Why did Italy perform so poorly in WW2?

[Simon_Jester]

I was going to mention this in the Indian army thread, then got to wondering about it.

The Italians had a number of nasty reverses, even against relatively weak opponents- the Ethiopians launched some rather effective counterattacks against Italian troops in 1935-36 until the Italians broke out the chemical weapons, the Greeks were able to stop them cold in 1940. The British, who while competent at warfare weren't exceptional, utterly defeated Italian armies on land repeatedly, the highest-profile example being Operation Compass, where O'Connor's offensive used mobile warfare techniques to dismantle an Italian army that outnumbered him by some ridiculous margin (I've heard as high as ten to one).

Their fleet achieved relatively little except for negative victories- fleet-in-being tactics, the only exception I can think of being the minisub attacks on the Mediterranean Fleet in Alexandria in December 1941. Their performance calls to mind Bob Hope jokes, not names of battles, for me.

What was wrong with the Italian military, anyway?

Answers I've heard include:
-Relatively low-quality heavy equipment, and limited availability of same, due to weak Italian industry.
-Inept strategy from Mussolini
-Low morale and/or inadequate officers among much of the Italian military
-Half-heartedness in prosecuting the war.

I don't know what to make of this though.

[Mr Bean]

You already covered everything. Nothing the Italians made with the exception of the Beretta was worth a damn. Only Japan had worse tanks, only China had worse transportation, only France had a worse airforce. At the end of the day while the fighting spirit of the Italian soldier was fine and his kit was excellent everything else was lacking. The Italians were the best World War One army to fight in World War II.

[thejester]

There's a couple of great books in English by a guy called Macgregor Knox which examine the Italian war effort. He makes the point that at no point did the Italians have anything that could be described as a coherent piece of grand strategy, or any sort of institution capable of producing one; it was all just seat-of-the-pants stuff. This was accentuated by the fact that Mussolini never had a stranglehold on political power in the way Hitler did - the handful of wealthy industrialists who essentially controlled Italy's economy and heavy industry were perfectly prepared to bleed the state, which accentuated existing economic weakness. This permeates all levels of the war effort - Italian logistics are terrible, in part because they lack trucks, to the point where ammunition stockpiled in dumps within Bardia could not be moved sufficiently quickly to the frontline; there's no standardisation of equipment, which also complicates logistics and is brought about in part by the use of surplus Austrian equipment, which was obsolete; and quality control is horrendous. Italian shells, if they exploded, often didn't fragment properly and even when they did the blast tended to be concentrated at the rear of the shell - rendering artillery, easily the most effective arm in a pretty poor army, considerably less effective than it should have been.

Military thought in Italy is itself a fascinating case study. It's a simplification, but all the stuff about the 'moral of superiority of the attack' that floated around pre-1914 in the rest of Europe actually made a comeback in Italy in the 30s; training your men was considered bad form as it diluted their natural aggression, and officers who thought otherwise were actually censored. Consequently it's hardly surprising that, when combined with the chronic under mechanisation in the army, they got badly touched up. That said, it's also a bit unfair to simply 'count bayonets' and then say 'enormous Italian Army trounced by plucky Brits', or whatever. At a lot of the set pieces during the Western Desert campaign the British had an enormous advantage - at Bardia the artillery resources available would have made a WW1 commander blush. There's also individual tactical factors like the Matilda being impervious to Italian AT guns.

[CaptHawkeye]

I'm sure it would have helped Italy if Mussolini didn't decide to declare war on the Allies when nearly half of their merchant vessels were docked at the fucking ports of their enemies.

Oh, and losing a 150,000 man Army to a British garrison barely 1/10 its size in North Africa didn't start things off well either.

[ChaserGrey]

The Italian Air Force in particular was crippled by, I'd say, two factors:

First, the failure of the domestic aero engine industry to put an engine developing over about 1000 HP into production. Even near the end, the Italians had to import German engines to get their second generation of fighters off the ground. The lack of horsepower had knock-on effects on just about everything. It helped keep Italian fighters relatively lightly built and armed, because increasing weight would have turned them into sitting ducks. It also put limitations on Italy's bomber arm- they could put together some good two and three engined medium bombers, but heavies were out of the question with any reasonable number of engines

Second, lack of vision between the wars in the fighter arm. Italian fighter pilots were notoriously conservative between the wars and believed that future air combat would resemble World War I air combat, which meant they emphasized agility, pilot view, and good control over speed, armament, and pilot protection. A lot is made of the Italians still having biplanes in World War II, but I think a better example is their most common fighter during most of the war, the Macchi MC.200. It was an all-metal monoplane, so it had that going for it, but it still had an open cockpit because the pilots complained a canopy cut down on their view and was armed with a pair of rifle-caliber machine guns- and this for a fighter entering service in August of 1939, when the RAF had about 500 Hurricanes and 350 Spitfires in service. Other Italian fighters of its generation were similar. The next generation was actually quite good (a stiff dose of combat eliminated those objections quite nicely), but they mostly didn't get into service until after the armistice.

The Italian Navy wasn't bad, but it had four majors things that combined against it, again IMO:

- Lack of a fleet air arm. The small size of the Med meant this wasn't as crippling as it might have been, but it meant that if the Navy wanted air recon or air support they had to go begging to the Air Force. Coordination problems.

- Lack of shipbuilding capability compared to Britain, their major opponent in the Med. Made the Italian fleet smaller and also meant Italian fleet commanders tended to be cautious about engaging the enemy, since they had limited ability to replace losses.

- Italian ships tended to be built for speed at the expense of armor, exacerbating the problem given above.

- As the war went on fuel problems became increasingly severe. The Italians had built up a reserve before entering the war, but once that was gone they were up a certain creek sans paddle. The only place they could really import from was the Ploesti fields in Romania, which were under German control. As the Germans' own fuel problems got increasingly severe they were disinclined to share.

[DarkArk]

Also losing a decent chunk of their fleet at Taranto didn't help things for the Italians. The British were in fact quite worried about the Italian fleet but it was never used effectively.

Put more simply the Italians were just not prepared for war at all. A major problem was that the Italians over the decade before the war put a large portion of their wealth and energy into developing their colonies in Africa. Colonies that were lost quite quickly to the British. There was no great buildup of wartime industry to any degree, and the Italian economy and military was unprepared for the kind of fighting they were going to have to do.

[Simon_Jester]

That said, it's also a bit unfair to simply 'count bayonets' and then say 'enormous Italian Army trounced by plucky Brits', or whatever. At a lot of the set pieces during the Western Desert campaign the British had an enormous advantage - at Bardia the artillery resources available would have made a WW1 commander blush. There's also individual tactical factors like the Matilda being impervious to Italian AT guns.

What I was getting at there is that, if you do just count bayonets, the gap between the Italians and British is spectacular- common sense defies the idea of the British winning at all if you just look at the numbers. Every other factor but numbers worked against the Italians, though, to the point where the Italians never really had a chance of holding their position- the best they had a hope for was a successful retreat toward Tripoli, and they didn't even get that.

I consider it impressive and relevant for two reasons. One is that it's a textbook case of how easily a superficially strong army can be destroyed if it is outgunned, outmaneuvered, and 'outstrategized.'

The other is that it undermines the myth of the German superman, supertank, and supergeneral. In Compass, the British were given the opportunity to use an advantage in firepower, mobility, and grasp of the operational art, against a static and underprepared enemy. And the British took that and used it to flatten a huge enemy army and made it look just as easy as the Battle of France had made it look when done against them eight months earlier. It wasn't something 'only' Germans knew how to accomplish, which is one of the popular myths you get from the sophomoric crowd.

[Stark]

His point is that it was only a strong army if you're wrong. Seriously, the Italian commander knew how weak his force was in truth. Don't you believe him?

[thejester]

That said, it's also a bit unfair to simply 'count bayonets' and then say 'enormous Italian Army trounced by plucky Brits', or whatever. At a lot of the set pieces during the Western Desert campaign the British had an enormous advantage - at Bardia the artillery resources available would have made a WW1 commander blush. There's also individual tactical factors like the Matilda being impervious to Italian AT guns.

What I was getting at there is that, if you do just count bayonets, the gap between the Italians and British is spectacular- common sense defies the idea of the British winning at all if you just look at the numbers. Every other factor but numbers worked against the Italians, though, to the point where the Italians never really had a chance of holding their position- the best they had a hope for was a successful retreat toward Tripoli, and they didn't even get that.

I consider it impressive and relevant for two reasons. One is that it's a textbook case of how easily a superficially strong army can be destroyed if it is outgunned, outmaneuvered, and 'outstrategized.'

The other is that it undermines the myth of the German superman, supertank, and supergeneral. In Compass, the British were given the opportunity to use an advantage in firepower, mobility, and grasp of the operational art, against a static and underprepared enemy. And the British took that and used it to flatten a huge enemy army and made it look just as easy as the Battle of France had made it look when done against them eight months earlier. It wasn't something 'only' Germans knew how to accomplish, which is one of the popular myths you get from the sophomoric crowd.

Don't think that's much of an achievement though - anyone with a basic knowledge of the Second World War or military thought/art/history should recognise that silliness of the Blitzkrieg myth. I think it's more interesting that you've implied that any army, when given the opportunity, can execute operations in that manner. I don't think that's necessarily true of the British Army in WW2 and I think it also hints at a bigger mythology - that of winning the 'right' way. But that's probably getting off topic.

[Lord Revan]

correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Italy also not use the opportunity to fine tune their military during the Spanish Civil War, unlike the germans?

[Simon_Jester]

His point is that it was only a strong army if you're wrong. Seriously, the Italian commander knew how weak his force was in truth. Don't you believe him?

What you seem to have not bothered to get because you were too busy smarming at me, again, is this:

Compass is a great example of why troop numbers don't automatically equal the strength of an army. Hardware matters, doctrine matters, logistics matters, how the troops are used and the mindset of the commanders matters. Even when the hardware on both sides is theoretically similar, except for one side having slightly better X or Y than the other (and more of it), so that it's not something totally blatant like guys with machine guns slaughtering guys with swords and spears, all these advantages still allow very lopsided victories under the right conditions.

Is this blindingly obvious to someone who's educated in military history? I suppose you could say so. But how does anyone ever become educated, except by learning from examples? How does it make sense to pooh-pooh anyone who points to an example by saying "what, are you too stupid to already know the lesson of this example?"

Don't think that's much of an achievement though - anyone with a basic knowledge of the Second World War or military thought/art/history should recognise that silliness of the Blitzkrieg myth.

By this definition of basic I have run into way too many people who don't have basic knowledge. That doesn't surprise me, so I like having counterexamples ready to hand.

I think it's more interesting that you've implied that any army, when given the opportunity, can execute operations in that manner. I don't think that's necessarily true of the British Army in WW2 and I think it also hints at a bigger mythology - that of winning the 'right' way. But that's probably getting off topic.

An army that lacks the equipment will have trouble doing it (though the Japanese managed for a while despite poor equipment, when they were up against a disorganized, fragmented opposition and had superior air and sea mobility). An army that lacks the doctrine or the officer corps can't do it at all. But what I like to use Compass for when talking about the war, and what I think it's good as an illustration for, is the point that pretty much anyone would try to fight this sort of way, if they were competent and had the tools for the job.

For example, the Russians kept refining tactics, combining arms and using their great production of materiel against the Germans. You already know this, yes I know that, but a lot of people still think in terms of the mythologized stereotype of stupid Russians mindlessly throwing human waves at the Germans until they buried the Germans in bodies.

The British come across as sort of "meh" in World War Two, at least as far as Americans are concerned- and I share a continent with a whole lot of Americans, so I hope you'll forgive me for thinking about what they think. Being able to point to something like Compass helps show that yes, the British had their flashes of genius like anyone else, they weren't just along for the ride and hanging on out of toughness.

I'm not sure what you mean by winning the "right" way. If you mean that I think the "right way" is to use specific tactics like materiel-heavy maneuver warfare, I don't think that's true- it happens to work very well at breaking up immobile armies in the open field, but that doesn't mean it's a silver bullet for all military problems.

correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Italy also not use the opportunity to fine tune their military during the Spanish Civil War, unlike the germans?

Italy sent troops to Spain, but they didn't perform very well. Italy shipped weapons to Spain, too. But if I remember, the real problem is that unlike Germany, Italy didn't have a systematic program going to develop and improve their war machine. The Germans had tank and air theorists who were eagerly lapping up every bit of experience they got out of Spain; the Italians weren't paying as much attention to the details of what happened and what it might imply for modern warfare.

Maybe I'm wrong though.

[Spoonist]

Don't think that's much of an achievement though - anyone with a basic knowledge of the Second World War or military thought/art/history should recognise that silliness of the Blitzkrieg myth. I think it's more interesting that you've implied that any army, when given the opportunity, can execute operations in that manner. I don't think that's necessarily true of the British Army in WW2 and I think it also hints at a bigger mythology - that of winning the 'right' way. But that's probably getting off topic.

Zooming in

basic knowledge of the Second World War or military thought/art/history

Zooming further

military thought/art/history

military art

military art? Is this like the "martial arts" aspect? Where art would be interchangeable with skill?

[Simon_Jester]

Huh? It's a common way of phrasing it in English.

The term "art" is applied because you can't reduce war to a set of mathematically predictable things- it is not a science, not entirely. There are rigorous things that can be studied and taught and learned in terms of rules in war, "military science," yes. But there are also imponderables, abstractions in strategy that don't turn into syllogisms or equations no matter how you look at them. Hence "the art of war."

Which happens to be the English translation of the title of Sun Tzu's famous book; what do you call it in Sweden, anyway?

So calm down, man...

[Spoonist]

Calm down?
Art of war I would recognize and we have the same thing in swedish, krigskonst, which is literally warart.
But military art I've never heard of in this context.
So now I googled it and the links are paintins atc with mili motives...

[Ziggy Stardust]

Yeah, to be honest, I've never heard the phrase "military art" before, either. Art of War, sure, but never "military art."

EDIT:

More on topic, several years ago I read a book on the Mediterranean theater of WW2, which was fascinating, and it spent a lot of time talking about the shortcomings, both true and perceived, of the Italians. I wish I could find the book, because it made some interesting arguments about the various ways the Germans screwed over the Italians, by forcing them into strategic situations that their army composition simply wasn't ideally suited for. And, in fact, there were a number of isolated encounters in the war when the Italians did a good job against the Allies when on a tactical level they were able to use their naval and land forces they way they had been operationally "designed". It was sort of a square peg, round hole thing. When I find the book after work I can get some passages, unless one of the more knowledgeable members has something better.

[fractalsponge1]

Were you thinking of

The Naval War in the Mediterranean 1940-1943, by Greene and Massignani

http://www.amazon.com/The-Naval-War-Med ... 1861761902

Great read, bad proofing, but very interesting and informative.

The Italian Navy wasn't bad, but it had four majors things that combined against it, again IMO:

- Lack of a fleet air arm. The small size of the Med meant this wasn't as crippling as it might have been, but it meant that if the Navy wanted air recon or air support they had to go begging to the Air Force. Coordination problems.

- Lack of shipbuilding capability compared to Britain, their major opponent in the Med. Made the Italian fleet smaller and also meant Italian fleet commanders tended to be cautious about engaging the enemy, since they had limited ability to replace losses.

- Italian ships tended to be built for speed at the expense of armor, exacerbating the problem given above.

Let's not forget the lack of radar. There were some natively developed Italian sets during the war, but the Regia Marina had to import FuMO sets to equip its ships (and there were never that many sets acquired anyway). By 1943 the British were putting radar on convoy escorts.

Also, Italian guns tended to favor very high muzzle velocities, and were often (for twins), mounted close together in a common cradle. This led to shell interference in flight and extreme muzzle wear, leading to large salvo spreads. This wasn't helped by the bad quality control of ammunition.

Also, the Italians were spending a lot of money pre-war on deploying troops to Spain and Ethiopia, and was still building new ships, but there didn't seem to be either the emphasis or money for training. This led, among other things, to the RM being woefully unprepared for night fighting, which would come to hurt badly in the coming years. Witness Matapan and the Duisburg convoy.

[thejester]

Calm down?
Art of war I would recognize and we have the same thing in swedish, krigskonst, which is literally warart.
But military art I've never heard of in this context.
So now I googled it and the links are paintins atc with mili motives...

It's not as common a term as it once was - but the US Army CGSC still offers a Masters in Military Art and Science, for example.

[lord Martiya]

As far I know, it's due a lot of reasons. I'll list what I know.
1)The Italian people wasn't too enthusiast of the war, and apparently even disliked its ally: I remember listening a record of Mussolini announcing the declaration of war, and when he announced it was against France and Britain he got booed.
2)As already said, the Italian army had low-quality equipment (bad tanks, bad rifles, bad everything but bayonets and mortars), and often not enough of it. Steps were being taken to correct this, but they were too little, too late (a good example comes from the Carcano rifle, whose ammo tended to overpenetrate and didn't make enough damage unless it hit a vital organ: the problem was known since WWI, but a larger caliber round and the relative Carcano variant started being fielded only in 1938, and it was all aborted when Italy entered the war because there wasn't enough of the new round), and sometimes failed miserably (see the Fiat-Revelli Modello 1935 and Breda Mod. 37 machine guns: replacing the older Fiat-Revelli Modello 1914, they were overcomplicated and only slightly less prone to jamming than the older weapon).
3)The officers of the Italian Army were bad: with few exceptions, the higher was the rank the higher was the chance they got the rank due nepotism and corruption. To make just one example, Pietro Badoglio had been one of the responsibles of the defeat of Caporetto during WWI (arguably even more than Cadorna: Badoglio was supposed to defend a forced chokepoint with overwhelming artillery, but due his orders to not fire unless ordered otherwise by him the artillery did nothing), but had escaped prosecution and was even chief of staff of the armed forces from 1925 to 1940.
4)The Italian army was poorly trained for WWII standards. Well-trained for WWI, and its cavalry charges were downright lethal (the regiment Savoia Cavalleria still brags about Isbuscenskij during WWII with good reasons), but all of its training and equipment was geared to defend and assault trench lines.
5)Italian supply lines were poor. The army had little trucks and many mules and camels, and the merchant navy had to deal with minefields and the strange ability of the Royal Navy to know almost everything.
6)Due all of the above, the morale of the Italian Army was at an all-time low, with the only exceptions being only the elite corps (Alpini mountain troops, the famous Bersaglieri, the recently reactivated Arditi assault troops, the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale (AKA the original Blackshirts) and the Carabinieri (who doubled as the universally loathed military police and provided the royal guard)). As a consequence, the line troops mostly fought half-hearted, and in spite of occasional acts of valor (like the aforementioned Charge of Isbuscenskij or the sacrifice of five Italian divisions (including the Ariete tank division and the Folgore parachute division) at El Alamein, that fought to the last round covering Rommel's retreat) they tended to retreat as soon as they were given the occasion.
7)Interservice rivalry: the Navy and the Air Force loathed each other, and tended to not collaborate. Friendly fire among the two were fairly frequent.
The Italian Navy wasn't up to task. While powerful and possibly able to give the French Navy a terrible beating, the enemy was the Royal Navy, that seemed specifically created to take advantage of both the Italian strengths (very fast ships) and their weaknesses (paper-thin armor, they were led from Rome until the start of the engagement). A good example comes from the battle of Cape Spada: in that engagement two Italian light cruisers (designed as destroyer hunters, using their high speed to keep pace with enemy destroyers and then sink them with their superior firepower) engaged four British destroyers but were led in a wild goose chase and brought before a fifth destroyer and the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sidney (more armored than the Italian ones and with comparable firepower), resulting in one Italian cruiser sank and the other damaged and forced to retreat.
9)The Italian Navy had no carriers. That meant they depended from the Air Force for recon and air support, and only contributed to interservice rivalry.
10)Poor coordination among different branches, as, apart special cases, all of it had to pass from the Supreme Command. Thus a request for air support from the Army or the Navy had to be made to Supermarina (Navy supreme command) or Superesercito (Army supreme command), that would pass it to the Supreme Command, who would analize it and pass it to the Air Force, that regularly arrived on the battlefield too late. Information from air rec went from the same route, slowing operations.
11)Somehow the Royal Navy always knew what the Italian Navy planned. That led to paranoia and low morale, and until 1974 and the declassification of ULTRA it was considered a fact that there were traitors in Supermarina.
12)Mussolini was so sure that the war would end in a couple months that a good chunk of the merchant navy remained outside of the Mediterranean Sea and eliminated from the war (either sank or captured by the British or interned in neutral ports), worsening the logistical nightmare.
13)The Italian Air Force was unable to tell the Italian ships from the British ones, leading to the aforementioned friendly fire incidents when they came to support it (the Air Force would attack the first force they saw, that would always fire back. More often than not it was Italian ships that were being attacked and fired back).
14)When the Air Force actually got the right target, their bombs were not up to task (they got the nickname 'cowshit' from the Italian Navy for this reason).
15)The Air Force was underequipped due antiquated thinking in the Supreme Command: while they had a magnificent medium bomber/torpedo plane in the SM.79, the main fighter was the CR.42, that could be easily handled as long as the enemy pilots remembered to not engage in a dogfight.
16)Italian replacement of the antiquated CR.42 with better fighters was slow, as the new Italian fighters, while capable, were overcomplicated and depended on German-made engines.
17)Italian industry was not up to task. While greatly grown during Fascism, it was still not enough to produce everything needed for a modern war, and suffered from shortage of strategic materials like steel, coal and, in a lesser measure, oil (extraction of petroleum in Libya was still starting).
18)Italian industry had a penchant for overcomplicating things (hence the problems of Italian machine guns and modern fighters) and low quality control (hence the problems with reliable ammo).

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Honestly, the best thing I've ever heard that summarizes everything wrong with the Italians in WW2 is a quote from the commander of the Army at the start of the war:

"When the guns begin to fire, all shall fall into place." Yes, Badoglio actually said that, and it roughly summarizes the amount of "planning" the Italians did, too.

The Italian officer corps was barely better than that of the British in the 1840s and 1850s when you could still buy a commission, and most of all they had invested heavily, massively in fact, in rearming in the early 1930s instead of the late 1930s, which means they were a full technological step behind everyone else, as they had no money left when everyone else was rearming. The Italians therefore actually had reasonably good industry, but they'd broken the bank in advance of everyone else and ended up fighting with the best biplane of WW2, the best wooden bomber of WW2, the best MG armed tankette of WW2, etc, etc. They would have performed much better in 1935 than in 1940... Which considering their performance in Ethiopia (though the Ethiopians actually had plenty of modern rifles and machine guns, ex-WW1 Ottoman Army officers as advisors, barbed wire, several dozen French 75mm field guns and several dozen 1900-era Russian mountain howitzers, etc) isn't, we grant, saying much. See the officers again.

[CaptHawkeye]

The hilarity of everything was they lost Italian Abyssinia a few years later when the British just took the whole country back and their was exactly nothing the Italians could do about it. I've never seen an example of a military so comically set to defeat itself at nearly every turn. Why are the French the punchline of all the war jokes?

[Blayne]

There`s the one joke about an Italian tank that could travel faster in reverse？

[Simon_Jester]

Calm down?
Art of war I would recognize and we have the same thing in swedish, krigskonst, which is literally warart.
But military art I've never heard of in this context.
So now I googled it and the links are paintins atc with mili motives...

Sorry, you sounded angry to me. Honest mistake.

But "military art..." well, I consider it to be interchangeable with "art of war," you use whichever sounds best in context.

Yeah, to be honest, I've never heard the phrase "military art" before, either. Art of War, sure, but never "military art."

I have, now and again.

[Lonestar]

Also losing a decent chunk of their fleet at Taranto didn't help things for the Italians. The British were in fact quite worried about the Italian fleet but it was never used effectively.

They had some of their Battleships temporarily put out of action at Taranto, but they didn't "lose" it. And even with the loses, the RM was still the 4th Biggest navy on the planet and could have played merry hell with the RN in the Med.

[Captain Seafort]

They had some of their Battleships temporarily put out of action at Taranto, but they didn't "lose" it.

They lost half their battlefleet, temporarily or not, and more importantly had a healthy fear of carrier aircraft instilled in them. Having said that, when it came to crippling battleships the Italians proved somewhat better at it than the Fleet Air Arm.

[Sea Skimmer]

The fleet air arm sank or crippled four Italian battleships, one of which never returned to service, the Italians got three all of which returned to service. British actions were also a lot more repeatable then the Italians one off commando raid that accounted for two of the scores. I have no idea how you could conclude this makes the Italians 'better'. Especially when the Italians completely failed to exploit the advantages they gained, while the British did heavily. The point of sea power isn't to sink the enemy fleet, its to exploit control of the sea.