I cannot fathom why the Italians didn’t seize Malta right off the bat when they entered the war. Malta had been a major British naval base for a hundred years. It lay athwart the shipping routes to Africa, even an amateur strategist like me could see it needed to be taken to secure supply lines.
It’s almost like the Italians were deliberately trying to tank their war effort.
Thank God for that, the Nazis may have won the war, had Hitler not had to bail out Mussolini's chestnuts in Greece and Yugoslavia, otherwise he would have launched Operation Barbarossa earlier, which may have allowed them to win the war before the harsh Russian winter set in in 1941.
I’ve wondered that myself. The best conclusion I can come to is that Italy’s decision makers both politically and militarily were not in those positions based on their qualifications. This hierarchy of military leadership that was based on their favor of Mussolini did not make them strategic thinkers. I really think they just couldn’t grasp the significance of taking that base or any other island fortress for that matter.