Italians in WWII

I agree with you, the only thing I liked in the link in the original post was the willingness to investigate, the premise that investigating the causes of poor average Italian military performace was worthwile is good, the execution was, to be generous poor and the research behind it frankly unworthy of any serious military historian.
Just to quote some of the most obvious,
Garibaldi at second Custoza ?
The author waves aside the war against Turkey of 1911/12 as irrelevant, why? just because in that war Italian performance was generally good, and against the same Turks that gave ANZAC a b*** nose only a few years later?.
Judging Italian performance in WW1 by only looking at Caporetto is like judging the French performance based on the 1917 mutinies or the Luddendorf offensive. Much closer to the truth would be to state that the Italian soldiers in WW1 generally performed no better or worse than his contemporaries. An this despite a leadership that makes Grandmaison look like an expert of tactical finesse. They were so uninspired as to produce over 10 "Isonzo offensives", without without even the common sense to change the names to give at least the impression of some progress, but then the answer to poor morale, in their way of thinking, was more carabinieri.
The subject of Italian poor performance is worth investigating, but rather lies, in the direction of uninspired (at best) leadership, lack of clear strategic thinking, poor average training and corruption in the procurrement processes. I always wondered how the commander of one of the two corps involved in Caporetto, Italy's greatest WW1 reverse, far from being sacked, ended up as chief of the armed forces. With that sort of leadership there is no wonder the ordinary soldiers were poorly motivated. If this looks familiar to anyone who knows Italian politics well ... why should the military be any different from the politicians that ultimately select them? Sad ....

 

From the other article,

[SIZE=+1]MANPOWER POOL[/SIZE]
Manpower came mostly from peasant stock. The personnel pool was handicapped by many local dialects. The masses were not highly educated. They were not mechanically experienced. Gasoline cost 4 times British prices so Italy had an automotive base of only one motor vehicle to each 130 people. In comparison, France had a ratio of l: 23, Britain 1:32, Germany 1:37, and the US 1:4.4. Italy had, however, a manpower pool with two excellent qualities: the willingness to suffer inadequate clothing, food, and supplies and the willingness, if led with anything approaching competence, to fight and die in conditions that would have caused the armies of the industrial democracies to quail. This manpower was misused as Italy followed the fairly common policy of subordinating infantry to other specialties in quality of personnel.

[SIZE=+1]CONDITIONS OF SERVICE[/SIZE]
A policy stemming from the 1870’s based on a fear of mutiny and regional succession resulted in the members of each regiment being recruited from several different regions and stationed in yet another region. This caused friction and lack of trust because of different regional dialects, values, and customs.

Officers enjoyed better food, uniforms and living conditions. They had EM assigned to them as servants. Little consideration was given to the other ranks. Their rations were universally described as the worst of all armies. Little thought was given to medical attention, mail, leave, and other factors of pride and morale. Italian mobile kitchens were wood burning relics of 1907………this in a treeless desert.

Rotation: (from an archive)” British Command, even in quiet periods, did not keep its units in the front line for more than twelve days and, after that, gave them foot days’ complete rest in the rear. On the other hand, our soldiers had for months not had any relief from front-line duty; rest was almost unknown to them, as was also the system of relieving for home leave units that were tired and worn from many months of exhausting life and combat in the desert. There were divisions amount the soldiers that had been fighting for more than twenty-four months in the front line, and that had greatly exceeded the theoretical 200 days which American and British experts have set as the maximum limit of physical and psychological resistance in battle, after which, according to them, the soldier becomes exhausted and militarily inefficient.
If the Italian soldier, deprived of means and exhausted has retreated before the superior numbers, strength and buoyant morale organization of the enemy—if he has retreated it is because the limits of human endurance have been exceeded and he could not do otherwise.”

The Italian army was unspectacular and not overly successful, so the individual courage of the Italian soldier was emphasized to give a sense of national pride."

1.JmA - Weapons & Hardware links page

 

Thanks for that last link JC that site is quite good and informative and much more helpful in understanding what went wrong with the Italian army in WW2 than major Hansen's one.
On the items you chose to extract I believe the rotation issue is more pertinent to German Infantry performance on the Eastern front than to Italians in the desert. Graziani's army disaster happened to relatively fresh troops. The Greek campaign also was relatively short and as the war went on the italian troops generally improved not got worse, it was the equipment that got worse compared to the opponents and partly negated the better performance of the soldiers.
IMHO there is still a piece of the puzzle I can't see, but the "break" between conscripts and officers is probably the most significant element.

 

Nice link. It really helped with my history homework and had a lot of other interesting information.

 

Welcome JCARLE. If you enjoy ths forum, why don't you go to the new member section and introduce yourself there? You'd be welcome to stay. JC will be happy to read that this thread has helped you with your homework

 

Im glad that some of the "propaganda" ooopppsssss...info I posted helped . Thanks.

 

Here is another good example of Allied cooperation involving Italian troops.

HISTORY OF TASK FORCE 45
(29 July 44 to 28 January 45)
http://www.ww2f.com/wwii-general/21752-history-task-force-45-a.html

 

And the Italian forces in China

http://www.ww2f.com/cbi-theater/21698-italian-armed-forces-china-1937-1943-a.html

 

How could I have missed this? Of course JCFalkenberg always loves to help people with their homework!

 

LOL. Always first and foremost in my mind LOL. I notice that Truthie no longer wants to educate us with his version of the "truth" LOL.

 

Well JC, I've used the websites he provided as his sources in the past, and they always seamed proper to me. Just the way his truth was a complete distortion of what was on those sites was what disgusted me.

 

I agree. I used the same ones too and was just surprised how a bias could distort information that was even positive in regards to what he was spouting.

 

Good morning to everyone

I want to give a little contribution to this thread posting some statements about italian military efforts during World war II

Compton Mackenzie in Eastern Epic, an officially sponsored history of the British indian army n World War II, wrote:

Keren was as hard a soldiers' battle as was ever fought, and let it be said that nowhere in the war did the Germans fight more stubbornly than those [Italian] Savoia battalions, Alpini, Bersaglieri and Grenadiers. In the [first] five days' fight the Italians suffered nearly 5,000 casualties - 1,135 of them killed. Lorenzini, the gallant young Italian general, had his head blown off by one of the British guns. He had been a great leader of Eritrean troops.​

Rommel, about El Alamein:

the Italians were willing, unselfish and good comrades in the frontline. There can be no disputing that the achievement of all the Italian units, especially the motorised elements, far outstripped any action of the Italian Army for 100 years. Many Italian generals and officers earned our respect as men as well as soldiers.​

Historian Tim Ripley has asserted:

The Italians supplied the bulk of the Axis troops fighting in North Africa, and too often the German Army unfairly ridiculed Italian military effectiveness either due to its own arrogance or to conceal its own mistakes and failures. In reality, a significant number of Italian units fought skillfully in North Africa, and many "German" victories were the result of Italian skill-at-arms and a combined Axis effort.

Finally, from the book Iron Hulls Iron Hearts:

....it is perhaps simplest to ask who is the most courageous in the following situations: the Italian carristi, who goes into battle in an obsolete M14 tank against superior enemy amour and anti-tank guns, knowing they can easily penetrate his flimsy protection at a range where his own small gun will have little effect; the German panzer soldier or British tanker who goes into battle in a Panzer IV Special or Sherman respectively against equivalent enemy opposition knowing that he can at least trade blows with them on equal terms; the British tanker who goes into battle in a Sherman against inferior Italian armour and anti-tank guns, knowing confidently that he can destroy them at ranges where they cannot touch him. It would seem clear that, in terms of their motto Ferrea Mole, Ferreo Cuore, the Italian carristi really had "iron hearts", even though as the war went on their "iron hulls" increasingly let them down.​

 

I can comment only on naval matters. Certainly the RM has received rough handling by English-language histories, and the body of English-language histories suffers a severe lack of input from the "other" side. Fortunately this is changing. The past several Warship volumes have featured articles from Enrico Cernuschi and Vince O'Hara that provide a good inside look at Italian naval policy. Folks may also want to go hunting for articles and books by James Sadkovich. In my opinion, Sadkovich is an Italian apologist to a certain extent, but even if he overstates things, everything I've seen of his can be read profitably.
I suspect that the disrespect for the RM has its origins in the fundamental misunderstanding of Italian naval policy during the war. No one in Britain expected the German navy to duel the Royal Navy for command of the sea. But Italian naval strength in the Mediterranean more closely matched that of the British, so the British expected a British-style approach to a sea command duel. But the Italians had an entirely different idea. Rather than trying to command the Mediterranean, they tried to control the sectors where they needed to operate, when they needed them. They sortied in support of, for example, a convoy; and when that mission was complete, they returned to port. As far as the British were concerned, that was running away. They never understood that the RM wasn't playing their game. The fact is that the convoy duel in the central Med was bloodily fought and very close despite the administrative and logistical handicaps imposed on the RM.

 

Thanks you both for you contributions

 

Im surprised you missed these Tiornu LOL.

http://www.ww2f.com/north-africa-mediterranean/25649-italian-navy-during-world-war-ii.html

http://www.ww2f.com/north-africa-mediterranean/22962-rsi-navy-xa-mas.html

http://www.ww2f.com/north-africa-mediterranean/22230-italians-allies.html

 

I guess I didn't look back far enough in that forum.

 

after the reading of "Italian military enigma" i can tell you what i think.

Is a good job, expecially when it talks about World War II.

But the World War I part is very... unfair.

Talking about "poor results" from 1915 to 1917 is quite wrong, the italian army was always on advance, maybe for few Km but always on advance. In the western front we can not see better results from both sides (Allies and Germans) . It's the main feature of the "trench war": poor gains, high price.
Caporetto was a great defeat for Italy and, indeed, is described accurately .
But no a word about two "Austrian Caporetto", The battle of the Piave river and the battle of Vittoro Veneto, where italian army destroyed completely austro-hungarian forces capturing much more prisoners than the italian ones in caporetto and forcing the Austrian empire to the capitulation and the dissolution.

Italy History has victories and defeats, of course our defeats are astonishing , but we also have victories and hide them is simply unfair.

This is my opinion

 

Ill let ya slide this time LOL .

 

Grazie.