Short preparation time and a favourable starting position

Cavagnari had roughly six years between his appointment and the outbreak of war in Europe, less preparation time than Raeder or Fushimi received. Even so, Italy expected France to be its likely opponent and entered the period with ships assessed here as qualitatively competitive with French forces. That gave him a more favourable relative starting point than the German and Japanese chiefs. Mussolini's role gave the naval chief direct access to the man controlling the ministry and a route for pressing complaints about inter-service problems such as air cooperation. The counterfactual is deliberately limited: dictatorship did not make planning easy, but a more forceful naval leader could have used the available political leverage far better.