The last time France recalled its ambassador to Rome was in June 1940. Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, observing the collapse of the French army before Hitler’s tanks, opportunistically declared war and made a grab for southeastern France. It was not a success. Italy’s ramshackle, poorly equipped conscripts were halted within a few miles of the border, dying in their hundreds in the summer Alpine snow.

We Britons are sometimes accused by our European neighbors of banging on about the Second World War, but this time, it is the French government drawing the parallel. “France has been, for several months, the object of repeated accusations, unfounded attacks, and outrageous declarations,” said its Foreign Ministry in an official statement justifying the diplomatic rupture. “This is unprecedented since the end of the war.”