Unlucky Italians

From my sources Kampgruppe Simons was created on 11/11/1942 and made up of
Stab (HQ) of Grenadier-Regiment 190
Elements of Panzerjäger-Abteilung 162 (Anti tank) and Nachrichten-Abteilung 162 (Comunications)
Panzerjäger-Abteilung 611 (Army level A/T asset)

The A/T heavy TOE make me think it was meant as a specialized "fire brigade" against tank penetrations which is also consistent to it's attachment to 14th Panzer, it was also probably at least partly motorized as otherwise it would have been unable to reach the Sellivanow area from Millerovo where it was apparently commited on the 19th in time.

IMO the removal from the division of both the Pioneer batallion and part of the A/T assets (not to mention a regimental HQ) would significantly weaken it's A/T capability, it's interesting to see how common this sort of improvvisation that attempted to squueze every dreg of "immediately available" fighting power out of altready committed troops at the expense of unit cohesion. IMHO the practice greatly conyributed to the erosion of the average division's fighting power and would make operational planning a nightmare as units that were similar "on paper" had widely different combat capabilities.

 

Oops I put Simon's had motor cycle units. Poor memory skills! Radfahr abt 162 is of course the bicycle batallion, of which 212 men were in Kampfgruppe Simons.

 

Even more oops. No idea how I put a line through that?

 

I understand your question in the way that the German Wehrmacht used Italian troops for the invasion and the italian units were under command of the Germans, right? That isn´t true - the german plans for operation "Barbarossa" did not include any participation of italian troops for the invasion of russia! Hitler´s about Italy was completely different. There are some reasons for a deployment of italian troops in russia ... especially the Mussolinis attitude at this point was the main reason ...

 

With the exception of the camicie nere the rest of the units were regular army so mostly conscripts, the 8th Army was a partly independent command and even had some German units under it, including the 62 ID whose gutting to reinforce 6th Army at Stalingrad is at the origin of the events in this thread. IIRC Hitler didn't ask for troops, they were sent on Mussolini's insistence to participate in the "crusade against bolschevism".

 

It was my understanding that Herr Hitler (and the OKW) wished Il Duce to concentrate more on his area of responsibility in the Med and Balkans but relented due to his soft spot for the Italian leader. I wonder if Mussolini had not offered them in 1941, would Hitler have requested/demanded them in '42 since things were going a bit behind schedule?

Certainly Kesselring and Rommel would have liked to have all those trucks sent to Russia in 1941.

 

It was in Germany's interest that Mussolini with his limited forces remained being active in the Mediterranean area and so indirectly supported the German war in the east. When Hitler and Mussolini met on 02 June 1941 at the Brenner, the Italians were informed of the German intentions ("Operation Barbarossa"). But Mussolini did not want to accept that the Germans were determined to lead this campaign without the Italians. Mussolini had already decided on 30 May 1941 in case of a military conflict with Russia to participate in the Eastern campaign. Ostensibly it was about the "fight against communism", but mainly a proof of the Italian great power claims.
Although the participation of the Italian army was no substantial gain for the offensive forces of Heeresgruppe South, but it seemed to be usefull to use the italian corps as a kind of partition wall on one hand and as kind of bridge on the other hand, between the forces of the romanian and hungarian units ...

 

..... that would otherwise have fought each other rather than the Soviets or so the mith goes.
In reality the semi motorized italian corps of 1941 was a lot more useful than that during the second phase of AGS's 1941 campaign as the Germans were awfully short of troops that could keep up with the panzers. There were very few Hungarian units in 1941. The additional divisons sent in 1942 were foot units and much less useful,
One division was never commited to the front and stayed behind to protect the supply routes, given the ferocity of anti partisan warfare in the USSR I find it pretty strange it was never involved in dubious epsodes, but post war both NATO and the communists had no interests in briging them up.
Mussolini and his generals went for quantity over quality, so the army was quite large, but badly trained and equipped as the industry was unable to provide modern equipment tn sufficient quantities and buying German or Czech weapons was incompatible with fascist nationalism. So they were little use for the high intensity combats on the steppes where "average" units tended to shatter with alarming frequency .

 

The 9th italian Infantry-division "Pasubio" and the 52nd italian Infantry division were compared to a german infantry division by full strength - two weak divisions (each around 10.000 soldiers). Because of their motorization they should be able to move quickly and been able to follow the german armored divisions ... but this was a myth. In fact, the number of vehicles was not sufficiently enough to move both divisions simultaneously. So either the italian infantry had to march on foot or on unprotected trucks.
The 3rd Rapid Division "Principe Amedo Duca d'Aosta" brought the only one armored component, consisting of 60 tanks of type L3-33, three tons light and armed only with machine guns. The Italian tanks were hopelessly inferior to the main battle tanks and anti-tank weapons.

 

The semi motorized divisions had sufficient lorries to carry either the infantry or the support units so you could think of them as one motorized and one foot, they had only two regiments like the German army 1941 motorized divisions (that also had parctically no AFVs) but were on the whole not as strong. The CSIR corps level artillery that was also motorized and the 1941 Aosta was a mix of cavalry and motorized infantry (besaglieri), this made the Italian corps considerably more mobile than the German foot. It had no pretence of being a mecanized unit but operated succssfully as part of Von Kleist's command during the later 1941 battles and as part of 17th Army during the winter battles..

 

my name is luca
forgive about my english
i'm a history passionate
i would give you my contribute to the discussion about russian campaign.
attach file in italian language

 

The bulk of Pionier-Bataillon 162 as a unit of 62. Infantrydivision reached Kalach at Stalingrad on 4th of november, the rest the next day. So the Italian driver had done their job at 05th of november. The pionier-bataillon 162 was one of the 5 pionier-bataillons which were sent to Stalingrad for Operation "Hubertus" at the beginning of november. The operation was planned as the last assault/offensive against the last russian defense positions along the wolga banks - but it will failed.