“The appearance of economic order, prosperity, and self-sufficiency that Mussolini’s fascist government had been able to create was in reality only a facade that cloaked Italy’s long-standing economic ills. The country was almost entirely dependent upon the outside world for coal and oil, and much more so for essential raw materials and even foodstuffs than the Fascists admitted.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The Army and Civilian Supply – I,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945