The Battle for Malta
The small Mediterranean island of Malta had been British since 1814 but was 1,000 miles from the nearest British territory -- Gibralter to the west and Egypt to the east. The population was mostly Italian and that was the lingua franca. In Italy, only a few miles to the north, dictator Benito Mussolini watched as Hitler's war machine drove the British out of continental Europe and decided he'd bet on Britain's withdrawal from the war. So feeling, he declared war on Britain, at...
