War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. Your host, James Early. Hello and welcome to another episode of Key Battles of World War II in Europe, our 10,000-foot

survey of the Second World War in Europe in the areas around it.

I'm your host, James Early, as always, and my co-host, as always,

is Sean McIver. In our last episode, we were out on the seas, and we talked about the early

years of the Battle of Atlantic, including the exciting hunt for and eventual sinking of

the great German battleship Bismarck. In this episode,

where we go back on to the land, and we're going to actually go back in time a little bit.

It's going to be kind of a topical episode. We have not talked a whole lot about Italy. So what

we're going to do this time is focus on Italy. We're going to call this episode, Il Duce's gamble. Italy enters the war. So obviously, the actions of Italy will be our

focus during this episode. We'll see what effect Italy has on the early war. Sean,

you got your spaghetti and your red wine ready to go. We're going to get Italian here.

All right.

Let's get going.

The first state to succumb to the rise of radical autocratic dictatorship,

indeed, the country to give fascism its name, was, as we've seen in a previous episode,

Italy.

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