<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> The participation of Italy in the Second World War was characterized by a complex framework of ideology, politics, and diplomacy, while its military actions were often heavily influenced by external factors . The imperial ambitions of the Fascist regime, which aspired to restore the Roman Empire in North Africa and the Mediterranean (the Mare Nostrum, or the Italian Empire), were partially met with the annexation of Albania and the Province of Ljubljana, and the occupation of British Somaliland and other territories, but ultimately collapsed after defeats in the East and North African campaigns . In July 1943, following the Allied invasion of Sicily, Benito Mussolini was arrested by order of King Victor Emmanuel III, provoking a civil war . Italy surrendered to the Allies at the end of the Italian Campaign . The northern half of the country was occupied by Germans with the fascists help and made a collaborationist puppet state (with more than 600,000 soldiers), while the south was governed by monarchist and liberal forces, which fought for the Allied cause as the Italian Co-Belligerent Army (at its height numbering more than 50,000 men), helped by circa 350,000 partisans of disparate political ideologies that operated all over Italy . </P> <P> During the late 1920s, the Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini spoke with increasing urgency about imperial expansion, arguing that Italy needed an outlet for its "surplus population" and that it would therefore be in the best interests of other countries to aid in this expansion . The immediate aspiration of the regime was political "hegemony in the Mediterranean--Danubian--Balkan region", more grandiosely Mussolini imagined the conquest "of an empire stretching from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Strait of Hormuz". Balkan and Mediterranean hegemony was predicated by ancient Roman dominance in the same regions . There were designs for a protectorate over Albania and for the annexation of Dalmatia, as well as economic and military control of Yugoslavia and Greece . The regime also sought to establish protective patron--client relationships with Austria, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, which all lay on the outside edges of its European sphere of influence . Although it was not among his publicly proclaimed aims, Mussolini wished to challenge the supremacy of Britain and France in the Mediterranean Sea, which was considered strategically vital, since the Mediterranean was Italy's only conduit to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans . </P>

When did italy become an ally in ww2