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25 May, as the extent of the French defeat became apparent, Lord Halifax carefully began sounding out the Italian ambassador to find out what concessions would be needed to ‘bribe’ Italy from entering the war. Gibraltar, perhaps, or Malta? He hoped that Italy could provide the initiative for a peace conference with Hitler, leading to a ‘general European arrangement’. England was to keep the sea and its empire, while Germany could do as it pleased on the continent. Hitler would probably have agreed to such a proposal: it was roughly the same division of roles Kaiser Wilhelm II and his ministers had contemplated in 1914. As a result, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark and Norway – the lion’s share of Europe – would have been transformed into a federation of Nazi
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