's position, it would have nonetheless been an embarrassing display of independence from a leading conservative. 
Benito Mussolini and the Fascist Party promised to bring Italy back as a Great Power in Europe, making it a "New Roman Empire".
Mussolini promised that Italy would hold power over the Mediterranean Sea.
In propaganda, Fascists used the ancient Roman ""Mare Nostrum"" (Latin for "Our Sea") to describe the Mediterranean.
The Fascist regime increased funding and attention to military projects, and began plans to create an Italian Empire in Africa, and reclaim dominance in the Mediterranean and Adriatic Sea.
The Fascists considered wars to conquer Dalmatia, Albania and Greece for the Italian Empire.
Colonial efforts in Africa began in the 1920s, as civil war plagued Italian North Africa ("Africa Settentrionale Italiana", or ASI) as the Arab population there refused to accept Italian colonial rule.
Mussolini sent Marshal Rodolfo Graziani to lead a punitive pacification campaign against the Arab nationalists.
Omar Mukhtar, led the Arab resistance movement.
After a much-disputed truce on 3 January 1928, the Fascist policy in Libya increased in brutality.
A barbed wire fence was built from the Mediterranean to the oasis of Jaghbub to sever lines critical to the resistance.
Soon afterwards, the colonial administration began the wholesale deportation of the people of the Jebel Akhdar to deny the rebels the support of the local population.
The forced migration of more than 100,000 people ended in concentration camps in Suluq and Al-'Aghela where tens of thousands died in squalid conditions.
It's estimated that the number of Libyans who died - killed either through combat or starvation and disease - was at least 80,000, and up to half of the Cyrenaican population.
After Al-Mukhtar's capture September 15, 1931 and his execution in Benghazi, the resistance petered out.
Limited resistance to the Italian occupation crystallized round the person of Sheik Idris, the Emir of Cyrenaica.
Negotiations occurred with the British government on expanding the borders of the colony of Libya.
The first negotiations began in 1925 to define the border between Libya and British-held Egypt.
These negotiations resulted in Italy gaining previously undefined territory.
In 1934, once again the Italian government requested more territory for Libya from British-held Sudan.
Britain allowed Italy to gain some territory from Sudan to add to Libya.
[http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/collection/LimitsinSeas/IBS010.pdf] These concessions were probably allowed because of the relatively good relations between Italy and Britain prior to 1935.
In 1935, Mussolini believed that the time was right for Italy to invade Ethiopia (a.k.a.
Abyssinia) to make it a colony.
As a result, the Second Italo-Abyssinian War erupted.
Italy invaded Ethiopia from the Italian colonies of Eritrea and Somaliland.
Italy committed atrocities against the Ethiopians during the war, including the use of aircraft to drop poison gas on the defending Ethiopian soldiers.
Ethiopia surrendered in 1936, completing Italy's revenge for its failed colonial conquest of the 1880s.
King Victor Emmanuel III was soon proclaimed Emperor of Ethiopia.
The international consequences for Italy's belligerence resulted in its isolation at the League of Nations.
France and Britain quickly abandoned their trust of Mussolini.
The only nation to back Italy's aggression was Nazi Germany.
After being condemned by the League of Nations, the Grand Council of Fascism declared Italy's decision to leave the League on December 11, 1937 and Mussolini denounced the League as a mere "tottering temple".
After pressure was placed on Italy by Nazi Germany to promote a racist agenda, the Fascist regime moved away from its previous promotion of colonialism based on the spread of Italian culture to a directly racist colonial agenda.
The Fascist regime declared that it would promote mass Italian settlements in the colonies that would in the Fascist regime's terms, "create in the heart of the African continent a powerful and homogeneous nucleus of whites strong enough to draw those populations within our economic orbit and our Roman and Fascist civilization".
Fascist rule in its Italian colonies differed from region to region.
Rule in Italian East Africa ("Africa Orientale Italiana", or AOI), a colony including Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Italian Somaliland, was harsh for the native peoples as Fascist policy sought to destroy native culture.
In February 1937, Rodolfo Graziani ordered Italian soldiers to pillage native settlements in Addis Ababa, which resulted in hundreds of Ethiopians being killed and their homes being burned to the ground.
After the occupation of Ethiopia, the Fascist regime endorsed racial segregation to reduce the number of mixed offspring in Italian colonies which they claimed would "pollute" the Italian race.
Marital and sexual relationships between Italians and Africans in its colonies were made a criminal offense when the Fascist regime implemented decree-law No.
880 April 19, 1937 which gave sentences of one to five years imprisonment to Italians caught in such relationships.
The law did not give any sentences to native Africans, as the Fascist government claimed that only those Italians were to blame for damaging the prestige of their race.
Despite racist language used in some propaganda, the Fascist regime accepted recruitment of native Africans who wanted to join Italy's colonial armed forces and native African colonial recruits were displayed in propaganda.
[http://www.germaniainternational.com/images/bookgijuinit13.jpg][http://www.germaniainternational.com/images/bookgijuinit14.jpg] In Italian Libya, Mussolini downplayed racist policies as he attempted to earn the trust of Arab leaders there.
Individual freedom, inviolability of home and property, right to join the military or civil administrations, and the right to freely pursue a career or employment were guaranteed to Libyans by December 1934.
In famous trip to Libya in 1937, a propaganda event was created when on March 18 Mussolini posed with Arab dignitaries who gave him an honorary "Sword of Islam" (that had actually been made in Florence) which was to symbolize Mussolini as a protector of the Muslim Arab peoples there.
In 1939, laws were passed that allowed Muslims to be permitted to join the National Fascist Party and in particular the Muslim Association of the Lictor ("Associazione Musulmana del Littorio") for Muslim Libya, and the 1939 reforms allowed the creation of Libyan military units within the Italian army.
The Fascist regime also engaged in interventionist foreign policy in Europe.
In 1923, Italian soldiers captured the Greek island of Corfu as part of the Fascists' plan to eventually take over Greece.
Corfu was later returned to Greece and war between Greece and Italy was avoided.
In 1925, Italy forced Albania to become a "de facto" protectorate which helped Italy's stand against Greek sovereignty.
Corfu was important to Italian imperialism and nationalism due to its presence in the former Republic of Venice which left behind significant Italian cultural monuments and influence, though the Greek population there, especially youth, heavily protested the Italian occupation.
Relations with France were mixed, the Fascist regime consistently had the intention to eventually wage war on France to regain Italian-populated areas of France, but with the rise of Hitler, the Fascists immediately became more concerned of Austria's independence and the potential threat of Germany to Italy, if it demanded the German-populated areas of Tyrol.
Due to concerns of German expansionism, Italy joined the Stresa Front with France and the United Kingdom against Germany which existed from 1935 to 1936.
The Fascist regime held negative relations with Yugoslavia, as they long wanted the implosion of Yugoslavia in order to territorially expand and increase Italy's power.
Italy pursued espionage in Yugoslavia, as Yugoslav authorities on multiple occasions discovered spy rings in the Italian Embassy in Yugoslavia such as in 1930.
In 1929, the Fascist government accepted Croatian extreme nationalist Ante Pavelić as a political exile to Italy from Yugoslavia.
The Fascists gave Pavelić financial assistance and a training ground in Italy to develop and train his newly formed fascist militia and terrorist group, the Ustaše.
This organization later became the ruling force of the Independent State of Croatia, and murdered hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and other minorities during World War II.
In 1936 in Spain, the Fascist regime made its most significant pre-war military intervention.
The Spanish Republic was divided in the Spanish Civil War between the anticlerical socialist Republicans and the Church-supporting, monarchy-backed nationalists led by Francisco Franco under his fascist Falange movement.
Italy sent aircraft, weapons, and a total of over 60,000 troops to aid the Spanish nationalists.
The war helped train the Italian military for war and improve relations with the Catholic Church.
It was a success that secured Italy's naval access in and out of the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and its ability to pursue its policy of "Mare Nostrum" without fear of opposition by Spain.
The other major foreign contributor to the Spanish Civil War was Nazi Germany.
This was the first time that Italian and German forces fought together since the Austro-Prussian War in the 1860s.
During the 1930s, Italy built many large battleships and other warships to solidify Italy's hold on the Mediterranean.
After Germany annexed Czechoslovakia, Mussolini decided to capture Albania to avoid becoming second-rate member of Axis.
On April 7, 1939, Italy invaded Albania.
After short campaign Albania was occupied, and its parliament crowned Victor Emmanuel III King of Albania.
The historical justification for the annexation of Albania laid in the ancient history of the Roman Empire in which the region of Albania had been an early conquest for the Romans, even before northern Italy had been taken by Roman forces.
But obviously by the time of annexation, little connection to Italy remained amongst Albanians.
In actuality, the annexation of Albania was far from a military conquest as the country had been a de facto protectorate of Italy since the 1920s and much of its army were commanded by Italian officers sent from Italy.
The occupation was not appreciated by King Emmanuel III, who feared that it had isolated Italy even further than its war against Ethiopia.
When the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP, a.k.a.
Nazi Party) attained power in Germany in 1933, Mussolini and the Fascist regime in public showed approval of Hitler's regime, with Mussolini saying "The victory of Hitler is our victory".
The Fascist regime also spoke of creating an alliance with the new regime in Germany.
In private, Mussolini and the Italian Fascists showed disapproval of the Nazi government and Mussolini had a disapproving view of Hitler despite ideological similarities.
The Fascists distrusted Hitler's Pan-German ideas which they saw as a threat to territories in Italy that previously had been part of Austrian Empire.
Although other Nazis disapproved of Mussolini and Fascist Italy, Hitler had long idolized Mussolini's oratorical and visual persona, and adopted much of the symbolism of the Fascists into the Nazi Party, such as the Roman, straight-armed salute, dramatic oratory, the use of uniformed paramilitaries for political violence, and the use of mass rallies to demonstrate the power of the movement.
In 1922 Hitler tried to ask for Mussolini's guidance on how to organize his own version of the March on Rome which would be a "March on Berlin" (which came into being as the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923).
Mussolini did not respond to Hitler's requests as he did not have much interest in Hitler's movement and regarded Hitler to be somewhat crazy.
Mussolini did attempt to read "Mein Kampf" to find out what Hitler's National Socialist movement was but was immediately disappointed, saying that "Mein Kampf" was "a boring tome that I have never been able to read" and remarked that Hitler's beliefs were "little more than commonplace clichés."
While Mussolini like Hitler believed in the cultural and moral superiority of whites over coloured peoples, he opposed Hitler's antisemitic beliefs.
A number of Fascists were Jewish, including Mussolini's mistress Margherita Sarfatti, the director of Fascist art and propaganda, and there was little support amongst Italians for antisemitism.
Mussolini also did not evaluate race as being a precursor of superiority, but rather culture.
Hitler and the Nazis continued to try to woo Mussolini to their cause, and eventually Mussolini gave financial assistance to the Nazi party and allowed Nazi paramilitaries to train in Italy in the belief that despite differences, a fascist regime in Germany could be beneficial to Italy.
Suspicion of the Nazis increased after 1933, Mussolini sought to ensure that Nazi Germany would not become the dominant fascist state in Europe.
To do this, Mussolini opposed German efforts to annex Austria after the assassination of fascist Austrian President Engelbert Dollfuss in 1934, and promised the Austrians military support if Germany were to interfere.
This promise helped save Austria from annexation in 1934.
Public appearances and propaganda constantly portrayed the closeness of Mussolini and Hitler and the similarities between Italian Fascism and German National Socialism.
While both ideologies had significant similarities, the two factions were suspicious of each other, and both leaders were in competition for world influence.
Hitler and Mussolini first met in June 1934, as the issue of Austrian independence was in crisis.
In private, after the visit in 1934, Mussolini said that Hitler was just "a silly little monkey".
After Italy became isolated in 1936, the government had little choice but to work with Germany to regain a stable bargaining position in international affairs and reluctantly abandoned its support of Austrian independence from Germany.
On October 28, 1937, Mussolini declared Italy's support of Germany regaining its colonies lost in World War I, declaring"With no significant opposition from Italy, Hitler proceeded with "Anschluß", the annexation of Austria in 1938.
Germany later claimed the Sudetenland, a province of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by Germans.
Mussolini felt he had little choice but to help Germany to avoid isolation.
With the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, the Fascist regime began to be concerned about the majority ethnic German population in southern Tyrol, and whether they would want to join a Greater Germany.
The Fascists were also concerned about whether Italy should follow Nazi antisemitic policies in order to gain favour from those Nazis who had mixed feelings about Italy as an ally.
In 1938, Mussolini pressured fellow Fascist members to support the enacting of antisemitic policies, but this was not well taken, as a number of Fascists were Jewish and antisemitism was not an active political concept in Italy.
Nevertheless, Mussolini forced through antisemitic legislation even while his own son-in-law and prominent Fascist Count Galeazzo Ciano personally condemned such laws.
In turn for enacting the extremely unpopular antisemitic laws, Mussolini and the Fascist government demanded a concession from Hitler and the Nazis.
In 1939 the Fascists demanded from Hitler that his government willingly accept the Italian government's plan to have all Germans in south Tyrol either leave Italy or be forced to accept Italianization.
Hitler agreed and thus the threat to Italy from the south Tyrol Germans was neutralized.
As war approached in 1939, the Fascist regime stepped up an aggressive press campaign against France claiming that Italian people were suffering in France.
This was important to the alliance as both regimes mutually had claims on France, Germany on German-populated Alsace-Lorraine and Italy on the mixed Italian and French populated Nice and Corsica.
In May 1939, a formal alliance was organized.
The alliance was known as the Pact of Steel which obliged Italy to fight alongside Germany if war broke out against Germany.
Mussolini felt obliged to sign the pact in spite of his own concerns that Italy could not fight a war in the near future.
This obligation grew from his promises to Italians that he would build an empire for them and from his personal desire to not allow Hitler to become the dominant leader in Europe.
Mussolini was repulsed by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreement where Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to partition the Second Polish Republic into German and Soviet zones for an impending invasion.
The Fascist government saw this as a betrayal of the Anti-Comintern Pact, but decided to remain officially silent.