Why Couldn’t WW2 Italians Fight? July 8, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary , trackback
There are endless tales about twentieth-century Italian military ineptitude and more importantly the perception of the same. Churchill said to Ribbentrop of the Italians just before the last war: ‘We had them last time, it is only fair you take them this time.’ In a meeting between British and German WW1 veterans in 1937 or 1938 the speaker at a meeting broke the ice by noting that he didn’t know who would win the next war but he knew who would lose: whoever was fighting with the Italians… (One can almost hear the Stentorian guffaws). These comments are probably apocryphal (it has proved impossible to substantiate either), not least because in 1937-1940 the western democracies were anxious about Italy and particularly Mussolini’s crown jewels, the Italian navy. But there is no question that by late 1940 the Allied powers, the Allied powers to be, Germany and even humiliated France had begun to make Italy the butt of their military jokes: a nice example is the loveable but useless opera singing Italian general in Five Graves to Cairo (a much underrated 1943 film). This perception continues down to the present. What was the most incompetent of the major powers in the Second World War in military terms? The vast majority of WW2 historians would put Italy at the very bottom of the heap below mediocre Britain and defeated France.
But was Italy’s record really so bad? Well, yes, it really was. Italy was gutted in Africa by the British: though in terms of numbers the British should have been soundly beaten back into Palestine. Italy fared far worse than all commentators had expected against the Greeks and the French: Italy outnumbered the French many times over. They were, meanwhile, mauled by the Russians and the winter weather in the east. The Italian airforce and the Italian navy proved far more able than the Italian army but Cunningham, Britain’s most talented admiral did for the Regia Marina in the Mediterranean and the Italian airforce was whittled away by superior numbers wherever they flew. None of this means, of course, that the Italians were ‘cowards’: the slight that modern Italians take so personally. In fact, one of the characteristics of Italian soldiers was stubbornness in difficult defensive positions, something the western democracies all too often lacked in their armies. Italians died bravely in every theatre into which Mussolini pushed them. The whole ‘surrender monkey’ topos only really began when demoralized Italians decided to abandon the regime: as they conspicuously did in the Sicily landings in 1943. This was in no sense cowardice, though, it was a heartfelt and rather sensible political decision.
So what went wrong for Italy? Various reasons have been given over the years. Here is Beach’s take:
1) The Italian armed forces seemed (to their credit) to have lacked the ideological fervor of the Germans and Japanese. Mussolini’s whole Italian project was stillborn: as he memorably put it, ‘it is not impossible to govern the Italians, it is useless.’ These were not fanatics fighting for the thousand year Reich, they were kids from the Apennines and the poor quarters of Rome, who loved their country and who wanted to enjoy said country for their three score years and ten. In many ways the Italian army resembled the democratic armies more than the forces of Axis friends.
2) Italy suffered and suffers from a gap between ideal and reality that is constantly on display in public life (something that Mussolini’s regime only encouraged). In the interwar years Italy’s armed forces had been talked up to ridiculous levels and to the point of falsification by military heads who had to impress Mussolini. Combat proved a rude awakening.
3) Italy lacked the industrial base to live up to Mussolini’s ambitions. Engineering ingenuity was constantly on display, though ambitions were not always made into mass-produced machines. And the industrial triangle in the north-west was simply not capable of sustaining the country through a war of many years.
4) Critical failures were made in acquisitions. There was, for example, the failure of the Italians to build aircraft carriers; the choice to make several light tanks instead of few heavy tanks… Perhaps no other major power made worse decisions prior to the war: though all naturally made mistakes.
5) The leadership deficit. In the pressures of a World War everyone screws up, even on good days. Italian generals and commanders were often though of very poor quality: Badoglio is a case study. Mussolini, meanwhile, lacked Hitler’s grasp of strategic military affairs and, indeed, of military details. He was perhaps better able to understand the inevitability of Italy’s defeat.
Any others: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com.
Of course, there were glorious exceptions to the record of retreat and surrender: the Folgore’s last stand in the desert; Amadeo Guillet making a mockery of the British in Africa; the maiali submarines; Italy’s extraordinary secret services; the Italian defence of Gallabat (against Slim no less); RSI and partisan formations fighting a nasty war in northern Italy; and the last successful cavalry charge in history (it wasn’t actually the last)… Many other posts, many other days: Italians can sometimes fight. What is striking about these, and that this could be a sixth reason, is that Italians seems to star in smaller operational groups. Indeed, to look at Italy’s achievements in WW2 one would think that success came in inverse proportion to numbers. A division collapses when three tanks turn up: a couple of Italians on an improvised mini sub sink a powerful battleship.
Thanks to Mario for sending in this site that has the uphill struggle of defending the honour of Italy’s WW2 armed forces. Lots of interesting reading.
21 July 2015: KMH writes ‘The Italians were uniquely identified with the Papacy and could not have developed an independent ideology as did Hitler and Stalin. Yes, there was the New Roman Empire, ( Ethiopia, Libya, and Albania for starters), and Fascism kept the trains running on time, but too much fighting fervor would have placed the Pope in a dangerous position if the Italians had tried really hard but lost everything they had at the beginning, as did Germany. What to do with the Pope? Italians couldn’t gain everything they desired and simply shove the Pope, an international figure, aside. The Pope had to want they wanted. No one has ever proffered an acceptable solution to the Papal problem. Napoleon tried the hardest, but he didn’t succeed. The Italians subconsciously chose to lose militarily and keep the Pope, rather than the reverse.’ Thanks!
28 Aug 2015: Stephen D ‘You mention the heroic centennarian Amadeo Guillet’s making a mockery of the British in East Africa. I am not sure if you mean achievement in keeping a guerrilla war going in East Africa for some months after the main Italian forces had surrendered in 1941. Actually, there were Italians there who fought for far longer: some were still active till October 1943, when they belatedly heard of the cease-fire. But his greatest achievement, according to his obituary It was in January 1941 when he led 250 or so Ethiopian horsemen (another nation not without courage) in the last cavalry charge directed against the British Army: cutting through the Sikhs, outflanking the armoured cars of Skinner’s Horse (no less), breaking through a regiment of field artillery who went on firing until the last 25 yards. And on the same theme of Italian courage: according to my father who was there, there were Italian divisions in Tunisia who went on fighting after the Africa Corps had surrendered, without any hope but reckoning that every day they could delay the Allies in North Africa was an extra day to reinforce Italy’s defences. Most accounts of Second Alamein agree that the Italians fought with great courage: I am trying to trace the Australian account I once read, saying that under their attack the Germans broke and ran, but to judge by the corpses the Bersaglieri stayed by their guns to the last round. Why they fought and died for such a worthless man as Mussolini, I cannot imagine.’
