Italian morale

We must not forget that the motorized-mechanized warfare was still in it's infancy at the time of the Italy's entrance in the WW II; not only the Italians were ill prepared for that, all the countries involved had problems with adaptation to modern warfare. Remember the French response to german tactics during 1940 campaign, the British action at Gazala line in 1942, the soviet T-34 equipped with flags for transmitting orders and so on. to name just a few examples. The Modern Combined Arms was and it's still a very complex mechanism to implement even to a professional army and even more difficult to sustain it for a long period of time; in a rapid growing army, like all armies in WW II, no wonder that errors were made. Combine this with the Italy's inter-war doctrine, Austria been considered as the only potential enemy and therefore only mountain warfare been developed, and we will have a clearer picture about Italian's "low morale".

I apologize for possible errors regarding grammar or spelling, however English is not my native language.
Best regards.

 

In nearly every respect the Italian War machine did the wrong thing in nearly every area.

1) They entered the war with no coherent war aims other than "aquiring a few thousand war dead so that they could sit at the peace table".

2) No realistic goverment control over industry in production of war materials. If Industry did not want to build more modern equipment they would tell Mussollini that the workers would strike if they shut down production on obsolete equipment to retool. Could you imagine Krupp telling Hitler that?

3) Extensive graft in the procurement system. I read a quote that went something like this, " A military supplyer who provided shoes that did not fall apart within a month of use, must be considered something of a patriot".

4) The Binary Division system. Reducing the size of an division from 3 regiments to 2 serves only to stroke the ego of Il Duce (more divisions for the same number of men) and to provide general billits to and allready bloated general staff.

5) High command slots available to only 'politicly acceptable' officers. Limited promotion for young energetic jumior officers.

The list could go on, if you were an Italian soldier would your moral be all that good?

 

2) Never heard of the strike threat, the usual excuse was "we don't have the capability and retooling for it will not give results until welll after the war is over".

3) Correct about the graft, though Mussolini and most top level fascists were not corrupt they were just incapable of asserting control over the industry. The military leadership was a lot more corrupt/incompetent than in other countries which led to some awful pieced of junk bring selected for production and bad quality assurance overall.

4) The binary division was not all that terrible, the manouver element was meant to be the corps a bit like in the late war soviet system, what was terrible was sending partly mobilized units to fight piecemeal as happened for most of 1940.

5) What do you expect from an army thet had as it's top the general resposible for it's greatest defeat?

 

Might also be worth noting, on the equipment side of things that Italy was the only nation that used almost completely unique equipment - caliber of almost all their ammunition for example was only available from Italian sources.

Almost every other combatant nation had some commonality with a selection of other nations involved, so when the war geared up they were able to get ammo and spares etc from elsewhere if their production capacity was not yet up to speed - The Italians didn't have that option and had to rely on their own (fairly inefficient) industry for all supply, so when the war got going properly they always had shortages which in my experience is a much greater damage to morale than even poor equipment to begin with - even a bad gun will still kill, but not without ammo.

 

Not completely true, each major power has it's own rifle bullet with the exception of the German 7.92 mauser round that was used by half the world (including British tanks)- French 7.5, British 7.7, US 7,62, Japanese 6.5, Soviet 7.62 (but icompatible with US). The Italians didn't generally have access to many foreign manufacturers and money to pay those they had access to, so sharing a design would serve little. The problem was more the tendency to "reinvent the weel" even when perfectly good foreign design were available. Industrially Italy was a minor power but military procurement behaved like it was a major one (and still does today in lot of instances).

 

You are in some ways right, but my point was that the 7.92, .303, .30 and 7.5 were all manufactured in a lot more countries than just the main originators (the Japanese 6.5 i believe you are right about although i expect it was made in China also)
in fact the artillery ammo was probably more crucial - the Italian 100mm was pretty rare while almost all the other major players had arty ammo and tooling based around the French or British calibers (mostly French)(exception soviets) - i read an article a while back about italian ammo shortages in NA but don't seem to be able to find it at the moment - will try again tomorrow.

 

Actually found a thread on ww2incolor that says the Germans tried to help by taking used italian shell cases and returning them refilled and of course they helped supply the captured weapons that the italians were using too

 

For artillery calibers the odd man out are the British and Sobiets with their 87-114 and 76-122, most other combattants used 75, 100 and 105. The main Italian gun was the 75, IMO a correct choice for a horse drawn army, in an astonishingly large variations, followed by the 100 nd 149. The issue ws not caliber choice, but the inability of the industry to produce sufficien numbers of the new weapons which left masses of WW1 weapons, including war booty ones in all sort of calibers, around with reslting logistical difficulties.
The Germans supplied a number of weapons, somewhat adding to the mess, somewhere on this site I posted a 1943 report with the totals (need to search for it though), but for "refilled" ammo the only story I know is was the other way round concerning 88 and 90 mm AA rounds that were refilled in Italian factories.

There is some very similar info (and a notorious troll) on this thread
http://www.ww2f.com/italy-sicily-greece/22728-italians-wwii-2.html

 

Surprisingly no, most stuff have are memoirs of participants in Italian, a good "big picture" book from an Italian perspective doesn't exist as the war still is a taboo subject here, but I have some hopes that someone from the pretty good group of reseachers that rotates around the Storia Militare magazine will finally take the plunge. The anglo-saxon "hollow legions" picture is not very accurate and unfortunately most English writers have stuck to it, and better not talk about the French authors.

One in English I'm currently reading is Italy's sorrow by James Holland looks pretty good so far, but it's the 1944-45 period while I understand you're more interested in the 1940-43 one.
One I would not recomend as first book, is Bitter Sea by Simon Ball, it's refreshing in how it does way with "conventional wisdom" but you won't get the border between the good data and his personal theories unless you know a lot already. And that's about all for recent "big picture" books I have read.

 

Sadly that tallies with what I have been able to find myself. except for accounts from either the Allied or German perspective, I have read (and own) only one book on subject plus a few articles in military history magazines like Military History/Strategy & Tactics/WWII.

In the US over the last decade there has been a resurgence of new info due to fact that so many veterans were passing away. It is a pity that the same does not happen for the Italian vets. I can only guess that the taboo comes from both having been an ally of Germany and for fairing so poorly in the war. A somewhat similar taboo existed about Vietnam here in the US, but after about 15 years people began to open up.

 

As I understand from my father-in-law's memoir of the time, the Italian troops (a majority) did not really want to fight. With invasion of Sicily (my family home town in fact) on July 10, 1943 and Mussolini ready to "resign", the Italians were mostly relieved and celebrated his leaving. It really didn't seem to be a matter of being prepared. They knew they were being used and easily surrendered when they could.

Patti

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I just saw a documentary about North Africa on TV, it said the Italians actually fought quite bravely but they had no other alternative to surrender becaus ethey were ill equipped but also because Rommel stole their petrol supplies for his own Panzers.

 

Elite Italian units like the paratroopers or frogmen were very effective; these attracted the most motivated soldiers and also stressed cameraderie between officers and men. Where the Italians fell short was in leading and sustaining mass armies. Most soldiers in most WWII armies were draftees; but in Britain, America, Germany, or Russia the government and the military leadership were able to make a convincing case that they needed to fight for their country and cause. As other have noted, there was little clear reason for Italy to be in the war. Social, regional, and class differences exacerbated the problem; Italian officers maintained a clear distinction between themselves and their men, including vastly different living conditions in the field. It didn't help when officers were from the industrial north found themselves commanding peasants from the south or Sicily with whom they could barely communicate.

In Renaissance times, when wars were fought by small companies of professional soldiers, Italians were among the leading practitioners of the military art. The social class who made fine gentleman adventurers proved less capable of leading mass conscript armies.

A similar situation prevailed on the material side. Italy produced many fine examples of technology: record-setting aircraft, racing cars, sporting firearms, etc. but they were unable to produce serviceable, quality weapons in sufficient numbers for large-scale war. Material deficiencies amplified the problems of leadership and motivation.

I suppose there are worse things that could be said about a people than that they are unsuited for mass mechanized warfare.....

 

IMO Rommel "diverting" supplies for his own Panzers is a "half myth", after all the M13 and most Italian trucks burned diesel and the panzers gasoline, what is historical is the Germans grabbing all available transportation equipment when they decided to pull back from El Alamein leaving the Italian troops unable to retreat. Before 1942 Italian equipment was not terrible compared to their opponents, neither the Greeks nor the desert forces had much better with few exceptions like the Matilda tanks, but officer quality was worse than terrible. From 1942 the allies were receiving lots of decent stuff and the gap became more apparent, so when the Italian forces in NA had finally reached a decent experience level, the handicap in equipment kicked in.

AFAIK Italian soldiers after the armistice usually fought well, though they still suffered from bad equipment, neither side was likely to trust badly motivated Italian troops near the frontline.

IMO the best Italian troops were the Alpini mountain forces and the Ariete armoured division, Folgore, the only paratroop division, was a unit formed of high quality manpower (I think it was in large part volunteer) but totally unsuited to the role it was assigned (static defence in the desert), despite lack of traditions it avoided the usual Italian trouble of separation of officers from troops bercause in a para unit "everybody jumps".

The frogmen were really the creation of a few exceptional leaders that attracted similar men, that sort of thing doesn't "scale up".