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Hi, I'm Griffin Johnson, the Armchair Historian. Today's episode: why Italy was so incompetent during the Second World War. This should be fun.
Fascist Italy's military has long been the target of ridicule aimed at its lack of competence and commitment to duty.
In this video we'll be evaluating the factors that inhibited the Italian military during the Second World War,
and examine whether or not the poor reputation of fascist Italy's military, which continues to this day largely in the form of internet memes,
is entirely deserved.
Now, let's begin by providing a bit of context.
Joining me today is Potential History to do just that.
Potential History: Since 1922,
Italy was under the leadership of Benito Mussolini, known as Il Duce, or "the leader".
What Il Duce imagined was nothing less than the restoration of the Roman Empire,
an ambition even Hitler prodded going as far as to call him "one of the Caesars".
Now, although I'm sure that big chin himself meant every word of his intentions, in reality
It turned out... Well, I won't spoil it for you...
Bad. It turned out very bad.
Even though there were clearly grand ambitions behind the troops Mussolini sent to the field,
The fact of the matter was, that they received substandard equipment.
Including thinly armored and very undergunned tanks. If you want to learn more specifically about Italian armor,
check out my video in the description below.
Armchair Historian: Let's start by analysing Italy's leadership during the Second World War.
Naturally, we'll start with big chin himself. Mussolini was eager to get involved, but Pietro Badoglio and Italo Balbo,
two of his top marshals, advised him to be patient. In his mind,
there was no doubt that the world would soon be subjected to
Axis rule and he was hoping to secure a territory for Italy. As a result, Mussolini ignored his army's
logistical deficiencies, which became very apparent just two weeks into the Italian invasion of France.
This was exacerbated by the lack of equipment, some of which had been lost due to
Mussolini's involvement in wars in Spain and East Africa. To make matters worse
the Italian High Command was simply not up to par with those of the other Great Powers.
Many of Mussolini's marshals only gained their positions because of their political affiliation and personal loyalty rather than military experience.
Incompetence was not limited to the upper echelons of the command structure, however.
MacGregor Knox in his book on the subject provides the following explanation as to why.
[quote on screen]
This translated into a widespread failure to adapt to the changing nature of combat, with many officers preparing their soldiers for First World War era
scenarios, and equipping them with outdated weapons. In terms of industrial capacity and natural resources,
Italy was also at a disadvantage. To give you an idea of how dire the situation
truly was at one point, the Italian infantry divisions were short, roughly
15,000 contemporary artillery guns,
but the Italian military factories could only produce 8 percent of that number in a year.
Furthermore, the artillery that was available to the Italian soldiers was often defective in some way. In Frank Joseph's book,
He quotes an Australian soldier, Robert Donovan, who professed that:
[quote on screen]
Throughout the war, the industries of Britain and its allies out-competed Italian industries in producing artillery,
aircraft, and ships alike.
And much like Germany, Italy suffered from a dearth of natural resources, like coal and oil, that were needed to power those
factories in the first place. Now that we understand that both Italy's command and resource output were inferior to its neighbours',
let's analyse Italy's forces and equipment. The Navy was by far the best thing that Italy had going for it. Its presence in the
Mediterranean Sea was imposing. Its destroyers, submarines, and torpedo boats outnumbering those of Britain and France in the region.
But the Navy suffered from two significant drawbacks. Number one:
It was hindered by fuel shortages, and number two: like the infantry, it could not depend on the Air Force.
This is largely a result of the Air Force's disorganized state, being composed of myriad aircraft types like the
infantryman barring World War 1 era weapons, some Italian pilots were forced to fly in
outdated biplanes, even during the final stages of the war.
Not to mention, in September 1939 less than half of Italy's planes were operational.
But of all three military branches, one could easily make the argument that ground forces suffer the most from equipment and supply shortages.
In 1940, only about a quarter of Italy's divisions were supplied with a sufficient amount of weapons and rations.
Those weapons that did make it into the hands of these soldiers were at times outdated, with the newly adopted Carcano rifle being sometimes
exchanged for World War one era rifles because of its limited range, accuracy, and jamming issues.
What's more, as of 1937 each
Infantry Division was composed of only two
Infantry regiments instead of three. Thus as the total numbers of divisions increased, the fighting capacity of each division decreased.
Each of these new divisions needed a new commander as well, and Italy suffered from a sort of marshal brain drain.
Granted, the binary system did provide each Italian division with more maneuverability,
but this advantage was nullified by the fact that the Italians were facing motorised enemies on the battlefield.
By en-large, Italian divisions were non-motorized as the country did not have the industrial capacity
to produce automotive parts. On the whole, we can definitively conclude that the Italian military performed poorly during the Second World War.
It failed to make a breakthrough in France, failed to invade Greece and Yugoslavia
without first soliciting German support, and failed to assert control over North Africa despite outnumbering British forces in Libya ten to one
during its planned invasion of Egypt. As such, Italy's string of failures and early capitulation
in 1944 can be better attributed to brash leadership, a lack of industrialization,
scarce resources, as well as equipment shortages and
deficiencies, as opposed to a scarcity of brave and dutiful soldiers. This seems to be the consensus among modern historians.
Although in William L. Shirer's book, the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,
another less heard of argument is put forth. Shirer points to the lack of popular support
among Italian people, who unlike the Germans, never truly embraced fascism to explain the inability of
Mussolini's regime to address the problems we've discussed throughout this video.
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Thanks for watching.
I'd like to thank my General Staff on Patreon and the Armchair Historian team listed on screen. If you're interested in learning more about
Italian History, we've actually got a playlist dedicated to that very subject, including videos on Venice, Italian unification and Italy during the first world war;
Lastly, be sure to check out Potential History's video on Italian tanks.
I'll see you next time in August with our video on Russia's transformation into an Empire.