The Mediterranean and Middle East Theatre was a major theatre of operations during the Second World War. The vast size of the Mediterranean and Middle East theatre saw interconnected naval, land, and air campaigns fought for control of the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and Southern Europe. The fighting in this theatre lasted from 10 June 1940, when Italy entered the war on the side of Germany, until 2 May 1945 when all Axis forces in Italy surrendered. However, fighting would continue in Greece – where British troops had been dispatched to aid the Greek government – during the early stages of the Greek Civil War.
The British referred to this theatre as the Mediterranean and Middle East Theatre (so called due to the location of the fighting and the name of Middle East Command), the Americans called it the Mediterranean Theater of War and the German informal official history of the fighting is The Mediterranean, South-East Europe, and North Africa 1939–1941 (1995). Regardless of the size of the theatre, the various campaigns were not seen as neatly separated areas of operations but part of a vast theatre of war.
Fascist Italy aimed to carve out a new Roman Empire, while British forces aimed initially to retain the status quo. Italy invaded Greece, and not until the introduction of German forces were Greece and Yugoslavia overrun. Allied and Axis forces fought back and forth across North Africa, while Axis interference in the Middle East caused fighting to spread there. With confidence high from early gains, German forces planned to capture the Middle East with a view to possibly attacking the southern border of the Soviet Union. In three years of fighting, Axis forces were defeated in North Africa and their interference in the Middle East was halted. The anti-Axis coalition then commenced the Allied invasion of Italy, resulting in the Italians deposing Mussolini and joining the Allies. A prolonged battle for Italy took place between Allied and Axis forces. As the strategic situation changed in south-east Europe, British troops returned to Greece.
The theatre of war had the longest duration of the Second World War, resulted in the destruction of the Italian Empire and severely undermined the strategic position of Germany, resulting in German divisions being deployed to Africa and Italy and total German losses (including those captured upon final surrender) being over two million. Italian losses amounted to around 177,000 men with a further several hundred thousand captured during the process of the various campaigns. British losses amount to over 300,000 men killed, wounded, or captured, and total American losses in the region amounted to 130,000.
Background
Italy
During the late 1920s, Benito Mussolini claimed that Italy needed an outlet for its "surplus population" and that it would be in other countries' best interests to aid in this expansion. The regime wanted "hegemony in the Mediterranean–Danubian–Balkan region" and the gaining of world power by the conquest "of an empire stretching from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Strait of Hormuz". The Fascists had designs on Albania, Dalmatia, large parts of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Greece and harked back to the Roman empire. The regime also sought to establish protectorates with Austria, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Covert motives were for Italy to become the dominant power in the Mediterranean, capable of challenging France or Britain and gaining access to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
On 30 November 1938, Mussolini addressed the Fascist Grand Council on the goal of capturing Albania, Tunisia, Corsica, the Ticino canton of Switzerland and "French territory east of the River Var (to include Nice, but not Savoy)". Mussolini alleged that Italy required uncontested access to the oceans and shipping lanes to ensure its national sovereignty. Italy was a "prisoner in the Mediterranean" and had to break the chains of British and French control. Corsica, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Malta, Suez and Tunisia would need to be taken and Egypt, France, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom had to be challenged. Through armed conquest, the north and east African colonies would be linked and this 'prison' destroyed. Italy would be able to march "either to the Indian Ocean through the Sudan and Abyssinia, or to the Atlantic by way of French North Africa". On 2 October 1935, the Second Italo–Ethiopian War began when Italian forces invaded Abyssinia.