Italian morale

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..

http://www.ww2f.com/north-africa-mediterranean/22728-italians-wwii.html

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1988/HEG.htm

http://www.1jma.dk/articles/1jmaarticlesww2italyarmy.htm

 

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The Italians were using vastly outdated weapons and had very little motorized transport for warfare in the desert.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

 

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....

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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.