(Mirror.)

[Rome], by the end of 1926, decided that [the Kingdom of] Italy had to return to [its] anti‐Yugoslav policy and [it] would help the collapse of Yugoslavia at any costs. For this ambition [Rome] had already found the perfect partner in Hungary after the First World War, so our little homeland had been again in the lime‐light of Italy (Italian politics).

The only problem was that in the meantime [the Kingdom of] Hungary […] approached [the Kingdom of] Yugoslavia, against who[m] [it] had to act according to [Fascist] conception. Beyond this [the Kingdom of] Hungary meant an excellent possibility for the [Fascist] economic expansion in the Danubian basin. Weigh[ing] these [together], [Fascist] Italy started to prevaricate.

First, the [Fascist] Secretary of Foreign Affairs Dino Grandi offered the involvement of Italy to make the Hungarian–Yugoslav negotiations successful, [propos]ing the possibility of a trial bloc. The [Fascist] envoy [to] Budapest, Ercole Durini di Monaza, announced this plan to István Bethlen,12 who was one of the most significant Prime Ministers of the Horthy‐era (1921–1931). He worked up the political conception of the régime. His foreign policy can be divided into two phases.

Before 1926 it was passive, because the Entente States controlled [the Kingdom of] Hungary both financially and militarily. By 1927 the control ceased and the “active phase” of Bethlen’s foreign policy, w[h]ich advertised revisionism, could […] beg[i]n.13 Bethlen thought that [Fascist] Italy was able to help revisionism, because Mussolini also wanted to disrupt the status quo formed in Versaille[s]. Beyond this, neither of the two States was interested in the expansion of the Slavs living in Yugoslavia and in the Soviet Union.14

Added to this, in the 1920s for [the Kingdom of] Hungary the policy of Italy and France in Central‐Europe was determin[ative],15 and that time there was the possibility [of] associat[ing] with one of them. So Bethlen travelled to Rome and on 5 April 1927 the Agreement of Friendship, Peacemaking Procedure and Arbitration was signed. It strengthened [Fascist] Italy’s Central‐European positions,16 which can be considered as the basic condition, or [the] beginning of the economic expansion of [Fascist] Italy.

[…]

In October 1926, when Mussolini laboured for realizing the Italian–Hungarian alliance, he promised to give preferences to [the Kingdom of] Hungary in Fiume.17 After [sign]ing the Treaty of Friendship it [quickly came into effect] because [Fascist] Italy was interested in quickening the trade of Fiume’s port in order to enable the town to re‐occupy the position it possessed in Central‐European commerce before the dissolution of the Monarchy.

On 25 July 1927 the “Protocol for Developing the Hungarian Trade passing Fiume’s port” was [sign]ed. The agreement consisted of nine articles announcing that […] the items coming from [the Kingdom of] Hungary would enjoy the same preferences in respect of common charges and sales tax as Italian items. So “there will be no difference between items transported on ships with the Italian flag or Hungarian flag”.18

The [Fascist] Government would not only let Hungarian ships into the port, but it would also help Hungarian items […] flow [in]to Fiume. In exchange [the Kingdom of] Hungary would have to set up a shipping company in the town within three months after the convention came into effect.

By that time the signatories of the treaty would set up a joint committee for working out the details of preferences given to [the Kingdom of] Hungary, and for the fixation of the carriages’ tariffs. In addition to these the [Fascists] promised that cereal traditionally arriving on Italian railway[s] would be directed to Fiume, as well.19 The protocol — completed with a point which made Hungary to set up a warehouse for Hungarian products, mainly cereal and sugar in Fiume — was put in effect on 18 November 1934.20

(Emphasis added.)

As you can see, the author’s English is flawed, but to nail this down and put it into a larger perspective:

  1. The Entente failed to adequately compensate the Kingdom of Italy as a reward for winning WWI
  2. Rome partitioned Fiume in 1924 as compensation
  3. Rome signed a trade agreement with Budapest in 1927 (two years after the so‐called ‘battle of the grain’, curiously) to strengthen Fascist capital at Yugoslavia’s expense
  4. Fiume served as an important port for Hungarian food
  5. Fascist Italy gained more resources for its ‘autarky’, and was on its way to (officially) becoming an empire, on which others would depend

My summary may be overly simplistic, but in any case you can clearly see that these negotiations with the Kingdom of Hungary were part of a chain reaction. Now, this is not to say that if the Entente satisfied Italian imperialism none of this would have happened, but that the capitalists (and specifically the Entente) could not have prevented this from happening. Satisfying the Italian bourgeoisie’s quest for land after WWI might have accelerated its imperialism, but otherwise it’s doubtful that the course of history would have been drastically different.

See also: From Isolation to Active Foreign Policy: The Hungarian–Italian Treaty of Friendship of 1927 (written in broken English, unfortunately).

Click here for other events that happened today (April 5).

1933: A council of German Christians, convened in Berlin, issued a call for a unified Protestant church faithful to the tenets of German Fascism, including the ‘Aryan cleansing’ of the German church.
1941: Axis forces advanced toward Msus and Mechili in Libya. Apart from that, the German embassy in Moscow claimed that Soviet exports to Germany had dramatically increased in the month of March 1941, but the flow of goods from Germany to the Soviet Union had slowed.
1942: The Fascist bourgeoisie ordered a renewed offensive in the Leningrad region in the Soviet Union; Berlin issued Führer Directive № 41, calling for the invasion of the Caucasus region and Stalingrad. As well, Axis troops defeated the Philippine 21st Division at Mount Samat on the Bataan Peninsula, Philippine Islands.
1943: Theo Osterkemp became the commanding officer of Jagdfliegerführer Sizilien and charged with safeguarding Axis flights between Sicily and Tunisia.
1944: The SS Economic and Administrative Office submitted a report to the Supreme Command of the SS organization noting the existence of twenty concentration camps with 165 connected labor camps, and in the Kingdom of Hungary, Jews were required to wear the yellow Star of David. As the Axis lost Dorohoi to the Soviets, Siegfried Lederer escaped from Auschwitz‐Birkenau camp and made it safely to Czechoslovakia; he warned the Elders of the Council at Theresienstadt about the atrocities being committed at Auschwitz. Additionally, Axis authorities in Hong Kong completed the liquidation of Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, better known by their acronym HSBC, and twenty‐six Axis A6M Zero fighters of the Sanya Kokutai and the Kaiko Kokutai based in Hainan, China attacked Nanning, Guangxi, China, destroying two B‐25 bombers and three P‐40 fighters on the ground and shooting down seven P‐40 fighters in the air, although the Axis did lose eight A6M fighters. It was almost or maybe around this time when the Axis launched a frontal assault at Nhpum Ga, Burma before dawn, in multiple waves.
1945: SS‐Obersturmbannführer Karl‐Otto Koch, the notorious, brutal and corrupt former Commandant of Buchenwald Concentration Camp, perished at the hands of a firing squad at Buchenwald after a trial in which he was convicted of bringing himself and the SS into ‘disrepute’.
1948: The trial against Albert Forster began at Gdansk, Poland.