Italy
Jason Hu
Japanese for WW2.But not much had been say for Italy.From what I know Italy
seems to have a lot of internal problems during the war.Any views about
this.And was their campaigns mainly a fiasco.Any views?
Tero P. Mustalahti
"Jason Hu" <juli...@singnet.com.sg> writes:
This has been discussed several times in this newsgroup
before. Italian military efforts were not very successful just as you
wrote. There were several reasons for that (in no particular order):
1. The Italian army was poorly equipped. In the beginning of the war
the Italians had no decent tanks and their infantry weapons were
generally inferior to all other major powers. They also had other
equipment shortages.
2. Italy had (and still has) major cultural differences between
different parts of the country. The soldiers from Southern Italy and
Sicily never respected their mainly Northern officers. Especially in
the Southern parts of Italy Mussolini's rhetoric about rebuilding the
Roman Empire failed to inspire the people -- but in fact it did not
work that great in the North either. Most of the infantry soldiers
came from Southern Italy, whereas armor, artillery, navy and air force
people came largely from the North. Consequently infantry was the
poorest performing branch of the Italian military forces.
3. Italian generals were generally no strategic or tactical
geniuses. There were exceptions of course, but they were too few.
4. Italy simply did not have the industrial capacity or natural
resources for a prolonged war. The Germans were only able to help a
little, because they had production problems of their own, and
technological cooperation between Germany and Italy seems to have been
quite inefficient, especially before and early in the war.
Tero P. Mustalahti
David Thornley
Tero P. Mustalahti <term...@utu.fi> wrote:
>
A few comments...
>1. The Italian army was poorly equipped. In the beginning of the war
>the Italians had no decent tanks and their infantry weapons were
>generally inferior to all other major powers. They also had other
>equipment shortages.
>
One of the problems the Italians had was peaking too soon. In the
late 1930s, Italian tanks weren't all that much worse than those
of other armies. In the early 1940s, the Italians were still using
the same lousy light tanks, and everybody else had outbuilt them.
Italy did not have the industry to catch up.
>2. Italy had (and still has) major cultural differences between
>different parts of the country. The soldiers from Southern Italy and
>Sicily never respected their mainly Northern officers.
The officers did not particularly respect the Southern soldiers,
either. Troops tend to live down to their officers' expectations.
>3. Italian generals were generally no strategic or tactical
>geniuses. There were exceptions of course, but they were too few.
>
Neither were the admirals, in general. The Cape Matapan loss of
four heavy cruisers came about because one of the cruisers had
been crippled by air attack. Rather than accept its loss, the
Italians greatly reduced the squadron speed, and left three more
cruisers for the British battleships to shoot up.
>4. Italy simply did not have the industrial capacity or natural
>resources for a prolonged war.
Italian aircraft would probably have been much better, given adequate
engines.
The most critical resource of the war was oil, and Italy produced
almost exactly no oil, and so was dependent on prewar reserves
(which dwindled greatly over the years), and whatever they could
talk the Germans out of. Since the Germans had serious limits
on oil, too, this was typically much less than the Italians could
have used.
The Germans were only able to help a
>little, because they had production problems of their own, and
>technological cooperation between Germany and Italy seems to have been
>quite inefficient, especially before and early in the war.
>
At the very end, the Italians were coming out with some very good
fighters built around German engines. Had the Germans been more
generous with them earlier, the Italian Air Force would have been
much more formidable.
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
Paulo
it's military industry.
The only field were the italians seemed to be better prepared in the
beggining of the war was the Navy.
In fact italy was producing it's Littorio class and underwent a compleete
reffiting of it's WW I battleships, which in fact became modern and
effective ones.
The Italian Navy had a shortcoming in which concered use of Radar, and
deficiencies in air cover (no aircraft carriers). The lack of aircraft
carriers could be solved with cooperation between the navy and the air
force, but cooperation between the various armed force brances was in fact
very poor.
After Taranto, italy got very prudent in the use of it's fleet, and lost
initiative, and the possibility to control the mediterranean.
It is curious to remember that the conflict between the italian navy and the
italian air-force substited up to the 1980's, when Itally actually lauched
it's first aircraft carrier (the Veneto) For years the carrier was armed
only with helicopters because the air force did not accept the use of
military aircraft by the navy.
regards
paulo
Haydn
Tero P. Mustalahti <term...@strangelove.yok.utu.fi> wrote in message
8skm8t$c66k$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu...
> 2. Italy had (and still has) major cultural differences between
> different parts of the country. The soldiers from Southern Italy and
> Sicily never respected their mainly Northern officers.
Well, this is pretty exaggerate - especially that "never". Plenty of
Northern officers were respected by their Southern troops, and vice versa.
The problem was much less the geographic and "ethnical" origin of the
officers and the troops than the single officer's preparation, command
capabilities and leadership qualities. The "North Vs. South" question as
regards the Italian Army has to be reappraised thoroughly.
>Most of the infantry soldiers
> came from Southern Italy, whereas armor, artillery, navy and air force
> people came largely from the North. Consequently infantry was the
> poorest performing branch of the Italian military forces.
While it's true that a majority of infantry troops were of Southern origin
(but that only mirrored the demographic *and* economic setting), this is
another, and even grosser, exaggeration. Many Southerners performed well in
all armed forces branches, including infantry. Again, this "ethnical" myth
has to be severely re-evaluated. The failure on the field of several
infantry units was only to a little extent due to a lesser fighting prowess
of the Southerners. It was mainly and primarily due, instead, to other
problems and circumstances, which didn't depend on the supposed degree of
fighting abilities of the troops involved. This reminds of the US colored
troops story. Too easy to accuse them of natural weakness under fire -
several episodes give the lie to the assumption. Their tactical failures can
perhaps be better explained by recalling the quality of their white
officers - perhaps not the absolute US Army best.
Haydn
Tero P. Mustalahti
thor...@visi.com (David Thornley) writes:
> In article <8skm8t$c66k$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> Tero P. Mustalahti <term...@utu.fi> wrote:
>>
> A few comments...
>
> One of the problems the Italians had was peaking too soon. In the
> late 1930s, Italian tanks weren't all that much worse than those
> of other armies. In the early 1940s, the Italians were still using
> the same lousy light tanks, and everybody else had outbuilt them.
> Italy did not have the industry to catch up.
I do not agree. The Italian "tank" in the late 1930s was the L3
(a.k.a. CV-33/35) light tank that was actually a tankette. It had no
turret, a paper thin armor that could barely stop rifle caliber
bullets, and only machine guns as armament. The German Pz I & II,
Soviet T-26 and BT-series, early British cruisers and Mk. VI light
tank, various French light tanks, Czech LT-35 and LT-38 and even the
US M1 and M2 "combat cars" were clearly superior. The Poles managed to
plan and partly execute a rearmament of their TK-series tankettes with
20mm automatic cannons before September 1939, but the Italian L3s were
still armed with machine guns only in 1940.
The M.11/39 medium tank was nothing to write home about either. It was
fielded in 1939, but the formations were not combat ready until summer
1940. The 37mm main gun was located in the hull and had a limited
traverse. Turret armament was two 8mm machine guns. Reliability was
abysmal and armor easily penetrated by all contemporary anti-tank guns
and some AT rifles.
In fact the least obsolete Italian tank was the M.13/40 in late 1940
and early 1941. It actually had a fighting chance against the British
cruiser tanks. Improved variants of the basic design followed (M.14/41
and M.15/42). By 1942 it was already obsolete, but not because it was
introduced earlier than contemporary British tanks, but since it did
not have much development potential.
> The officers did not particularly respect the Southern soldiers,
> either. Troops tend to live down to their officers' expectations.
Yes. The door swings both ways.
> Italian aircraft would probably have been much better, given adequate
> engines.
I agree. There was nothing wrong in the Italian airframe designs, in
fact they were quite good. Lack of powerful engines and to a lesser
degree lack of good armament for fighters really kept the Italian
aircraft designs back.
> At the very end, the Italians were coming out with some very good
> fighters built around German engines. Had the Germans been more
> generous with them earlier, the Italian Air Force would have been
> much more formidable.
That is only one example of too late cooperation between Germans and
Italians. The Italians should have adopted German armor and infantry
weapon designs as well. Considering Hitler's admiration of Mussolini,
it seems likely that the Germans would have given the designs if the
Italians had swallowed their pride and asked. Still, it is
questionable whether the Italians could have produced German tank
designs, because the Italians did not have good armor plate welding
technology (the Italian tanks were rivetted). The Germans should have
given them that first.
Tero P. Mustalahti
Tero P. Mustalahti
"Haydn" <fob...@iperbole.bologna.it> writes:
> Well, this is pretty exaggerate - especially that "never". Plenty of
> Northern officers were respected by their Southern troops, and vice versa.
Well, I did not mean it literally never. Such absolutes are rarely
true in any situation. I meant that the significant majority of the
Southern troops did not learn to respect their Northern officers,
quite possibly because the officers did not deserve their respect.
> The problem was much less the geographic and "ethnical" origin of the
> officers and the troops than the single officer's preparation, command
> capabilities and leadership qualities. The "North Vs. South" question as
> regards the Italian Army has to be reappraised thoroughly.
You are Italian, so I suppose you know this subject much better than
I. However, some Italians have supported this theory earlier.
>>Most of the infantry soldiers
>> came from Southern Italy, whereas armor, artillery, navy and air force
>> people came largely from the North. Consequently infantry was the
>> poorest performing branch of the Italian military forces.
>
> While it's true that a majority of infantry troops were of Southern origin
> (but that only mirrored the demographic *and* economic setting), this is
> another, and even grosser, exaggeration. Many Southerners performed well in
> all armed forces branches, including infantry.
Many perhaps, but how about a majority? I would also be interested in
what is your opinion of the importance of social class. Did the
Southerners perform worse than the Northerners mainly because they
were on average from the lower classes, or was it a combination of
social and cultural differences?
> Again, this "ethnical" myth has to be severely re-evaluated. The
> failure on the field of several infantry units was only to a little
> extent due to a lesser fighting prowess of the Southerners. It was
> mainly and primarily due, instead, to other problems and
> circumstances, which didn't depend on the supposed degree of
> fighting abilities of the troops involved.
So, your take on this is that poor officers and substandard weapons
were the main reasons for the subpar performance of the infantry
units? If so, then the natural question is how could the armored units
show great courage in many situations despite the fact that most of
the time they also had inferior weapons? Did the armored formations
have better officers? I assume they were trained better in any case,
since that was the norm in practically all armies.
Tero P. Mustalahti
ferrante formato
It sounds singular that a Finnish is claiming to discuss in a deep and
senseful way about facts that are so far from his countries
In fact your analysis is totally wrong, and betrays a profound ignorance
of Italy and Italians.
The soldiers from Southern Italy and
> Sicily never respected their mainly Northern >officers.
Totally wrong.
a) Italian Officers were always respected in WW1
b) Italian Officers were formed in the South, too.
>Most of the infantry soldiers
> came from Southern Italy, whereas armor, artillery, navy and air force
> people came largely from the North. Consequently infantry was the
> poorest performing branch of the Italian military forces.
>
False, infantry divisions in Italy are everywhere.
Your analysis lacks of any sense of logic.
Armor Factories and their users are not geographically connected!
> 3. Italian generals were generally no strategic or tactical
> geniuses.
False, we have outstanding military academes directly derived from Austria
and France.
We have the Accademia Militare di Modena
and the Nunziatella in Naples.
The form the Bone of the Official Corp of Nato and
Ue officers.
> 4. Italy simply did not have the industrial capacity or natural
> resources for a prolonged war.
False. Italy had the resources to win WWI, which was a prolonged war.
The Germans were only able to help a
> little, because they had production problems of their own, and
> technological cooperation between Germany and Italy seems to have been
> quite inefficient, especially before and early in the war.
>
False, Italy contributed to the war in lots of things that Italian
mastered. E.g. mines
> Tero P. Mustalahti
>
Posts like these are void of any historical contents and do not rise any
significant debate.
They are nothing but a demonstration
of profound ignorance and superficiality,
supplying a dangerous and distorted vision of history.
Ferrante Formato
University of Salerno
Italy
>
>
>
>
>
Haydn
P. Mustalahti) wrote:
>In article <8snjcg$r6l$1...@beast.tcnj.edu>,
> "Haydn" <fob...@iperbole.bologna.it> writes:
>
>> Well, this is pretty exaggerate - especially that "never". Plenty of
>> Northern officers were respected by their Southern troops, and vice versa.
>
>Well, I did not mean it literally never. Such absolutes are rarely
>true in any situation. I meant that the significant majority of the
>Southern troops did not learn to respect their Northern officers,
>quite possibly because the officers did not deserve their respect.
I would say instead that the geographic origins of an officer were
less important, in most troops' opinion about him, than his real
leadership quality and his attitude towards the troops themselves.
Undoubtedly there were Northern officers who despised the Southern
peasants under them, as well as Southern officers scarcely appreciated
by their Northern subordinates. And as a matter of fact, cultural
differences might be remarkable and a wide gap might separate troops
from officers (but also troops from troops). The historical reasons
for that are rather well known.
However, and just as an example, Col. Tanucci, the commander of the
elite Young Fascists Regt., was a Southerner (a Neapolitan IIRC).
While it would be an exaggeration to state that his men (many of whom
were Northerners) adored him, he was deeply respected and his
leadership was effective. There were several "Tanuccis" in the Italian
Army.
>> The "North Vs. South" question as
>> regards the Italian Army has to be reappraised thoroughly.
>
>You are Italian, so I suppose you know this subject much better than
>I. However, some Italians have supported this theory earlier.
They are even more biased towards their own people than many
foreigners are. The tale of the "bad Southerner, good Northerner" in
war is a Piedmontese myth, disgracefully supported even by Mussolini
in his bad mood moments. The Southerners are victims of a black
legend, showing them as totally unfit for real fighting. In fact,
several Neapolitan regiments at Tolentino (1815) and the 1860-61
campaign fought valiantly and in most cases victory escaped them by a
hairbreadth. The troops' effort was marred by bribery and/or a rotten
command system and abysmally low leadership capabilities: it's not
their fault. The same, with some adjustments, can be said as regards
WWI and WWII.
>> While it's true that a majority of infantry troops were of Southern origin
>> (but that only mirrored the demographic *and* economic setting), this is
>> another, and even grosser, exaggeration. Many Southerners performed well in
>> all armed forces branches, including infantry.
>
>Many perhaps, but how about a majority? I would also be interested in
>what is your opinion of the importance of social class. Did the
>Southerners perform worse than the Northerners mainly because they
>were on average from the lower classes, or was it a combination of
>social and cultural differences?
It would take one weeks and gigabytes to tackle this issue in a not
superficial way. To put it in a simple and short way, many Southerners
did not identify themselves, or only did that to a limited extent,
with the State and the nation, and its proposed goals. This happened
because of a number of reasons, the roots of which traced back to
Middle Ages. The national consensus was weak, brittle, lukewarm.
Thusly propaganda and stirring rhetoric codewords might seem effective
in peacetime, but they revealed all of their insufficiency in wartime.
If that was the ideological problem, there was an even more pressing
problem: poverty. A German officer, invited to dinner by an Italian
low class family in 1943, wrote: "How is it possible to win wars with
starving people?" Most people in the South (and a sizeable portion of
the Northerners) were too engaged in the struggle for everyday
survival, to be much concerned about peace and war. If the Italian
armed forces could have offered them the American GI supply and
inexhaustible battle area equipment, their morale would have been
high. When they instead realized that their army was as poor as their
native village, not a few of them gave in morally.
>So, your take on this is that poor officers and substandard weapons
>were the main reasons for the subpar performance of the infantry
>units?
Yes.
>If so, then the natural question is how could the armored units
>show great courage in many situations despite the fact that most of
>the time they also had inferior weapons? Did the armored formations
>have better officers? I assume they were trained better in any case,
>since that was the norm in practically all armies.
Armored forces were "technical" units and, as it was the norm in all
armies as you note, technical units often received the best, best
educated and trained manpower. Also, a disproportionate number of Army
officers were reserve officers who had been lieutenants or captains in
WWI and were hurled to the operation area after 20+ years of civilian
life, without the least training update, as majors and colonels. This
devastating habit of employing reserve officers in massive numbers
even on the front line was the direct consequence of the lack of
professional officers and NCOs and was one of infantry's main
scourges. Many tasks usually performed by experienced NCOs in the
German army were performed by green or unfit reserve officers in the
Italian army. While young reserve officers might prove able and
efficient - after most colleagues of them had been put out of combat
due to inexperience - , former WWI lieutenants catapulted to the front
as battalion leaders without any further training might easily face a
task too above their capabilities and psychologically broke under
pressure, revealing a disastrous inefficiency, low morale and bad
fighting ability.
Haydn
Jason Hu
believe they are a strong power or is it because we believe Hitler will kept
the Allies too busy to defend areas of lands Italy wanted?Any views?
"Paulo" <pj...@mail.telepac.pt> wrote in message
news:8sn77i$g81m$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu...
Antonio Maraziti
"ferrante formato" <ferrante...@libero.it> wrote:
>
> It sounds singular that a Finnish is claiming to discuss in a
deep and
> senseful way about facts that are so far from his countries
>
Frankly, I cannot see why a Finn should not, in principle, discuss
about Italy and Italians.
> In fact your analysis is totally wrong, and betrays a profound
ignorance
> of Italy and Italians.
>
I only think that some of Tero’s point are a bit exaggerated.
Other are correct.
> > The soldiers from Southern Italy and
> > Sicily never respected their mainly Northern
> > officers.
> Totally wrong.
> a) Italian Officers were always respected in WW1
> b) Italian Officers were formed in the South, too.
>
I only think that the importance of this one of Tero’s point
is a bit exaggerated by him.
I am not aware of large numbers of soldiers condemned for
insubordination, or of diffused mutiny cases among Italian
troops, which should be symptoms of a critical situation.
I think that this problem might exist to some extent, but was
not general and did not affect the performance of Army unit
as much as other problems (lack of mobility, artillery,
anti-tank weapons).
> > 3. Italian generals were generally no strategic or tactical
> > geniuses.
> False, we have outstanding military academes directly derived from
Austria
> and France.
>
> We have the Accademia Militare di Modena
> and the Nunziatella in Naples.
> The form the Bone of the Official Corp of Nato and
> Ue officers.
>
Tero was not talking of today’s situation (this is still a WWII
Board, isn’t it?).
Anyway, as "Haydn" has pointed out, the main problem was not with
Academy trained officers, but with reserve officers that were
recalled to active service after tens of years of civilian life.
It is also true that some of the most modern concepts of military
tactics and strategy (e.g. use of tanks, use of submarines,
importance of naval aviation and air-naval cooperation) were not
understood by the Italian military establishment.
> > 4. Italy simply did not have the industrial capacity or natural
> > resources for a prolonged war.
> False. Italy had the resources to win WWI, which was a prolonged war.
>
Great. Can you tell me where were the oil fields? Where were the
mines of raw materials? Which were the industries able to deliver
high-technology, state-of-art weapons?
And, if your point is right, why did Italy lose the war? Bad luck?
> False, Italy contributed to the war in lots of things that Italian
> mastered. E.g. mines
>
Definitely the wrong example. The V3 anti-tank mines, for instance,
were much more deadly to Italian sappers than to enemy tanks, due
to their diffused tendence to explode prematurely. Its use was
prohibited in the Italian-German Army.
One piece of equipment that had very good features was the Breda
20mm gun. This gun was well appreciated even by the enemy:
captured guns were widely used as anti-aircraft weapons on Royal
Navy ships and the Royal Army units.
>
> Posts like these are void of any historical contents and do not rise
any
> significant debate.
>
In my opinion many of the points raised by Tero were correct.
Instead, in your confutation I did not find a single
argument, a single fact, a single piece of information to
support it.
References to WW1 are not useful because it was a completely
diffferent kind of war.
It is no use saying "you are wrong" without giving some objective
fact to support one’s opinion.
Antonio
--
"Manco' la fortuna, non il valore"
El Alamein, 1-7-1942
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Tero P. Mustalahti
"ferrante formato" <ferrante...@libero.it> writes:
> It sounds singular that a Finnish is claiming to discuss in a deep and
> senseful way about facts that are so far from his countries
Geographic distance hardly has anything to do with this. People in
this newsgroup regularly discuss things relating to the Japanese war
effort, even though Japan is both geographically and especially
culturally much farther away from any part of Europe or the US than
Finland is from Italy.
> In fact your analysis is totally wrong, and betrays a profound ignorance
> of Italy and Italians.
Haydn does not seem to agree with you, although he is Italian. He
rightfully criticized some of my claims, most notably the importance
of cultural differences between Northern and Southern Italy. However,
he also agreed with me on several points. This clearly shows that
either my analysis was not totally wrong, or an Italian person with
first hand knowledge of the facts does not agree with you. I would be
very interested to see your comments on Haydn's articles.
> The soldiers from Southern Italy and
>> Sicily never respected their mainly Northern >officers.
> Totally wrong.
> a) Italian Officers were always respected in WW1
> b) Italian Officers were formed in the South, too.
This has been discussed elsewhere, so I will not comment more here. I
would like to point out though that we are discussing WW2; how
things were in WW1 is not directly relevant.
> False, infantry divisions in Italy are everywhere.
> Your analysis lacks of any sense of logic.
Naturally infantry divisions were formed everywhere, but that does not
preclude that the majority of infantrymen were Southerners, or at
least that is what I have read earlier. Possibly my sources could be
wrong.
> Armor Factories and their users are not geographically connected!
That goes without saying and of course I did not mean to imply that it
they are.
>> 3. Italian generals were generally no strategic or tactical
>> geniuses.
> False, we have outstanding military academes directly derived from Austria
> and France.
>
> We have the Accademia Militare di Modena
> and the Nunziatella in Naples.
> The form the Bone of the Official Corp of Nato and
> Ue officers.
We are still discussing WW2. NATO does not even come to play here. Old
military academies also do not guarantee the quality of officers. The
French had many, and the quality of French officers was not very good
in 1940. In North Africa the British commanders often outmaneuvered
their Italian counterparts. Then Rommel came and managed to do the
same to the British many times. That is a fact which I do not believe
you can deny. The performance of the Italian Army in Greece was not
too great either, even though the Greek Army was outnumbered and at
least as poorly equipped as the Italian Army.
I did not mean to imply that the Italian officers were totally
incompetent, but obviously they lacked something that the German,
British and seemingly even the Greek officers had.
>> 4. Italy simply did not have the industrial capacity or natural
>> resources for a prolonged war.
> False. Italy had the resources to win WWI, which was a prolonged war.
Italy did not win the WW1 on its own. In fact Italy did not fare very
well against Austria. Italy also received support from France and the
British Empire, which were both major colonial powers with lots of
resources. Later the US joined the war. The crucial battles of WW1
were fought on the Western front and Italy had virtually nothing to do
with them.
Furthermore, if you compare pre-war industrial outputs, I think that
you will find that Italy was significantly behind all other major
powers. Better than Bulgaria, Finland or Romania of course, but they
did not pretend to be major powers.
> The Germans were only able to help a
>> little, because they had production problems of their own, and
>> technological cooperation between Germany and Italy seems to have been
>> quite inefficient, especially before and early in the war.
>>
> False, Italy contributed to the war in lots of things that Italian
> mastered. E.g. mines
Do you mean that the Germans used mines designed by Italians? Do you
mean naval mines or land mines? I do not know about naval mines, but I
am fairly certain that the German land mines and anti-tank mines were
all German designs. There are also numerous examples about poor
technological cooperation between German and Italy, for example armor,
aircraft engine and infantry weapons technology.
> Posts like these are void of any historical contents and do not rise any
> significant debate.
And, if you excuse my sarcasm, in your opinion a good way to stimulate
discussion is to categorically deny all the opponent's claims without
providing sources or sufficient examples.
> They are nothing but a demonstration
> of profound ignorance and superficiality,
> supplying a dangerous and distorted vision of history.
Perhaps -- unlike you seem to, I rarely make categorical statements
even when defending my own views. However, you have managed to provide
hardly any sources or good examples to disprove my arguments. That
kind of approach would not get you very far in a serious academic
debate.
Tero P. Mustalahti
Yevgeniy Chizhikov
> I agree. There was nothing wrong in the Italian airframe designs, in
> fact they were quite good. Lack of powerful engines and to a lesser
> degree lack of good armament for fighters really kept the Italian
> aircraft designs back.
When Italians began to use German aircraft engines, their planes become
very good. There were no problems with armament either. Some later
Italian fighters carried 3 20 mm cannons and two 13mm machineguns.
Nearly as good as FW-190, plus they were even faster than FW-190.
Italians are the good example what was wrong with Axis. They were
fighting together, but they were barely any cooperations as far as
economy, design, and production is concerned. Utilization of production
resources were far worse than any Allied country or USSR. German,
Italians, and Japanese could have been many times better at sharing
their plans and technology.
Yevgeniy Chizhikov.
ferrante formato
> >Southerners perform worse than the Northerners
> >social and cultural differences?
>
confuse Italian military impreparation in ww2 with differences between North
and South
THIS ARE TWO UTTERLY DIFFERENT THINGS
Read the textbooks of History of Italian Economy.
You will find the very reason of Italian defeat.
I will give you an hint.
What does it take to build an heavy bomber?
The answer is : -A scalable airwar economy!-
Were there any scalable airwar economy in Italy?
The answer is NOT
Because in Italy an Albert Speer would have faced
a capitalistic olygarchy that had celebrated a sort of "conveniency
marriage" with Fascism, whose only
outcome was to keep the spectre of Communism far..
Italian burgeosy, whose task "would have been" that of building tanks,guns,
fighters,carriers..., and was DETERMINANT for the victory in WW1 , had
strong "liaisons" with Anglo Saxon world, (And may be this sparred Itaians
the paranoia of Arthur Harris) was contemptuous toward
Mussolini and Fascism and saw them as a "necessary evil to prefer to Reds"
If you study Fascism, you will see that its members came from lower-middle
class and it was above all a country proletary movement.
Industrial Captitalists coldly sustained it. They did nothing to prepare a
scalable war economy.
Nor did Fascists do anything about it. Nobody
thought to be on the edge of a total war.
This is the fault that condamns Mussolini for all the centuries to come.
Italians entered WW2 with the aim to interpret a Comedy, and nobody
expected that it can soon turn into a tragedy!
Ilkka
>
> If all the posts were true,what did Italy enter the war.Is it because they
> believe they are a strong power or is it because we believe Hitler will kept
> the Allies too busy to defend areas of lands Italy wanted?Any views?
Mussolini believed that the war was over. He was afraid that he will be
left out of the building of the new Europe. "I need 2000 bodies to join
the peace negotiations".
Ilkka
Fleur40
It's a long story that stretches back in time with Italy's relationship with
Great Britain and to a lesser degree, France.
A major factor in *why* Italy eventually succumbed to German (Hitler's)
rhetoric finds some of its origins in the conflicting messages Great Britain
kept giving Italy previous and subsequent to the Abyssinian incident.
Rowena
ferrante formato
Tero P. Mustalahti <term...@strangelove.yok.utu.fi> wrote in
> Perhaps -- unlike you seem to, I rarely make categorical statements
> even when defending my own views.
Your argument needs a cathegorical statement because it contained a
cathegorical mistake
>That kind of approach would not get you very far >in a serious academic
> debate.
WW2 is not close to my subject of investigation , but I am here to discuss
it in depth
>
> Geographic distance hardly has anything to do with this.
It does. You don't have a complete perspective of the phenomenon
(North-South differencences, Italian History, Italian Attitude)
you are likely to make misvaluations of Important historical events.
>
> Haydn does not seem to agree with you, although he is Italian. He
> rightfully criticized some of my claims, most notably the importance
> of cultural differences between Northern and Southern Italy.
Here is what Haydn says
"I meant that the significant majority of the
>Southern troops did not learn to respect their Northern officers,
>quite possibly because the officers did not deserve their respect."
This is not to say at all that they distinguished from North and South.
"an Italian person with
> first hand knowledge of the facts does not agree with you. I would be
> very interested to see your comments on Haydn's articles.
>
My Co-nnational firstly warns you that
"It would take one weeks and gigabytes to tackle this issue in a not
superficial way"
Then he himself gets rather superficial, by saying that
"To put it in a simple and short way, many Southerners
did not identify themselves, or only did that to a limited extent,
with the State and the nation, and its proposed goals."
This is false, it confuse State with nation (A Nation is a Romantic term,
State is quoted by Hobbes and Macchiavelli).
Southern Italians did identified with the State, but
they did not identified with War. As the majority of ALL italians, at that
times.
If you can read Italian, I can quote you some
beautiful chronicles of the War times written by Italian writer Italo
Calvino. You can understand many things from these tales about Italian
Attitude
toward War.
how
> things were in WW1 is not directly relevant.
>
You choosed to discuss about Italian Army and so
you can not say that it can be so different in twenty years.
> Naturally infantry divisions were formed everywhere, but that does not
> preclude that the majority of infantrymen were Southerners
>Possibly my sources could be
> wrong.
>
Statistically they can be wrong, because Italy was a rural country in 1940
and there were as many regions in the North as there were in the south.
Folgore division, an Italian Elite Corp, had a lot of Southern Paratroopers
in it. You can consult their books. The Navy has a long tradition of
Sicilian and
Neapolitan sailors.
Italian Army has never applied a politic of regional selection.
>
> >> 3. Italian generals were generally no strategic or tactical
> >> geniuses.
> > False, we have outstanding military academes directly derived from
Austria
> > and France.
> >
> > We have the Accademia Militare di Modena
> > and the Nunziatella in Naples.
> > The form the Bone of the Official Corp of Nato and
> > Ue officers.
>
> We are still discussing WW2.
I studied the strategic role of Italian Armies in WW2. With the only
exception of Greece and Etiopia, Italian Strategists had no particular
occasion to be tested. But success does not depends only from a good
strategy, it depends above all from preparation to war. There was no
preparation for War.
In North Africa the British commanders often outmaneuvered
> their Italian counterparts.
Italian Armoured division Ariete outmanouvered
150th Brigade at sidi muftah, the Corpo Motorizzato Italiano, together with
Folgore, 21th Pz , 15 th and 90 th outmaneuvered Auchinnleck's 8th Army at
Alam Halfa. They were stopped by oil scarcity.
> Then Rommel came and managed to do the
> same to the British many times. That is a fact which I do not believe
> you can deny.
Strategy is a question of scale. With poor Italian Officers, Rommell did
not have launched his 21th Pz
aside Ariete and Littorio.
The performance of the Italian Army in Greece was not too great either,
even though the Greek Army was outnumbered and at
> least as poorly equipped as the Italian Army.
>
Greeks advanced 150 km in three days. That meand 50 km a day. This is
impossible to do with a "poor" armed Army
> I did not mean to imply that the Italian officers were totally
> incompetent, but obviously they lacked something that the German,
> British and seemingly even the Greek officers had.
>
Unlike Greeks, Italians lacked Maps, unlike British they lacked Tanks
>
> Italy did not win the WW1 on its own. In fact Italy did not fare very
> well against Austria.
As in war an error causes another error, you add
superficialities to superficialities.
That is too much for me. I stop here.
Replying to this argument seems OT but I am ready to answer you fully
either on a specific newsgroup on WWI
or privately
> Furthermore, if you compare pre-war industrial outputs, I think that
> you will find that Italy was significantly behind all other major
> powers.
Finally you get to the correct point.
It was not lack of tactcians, strategicians, it was not
lack of courage from people from East, South, North or West
It was lack of
war technology. Lack of scale economy. Lack of
scalable intelligence like Bletchley Park In a word, Lack of motivation to
seriously combact a war that was seen as a comedy by the majority of
Italians, generals included.
In my opinion, These were the very reasons that doomed Italy in WW2
Ferrante Formato
ferrante formato
Antonio Maraziti <antonio....@tin.it> wrote in message
8t75c7$42uk$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu...
> Frankly, I cannot see why a Finn should not, in principle, discuss
> about Italy and Italians.
>
> I only think that some of Tero's point are a bit exaggerated.
> Other are correct.
>
I think that his claim that Italy lost the War because
of South-North differences , that to me it seems as its main argument , is
a plain mistake.
> I think that this problem might exist to some extent, but was
> not general and did not affect the performance of Army unit
> as much as other problems (lack of mobility, artillery,
> anti-tank weapons).
>
Do not forget tanks. Do not forget heavy bombers.
Imagine Giovanni Agnelli ordering its engineers
"Ok boys, I want you to produce an heavy bomber
to bomb England". Absolutely insane for Italian Capitalism and
aristocracy.
> Tero was not talking of today's situation (this is still a WWII
> Board, isn't it?).
>
Today's officers Schools matured within centuries.
If there were dumbheads within Italian army, then
these schools should be closed. These schools
belonged to Austrian and French Army, things that do not sound like Zulu
hordes
> Anyway, as "Haydn" has pointed out, the main problem was not with
> Academy trained officers, but with reserve officers that were
> recalled to active service after tens of years of civilian life.
>
No, I did not receive this impression.
> It is also true that some of the most modern concepts of military
> tactics and strategy (e.g. use of tanks, use of submarines,
> importance of naval aviation and air-naval cooperation) were not
> understood by the Italian military establishment.
>
This wasnt' undestood by ANYbody in WW2.
You can read Hasting's Book on Overlord.
Only Germans had some intuitions, may be.
> Great. Can you tell me where were the oil fields? Where were the
> mines of raw materials? Which were the industries able to deliver
> high-technology, state-of-art weapons?
>
Italy is not a rich country in terms of raw materials.
But what were Allies for ? What about Germany, Rumania with it's Ploesti
Oil refinery?
> And, if your point is right, why did Italy lose the war? Bad luck?
>
My claim is that Italy lose the war because he
begun it. The tragic error of Mussolini was that he was not able to halt
Italy and its people on the edge of an unsubstainable War.
From the pshycological perspective, War was for Italian a collective comedy
that sooner turned into a tragedy.
Very few, in Italy, were aware of this in 1940.
> In my opinion many of the points raised by Tero were correct.
>
He made two significant mistakes
1) Its main argument ascribed the defeat of Italy
to italian Army, and this is a mistake.
2) He thinks that Italian Army was inefficient because of the difference
between North and South.
This is a great mistake, too
> Instead, in your confutation I did not find a single
> argument, a single fact, a single piece of information to
> support it.
>
Since you are Italian, you can well read the "Racconti" of Italo Calvino. I
suggest you to read "L'entrata in Guerra" and "La veglia nel Fascio".
You will understand the mood of Italian people
(South and North) in 1940.
I strongly do not recommend you any military book, because they are not
written in serenity.
Instead, any textbook on Contemporary History of Italian Capitalism is
advisable.
> It is no use saying "you are wrong" without giving some objective
> fact to support one's opinion.
It is dangerous saying the false in a time in which it could be mistaken as
truth
>Ferrante
ferrante formato
> Mussolini believed that the war was over. He was afraid that he will be
> left out of the building of the new Europe. "I need 2000 bodies to join
> the peace negotiations".
>
On account of my knowledge, I agree with this.
The statement of Mussolini is true.
He wants a cheap success, and ordered his troops to invade France and Greece
Italian Army was totally imprepared to War, but its opposition to Fascism
was never strong enough
to refuse Mussolini's orders.
was never so
> Ilkka
>
The Unsinkable
war it was clearly not ready to fight. It didn't have the resources,
the manpower, nor the technology to keep up with the likes of even their
Axis partners. South Africa was one of the numerous battle sites that
Nazi Germany was ALWAYS bailing their Italian comrades out of! Someone
here brought up the point that the information exchange happened too
little too late, and yes I wholeheartedly agree with that.
As for the praise concerning the naval forces....well, to reply to the
comment about the aircraft carrier built back in 1980 I really don't see
how that helps the Italy of the 1930's and 40's...pity Doc Brown and his
time-traveling DeLorean weren't available....*stifled chuckle*
RMST-
Tero P. Mustalahti
"ferrante formato" <ferrante...@libero.it> writes:
>
> Tero P. Mustalahti <term...@strangelove.yok.utu.fi> wrote in
>
>> Perhaps -- unlike you seem to, I rarely make categorical statements
>> even when defending my own views.
>
> Your argument needs a cathegorical statement because it contained a
> cathegorical mistake
I did not have only one argument, I had many - one of which you in
fact admit to be correct in your own reply! Yet you choose to label
all my arguments false without forming a good and separate
counterargument to each of them.
>> Geographic distance hardly has anything to do with this.
>
>
>
> It does. You don't have a complete perspective of the phenomenon
> (North-South differencences, Italian History, Italian Attitude)
> you are likely to make misvaluations of Important historical events.
Well, I do know something about Italian history from the early
antiquity (early Roman era) to the post-WW2 era. I do admit that I do
not know nearly as many details as you probably do, but I am aware of
the general lines.
Frankly, I feel that your definition about sufficient knowledge is so
strict that following it would make impossible for all but the most
dedicated experts to contribute something relevant. This discussion
has already revealed that even Italian nationals do not apparently
know enough for you. But, I still doubt that even some of the true
experts would not agree with you on everything we have discussed.
> Here is what Haydn says
>
>
> "I meant that the significant majority of the
>>Southern troops did not learn to respect their Northern officers,
>>quite possibly because the officers did not deserve their respect."
>
> This is not to say at all that they distinguished from North and South.
Actually, if you check the article you will find that I wrote that...
> "an Italian person with
>> first hand knowledge of the facts does not agree with you. I would be
>> very interested to see your comments on Haydn's articles.
>>
> My Co-nnational firstly warns you that
>
> "It would take one weeks and gigabytes to tackle this issue in a not
> superficial way"
And I agreed. I feel you are using straw man like tactics - if one of
my points was inaccurate (note that Haydn or Antonio Maraziti did not
claim that it was completely false), you should still try to address
my other points separately.
> Then he himself gets rather superficial, by saying that
>
> "To put it in a simple and short way, many Southerners
> did not identify themselves, or only did that to a limited extent,
> with the State and the nation, and its proposed goals."
>
> This is false, it confuse State with nation (A Nation is a Romantic term,
> State is quoted by Hobbes and Macchiavelli).
I agree. State and nation are too separate things, but that is not
very relevant to our discussion.
> Southern Italians did identified with the State, but
> they did not identified with War. As the majority of ALL italians, at that
> times.
The goal of the State was war, and Italians did not identify with war,
just as Haydn wrote. If the State had goals that the people did not
agree with, I think it is fair to say that the trust of the people on
the State was at least weakened, if not completely severed.
> If you can read Italian, I can quote you some beautiful chronicles
> of the War times written by Italian writer Italo Calvino. You can
> understand many things from these tales about Italian Attitude
> toward War.
He is a good writer and I have read some of his books, although
translated to Finnish. Unfortunately I do not read Italian, but if you
tell me the name of the book, I can try to look for a translation to
Finnish or some other language that I do read.
> how
>> things were in WW1 is not directly relevant.
>>
> You choosed to discuss about Italian Army and so
> you can not say that it can be so different in twenty years.
The German army changed in many ways during those years. The Soviet
army managed to change quite a lot just in two years from 1941 to
1943. However, it is perhaps more important to notice how some armies
did not change - military technology made significant advances between
1918 and 1939, and those changes called for a complete re-evaluation
of strategy and tactics.
> I studied the strategic role of Italian Armies in WW2. With the only
> exception of Greece and Etiopia,
Which were not minor campaigns, especially not the former one.
> Italian Strategists had no particular
> occasion to be tested. But success does not depends only from a good
> strategy, it depends above all from preparation to war. There was no
> preparation for War.
Preparation for war is a part of grand strategy, but I agree that it
mostly was not a concern of generals, but of the political leadership,
above all Mussolini of course. And I do agree that there was no real
preparation for war. This appears to be in strong contradiction with
the aggressive fascist ideology, but then again, deeper logic has rarely been
associated with modern dictatorial governments.
> In North Africa the British commanders often outmaneuvered
>> their Italian counterparts.
> Italian Armoured division Ariete outmanouvered
> 150th Brigade at sidi muftah, the Corpo Motorizzato Italiano, together with
> Folgore, 21th Pz , 15 th and 90 th outmaneuvered Auchinnleck's 8th Army at
> Alam Halfa. They were stopped by oil scarcity.
As has been pointed out earlier, the armored division really were the
best of the Italian army. But you can not fight a war with a few elite
units alone. Thanks by the way for proving one of my other points,
namely that Italy lacked critical resources, most importantly oil.
>> Then Rommel came and managed to do the
>> same to the British many times. That is a fact which I do not believe
>> you can deny.
> Strategy is a question of scale. With poor Italian Officers, Rommell did
> not have launched his 21th Pz
> aside Ariete and Littorio.
Rommel said that the Italian armored divisions were good if they
were properly led. Rommel was an excellent operational level commander
and he managed to utilize the Italian divisions effectively, something
that the Italian commanders had apparently been unable to do.
> The performance of the Italian Army in Greece was not too great either,
> even though the Greek Army was outnumbered and at
>> least as poorly equipped as the Italian Army.
>>
> Greeks advanced 150 km in three days. That meand 50 km a day. This is
> impossible to do with a "poor" armed Army
I do not have specific data on the Greek weaponry and equipment, but
judging from the economical state of Greece at the time it could not
have been anything special. They did have Motorized infantry
divisions, which explains the rapid advance, but as far as I know
hardly any tanks and their air force was very weak.
>> I did not mean to imply that the Italian officers were totally
>> incompetent, but obviously they lacked something that the German,
>> British and seemingly even the Greek officers had.
>>
> Unlike Greeks, Italians lacked Maps, unlike British they lacked Tanks
Lacking maps of the area is a failure of strategic planning. The
Italians did have inferior tanks compared to the British, and I
distinctly remember mentioning poor weaponry as one of the reasons why
Italian army did not do very well. I guess you just proved two of my
points again.
>> Italy did not win the WW1 on its own. In fact Italy did not fare very
>> well against Austria.
> As in war an error causes another error, you add
> superficialities to superficialities.
I suppose you mean the latter argument as the former is clearly true
any way you look at it. I did not intend to provide a detailed
analysis of the Italian army in WW1, since this a WW2 newsgroup. I am
aware of the difficult terrain where the Italians (and Austrians as
well) had to fight in WW1.
> That is too much for me. I stop here.
> Replying to this argument seems OT but I am ready to answer you fully
> either on a specific newsgroup on WWI
> or privately
There is no WW1 newsgroup as far as I know. But please post your reply
to soc.history.war.misc.
>> Furthermore, if you compare pre-war industrial outputs, I think that
>> you will find that Italy was significantly behind all other major
>> powers.
> Finally you get to the correct point.
> It was not lack of tactcians, strategicians, it was not
> lack of courage from people from East, South, North or West
>
> It was lack of
> war technology. Lack of scale economy. Lack of
> scalable intelligence like Bletchley Park In a word, Lack of motivation to
> seriously combact a war that was seen as a comedy by the majority of
> Italians, generals included.
I do not agree with you completely on the matter concerning tactics and
strategy, and it appears neither do your countrymen, but I do remember
mentioning resources, technology and industrial capacity in my
original article. I did not mention courage, and you seem to agree
that the Italian people lacked motivation to fight the war, whatever
the cause for that was. I did not mention military intelligence and I
admit that it was an omission on my part.
> In my opinion, These were the very reasons that doomed Italy in WW2
Good. I found this post much more enjoyable than your earlier one. It
appears that we did not disagree on all my original arguments. Please
note also that my points were "in no particular order". According to
your countrymen I got three out of four correct, and one at least
partly correct if exaggerated. According to you only two, but that is
better than nothing.
Tero P. Mustalahti
ferrante formato
> A major factor in *why* Italy eventually succumbed to German (Hitler's)
> rhetoric finds some of its origins in the conflicting messages Great
Britain
> kept giving Italy previous and subsequent to the Abyssinian incident.
> Rowena
>
Italian and British people get along well since Roman times. As a matter
of fact, the fearsome BC never touched Italian cities. The very incident was
the war itself.
My claim is that there has never been a state of war
between Italian and British dominant classes.
The battlefields that involved Italy in ww2 were just a "table" of the
game
between Italy and British upper classes.
The very stake was the commercial control of Mediterranean and Eastern
Africa. The political engine of the game was the Vatican
It was a very subtle and fascinating political game in which Mussolini,
Churchill, the Americans , the Germans and the Italians were nothing but
unaware players.
Ferrante Formato
David Thornley
Tero P. Mustalahti <term...@strangelove.yok.utu.fi> wrote:
>In article <8sl0p7$au90$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> thor...@visi.com (David Thornley) writes:
>
>> One of the problems the Italians had was peaking too soon. In the
>> late 1930s, Italian tanks weren't all that much worse than those
>> of other armies.
>I do not agree. The Italian "tank" in the late 1930s was the L3
>(a.k.a. CV-33/35) light tank that was actually a tankette.
Right. Lots of armies were using tankettes at the time, not necessarily
better than the Italian tankettes. Italy, at this time, had something
of a disadvantage in tanks.
Now, fast-forwarding to the early 1940s, the Italians still had a
whole lot of tankettes, and an inadequate number of unimpressive
heavier tanks. Clearly, the Italian position had deteriorated.
It wasn't the only problem Italy had by a long shot, and it
doesn't explain the truly odd choices in heavy weapon design,
but it was a problem. Italy was not prepared for war in 1937,
and was relatively less prepared in 1940.
>The M.11/39 medium tank was nothing to write home about either. It was
>fielded in 1939, but the formations were not combat ready until summer
>1940. The 37mm main gun was located in the hull and had a limited
>traverse. Turret armament was two 8mm machine guns. Reliability was
>abysmal and armor easily penetrated by all contemporary anti-tank guns
>and some AT rifles.
>
I believe the Australians used some of these after Compass, but not
in large numbers, and they didn't last to be used in combat.
>> Italian aircraft would probably have been much better, given adequate
>> engines.
>
>I agree. There was nothing wrong in the Italian airframe designs, in
>fact they were quite good. Lack of powerful engines and to a lesser
>degree lack of good armament for fighters really kept the Italian
>aircraft designs back.
>
If beauty is any judge, Italian airframe designers were very good.
The early monoplane fighters are rather ugly, with those bottle-cap
cowlings, and that three-motor bomber didn't look good, but (to my
eye) most of the Italian aircraft look very nice.
>That is only one example of too late cooperation between Germans and
>Italians. The Italians should have adopted German armor and infantry
>weapon designs as well.
Considering their production ability, giving Italy the tank designs
probably wouldn't have helped much. Obviously better designs for
infantry weapons would have helped, and wouldn't have been difficult
(that 45mm grenade thrower was probably less useful in combat than
a forked stick and large rubber band).
ferrante formato
>You can,
This discussion
> has already revealed that even Italian nationals do not apparently
> know enough for you.
If they support your opinion that Italians were involved in the war
according to their Latitude, they certainly are not making a good service to
history, seen as scientific investigation.
>you should still try to address
> my other points separately.
I will try to make an analyis of the most discussed
point.
I will proceed through progressive questions
1) Did Italian want War?
The answer was NOT, because if they have wanted it, they would have prepared
it.
I postulate that Italians identified themselves with Mussolini, which his
historically true.
2) So, what did Italian want, really?
The answer is extremely complex and is at the base
of Italian defeat.
Basically, two answers has to be given.
2a) Lower classes wanted a better life
2b) Upper classes wanted NO Communist Revolution.
For both of them this meant a conflict, but not the kind of war europe was
starting in 1940.
Tragically, both the two thought that the starting WW2 was the conflict they
looked for.
So they identified themselves with the Fascist State which identified
itself into a war in which they do not identify themself , really.
That's were the point is, in my opinion. Something of a paradox.
> If the State had goals that the people did not
> agree with, I think it is fair to say that the trust of the people on
> the State was at least weakened, if not completely severed.
>
The state lies on a social contract. In the case of Fascism, it was a
gigantic misunderstanding.
>
Unfortunately I do not read Italian, but if you
> tell me the name of the book, I can try to look for a translation to
> Finnish or some other language that I do read.
>
There is a collection of short stories
Italo Calvino , "Racconti" (Tales). May be they have been translated in
English
> The German army changed in many ways during those years. The Soviet
> army managed to change quite a lot just in two years from 1941 to
> 1943.
Italian Army did not change. Fascism was a countryside proletarian
movement which proposed as an alternative to Communism.
They did nothing to potentiate industrial economy and War was just a matter
of scale economy, in the Fourties.
And I do agree that there was no real
> preparation for war. This appears to be in strong contradiction with
> the aggressive fascist ideology,
Fascism was a great 20th century comedy, that you
will never undertstand if you are not Italian.
I will try to explain it with an example....
If you come to Italy and say "Hello, I am from Mars", then you will find
millions of people ready to swear that you are from Mars. Not because that
they believe you, but because they would take benefit of someone really
believing it!
If you understand this example, you understand a lot about Fascism and the
reason why Italy entered ww2.
.. Rommel was an excellent operational level commander
> and he managed to utilize the Italian divisions effectively, something
> that the Italian commanders had apparently been unable to do.
>
Managing divisions is large-scale strategy.
Comedy-wars do not need it. Mussolini wanted just to impress European
powers. He had no strategy.
>I
> distinctly remember mentioning poor weaponry as one of the reasons why
> Italian army did not do very well.
This is a sad question whose answers farly outreaches the scope of this NG.
The foundation of IRI (Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale)
transformed a WWI warfare scale economy into a general-purpose economy
A suicidal move for Italian military ambitions.
>I did not intend to provide a detailed
> analysis of the Italian army in WW1,
Ok, but this does not spare you from the fact that
your statement that WWI was essencial an Anglo-French affair is good for
soc.history.bestialities
I do remember
> mentioning resources, technology and industrial capacity in my
> original article.
Yes, but no Italian weapon, with some exception,
could stand any reasonable with German or allied
counterpart. Both in quality and quantity.
>I did not mention courage, and you seem to agree
> that the Italian people lacked motivation to fight the war, whatever
> the cause for that was
No cause kept this war going for Italians.
Just a misunderstanding that lasted from 1940 to early 1943. Or may be from
many more years, from 1922.
According to you only two, but that is
> better than nothing.
Numbers do not care.
What cares is analysis and research.
And then using the results, which is the most fascinating aspect of
History, but it so inconsistent with human nature
Ferrante Formato
Nils K Hammer
tell me who it was who bombed Pisa? I was displeased to see that
some of the art I wanted to study was heavily damaged.
nils
Yevgeniy Chizhikov
>
> Let's face it: The bottom line was Mussolini dragged his country into a
> war it was clearly not ready to fight. It didn't have the resources,
> the manpower, nor the technology to keep up with the likes of even their
> Axis partners. South Africa was one of the numerous battle sites that
> Nazi Germany was ALWAYS bailing their Italian comrades out of! Someone
> here brought up the point that the information exchange happened too
> little too late, and yes I wholeheartedly agree with that.
Italians had pretty good Navy and their Air Force, through outdated, was
still capoble. Their Army was in very poor state, not highly trained,
not really motivated, and badly equiped. It seams that Mussolini did not
understood that and he did swallow Hitler's lies about quick victory.
Perhaps if Italians reserves themselves to defending Germany's ass from
the South, policing Mediteranian sea, and put their main industrial
effort in support of Germany, their participation in WWII would had been
MANY times more productive!
In 1940, Italians had following Naval forces:
6 Battleships. Two were very modern. Others very updated.
7 Cruisers.
12 Light Cruisers.
12 Leader Destroyers.
28 Modern Destroyers.
19 Old Destroyers.
69 Torpedo Boats.
117 Submarines.
Germany and Italy should have went and took Giblartar. In fact, Germans
did prepared enough troops to do so, but at the last moment they did
not. Correct strategy for Germans and Italy should have been coordinate
and support each other. German ground troops, Luftwaffe, Italian Air
Force should have went after Giblartar. I bet Franco could have been
wrestled into it, easely. There is no question that Giblartar would
fall. Then, Italians and Germans could move on to Malta. If Germans and
Italians trully coordinated on that one, Malta would also fall. There is
no question that with proper coordination and preparation it could have
been accomplished. Cyprus, and some other smaller islands could follow.
After that, Germans should have forgoten about Africa. Just forget all
together, it was waste of time, men, and resources. With forces needed
against Russia, Balkans, and some other places, like France. Italy from
there could concentrated purely on defense of Reich from the South,
using its powerful fleet and Air Force operating from stratigicly
important bases in Italy, Giblartar, Cyprus, Greece, and Malta. Italian
troops could have mainly used for defense of those locations. They would
had more time to train, eventualy get better equipment, and would sure
be more motivated to defend Italy than fight in Africa. Italy itself
should put more effort into cooperation with Germany in war production.
I think it would had been the best possible solution for utilizing Italy
in WWII.
With this strategy, Italy could stay in the war virtualy indefinitly. At
least until Germany collapse, and then Italy could have still switch
sides, like other countries did. Big losses in Africa for Germans and
Italians would not happen. Germans could use those forces at Stalingrad.
Germans would also did not need to sent troops to Germany later on.
Italy could utilize their forces in Mediteranian. It is also very
unlikely that Allies could launch any invasion to the continet from the
South. With Italian Navy, Air Force, and help of Luftwaffe working from
Malta, Sycily, Greece, and Giblartar, Allies would never be able to
create large enough Naval Force for invasion. Suez could still be
British, Italian fleet, subs, and Air Force could easely block it and
mine the area all over.
Axis were really stretching themselves from what ever little they had in
WWII. Germans were sending their forces virtualy everywhere. At the end
they end up with forces in Norway, France, Italy, Africa, Balkans, and
USSR. Yeah, smart moves. Italy was also behaving as if it was bad ass
land power, sending its badly prepared ground force to Balkans and
Africa, while totaly wasting their strength in Navy and to the lesier
extend Air Force. At least in case of Italy, purely defensive strategy
would had been better for Germany and Italy.
Yevgeniy Chizhikov.
ferrante formato
Nothing to do with firestorms in Germany, anyway.
No great damages to the factories of Pontedera are recorded, whose owner,
the family Piaggio, were kept in good consideration by British Aristocracy
Ferrante Formato
Nils K Hammer <nh...@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote in message
8tf12h$jl1$1...@beast.TCNJ.EDU...
ferrante formato
>
I went through the Manifesto of Fascism by Benito Mussolini.
One point strucked me:
The total negation of Industrial Society
"[Il fascismo e'] Dunque concezione spiritualistica, sorta anche essa dalla
generale reazione del secolo contro il fiacco e materialistico positivismo
dell'Ottocento. " (Point III)
"Fascism is a spiritualistic conception, arised from the general reaction of
XX century against the lazy and materialistic positism of XIX century"
This point is a clear negation of Capitalism and Industrial Society. By
doing this, Mussolini clearly
blamed liberal bourgesy, which had been the Deus ex Machina of War
Production in WWI.
It should be remarked that the attitude of liberal bourgesy, which was, at
the time, a filiation of liberal arystocracy (Agnelli, Piaggio, Ansaldo,
Pirelli, Caproni, Breda...) was something of a poundered toleration of
Mussolini (Like that of the Church)
"let us support Fascism. It is the strongest wall against Communism".
If we analyze deeply the Manifesto of Mussolini,
we will see that they were wrong . Fascism was deeply against capitalism and
Church, and it was a State-centered regime. (amazing enough, like
Socialism..)
But Mussolini was very careful not to touch the interests of liberal
bourgesy and Clerics.
This opportunistic attitude, that at the time caused his triumph by
gaining him the general support,
was actually a major cause of his death.
In fact, the liberal bourgesy, once sure that Mussolini and its accolade
played a comedy, pretended
an Armament Rush that resulted a mockery in WW2.
My question is:
Why did Italian generals not remarked impreparation to a large scale
War????
My claim is that high military ranks belonged to Liberal bourgesy and so
they did not long for a war against democratic capitalistic powers.
In a word, many persons in Italy played a comedy, at the times. As usual,
the tragedy was played by the weakest people.
Ferrante Formato
ferrante formato
The Unsinkable <RMSTi...@webtv.net> wrote in message
8tccgq$68j6$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu...
> Let's face it: The bottom line was Mussolini dragged his country into a
> war it was clearly not ready to fight. It didn't have the resources,
> the manpower, nor the technology to keep up with the likes of even their
> Axis partners.
In 1940 it seemed that the war was over. Norway, France, Holland and
Belgium occupied. The only battle theatre seemed to be North Afrika.
No heavy weapon had still appeared on the tactical scenario.
The tragic error of Mussolini was not to think that a modern war is
scalable. Like any aspect of industrial economy.
But the tragic error of Mussolini was essentially the tragic error of
Fascism. It is a rooted convinction of Fascism that the mere fact that
opposing Communism implies the favours of the
Italian Oligarchist Capitalism.
It is not so and therefore, in WW2, Italy faced industrial warfare
imprepared.
Ferrante Formato
Glenn A. Steinberg
> Why did Italian generals not remarked impreparation to a large scale War????
On the Topica World War II discussion list, there has been a long series of
messages on this topic.
You can read the messages by going to the list's archives at
<http://www.topica.com/lists/WWII/read>. Look for the messages with the title
"Speaking Italian(s)." I think there are 12 messages so far in the series.
To be honest, I haven't been following them closely myself, so I'm not sure what
the author says on the topic.
Antonio Maraziti
"ferrante formato" <ferrante...@libero.it> wrote:
> Italian and British people get along well since Roman times. As a
matter
> of fact, the fearsome BC never touched Italian cities.
>
As usual, Ferrante uses some _false_ historic facts to build
his imaginative political theories on them.
I will comment only the facts, and say that the Italian cities
_were_ actually bombed by the Bomber Command, and also very heavily.
The first Italian city to be bombed was Genoa, on 22 October 1942.
by 104 aircraft of 5. Group. The attack caused heavy damage, 39
killed and 190 wounded. Next day the city was bombed again by 122
bombers.
On 24 October 1942 Milan was bombed at day by BC, with heavy damage,
and again the subsequent night.
Genoa was attacked some more times in November, then also Turin
was targeted, seven times in november and december.
In 1943, Turin, Milan, La Spezia and other cities were heavily
attacked by the Bomber Command, with heavy damage and losses in
the population.
Source: "Comando Bombardieri - Operazione Europa" by G. Bonacina -
Longanesi
Antonio Maraziti
Antonio Maraziti
thor...@visi.com (David Thornley) wrote:
> Obviously better designs for
> infantry weapons would have helped, and wouldn't have been difficult
> (that 45mm grenade thrower was probably less useful in combat than
> a forked stick and large rubber band).
Please don't forget that Italian infntry also had the very good
81mm mortar, equal or better than its counter-parts.
Anyway the main problem, IMHO, was not in small weapons. Had
Italy had the M1 Garand and the MG.42, things would not have
changed much.
The main problems (concerning infantry) were artillery (many
artillery pieces were WW1 Austrian war prizes) and anti-tank
weapons (you cannot do much with Solothurns and 47/32s). And,
of course, lack of trucks (for mobility) and effective tanks.
Antonio
ferrante formato
> artillery pieces were WW1 Austrian war prizes) and anti-tank
> weapons (you cannot do much with Solothurns and 47/32s). And,
> of course, lack of trucks (for mobility) and effective tanks.
>
> Antonio
>
(The Italian Industry
from XIXth century to present times) by Valerio Castronuovo, Mondadori
1990.
In the chapter "Dirigism and rearmament" there are several significant
remarks. I quote them
"...there arised were two opposed tendencies [In italian Economy]. The
former, led by Volpi, supporting a large scale increasing of the relations
with Germany; the latter, supported by Fiat and Snia , that wanted to keep
on the collaboration with United States and Commonwealth Countries"
Now, Fiat was one of the main private contractors for steel production.
Again, Castronuovo goes on
"..not only the lobby of the business deeply relied on Italy's neutrality to
take the most advantages of the encreasing demand coming from all the
countries involved in the War, but the same Fascist Regime had a group of
officer that were deeply contrary to war, because they were already
satisfied with Colonies and feared the misfortunes of a War"
And Still , Castronuovo is very critic toward some Industries
"..Fiat was never been able to respect the plan of rearmament as far as
taks, trucks airplanes and engines were concerned. They did not made any
effort to accelerate bureaucracy and
they lacked raw materials.
Ansaldo underused their modern plantsand, unlike 1915, only two years later
, (1942) they overpassed the average production.."
"broadly speaking, during the War, just in the moment were it was necessary
to exploit the industrial resources to the maximum, there occurred an
increasing gap between the potentiality of plants and their real use"
My opinion is that Italian capitalism has never supported a war against
England and United States. As Carrell put it in his "Sie Kommen", the
defeat was therefore inevitable.
Ferrante
Haydn
David Thornley wrote:
> In article <8snjch$r6o$1...@beast.TCNJ.EDU>,
> Tero P. Mustalahti <term...@strangelove.yok.utu.fi> wrote:
> >>The M.11/39 medium tank was nothing to write home about either. It was
> >>fielded in 1939, but the formations were not combat ready until summer
> >>1940. The 37mm main gun was located in the hull and had a limited
> >>traverse. Turret armament was two 8mm machine guns. Reliability was
> >>abysmal and armor easily penetrated by all contemporary anti-tank guns
> >>and some AT rifles.
To Tero: Actually, the M11/39 had the same armor thickness as the M13 -
30mm
front, 15mm side. British Boys AT rifles could penetrate the side armor
plates, not the frontal ones. Battlefield statistics are unclear on this
point but it is possible that at Beda Fomm at least a few M13 were
penetrated by Boys rounds. A 1941 Italian "after action" battlefield
examination conducted on a number of M13 wrecks, by a high rank
technical
officer, reports that some AT rifle rounds dented the armor "to near
penetration" but didn't achieve full penetration.
>
>
> I believe the Australians used some of these after Compass, but not
> in large numbers, and they didn't last to be used in combat.
>
During Compass the Australians used, mainly to the photographers'
delight, a
little group of M11s and M13, which never saw real action; those famous
tanks with big white kangaroos painted on hulls and turrets. Who instead
did
use a pretty large number of M13s were the British after Compass, at the
time of Rommel's first sweep in Cyrenaica. (It was the 3rd Armd Bde
IIRC).
They, too, never saw any real fighting - they broke down one after
another
during the quick and rather chaotic withdrawal.
Haydn
David Thornley
ferrante formato <ferrante...@libero.it> wrote:
>According to my readings, Pisa was bombed by British and Americans.
>Nothing to do with firestorms in Germany, anyway.
>
Command most definitely bombed Italy in the same fashion as it
bombed Germany, although for obvious reasons it tended to concentrate
on Germany.
>No great damages to the factories of Pontedera are recorded, whose owner,
>the family Piaggio, were kept in good consideration by British Aristocracy
>
This, like the firestorms, is entirely a matter of chance. The British
did not deliberately create firestorms in some cities and not in others,
but rather bombed them all in much the same fashion, and sometimes
it caused a firestorm and sometimes it didn't.
Similarly, Bomber Command was simply not capable of flying a long
distance (and Italy was a good ways away from England), and deciding
to spare factories. The usual target point would be the city center,
and if the Pontedera factories were out in the suburbs they were saved
by the usual Bomber Command practice, not any special consideration.
The fact that Bomber Command hit Italian cities meant that Italy got
no special consideration. Bomber Command was one of the bluntest
weapons of the war, and a decision to send it at a city meant that the
decision maker didn't care for the welfare of anybody or anything
in or near the city.
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
--
---
Stephen Graham
gra...@ee.washington.edu
gra...@u.washington.edu
Haydn
"Tero P. Mustalahti" wrote:
> The performance of the Italian Army in Greece was not
> too great either, even though the Greek Army was outnumbered and at
> least as poorly equipped as the Italian Army.
>
The Greek Army was outnumbered on paper, not on the Albanian mountains during the
crucial first months of the Italo-Greek war. It was the other way round: a
numerically inferior force attacked the whole Greek Army. After the very first
days, when only a screen of border troops delayed the Italian advance, the
otherwise undisturbed Greeks were able to muster 90% of their field forces and
gradually moved them to the Albanian front (while the Bulgarians, on whom
Mussolini was relying, didn't stir a finger to support him). In a few weeks the
strength ratio was overturned completely. At that point, the Italian Navy and Air
Force were unable to ferry to Albania cohesive and fully equipped units fast and
efficiently, and when the superior Greeks started their string of remorseless
attacks, disaster occurred.
> Italy did not win the WW1 on its own. In fact Italy did not fare very
> well against Austria. Italy also received support from France and the
> British Empire, which were both major colonial powers with lots of
> resources. Later the US joined the war. The crucial battles of WW1
> were fought on the Western front and Italy had virtually nothing to do
> with them.
If you have a look at the strength and quality ratio, geographical
features and overall situation, you will hardly deny that Italy fared very well
against Austria, better than it could be expected by many (even though mistakes
and failures were not lacking - but which WWI participant was exempt from
errors?). Italy owed a lot to the other Western powers, no doubt, but without
national resolution, toughness and will to win, any financial or battlefield help
would have been of no use. Besides, the Allied military help - though
operationally precious during the last great offensive on the Piave River - was
important, but by no means decisive, in any phase of the war. More decisive was
the financial aid and raw materials supply, but I suppose that Italy owed a lot
more to the US than to the other Western allies, who in turn were clinging to the
US support.
Haydn
ferrante formato
David Thornley <thor...@visi.com> wrote in message
8tpnqm$gffm$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu...
> In article <8ti1ju$4dm$1...@beast.TCNJ.EDU>,
> ferrante formato <ferrante...@libero.it> wrote:
> >According to my readings, Pisa was bombed by British and Americans.
> >Nothing to do with firestorms in Germany, anyway.
> >
> Not to mention the list of bombings in the previous post. Bomber
> Command most definitely bombed Italy in the same fashion as it
> bombed Germany, although for obvious reasons it tended to concentrate
> on Germany.
>
range of BC's Lancasters from High Wacombe. Harris was a blind (and I add
blunt) bomber.
He did not care were to send its planes. But, as a military, he was subject
to politicians's choice
My question is
-If Italy was spared by the fierce distruction,
was it just because of chance, or was it because of political reasons?-
Ferrante Formato
tom adkins
"ferrante formato" <ferrante...@libero.it> wrote:
> My question is
> -If Italy was spared by the fierce distruction,
> was it just because of chance, or was it because of political
reasons?-
I have read nothing to give you a solid reply, but I'll venture a
logical guess:
* Italy was not a major opponent, no insult intended.
* Germany was always seen as - and correctly - the key to the Axis.
Even the US agreed w/this and focused on Germany, in spite of Pearl
Harbor.
* It was closer to hit Germany from UK than Italy, and basing in N.
Africa of long range bombers was largely a 1943-on affair (ie, when US
got involved). Then, they tended to focus on key targets like Ploesti.
* finally, the USAAF heavy bombers were more heavily deployed in Med
than their BC counterparts, and the USAAF were more interested in
attacking facilities than cities, and daylight than night.
I think all of these combined to make Italy a backwater in teh air war,
just like Hungary, Slovakia, Poland were. France was bombed more than
Italy.
tom
--
"Hitler has shown that Hell is still here on earth.
He has, in fact, taken the lid off Hell, and we have all looked into it.
That is his service to the Human Race." -Field Marshal Smuts, 1944
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
--
David Thornley
tom adkins <scou...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>In article <8tul92$5kq$1...@beast.TCNJ.EDU>,
> "ferrante formato" <ferrante...@libero.it> wrote:
>
>
>> My question is
>> -If Italy was spared by the fierce distruction,
>> was it just because of chance, or was it because of political
>reasons?-
>
>logical guess:
One quick addition:
The main part of the Combined Bomber Offensive came in 1944 and 1945,
and by that time Italy was an Allied nation, more or less, with parts
occupied by Germany. One of the reasons Germany was hit so much
harder is that Germany was still in the war when the bombing peaked.
This is in addition to the several other very good reasons Mr. Adkins
gives.
What it comes down to is that Italy was hit as hard as you'd expect
for a junior alliance partner inconveniently located who surrendered
early. There is no hint of any going easy on Italy or any Italian
factories.