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This book explains why the Italian armed forces and Fascist regime were so remarkably ineffectual at an activity-war-that was central to their existence. Italy's economic fragility, Mussolini's strategic-ideological fantasies, and Hitler's failure in the wider war made Italy's ruin inevitable, but did not determine its peculiarly undignified character. Hitler's Italian Allies demonstrates the extent to which Italian military culture-a concept with applications far beyond Fascist Italy-made humiliation inescapable. It offers a striking portrait of a military and industrial establishment largely unable to imagine modern war and of a regime that failed miserably in mobilizing the nation's resources. Above all, it explains why the armed forces, despite the distinguished performance of a few elite units, dissolved prematurely and almost without resistance-in stark contrast to the grim fight to the last cartridge of Hitler's army and the fanatical faithfulness unto death of the troops of Imperial Japan.
- Sales Rank: #1957859 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Cambridge University Press
- Published on: 2000-10-30
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.98" h x .55" w x 5.98" l, 1.10 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 224 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Publishers Weekly
This "academic novella," as Knox calls his narrative study, is strongly committed to the "argument from stupidity": the assertion that ineffective or unsuccessful war efforts reflect not merely institutional weaknesses but culpable and comprehensive incompetence. In discussing Italian Fascists, KnoxAa chair of international history at the London School of Economics and Political ScienceAdescribes not merely armed forces but a government and a culture programmed for defeat. Italy's administration was unable to mobilize the country's manpower, to say nothing of its material resources. Its industry, Fiat in particular, was corrupt and incompetent, Knox demonstrates. At strategic levels, the Duce and the generals refused to set priorities or cut losses. As a result, Italy's already limited strength was dissipated after 1940 in theaters from Tunisia to Stalingrad. Logistics, communications, armament, doctrine, trainingAall were not merely inadequate but, Knox finds, seriously defective. Officer corps more concerned with securing the proverbial "good plate of pasta" than with developing the effectiveness of their respective services substituted vitalist rhetoric for objective analysis. Army leadership virtually ignored the connection between training and performance until 1941. Courage and intuition were expected to compensate for discipline and instruction. Until early 1943, virtually all Italian fighter pilots communicated with each other by hand signals, as in the days of the Red Baron. The list goes on and on here, and the result was best expressed by American war correspondent Ernie Pyle. Italy, he mused, was like a dog hit by a car because it tried to bite the tires. Knox's cool, matter-of-fact narrative evenly traces the ensuing tangle. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
This somewhat scholarly but still readable monograph on the Italian war effort 1940-43 dissects the reasons why that war effort was so singularly unproductive. Mussolini himself never had really centralized control over the largely monarchist armed forces, and kept trying to make himself indispensable to the Germans by overextending his military commitments. Italy's industrial base was inadequate, the training of its soldiers even more so, the designs of most of its weapons were either inefficient or obsolete, and its navy was handicapped by disastrously inaccurate heavy guns. Nor was there sufficient enthusiasm for Italian participation in the war to generate the kind of reorganization that both Germany and Japan undertook when their flaws showed up under Allied pressure--and then in 1943 it was all over for Mussolini's Italy. Knox largely cites Italian sources, but there is enough in English, and Knox provides enough background, to make this a valuable introduction to a neglected aspect of World War II. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"This book is important to an understanding of how and why Italy collapsed during World War II."
-Washington Post
"MacGregor Knox's excellent study of Italy's defeat mercilessly reveals faliure on all fronts...Knox expertly paints a depressing and,, with very few exceptions, uniform picture of faliure of the Italian army, navy, and air force."
-Miliary History
"[A] valuable introduction to a neglected aspect of World War II."
-Booklist
"...thoughtful and well researched..."
-Library Journal
"Cool, matter-of-fact..."
-Publishers Weekly
"Knox tells the story clearly and concisely and his analysis of the weaknesses of the Italian military is likely to convince anyone who has witnessed the workings of Italian society...Knox's book poses interesting questions and convincingly critiques the operations of Italy's pre-war military establishment."
-International History Review
"A brief but cogent examination of Italy in World War II. Knox, whose talents were recently displayed in Common Destiny, a dual history of Germany and Italy, hones in here on the Italian side, his main field of expertise...This book is important to an understanding of how and why Italy collapsed during World War II."
-Washington Post Book World
"A necessary addition to World War II...Excellent... leaves the reader wanting more anecdotal information and first-hand accounts from officers and enlisted men."
-The Ocala Star-Banner (FL)
"This concise analytical study will be of much value to readers who are interested in the military relationship between Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany during the period when they were allies."
-The Historian
"...the survey of the Italian Armed Forces during World War II, manages to look deeply into its organizational, technological, doctrinal, and tactical shortcomings, as well as its leadership and cultural problems, while rebutting the wartime Allied propaganda. A very useful work for anyone interested in the Second World War."
-NYMAS Newsletter
Most helpful customer reviews
51 of 53 people found the following review helpful.
A much-needed study on WW2's most understudied participant
By anonymous
This book is the much expanded version of an essay which appears in the book "Common Destiny" by the same author. It fills an important gap in English-language history of WW2. The Italian participation in WW2 has been minimized, misunderstood or plainly ignored by many English and American historians. There is no shortage of books that lead readers to believe that Rommel had only (or mostly) Germans under his command in North Africa, when in fact they were the smaller part of his troops. Similarly, crude jokes on the Italian army in ww2 have been all too often the substitute for serious analysis.
This book has a rigorous, analytical, well-documented approach to the problem of explaining the extent Italy's defeat in WW2. A defeat that was so comprehensive in spite of the fact that the Fascist regime had regarded war as central to its objectives for 20 years. The author has drawn extensively on a vast number of high-quality, specialized studies by Italian historians (generally not available in English), and this alone would be enough to make it unique. However, the author ties together all the documentary evidence in a convincing thesis.
Basically, the main conclusion is that Italy's defeat was made inevitable by the failure of its "military culture", a concept that encompasses not only the strategic/operational/tactical spheres, but also the relatiosnhip regime-armed forces-monarchy, the military/industrial complex, and the cohesion of society as a whole.
The author's analysis is extensive and multi-faceted; for example, he covers in detail the obtusity of the top brass (and its reverence for the infantryman-mule combination), the neglect and contempt of the rank and file by the officer corps, the inefficiency of the cartelized arms producers, but also the basic cultural deficiencies that made it difficult to turn Italian recruits into cohesive, motivated units.
In short, the author shows that the extent of Italy's catastrophic defeat was made inevitable by intellectual failure -many of the armed forces' shortcomings were, quite simply, self-inflicted, and even the meager industrial resources were squandered by incompetent management. I might add that these mistakes were bound to be penalized devastatingly in a war like WW2, which required outstanding managerial skills at all levels. Indeed, people familiar with Italian history (whether military, economic or social) will recognize the pattern in which, as the author says, "collective inadequacies in research and development cancelled out individual skill and valor": invariably this country, so skilled at brilliant improvization, has found itself ill at ease with long term planning, objectives prioritization and resources allocation.
The book deserves its 5th star for redressing some of the mistaken theories "explaining" why Italy's defeat was so total. The first theory, or I should say prejudice, is that Italians were not willing to fight. The author mentions several occasions when the Italians fought determinedly the only type of warfare which they could fight - non-mobile defence (Cheren, Gondar, Bir el Gobi, El Alamein, Tunisia); moreover, and more importantly, he points out that "units in north africa, Albania, and Russia held together in conditions (...) that would have caused soldiers of the industrial democracies to quail". Another theory is that the Fascist regime was responsible for the disastrous planning and conduct of the war. The book makes it abundantly clear that the regime did have major responsibilities in sstrategic blunders, but they compounded, rather than cause, the faults within the armed forces.
Finally, I would like to note that the book is a valuable case study of an army that prepared for "the previous war" (or even the one before...). As such, it provides general lessons that can have universal validity and transcend the specific case of Italy in WW2.
16 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
An informative descriptive history and analysis
By Midwest Book Review
In MacGregor Knox's Hitler's Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, And The War Of 1940-1943, the military buff and the student of World War II military history is provided an informative descriptive history and analysis of why the Italian Fascist regime was so basically ineffectual in conducting the war. Author MacGregor Knox offers an innovative analytical cross section of the Italian war effort in a broad spectrum of perspectives, the ineptitude of Italian military leadership, and why the Italian armed forces dissolved prematurely and almost without resistance -- especially when compared with the diehard and suicidal resistance of German and Japanese armed forces in their respective theaters. Hitler's Italian Allies is an impressive, unique, and highly recommended contribution to World War II studies and reading lists.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
We Are All Bozos on this Bus
By Grey Wolffe
Could the Italian Armed Forces and the Generals who were in charge be any more inept if they tried. From 1922, after the 'March on Rome' to the 'Forty-Five Days' in 1943; Mussolini and his Military did everything they could to build a strong armed forces, but ended up building a Camel. (A camel is a horse designed by a committee.) From what Knox writes, the three branches of the military spent more time fighting over money and prestige than training and building an effective offensive power.
In the seventeen years leading up to 1939 (versus six years for the Germans) they spent billions of lira on military hardware that didn't work and never created the necessary 'links' between the services that would allow joint efforts. The Air Force still relied on a bi-plane as it's main fighter and had no airlift ability to bring in supplies or support paratroops. The Navy built Battleships that didn't have enough destroyers to protect them, ineffectual guns, no ability to fight at night and catapult launched floatplanes that couldn't be recovered at sea. The Army depended on Tankettes and a medium tank that had such a small main gun that it was useless outside of four kilometers.
Over the years the Air Force had so many prototype planes that they had few squadrons that were homogeneous. There was no effectual anti-tank squads or guns, and logistics were so bad that most soldiers received mail only after three months. The inability to feed and cloth soldiers on the move in Africa meant that some didn't have hot meals for months on end. The Air Force and Navy seldom worked together because their was little or no communication between them.
So was this endemic to the Italians. In a word, Yes. Unlike Germany, there was no history of prestige for being in the military. Unlike the British, this is where the nobility sent their sons only as a last resort. Cheating the military on quality and quantity of goods was looked at the same way as cheating on your taxes. The Italian 8th Army in Russia received boots that had soles made out of cardboard because no one checked the consignment. The Italian Navy tried to keep out of harms way in order to protect the few ships they had been able to build and knew they couldn't replace.
Mussolini spent most of the late 20s and thirties as his own supreme commander, placing his Fascist cronies at the head of the different branches of the military. (As ineffectual as Goring was, the Luftwaffe had good officers and equipment.) The Italian military built more for prestige and looks than effectiveness. The Italian Navy had over 100 submarines by 1939, but few were ocean going and easily found by sonar used by the British in the Mediterranean.
According to Knox, if your looking for an example of how NOT to run a military; the Italian Armed Forces was a sterling example. It should be noted that when Italian troops were well trained and armed they were able to acquit themselves well; unfortunately this was rare.
Zeb Kantrowitz
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