A Prussian modeled Italian Army
- Thread starter Fenwick
- Start date
Redbeard
Banned
Then we will see the Italians goose walking in spiked helmets and win/loose just about the same battles they won/lost in OTL. The Italian army initially had the French army as model (at least in uniforms) and fought as valiantly as anyone in WWI.
What the Italians really need is a solid industrial base and raw materials to keep it working. In WWI the Entente generally kept Italy supplied, but in WWII they found themselves cut off by the allies and with a Germany with little to spare.
Regards
Steffen Redbeard
Susano
Banned
Oh, they were surely valiant alright, just completly incompetent. I find it amazing ho wmany people take critics at armies of contemporary nations so personally (even if theyre not of the same nation, heh). Some armies simply were better then others, and the Italian Army surely, ah, had potential for improvement,
Considering that they managed to take 15-1 casualties in a defensive battle in World War I, and about 75-1 casualties in Operation Compass, the Italians certainly have room to improve. Certainly Italian performance in both wars showed that their army had some pretty severe structural problems that need to fixed, and reforming the army on the Prussian model might help with that.
The two biggest problems in the Italian army were the excessively harsh discipline and a language barrier. Italian discipline was quite brutal (in the wake of Caporetto there actually a few Roman-style decimations) and the average peasant conscript had difficulty understanding the official dialect that orders were given in. Fixing those two problems would probably help improve the Italian army somewhat.
German military units in both World Wars also tended to grouped by region, so that there Bavarian, Prussian, etc. divisions that made dialect barriers less of a problem, in addition to Gladi's mention of the better education in Germany, which was in part due to the much higher proportion of urban industrial workers in Germany. As I recall the Italian army was mostly made up of rural peasants, who did not have access to the quality of education offered in major cities.
I think there was also a deep social and geographical divide. From some of what I've read a lot of the peasant recruits from central and southern Italy felt little sense of identity with the Piedmont monarchy and the bulk of the officers who came from that area.
Steve
So would the answer be in better trained CO's and NCO's? Or simply officers coming from all areas of Italy?
Redbeard
Banned
What a strange comment - how do you define "taking personal"? Can I conclude that you find disagreement a personal insult?
Anyway I DISAGREE about military incompetence, cowardice or whatever like is usually said, being the main factor behind the lacking succes of Italian warfare in 20th century.
In WWI they were supplied by the Entente, and therefore kept on attacking and attacking in very difficult terrain - their tactics were not any worse or better suited to the situation that what was seen in say the French or British armies, but the terrain a lot more difficult. Cadorno's handling of the crisis after Caporetto indeed was sickening brutal (described in Hemmingway's "Farewell to arms"), but after all he suceeded in reestablishing the front and the cohesion of the army - the Germans and Austrians didn't when their armies were in a similar situation in 1918.
In WWII they first started with a total political misjudgement - Mussolini thought that it would only be a very short war he joined as he knew Italy would not be ready for major until 1943 earliest. Next the Italians found them selves cut off from most supplies - and this set the Italian wareffort on half power or less for the entire war. Ian W. Walker's "Iron hulls Iron hearts" can be recommended for giving a more complete insight to the Italian war effort.
Anyway most people actually having studied the Italian Army will say that the units usually fought well with the little they had. Most also agree that the political leadership was extremely flawed and Italy very ill prepared for war, but disagrement is widespread as to how much the higher military leadership is to be blamed. For instance the naval leadership is blamed for not using their superior number and quality in ships, but others point to the shortage of fuel prohibiting any widescale usage of the navy.
In short it would not help to copy this or that army's attitudes, the problem was a far more fundamental and mainly about basic economics, preparedness and total lack of political judgement.
Regards
Steffen Redbeard
Actually with the number of set-backs suffered by the Italian army, it is somewhat surprising they kept on fighting, were split-up and then kept on fighting.
Susano
Banned
What a stange thought. No, I dont of course, though that notioon, depending on how it was meant, could be seen asan insult...
Thing is, you crictise an army of a contemporary nation, always somebody will come up with "they fought valiantly", "they were brave soldiers", etc etc. Well, maybe, but that is quite irrelevant to the point, now is it? Valiance and competence are two different things alltogether. And, for that matter, how well the individual units fought is again another point then how the army fought as a whole. The two comparisions are even equivalent: The single soldier or the singl eunit can be as valiant and well fighting as possible, but it is really meaning less if the army as a whole is incompetent.
As for the Italian Army in WW1 (which wa sthe point, WW2 wasnt even discussed here), werent the Italians mainly inthe defensive in WW1, and shouldnt thus the terrain have favoured them? And certainly, even terrain cant account alone for how they did, because that was a really bad performance. The Italian Army was of worse quality then the Austrian and German army, and the WI is how that can be changed. Well, okay, the WI is what if the army is remodelled after Prussian model, but I agree that alone wouldnt help much.
Redbeard
Banned
Sometimes derogatory comments about an army or something/body else are well placed, but the more derogatory you get the greater the demand for documentation. In the case of the Italian Army words like "incompetence" and "cowardice" are frequent but rarely documented or even explained. That I oppose fiercely against, not by taking it personal (I have no "stocks" in the Italian Army), but because I simply don't accept such serious accusations without documentation or at least argmentaion - no matter if the case is the Italian Army or whatever.
Concerning the defensiveness of the front in WWI Italy launced offensive upon offensive between 1915 and 1917, and with an elan and loss rate fully equalling their British and French allies on the w.front. They outnumbered the Austrians, often by 2:1, but then terrain heavily favoured the defender. In 1917 came the first serious Austrian offensive at Caporetto (after German reinforcement had been recieved) and also showing the first widespread use of "Stormtrooper/Stosstruppen" tactics. The Italian front was broken in several places and quickly approaching complete dissolution. Here Cadorno's very harsh metods might have helped stabilise the front, but anyway also was helped by the inherrent diffilculties in attacking beyond the reach of your starting artillery positions. Later French, British and even US troops were stationed in Italy to stiffen the front, but the worst crisis was handled by the Italians themselves. That is in contrast to the Germans and Austrians in autumn of 1918, when their fronts started to give in. In Italy the Italians won a splendid victory at Vittorio Veneto and the Austrian generals simply left the army which quickly dissolved together with the Empire.
Vittorio Veneto probably was the most clear offensive succes in WWI and in many ways the Italian front had more distinct offensive successes than the westfront.
I can't help taking this on to WWII. The Italians actually had their own very clear grasp of blitzkrieg (called "fast mobile warfare"), but that helped nothing when they couldn't equip motorised forces not to mention armoured Divisions and half of the infantry Divisions were far below their paper strength. BTW an Italian Infantry Division even on paper was weaker than most others, as it only had two infantry regiments where three was the norm in most other armies.
When Italy attacked Greece in 1941 the army became the laughing stock of the world when they were repulsed by the Greeks. But actually the Italian invasion force started the offensive OUTNUMBERED and this became even more prominent when the Greeks completed their mobilisation. For some strange reason the Italians only deployed one of their six specialist Alpini Divisions for the invasion. The responibility for this IMHO can't be placed on the Italian units and men taking part but on the political leadership launching it and the supreme military leadership accepting it.
Regards
Steffen Redbeard
WWI by its very nature was a defensive war, given machine guns, telephones, trenches, and artillery. The tactics used by both sides were insuffient for the technology. After the intial mobillity stopped it generally didn't matter how much quality was in your army. Victory went to the defender.
The fact that Italy took 15-1 casualties in a battle where they were defending in WWI would be a fair indication that in fact the quality of the army invovled does matter.
Redbeard
Banned
What battle are you referring to? If defending it must be Caporetto, but in Vittorio Veneto the year after the Italians attacked (again) and probably had the best casualty rate in all of WWI - the entire Austro-Hungarian Army and Empire dissolved! If deducting from such figures the Italian army of WWI ought to be among the very best on an all-time list.
In short one should be very careful to use such simple scorecards, even the balanced ones often go terribly wrong.
Regards
Steffen Redbeard
I was referring to Caporetto, and I agree that just tossing up a casualty ratio is a gross simplification of the battle. However, the example of Caporetto does offer insight into the some of the areas that were particularly problematic for Italy, such as the language issue and draconian discipline. The latest response about Caporetto was mostly directed to Othniel, who basically said that once trenches were dug the defender always won, and quality of the army did not matter. The Italians were not incompetent or cowardly, but suffering that severe of a defeat when your government is not the in process of utterly collapsing is an indication that there are some problems that need fixing.
I think many of the problems the Italian army had were symptoms of larger issues suffered by Italy in general, such as the fact that a fair amount of the army was drawn from rural farmers who had little love of a government they felt only cared about the large cities. Someone who knows more about Italian history could probably explain things a lot better.
The failures of the Italian Army at Adowa, Caporetto, and in WWII were failures of leadership at the top-they copied the form of the Prussians without understanding the spirit. The Italians had a General Staff modeled on the Prussians, but they never grasped how the General Staff was supposed to function, or what it was supposed to do. There was no understanding of the concepts of hard work, careful and objective study, no concept of creating a corps of competent and dedicated specialists who were carefully selected and trained and not derided as mere clerks and paper pushers who were either failures as commanders or were
dodging front duty.
dodging front duty.