The Effects of Benito Mussolini in World War II During the 1930s, Mussolini's obsession with demography led him to realize that Britain and France were finite powers, which led Italy and Germany to want to govern all of Europe. They only wanted democratic strength. Mussolini said he believed France's declining birth rates were "absolutely horrible". The British population was a quarter of citizens over the age of 50 and Mussolini was not interested in this. He would have preferred to form an alliance with Germany, which had more military power and was already a good form of rule. At the beginning of World War II, Ciano and Viscount Halifax held secret telephone conversations. The English wanted Italy on their side just as they were in World War I, but the French government was more intent on eliminating Italy. Mussolini was more interested in Germany because of the military alliance than in anyone else or anywhere else. The axis between Germany and Italy had not been entirely official, but in that month the pact of steel outlining "friendship and alliance" was signed. The Pact of Steel was an offensive and defensive military alliance. Italy joined the Germans in the Battle of France, fighting the fortified Alpine line on the border. Just eleven days later, France surrendered to the Axis powers. Included in Italian-controlled France was most of Nice and other south-eastern counties. While all this was happening. In Africa, Mussolini's Italian East African forces attacked the British in their colonies in Sudan, Kenya, and British Somalia. British Somalia was conquered and became part of the Italian East on 3 August 1940. Religious Perspectives Mussolini was raised by a very Catholic mother and also by a non-religious father...... middle of paper ......945 , near the village of Dongo (Lake Como), as they headed towards Switzerland to board a plane to escape to Spain. During this time Clara's brother posed as the Spanish consul. After several failed attempts to bring them to Como they were taken to Mezzegra. They spent their last night in the De Maria family's home. Mussolini's estate was survived by his wife, Rachele Mussolini, two sons, Vittorio and Romano Mussolini, and his daughters Edda, Count Ciano's widow, and Anna Maria. A third son, Bruno, was killed in a plane crash while flying a P108 bomber on a test mission on 7 August 1941. His eldest son, Benito Albino Mussolini, from his marriage to Ida Dalser, was ordered to stop claiming that Mussolini was his father and in 1935 forcibly interned in a mental hospital in Milan, where he was murdered on 26 August 1942 after repeated injections which induced a coma