There is a common view that Italian troops were almost useless in WWII. Is that so? Is it the matter of their weak weaponry or training? I heard of some mountain units that were really tough guys. Does anyone know some interesting sites on this issue?

There are many instances where the Italians fought bravely and successfully under proper leadership, mostly under German command in N. Africa. The Italian soldier suffered under inferior equipment, training, leadership and poor logistics. Under those circumstances, the Italian soldier was set up for failure.

You may want to perform a search within the forum for some previous discussions. I will see what I can conjur up..

Italians in WWII

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...t/1988/HEG.htm

http://www.1jma.dk/articles/1jmaarti...2italyarmy.htm

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I believe the Ariete and Triete (sp probably wrong) performed remarkably well for the Italians (Panzer Divisions) under German Command. There was also a 3rd Armored Division, but I can not reacall its name at this moment, though I do not think it was as distinguished as the previous two I mentioned.

The Italians were using vastly outdated weapons and had very little motorized transport for warfare in the desert. I can assure you their morale was extremely high when they had a bottle of wine in each hand

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Italy fielded 3 armoured divisions Ariete, Littorio and Centauro and only two truly motorized divisions Trento and Trieste but Trento was stripped of most of it's organic transport in favour of the supply columns.
These units were, together with the Alpini mountain troops, amongst the best of the Italian army.
Italian troops suffered from generally inferior equippment compared to both Germany and the Commonwealth troops, especially after 1941 when equipments incorporating wartime experience reached the others. It's remarcable that Italy produced in WW2 substantially less weapons than it had in WW1 while WW2 guns may have been more sophisticated so should the factories and production processes !!! Ansaldo and Fiat had a near monopoly and continued to deliver obsolete equipment to army and airforce, the last biplane CR 42 fighters were delivered in 1943 and Fiat/Ansaldo refused to licence build a better tank than the poor M13 series.

There was also both an a morale and a training problem with the troops, a large percentage of the conscripts were illiterate and Italy needed specialized training to teach basic driving skills as most troops had very little previous experience with motor vehicles.
But the worse problem was possibly the caste system that kept officers and men completely separate thus preventing the creation of "esprit de corps", officers had sepate kitchens, food, lodgings and even the field brothels had separate lines for i signori ufficiali and the truppa.
The units that overcame this limitation like Ariete due to it's long combat service, Folgore due to the the "everybody jumps" spirit of paratroopers or the Alpini due to the narrow recruiting bases (the men and officers both came from mountain regions) that broke the class system usually performed as well if not better than their foreign equivalents despite the bad equipment.
British propaganda often attributed Italian successes (there were not many of them but there were some) to generic "axis troops" if not to the Germans outright, Ariete for example overran a batallion of New Zeeland troops on 29/11/41 during "Crusader" but the NZ 21st batallion's official history, while reporting the episode, makes no mention of the opponent's nationality.

You mention Italians not getting credit it is the same with New Zealand most of the docos i watch on the history channel they just label us as British or commonwealth forces i watched one on the desert war and we got our name mentioned once in an hour and when it came to operation crusader we weren,t mentioned at all which was a suprise considering the Germans said the November battles were largely won by the New zealanders.

I have no access to my sources but I remember point 175 as the location, according to the Italian histories there were no A/C but M13 tanks, and it makes more sense as the very few Autoblinde that Ariete had in 1941 are not enough to overrun even two companies. BTW a batallion is usually made up of 3 coys so calling the NZ force a batallion is a good approximation even if the rest of the unit was not involved. There is no confirmation of the hands waving reported in NZ histories in the Italian histories and no references to a planned deception, as the Italian tanks had no cupolas the commander usually drove with head and torso outside the top hatch and this may have confused the NZ into believing they were British A/C until it was too late.
Navigation errors and suprises were common in the desert, there have been hundreds of pages written about an Italian tank batallion, also from Ariete but I think but not the same one involved at point 175, that lost it's way and ended up doing an unsupported attack trough a minefield at Bir Hakeim a year later, it could and did happen to all forces.

This is my theory that contributes to the Italian's morale in WW2. In addition to what was stated by previous posters, I believe that war weariness of the Italian people in general by the beginning of WW2 should not be overlooked. Without digging up any references, take a look at Italian military excusions (major conflicts only) in the 20th century;

The Italo-Turkish War 1911-1912
WW1 1915-1918 (dates reflect Italy's involvement)
Colonial Wars in Libya during the 1920s.
Ethiopian War 1935
Spanish Civil War 1936-39
WW2 1940-43 (Axis), 1943-1945 (both sides)

Maybe I missed a few, but this short list illustrates that maybe the mindset of the Italians that could have carried over into their frequent involvements in combat. Just about every generation in the first half of the 20 century had a "shootin' war" to march off to, and maybe not march back from. All that fighting, it had to wear down their psyche.

Just my idea of course....

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On the Plains of Hesitation
lies the blackend bones of countless millions
who, at the dawn of victory sat down to rest,
and resting died....
(author unknown-I wish it was me)

You missed the invasion of Albania of 1939 but an interesting theory nonetheless.

But I can't find much evidence to support it, of the conflicts you quoted WW1 was a terrible bloodbath and I think casued a lot more deaths than WW2 in Italy but the rest, with the exclusion of Ethiopia, were mostly colonial type affairs that didn't involve massive conscription.

And the Albanian invasion was hardly a shooting war. The Italians completed the occupation within 5 days with hardly a shot fired. Maybe that's why it was left off the list.

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Artillerymen believe the world consists of two types of people; other Artillerymen and targets.

Yes, I left the occupation/invasion of Albania off the lest intentionally due to the fact that casualties were in the "extremely light" category, and the operation was fairly effortless as a whole.

The colonial wars drug on and on, and with the regular wars thrown in, that had to be a drain on the economy (WW1 wrecked the Italian economy, in fact it collapsed, paving the way for the rise of the fascists). That in itself had to be a "black cloud" hanging over the citizenry, and when WW2 started, they had to be thinking "good lord, not another one." And Italy probably wasn't an industrial and manufacturing powerhouse either. The wars, and the effects of wars had to contribute to the overall morale situation of the Italians. When not properly motivated, enthusiasm dissapates quickly, especially when defeat follows defeat. Again guys, this is just my theory. Thanks for entertaining it as such.

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On the Plains of Hesitation
lies the blackend bones of countless millions
who, at the dawn of victory sat down to rest,
and resting died....
(author unknown-I wish it was me)

Italy didn't eliminate conscription unitil a few years ago but only a small minority of conscript were involved in military operations even if Italy didn't have a law like the French that only units fully made up of volunteers could be sent outside metropolitan France. Most Italians considered conscription as a nuisance and didn't have strong feelings about it, many of the older generations, including some veterans of the desert campaign I spoke to, recall military service as "the big adventure of their lives" that was otherwise spent in the confines of a small agricultural village, Italy in WW2 was still owhermingly old style agriculture, mecanical tractors were rare and "normal" transportation was still donkeys and mules.
But fighting and killing was not what military service is about for them, it looks like the "aggressive spirit", so evident in the German forces, just wasn't there for the average Italian conscripts but I don't think war weariness had much to do with it, Amy bureacracy and the separation of troops from officers, many of which, especially in the senior ranks, tended to consider the troops as little more than "cannon fodder" are more likely causes.

I believe the cliché of agressive spirit is a myth.Many Italians weren't motivated to fight against the allies that's all . We remember the stab in the back on June 15th 1940 when war was declared on France , but what the media never showed the peace demonstrations in Milano the same day when the population screamed "pace". Many believed Mussolini's war was a wrong cause and doomed because of poor material. Therefore they went to war relunctantly. It has nothing to do with courage. Many Italians fought bravely ,but there wasn' tmuch they could do . When they swithched sides in 1943 and got weapons from the allied, they fougt bravely just like the others and this time they had a goal to keep up their morale.

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Okie dokie, sounds good to me. I wasn't intending to have my theory studied, researched and published anyway!

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On the Plains of Hesitation
lies the blackend bones of countless millions
who, at the dawn of victory sat down to rest,
and resting died....
(author unknown-I wish it was me)

What no publication? What am I going to be able to read on the beach this year then?

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Would that be lilo di jeslo's beach then skip?

nope rather the Atlantik wall bunkers and actually more under the beach as they are mostly buried

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Start with Das Kapital, then follow it up with Proletariat Chicks in Bondage.

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On the Plains of Hesitation
lies the blackend bones of countless millions
who, at the dawn of victory sat down to rest,
and resting died....
(author unknown-I wish it was me)

I don,t know about other countries forces but our battalions in ww2 were approx 750-780 stong with four rifle companies and a headquarters company.

The Italians themselves could be good soldiers. It was the fact that they had less training and inferior equipment that people say they were 'useless'. They also had bad leaders a lot of the time, as when the Italians fought under German leadership they were reliable soldiers.

People keep saying the Italians had inferior equipment and training and poor leadership and use that to explain there poor performance but the fact is you go through history and you can find cases of soldiers with poor training and equipment and leadership and still they fight hard.

The fact is the Italians were not into what they were doing and that is why they performed badly and when the allies looked to attack they looked to attack the Italians because they were seen as a weak link.

The Italians fought quite well in the first World War. In World war 2, not so much. Mussolini was no Hitler, and Italians were not Germans - for the most part the Italians had little stomach for the war. Mussolini had no Goebbels to ingeniously whip up hatred for the enemies Mussolini had chosen for them, and situated on the Italian peninsula as they are, did not share too much of Germany's border problems.

There were also not too many historic scores to settle with the people Mussolini chose to invade: the French in 1940 (only after Germany had basically whipped them), the Ethiopians in the 1930's, the Greeks in 1941.
The old saying goes, "there are no bad troops, only bad officers." Italy did not have a good officer corps in WW2. At all levels they often made gross mistakes and displayed errors in judgment which if made by a German General, would have caused them to be shot by Hitler for incompetence.

Also their equipment was poor, as other people in the post say - even infantry weapons were sub-par, and they did not even have a decent machine gun. Italian tanks were under-armored and trouble prone. Italy did produce some very good aircraft in world war 2, but they were unable to switch from their painfully slow, old-world craftsmanship production methods to mass production, and so never had enough of anything, even if it was first-class.

Their heart was never in the war the same way it was for the Germans in Germany, or the Japanese, who simply obeyed blindly. The Italians simply were not motivated nor convinced to really hate and fight against the enemies Mussolini had chosen for them.

Maybe one other point:the alliance with Germany was extremely unpopular in Italy:the Vatican and the Monarchy were against it .and the people? In WW I some 500000 Italians were killed in the fighting against Austria-Hungary and when the Germans interfered,the result was Caporetto:a catastrovic defeat ;all those mutilated and widows hated "Il Tedesco " . Imagine the children of of the victims of the Somme and Passendale fighting with "the Huns " .Mussolini ? in 1915 he was a fanatical partisan of Italy fighting against the Germans and Austria-Hungary and in 1940 ....he engaged his country in a war at the side of those responsible for the death of innumerable Italians . Imagine Clemenceau or Lloyd George as allies of Germany in 1940 .

indeed sometimes italians fight hard, such as Folgore at el alamein, Giovani Fascisti division at Bir el Gubi, Alpini in Russia, the cavalry at Ingushensky and so on.... the italian war effort could not be reassumed only in Compass and invasion of Sicily

The Italian people for the most part did not buy into the fascist myth. Perhaps if they would have had a charismatic leader like Hitler and/or a great salesman like Goebbels pitching this line of crap morale would have been better. Now the Italians made GREAT anti fascists once they switched sides. I call this "smart" as Fascism was a worthless cause to fight and die for.
JeffinMNUSA

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When well lead the Italians often gave a good account of themselves, but the mass surrenders of the early desert war against a small British Commonwealth force gives a misleading impression.
However these mass surrenders weren't caused by poor morale, but poor tactics. The Italian high command sent a massive mainly static force into the desert and set up a number of defensive positions which the far more mobile but smaller British force was able to outflank, cut off from supply (including water), and deal with one by one.

The Italians surrendered in mass not because of morale, but due to the fact that if they didn't surrender they would very quickly die of thirst.

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if in doubt....Panic!!!!