The Italians had there moments were they fought hard but for the most part they didn,t amount to much they weren,t respected by the allies they were seen as a weak link.

I am getting conflicting impressions from this thread and from other sources I have read. On the one hand, Mussolini was popular with the average Italian before the war started going badly (and even Italian-Americans at least before the US got into the war). He promised them a new Roman Empire and I imagine most people didn't mind that. Also, it is stated clearly that the Italian troops under German command in North Africa fought well. I saw a part of an modern fictionalized Italian film about El Alamein and the hero was a student volunteer from a university back home and he was all gung-ho for the war.

On the other hand, we hear about how the most Italians were ashamed of the "stab-in-the-back" of France, that most Italians liked France and hated the Germans, about how they were not dedicated warriors like the Germans were, about their poor leadership and equipment.

The question is...if these latter qualities were true, how is it that the Italians fight well under the Germans?
Perhaps the situation was more of a mixed bag and that some Italians were enthusiastic for the war, and others weren't?

I think that'd be the case everywhere though, from the die-hard fanatic soldiers, to the career soldiers, to the 'draftee' who didn't want to be there.

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poor tactics because italian forces were led by Rodolfo Graziani, an expert of colonial warfare but little suitable for a modern mechanized war... also a Matilda tank was more usefull than an italian infantry battalion equipped only with 47mm AT gun completely ineffective against those kind of tank

AFAIK the "stab in the back" theory is not true, I found no mention of it in any conversation I had with people who lived through the war in Italy, after the trade sanctions and the Ethiopian campaign France and England were "the Enemy" for most Italians and opposition to Mussolini in Italy was practically non existent.

The reluctance to go to war and the unpreparedness was mostly in the armed forces and especially the officer corps, not the common soldier, the Army's still lived by a "caste system" and the decision making process was even slower and less suited to modern warfare than the French one. This somewhat worked as long as the troops were on the offensive like in Somalia or the 1941 USSR (if you are attacking it's your plan that matters) but went to pieces as soon as there was any need to react efficiently to enemy action. This was not strictly speaking a "morale" failure but did cause very similar effect (no organized resistance).

Many biografies of navy officers report an "inferiority complex" towards the RN that grew with the unexplainable failures due to the ULTRA intercepts, this, combined with Mussolini's reluctance to risk major units and fuel shortages produced a nearly complete paralisys as far as the major units were concerned, the light units that kept the supply lines to North Africa open until the very end were certainly not lacking in morale.

The air force was ineffective compared to it's raw number of planes, but here again morale was not the problem. The industry's failed to provide planes comparable to the enemies and in sufficient quantities, some planes were good, none outstanding so the Regia Areonautica never had a "happy period" of technical superiority. Training, especially in tactics, left a lot to be desired as well, I remember reading of an RSI ace that was surprised, in 1944, to learn about the "finger four" formation for high speed fighters that had been in use by the Germans since the Spannish Civil War.

IMO Italians fighting well under German leadership is a myth, I don't know how it orignated.
There are very few recorded instances of smal unit level integration before 9/1943, the two countries mostly fought parallel wars rather than as allies. Units like Ariete and Folgore or the Alpini fought better than the average Italian unit for reason that had nothing to do with the Germans, AFAIK there were no Germans in any of those units though Folgore may have had some German equipment.
Of course Rommel sometimes said that Italians would fight better under his command but I suspect the motivation was not exactly objective, he definetly had a personal agenda there.

After September 1943 the situation changes dramatically, while the weapons don't improve much, both the forces that fought with the Allies and those that fought with the Germans mostly used Italian stocks of equipment, the troops were closer to volunteers than concripts and the officers were a lot closer to the troops than in the pre-armistice armed forces. Those troops fought pretty effectively and the same can be said of a number of Italians that ended up serving in various German units (so 100% German equipped).

As i said in an earlier post the Italians had there monents on occasions they fought hard but there overall combat record is not good and they were not held in high regard by there opposition in the desert they were seen as a weak link and it wasn,t just in the desert war when they attacked Greece things didn,t go well for them either.

The Italians in WW2 had there elite units who could fight but for the most part they were a low quality fighting force for what ever reason leadership,equipment take your pick.

It should be noted that 8th army also suffered from poor leadership and doctrine in the early years of the desert war,on numerous occasions we had our troops over run after they had taken there objectives because we had no tank support the tanks were not linked with the infantry they were seen as a seperate force.

The British also had what they called Boxes which were static defensive positions with infantry and artillary and anti tank guns mines etc which could be isolated and cut off.

They also believed in breaking there divisions up into brigade sized groups to fight seperate battles they were contantly trying to break up the New Zealand division to be used piece meal sending brigades where ever they wanted the Australians had the same problem and our commander wouldn,t have it Auckinleck told Freyberg this is a brigade sized war and Freyberg replied since when.

Our commanders use to call it the cow pat theory because when you looked at a map the troop positions looked like a whole lot of cow pats spread al over the place.

I have a book at home with a german stating that the brigade sized group could offer nothing more than a bee sting it could hurt you but couldn,t knock you out.

And when you talk about bad leadership how about asking our tankmen to drive straight at 88mm guns over and over again.

When you look at it the leadership of 8th army wasn,t much better.