Reassessment of Italian Combat Prowess

[JonS]

http://www.1jma.dk/articles/1jmaarticlesww2italyarmy.htm

[Freyberg]

I read that the Italians were said to have put up a very valiant doomed rearguard at El Alamein to cover Rommel's retreat.

[JasonC]

Tempest - you think the Italian navy can't have done a poor job because "the British had to supply Egypt by the way of the Cape of Good Hope rather then through the Straits of Gibraltor-a 40 to 120 day journey as long as the Italian Navy was a belligerent". But the main reason for that was not the Italian navy.

We have the actual losses of British warships in the med, from large to small.

Italian frogmen damaged 2 BBs in a night raid off a submarine, using manned torpedos. But they never permanently sank any British warship larger than a cruiser, using any method - that was as close as they came.

One battleship, Barham, was actually lost (not just damaged) in the Med, to a German U-boat, U-331. German U-boats also got the Ark Royal and the small carrier Eagle. German JU-87 dive bombers sank the monitor Terror in Benghazi harbor.

That is it for permanent losses of ships larger than cruisers. Now the cruisers.

Italian motor torpedo boats torpedoed the York off Crete; it was finished off by German air from Greece. They also sank the Manchester. Italian submarines sank the Cairo, Calypso, and Bonaventura. Italian mines sank the Neptune. That is the full "score" of Italian arms on British cruisers. In contrast, German air got 8 cruisers, U-boats got 5, and German mines got 1.

In DDs, Italian surface gunfire sank all of 2 (one of those was by their torpedo boat, one by cruiser fire - the only loss inflicted by Italian capital ships in the entire war), an Italian DD launched torpedo also got 1, making 3 total by Italian surface ships. Italian air got 3 DDs, and 2 were sunk by Axis bombers not distinguished German or Italian. Italian subs got 2 DDs. Italian mines were more successful, getting 6 British DDs in all.

In contrast, German air got 26 British DDs, not counting the 2 ambiguous cases mentioned above. U-boats got 12, German mines got 5, German E-boats got 3, and German shore batteries (Tobruk) got 1.

All surface combatants combined got only 6 DDs and nothing heavier, and half of those were German E-boat torpedoes, mostly at night. Only 1 British DD was sunk by anything heavier than a DD, and it was mostly the numerous small torpedo platforms that scored, German or Italian. Subs got all the really big stuff and that was all Germans, plus 8 cruisers and 14 destroyers, most of them German kills. Air was the main scourge of the small ships, accounting for 1 monitor, 8 cruisers and 31 destroyers. And the German planes were the ones scoring, with JU-87s the top threats and JU-88s the clear seconds. Mines got 2 cruisers and 11 destroyers and split right down the middle between the Germans and the Italians.

It was land base air power in Italy, Sicily, and Greece that actually made the central med "off limits" for British surface ships in daylight for the middle of the war. They lost ships when they had to come out anyway, for example during the fight over Crete or on the various convoys to Malta. They bleed gradually to subs and mines the while, especially the German subs, which bagged big game routinely in the narrow waters of the Med. Escorting anything through the med brought land based air hitting the smaller ships especially hard, and anything poorly escorted was vulnerable to U-boats.

That is the real reason the Brits sailed around the cape, until the invasion of Sicily and later mainland Italy. The Italian surface fleet was not.

[Sublime]

Didnt the Allies in contrast devastate German/Italian shipping in the Med and especially the German JU52 fleet trying to resupply Tunisia in early 43? Do you have figures on Axis shipping losses? It'd be interesting to compare and contrast the two. Did US submarines operate in the ETO against Axis shipping?

[Michael Emrys]

Did US submarines operate in the ETO against Axis shipping?

Apparently a few did. I read something the other day that credited a US sub with some sinkings in the Med. If I come across it again I'll try to give you a cite. BTW, I think Rosskil's history of the RN gives fairly accurate comparisons for both sides.

Michael

[LukeFF]

Did US submarines operate in the ETO against Axis shipping?

A handful of American subs were in the ETO for a while, but eventually the conclusion of American commanders there was "we don't need them," and so they were sent back to the Pacific. They didn't really accomplish all that much while in European waters.

[Tarquelne]

Not sure there was a huge fascist movement like in Germany..many where farmboys with little education.

Italy didn't even have a word for "fascism."

[Sgt Joch]

Didnt the Allies in contrast devastate German/Italian shipping in the Med and especially the German JU52 fleet trying to resupply Tunisia in early 43? Do you have figures on Axis shipping losses? It'd be interesting to compare and contrast the two. Did US submarines operate in the ETO against Axis shipping?

As far as I am aware, no US sub ever patroled in the med. There was a squadron of fleet subs based at Roskill, Scotland in 42-43 to hunt U-boats, Axis shipping, but due to very restrictive ROEs, they did not sink anything and were relocated to the Pacific. There were also S-boats in the Caribbean off the Panama canal.

On Italian losses, the author Tempestzzz linked to claims 98% of men, 90% of material got through, which sounds high, but in the Atlantic, over 99% of all Allied ships got through.

[Tempestzzzz]

Jason C. Sorry to be the one to break the bad news to you.

I know it's painful.

The Italians did well given their limitations.

Royal Navy and Regia Marina were worthy opponents. It wasn't Jack Tar vs Mr. Gipetto the wood carver. It wasn't some Victory at Sea-Why We Fight WWII documentary.

Read the book I linked

It was a nasty nasty sea war. This typical-just as the Royal Navy had the upper had-and out comes some curve ball by Regia Marina.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Neptune_(20)

The Royal Navy had Taranto as a victory in 1940 and a year later Regia Marina has a victory Alexandria (12 days after Pearl Harbor). Carrier Ops and Special Ops. Things to come.

Worthy opponents.

Royal Navy never destroyed Regia Marina. They had a flawed strategy-sea denial-not sea control. If the Americans had not shown up by 1942 the Royal Navy would have lost control of the Mediterranean both from Italian mines, the threat of Regia Marina surface vessels (small units were laying mines and harassing) and Luftwaffe. It wasn't strictly Luftwaffe that the Royal Navy faced.

Nuff said.

[usgubgub]

Everyone seems to agree the Italian Armies were poorly equipped and very poorly led. Did they put up a good fight occasionally? There are many accounts of heroism by individual Italian soldiers and small formations.

Politically, Italy was led by an opportunist who thought as long as his country could be seen at the right place at the right time its armies did not need to be well eqwuipped or led. In the early stages of WWII in Europe, when the Germans blew aside any opposition and seemed invincible, it was easy to take that view.

But WWII turned into a great endurance/material contest, and every nation participating was tested to its limits. Victory went to those who made the right strategic choices after 1941. Little that went on before really counted, save perhaps the Battle of Britain, which kept the British in the war when they were alone.

France performed very poorly, but it does not get anwhere near the bad press Italy gets because it was not led by a fascist regime when the war broke out (by the way, Tarquelne, Italy invented Fascism, the name comes from the logo of the Italian Fascist party, depicting a Roman military symbol; Hitler copied italian Fascist ideas).

Like France, Italy was eventually split in two, the South with the Allies and the North still nominally with the Axis, but only the italians were stuck with the stigma of changing sides.

Many of these issues were political and highly complex, they don't lend themselves to simplistic and prejudiced analysis.

Yes, Rommel defeated the Matildas at Arras by improvising a defence with Flak guns. The Italians did not have a Rommel. Poorly led, not necessarily poor soldiers or a herd of cowards. There are plenty of examples of German formations performing poorly when poorly armed or led.

[usgubgub]

Talking about changing sides, the names Hitler and Stalin come to mind. They started on the same side against poland, remember?

[John Kettler]

usgubgub,

Welcome aboard!

A nice little fasces discourse. Believe you may find it of interest.

http://www.livius.org/fa-fn/fasces/fasces.html

Regards,

John Kettler

[Wodin]

France in the UK does get a terrible press..on par with Italy. So bad it has sullied their superb fighting prowess pre WW2. Everyone thinks France has always been a push over..only those who study military history know different..in the UK this is the case anyway.

[Wodin]

Talking about changing sides, the names Hitler and Stalin come to mind. They started on the same side against poland, remember?

What always baffles me is Allies went o war against Germany because they invaded Poland..yet Russia invaded a few days later and we left them alone..

Sort of like it was some sort of inconvenience pushed under the carpet.

"Russia...yes well best not mention that eh"

[Michael Emrys]

What always baffles me is Allies went o war against Germany because they invaded Poland..yet Russia invaded a few days later and we left them alone..

Sort of like it was some sort of inconvenience pushed under the carpet.

"Russia...yes well best not mention that eh"

Well, that's pragmatic statecraft for you. Britain desperately needed allies against Germany, most especially powerful allies. It must have seemed to Churchill and the rest of the British government that Hitler and Stalin were inevitably going to have a falling out and they set about to hasten that as much as they could, which wasn't really any sooner than Hitler planned anyway.

In any event, Britain wasn't in any position to take on both of them at the same time. Germany looked like the greater immediate threat to British interests, so the strategy was to deal with it first and then "do something" about the USSR further down the road.

Michael

[Sequoia]

Really, do you think going to war with Germany AND the Soviet Union would be a good idea? As one Republican politician recently stated "Martyrdom for ideological purity is for suicide bombers"

[Sublime]

What always baffles me is Allies went o war against Germany because they invaded Poland..yet Russia invaded a few days later and we left them alone..

Sort of like it was some sort of inconvenience pushed under the carpet.

"Russia...yes well best not mention that eh"

Pragmatism aside - for the reasons people stated above - I agree 100% wodin. That always bothered me, and it apparently bothered the hell out of Churchill. Still, in hindsight we didn't do bad. We didn't have to have an all out war, and the SU and the Eastern Bloc states fell apart. And while we bled, and bled a lot, we had the SU bleed a whole lot more.

But yes, it is screwed up, and I think a lot of people forget that. It always bugs me almost as much as the history channel D-Day docs that make it seem as if WW2 was Pearl Harbor/D-Day/Bulge/Nuke. Or Hollywood movies that make the Germans seem like inept idiots. It does a disservice to the Allied troops who had to face them.

Still though - and I love mentioning this when we get a rabid Soviet Union lover on here (usually about half the people from Russia, who jump down your throat if you say anything except how uber the Soviets were) - the Russians were nearly as guilty as the Nazis in starting WW2, and committed plenty of atrocities on their own. And I don't mean against Germans - I mean like Katyn.

Speaking of Katyn, did we actually execute any Nazis over that?

Heres another interesting one - What if it had been reversed? Let say say the Soviets have the agreement with Germans, but overeager forces attack too soon? Or the Russians feel cocky and want to grab more land than promised, so attack a few days early? Do you guys think we would have declared war on Russia as quickly as the Nazis? At the time, the West claimed the issue was Polish sovereignty, they didn't specifically say it's the Nazis (IIRC) so by that logic you'd think they would have declared war on the SU.

And if they had, do you think Germany would have attacked Poland, and declared war on the West with Russia as an ally?

[JasonC]

usgubgub wrote "France performed very poorly, but it does not get anwhere near the bad press Italy gets..."

Really? For sale, French rifles, only dropped once. Cheese eating surrender monkeys. "I'd rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me (Patton)". Why did they plant trees all down the Champs Eylsees? So Germans can march in the shade. Why did it take the Germans a month to conquer France? It was during the spring and it was raining. What English word has no French equivalent? Gratitude. The greatest French war hero was Joan of Arc - and they surrendered her to their English enemies to be executed. American to Frenchman: "Do you speak German?" Frenchman: "Non." American: "You're welcome." How can you tell French tanks from those of other nations? The rear view mirrors. When the French were told their new plane was a "fighter", they named it the "mirage". What is the most common French turn of phrase? I give up. How many Frenchman does it take to guard Paris? No one knows, it has never been tried.

I could go on all day...

[JasonC]

Sublime - Britain almost went to war with the Soviet Union over Finland, during the period in which the Soviets were tacitly allied with Germany as each picked off its own preferred targets. There was a British force already earkmarked to be shipped east to fight with the Finns and everything. The German invasion of Norway cut off the route they planned to take, and prevented it.

Britain's bottom line was to prevent German domination of the continent, but if that meant fighting against rather than with Russia, they were prepared to do so. They'd rather have Russian help for purely strategic reasons - as Churchill put it, if Hitler invaded hell he'd find something positive to say about the devil in the House of Commons.

Britain and France did not declare war to protect Polish sovereignty, they declared war to stop Germany from dominating the continent. The Polish campaign was just where that came up and they drew the line. It could have been a year earlier over the Czechs or a year or two later over the Yugoslavs and it would not have changed the outline of the war appreciably. Great powers balance against would-be hegemons, especially those that are clearly reckless and ruthless and willing to resort to aggressive war to get there.

As for Polish liberty, the Russians could have granted that, but it wasn't in their nature. Nothing the west could do about it, when the Red Army was already all over Poland. Pretending imaginary high flown morals or the lack thereof have anything to do with any of it is pretending - strategy reality dictates the outlines of possible diplomatic outcomes, not the reverse. Stalin had millions of armed men under his command all over Poland; he didn't need the permission of another living soul to do whatever the heck he wanted with it. Seeing that reality is just being conscious not stupid, and isn't an endorsement. Stalin is the only man responsible for Poland not having its freedom after the war.

[sburke]

usgubgub wrote "France performed very poorly, but it does not get anwhere near the bad press Italy gets..."

Really? For sale, French rifles, only dropped once. Cheese eating surrender monkeys. "I'd rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me (Patton)". Why did they plant trees all down the Champs Eylsees? So Germans can march in the shade. Why did it take the Germans a month to conquer France? It was during the spring and it was raining. What English word has no French equivalent? Gratitude. The greatest French war hero was Joan of Arc - and they surrendered her to their English enemies to be executed. American to Frenchman: "Do you speak German?" Frenchman: "Non." American: "You're welcome." How can you tell French tanks from those of other nations? The rear view mirrors. When the French were told their new plane was a "fighter", they named it the "mirage". What is the most common French turn of phrase? I give up. How many Frenchman does it take to guard Paris? No one knows, it has never been tried.

I could go on all day...

Please do, this was funny as hell. Sorry to all you French gamers, but hey I laugh at jokes about we Americans too.

[usgubgub]

Most of those jokes were circulated by americans after France refused to dance to their tune at the time of the second Gulf war. I agreed with American policy at the time on the basis that it had lost credibility as a military power because of too many half baked adventures where it pulled back after losing comparatively few men because of politicians' fear of media repercussions. America needed to show it meant business and could see things through to victory.

In hindsight, they were hasty in declaring victory and had not thought out what to do with Iraq after Saddam's regime had been toppled.

France was one of the main Allies in the North-West Europe campaign. Their support was needed to guarantee the success of Torch, much earlier on. The murky goings on at that time are well documented and have nothing to envy to what happened with Italy within a year. France, though, was not a fascist country, whereas Italy was. France had also been on the winning side from the beginning, and was occupied in part by the Germans, with the other part governed by a German puppet regime.

History always being written by victors, this guaranteed a very bad press for Italy and a more lenient treatment for France. I was born in 1955 and as I was growing up there were plenty of jokes such as Italian tanks having only one forward gear but ten reverse gears etc. Italian troops were considered cowardly and prone to surrendering without firing a shot, which certainly happened but was not an exclusively Italian prerogative.

I never came across such lore regarding France back then. Only when they wouldn't dance to Dubya's tune was all of that dragged up. They were being punished for pursuing their own interests, which differed from those of the then Republican, Neoconservative American Administration. Who had the last laugh in that context, though?

Propaganda is just noise. It distorts the truth to facilitate the imposition of narratives that suit the purpose of whoever ends up holding the biggest megaphone when the fight is over.

Russian war crimes were glossed over because they had large armies crawling all over Eastern Europe and had undoubtedly paid most of the butcher's bill. Stalin probably would not have seen what the fuss was all about, but he was canny enough to exploit the opportunity to deal its most dangerous ploitical enemy, Fascism, a mortal blow by using its undeniable crimes and atrocities to bury it politically. In this he succeeded. Such is power politics. Morality does not come into it, but it can be exploited when convenient.

My own assesment of the situation immediately after the war is that the Soviet Union could not have carried out an aggressive campaign against the Western Allies after the fall of Berlin.

The effort to get to Berlin had been enormous, and the Armies must have been exhausted. Taking the might of American industry on would also have been a huge gamble, and the Americans were only months away from obtaining nuclear capability, something Stslin would have known about. The main motivation for Soviet Troops fighting spirit, revenge on the Germans, had also become redundant.

It was not an option for the Allies, equally, despite Patton's solitary enthusiasm for the venture. Neither side had a powerful enough incentive to attack (no surprise, no superiority, no obvious gain, plenty of obvious risks), so things settled pretty much where they had got to at Potsdam. What we got was the cold war instead. Who won that one is still, in my opinion, a matter to be settled.

[JonS]

France was one of the main Allies in the North-West Europe campaign.

Only by default. For a long time there were more Poles fighting to liberate France, in France, than there were Frenchmen. Which is kind of ironic when you stop and think about it.

Their support was needed to guarantee the success of Torch

What?! No it wasn't. TORCH was a success in spite of the French. And, actually, the French went to a considerable amount of effort to bollix TORCH.

History always being written by victors

I take it you haven't read much on either the US Civil War, the Eastern Front in WWII, or WWI? The 'we wuz robbed' school of military history is a very strong genre.

[Erwin]

"a year earlier over the Czechs or a year or two later over the Yugoslavs and it would not have changed the outline of the war appreciably."

I have always read that Hitler and his Generals were terrified at the thought of the French walking into the Rhineland while the German forces were all in the east. It was a huge opportunity for the western allies that was missed. All the more so had it occurred a year or two earlier before Germany was fully mobilized. They were desperate to buy time. (Although admittedly so were the Allies due to their temerity.)

[usgubgub]

It would not be the first or only instance where a country's contribution to a war effort was not proportional to its political importance in the victor's alliance. British troops were a minority in most theaters where the Empire's armies were fighting, but Britain was the only politically important representative, which did cause tensions and had consequences beyond the end of the war.

Torch succeeded because covert operations (diplomacy and espionage) incapacitated or neutralised a good proportion of Vichy French fighting power. Yes, many French units resisted from token effort to determined stands, but in the main the real fight only began when the Germans reacted, the Allies having got all the way to Tunisia with comparatively light casualties.

As to the "we wuz robbed" school of military history, I agree about the American Civil War though that was a consequence of the far-sighted magnanimity of the victors who, for the sake of strategic imperatives, were happy to allow that narrative to develop. When you speak of WWII Eastern Front and WWI, I presume you are talking mainly of German revisionist narratives. These were important in Germany during the inter war years and in West Germany during the cold war, but were not intelligible by the majority of non interested observers. Certainly, the post WWII revisionist German narrative had no resonance is East Germany. In the West it was a function of the need to staff the nascent Bundeswehr with ex Wehrmacht officers which created the opportunity to indulge in such arguments (for example, Von Manstein's "Lost Victories"). On matters such as war crimes it is clear that the winning powers had the decisive impact on the narrative that prevailed. This does not detract from the horror of German and Japanese crimes. It does beg the question why powers on the winning side that perpetrated crimes of equivalent horror were not made to account for them, the answer being that such an intent was unenforceable.

It is easy to forget that WWII in Europe did not start according to anyone's plans, but that it started as a result of a diplomatic dynamic that got out of control. Hitler had got used to getting his way and miscalculated the Allies reaction to his invasion of Poland. The allies declared war but did not attack, their resolve being weak at the time. France wanted to fight a defensive war on the frontier, but Hitler had other plans.

[JasonC]

"were circulated by americans after France refused to dance to their tune"

Maybe that's when you heard them, but assure you I knew them much earlier (where do you think they came from, all on the tips of people's tongues, at that time?). I don't think Patton was exactly carrying water for GWB. Mark Twain had his, Edmund Burke his, even Shakespeare his, etc...