Italians Hold off the Russian resistance with the Germans

[TrendKill]

How would the course of history have changed if the Italians held off the counter-offensive that the Russians launched to eliminate the Italian and Hungarian forces out of Russia.
Crucial Steps:
Mussolini stations several more units in Russia to aid the German offensive

Hitler's forces are able to rely on the Italian units on their flanks. (This could either fully prevent the Russian counter-offensive or drastically change the outcome).

Italian units would be able to hold off the resistance with the Germans.

But what other things would be the result of this?
A quicker Eastern Front for the German war machine?
A decisive blow to the morale of Russian soldiers, leading to a long but decisive victory over the Russians in Stalingrad?

[New Patomic]

Would the Italians really be able to contribute any more than OTL to the eastern front?

[frieza]

If they could hold out, the change to the war would not be massive considering the amount of manpower the russians had under their wing. so they could easily send another offensive to the already weakened axis troops, but on the other hand this could give germany enough time to launch a counter offensive on the retreating russians.

[Franz Josef II]

Would the Italians have made that much of a difference though? Sorry, not knocking the Italians, it's just that they didn't do well against the Brits in Egypt, and I have not seen anything about their combat performance in Russia...so I don't know. But it would be cool if they did.

[frieza]

yeah the italians didnt have the best kill death ratio, but the russians werent doing to well either. So with german weapons and so forth they may of been able to hold off

[Kome]

Originally Posted by frieza

yeah the italians didnt have the best kill death ratio, but the russians werent doing to well either. So with german weapons and so forth they may of been able to hold off

Right well i dont think the renown Italians will start eating parabellum for breakfast and wearing MP40's as winter clothes.

Better supplies will help the Italians more, actually no considering the other two fronts they were having were also having supply problems. Italy just doesnt have the industrial base to fight a three front war.

[frieza]

=Komeyta;3173540]Right well i dont think the renown Italians will start eating parabellum for breakfast and wearing MP40's as winter clothes.

The Germans supported the Italians extensively during WWII, effectively without Germany the italians were an inconsoquential force, just look at the failed Italian invasions of Greece and Egypt and that becomes fairly obvious.

[mailinutile2]

I'ma afraid that's almost ASB

[Eurofed]

The amount of anti-Italian prejudice on this forum keeps sickening me.



Although it would likely require at least a 1940-41 PoD to allow restructuring the Italian army with better equipment and organization on the German model, Italian troops were perfectly able to kick British and Soviet butt if given decent toys and doctrine. I urge people to read BlairWitch's excellent TLs to see a well-researched picture of how an Italian military developed to German efficiency level could turn the tide for the Axis on a global level.

[mailinutile2]

That' not prejudice.
I'm italian myself

[Eurofed]

Originally Posted by mailinutile2

That' not prejudice.
I'm italian myself

See my edit above. And there is a lot of prejudice around here. People still expect Italy to perform poorly on the battlefield even if when the TL builds it up into a military-industrial powerhouse.

[Shogo]

I myself like to mock the Italians when it comes to WW2 . . . But if I remember right, weren't they actually competent whenever they were able to get their shit together? However briefly those periods were?

Even boosting their equipment, I was always under the assumption that the reason people keep Italy down is because their officers typically didn't know what the hell they were doing. And the repeated blunders of their officers had a considerably negative impact on morale . . . Which is one of the pillars of battlefield performance.

Then again, I don't really pay a whole lot of attention to WW2 Italy so I could be wrong . . .

[Cornelius]

Originally Posted by Shogo

I myself like to mock the Italians when it comes to WW2 . . .

Funny, I like to mock those who mock WW2 italians, because usually they know pretty much nothing on the argument . Repeating old cliché is easier than doing some reserch, I guess...

To come to the thread's argument, the russians attacked with a superiority of 10 to 1 and an heavy support from tanks and artillery, IIRC, an enemy who hadn't received enough supply in months. It would have been a miracle to resist against such odds. And even if the italians had managed to hold off the russians, Zukhov would have simply attacked in another point.

[mailinutile2]

Originally Posted by Cornelius

Funny, I like to mock those who mock WW2 italians, because usually they know pretty much nothing on the argument . Repeating old cliché is easier than doing some reserch, I guess...

To come to the thread's argument, the russians attacked with a superiority of 10 to 1 and an heavy support from tanks and artillery, IIRC, an enemy who hadn't received enough supply in months. It would have been a miracle to resist against such odds. And even if the italians had managed to hold off the russians, Zukhov would have simply attacked in another point.

take greece and albany: not very much of a performance, too.
also take libya-egypt before rommel: was it easier to supply an army from italy or from the UK? but...

the core point, I think, is tha Italans DID NOT WANT to fight.
don't misunderstand me, I am not saying they'e (we're, since I'm one of them) spineless.
Quite the opposite: I'm saying they're bloody intelligent.
Only stupid people want to fight.
If you want to fight even if you're poorly trained, against a bigger enemy and do not trust your leaders, then you ar not just stupid, you're abloody idiot

[Old Airman]

the core point, I think, is tha Italans DID NOT WANT to fight.
don't misunderstand me, I am not saying they'e (we're, since I'm one of them) spineless.
Quite the opposite: I'm saying they're bloody intelligent.

I think mailinutile2 hit the nail in the head. Italians didn't think it was "their" war, so why die fighting for someone else's interests? They got everything they could digest (and some above) before Barbarossa, so everything after that was a nuisanse.

I have not seen anything about their combat performance in Russia...

I don't know how to put it best. Germans were regarded by Russians as tough MoFos. Finns were deeply respected as even tougher soldiers and somewhat less inclined to commit atrocities against civvie population of occupied regions (they weren't angels, but, comparing with German-perpetrated slaughter and sheer insane bloody madness of Ukrainian and Baltic collaborant forces, Finns were better). Hungarians were considered somewhat inferior to Germans, but pretty decent overall. Romanians were simply despised (sorry for not being politically correct here, but Romanians distinguished themselves by mediocre performance on frontlines, harsh treatment of civvies on occupied territories, and tendency to steal anything they saw, including clothes, farm implements etc.; the latter tendency is easily explained by Romanian GDP per capita being barely 50% of Soviet, so essentially they were poor occupiers of rich country). Italians were... not taken seriously. They were known for occasional outbursts of bravery, but not for general toughness.

[Grimm Reaper]

How many divisions worth of equipment, particularly of armor, would the Italians need to have a fighting chance against otherwise overwhelming odds and what would convince Germany to hand over several divisions of desperately needed front-line tanks to the Italians?

The Italian army was crippled from the start courtesy of Il Duce:

1) Diverting several divisions worth of Italy's best equipment to Franco.

2) Insisting on having 60 divisions when barely 40 existed, done only by splitting up the existing units.

Those two actions alone meant the average Italian division was weakened in terms of troop strength and worse in tanks or heavy weapons. Plus a good portion of the officer corps had been hastily promoted above their level of competence to fill the positions in all the 'divisions'.



Later it got worse. During the Allied landing on Sicily some Italian reservist and coastal units had officers who last served in 1918 yet had not only been called up to serve but promoted. Lieutenants retired in 1918 suddenly found themselves wearing a uniform after 25 years and given battalions.



Old Airman, Horthy's regime shrewdly engineered a deal whereby Hungarian units were mostly spared the Eastern Front in return for Hungarian industry making an all-out effort to supply German and other units. One reason Germany agreed was the value of Hungarian industry, another was the Hungarian Army having been limited to 35,000 men under Versailles and thus being horrifically short of officers and NCOs to field a more substantial force.

It didn't last, of course, and led to the Hungarian Army later wondering where all the weapons their country had produced were...not to mention the units which were sent were enough to bleed off many of the desperately needed NCOs and officers for a hypothetical expansion.


Only stupid people want to fight?

[Cornelius]

Originally Posted by mailinutile2

take greece and albany: not very much of a performance, too.
also take libya-egypt before rommel: was it easier to supply an army from italy or from the UK? but...

You make a couple of bad examples...The problem in Greece was an understimation of resistance respect the possibility of supplying the army through albanian ports. The blame here falls on the high command and the political spheres, not on soldiers.
In North Africa before Rommel the problem was outdated weaponry and equipment: when an infantry based army encounter a much more mobile one as the british one the result is operation compass. The blame here falls again on high military command and political spheres for not understanding the importance of innovation, not on soldiers.
The point is that the fascists and the military elites are responsible for the italian defeat, not the soldiers, and I don't think that any other ethnic group would have fared differently if put in the same situation.

Originally Posted by mailinutile2

the core point, I think, is tha Italans DID NOT WANT to fight.
don't misunderstand me, I am not saying they'e (we're, since I'm one of them) spineless.
Quite the opposite: I'm saying they're bloody intelligent.
Only stupid people want to fight.
If you want to fight even if you're poorly trained, against a bigger enemy and do not trust your leaders, then you ar not just stupid, you're abloody idiot

So all the support for war and fascism was just a show? Nothing of serious? Everybody feigned support for fascist party while in truth was a a fervent democratic?
It's since the end of the war that we have been repeating this spiel endlessly, it's high time that we face truth...

[mailinutile2]

Originally Posted by Cornelius

So all the support for war and fascism was just a show? Nothing of serious? Everybody feigned support for fascist party while in truth was a a fervent democratic?
It's since the end of the war that we have been repeating this spiel endlessly, it's high time that we face truth...

Absloutly not.
It's not question of belief and support, but rather a mattern of opportunism.
it's just that italians have a well-rooted tendency to align with the winning side.
thus being pro-fascist was all right and proper while M was in charge and people do not have to fight (or not to fight seriously, at any rate), but not so after 1941.
and do not forget that for a lot of people PNF meant "per Necessità Familiare" rather than "Partito Nazionale Fascista" for a lot of people.

[Mr.Wigglemunch]

The capabilities of italian troops were just the same as british and german ones when the equipment was their, in the case of egypt and greece the italians were using WW1 tech hence their poor performance. Rommel even commented on this and did his best to improve their equipment but by then it was too late.

On the eastern front the italians were more or less serving in the heer, and had german equipment where possible...

[Geekhis Khan]

On the OP:

Well, without an earlier butterfly the chances of the Italian Russian Expeditionary Corps holding back the counterattack are insignificant due to numbers, equipment, and supplies. You need an earlier change.

At the latest you need Mussie to avoid joining the war in 1940 and staying officially neutral to UK/France. Now if we joins Germany against the USSR alone (and ignores Albanian tangents) he can concentrate the whole force against a single front without getting bombed by the WAllies.

Now this won't win the war for the Axis, most likely, but you probably see a better showing.

Now assuming all goes according to OTL up to Stalingrad (I'll assume Mussie joins the Eastern war in 42) but this time the more numerous, better-supplied Italians are able to hold the line then best case is Hitler grows a brain and uses the opportunity to pull his armies back. Knowing Hitler, though, he assumes this to be another example of Aryan superiority and prolongs his stay in Stalingrad. At best he holds S-grad until spring and loses the war on the long remaining push towards Baku. Most likely he gets OTL axis losses with more Soviet casualties (which they can afford). Even a quick counterattack on the Sovs will only delay the inevitable, IMO.

By late 42 the tide had already turned.

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On the (standard, typical) side conversation over "Italian bravery":

The reasons for the poor Italian showing OTL were many; here's a few:

1 - Poor equipment and not nearly enough of it due to an inadequate, badly-managed and flagrantly profiteering military-industrial complex.

2 - The understrength, undertrained force structure alluded to earlier.

3 - Poorly trained, over-indulged, and under experienced officers...and far too many of them per enlisted. Also a severe lack of NCOs

4 - Badly outdated strategic understanding...at best 1918, at worst 1850. Includes broad-front strategies that spread troops thin rather than massing a schwerpunkt, over reliance on infantry and not enough mechanization/motorization, an utter lack of radar and radios (in the land of Marconi, no less!), and a total failure of combined arms strategy (i.e. no army/navy/air force coordination).

5 - Strategic dispersal of forces over too many fronts alluded to earlier.

6 - Intelligence/recon failures.

7 - Nonexistent troop morale. Troops were under supplied, saw no reason to be in the war, and were poorly integrated (the old habit of mixing armies across regions to limit risk of uprisings led to mixed units who often had mutually incomprehensible dialects and culture clashes).

8 - Logistical paralysis. Too few trucks or merchant vessels (many of the latter lost due to Mussie's DoW without recalling the fleets), piss-poor port authority management, and conflicting command structures.


What the Italian military DID have going for it:

1 - Bravery under fire, even in the face of such vastly superior foes.

2 - The "Special Forces" units, including Alpini (mountain brigades), Arditi (storm troopers), Bersaglieri (rangers/snipers), Folgore (paratroops), and MAS (frogmen), performed amazingly well even outside of their stated missions. They were, of course, underutilized.

3 - Infantry-Artillery coordination was superb. Too bad the artillery mostly sucked.

4 - Where trained and properly equipped and well-led armies existed (few, but there were some), the Italian forces fared as well as any other nation's equivalent.


Read Hitler's Italian Allies, by MacGregor Knox; it goes into all of these reasons and more, and at 200 pages is a quick and easy read for the armchair historian.