Italys greatest mistakes after they declared war on the UK and France?

Keeping in the war for a country that had no love for them - but really, entering the conflict was Fascist Italy's death sentence. There was little they could do afterwards to make their situation worse. In this respect, even DOWing the US could almost be seen as a sane option - better be knocked out of the war by the Western powers than by the USSR...
 

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What ere Italys greatest mistakes after they declared war on the UK and France?

Attacking Greece! By that time it was very obvious that the British Empire was determine and capable(BoB) to continue the war. Which means the reason for Italy to got to war -Let´s rob some corpses!/Steal candy from a baby!- no longer existed. What makes the attack on Greece an even bigger mistake was the fact the the offensive into Egypt had already stalled. It would have been way smarter to concentrate at the problems in North Africa than open yet another front. Ideally one would try to take Malta -initially it´s defences were very weak- and than go on the defensive in the Med.

Ohh, and from 1942(Barbarossa fails) onwards make plans to stab Germany in the back.
 
Well not counting the DoW who by itself it's the greates mistake for the sheer unreadyness of Italy armed forces, basically try to fight everywhere without the resource. Concentrate it's assets in specific campaign help surely the armed forces in improving their performances, no wasting of men and weapon in Urss or in the battle of Britain or Greece, but concentrate in Lybia and Yugoslavia.
Second...someone must say to Benny to not improvise and plan ahead, the France and Greece campaign were hastily planned, basically he say the general to invade that countries immediatly and resolve the problem, plus with the sudden DoW Italy lost the bulk of her Merchant Marine with a little of planning a lot of ships can be saved and their cargo can reach Italy, a little thing but everything help.
Frankly with her situations the only sane thing in WWII for Italy was to declare neutrality,try to avoid conflict with every power except when a winner was clear, continue is modernization effort, grab everything she can from Yugoslavia and be ready to sell very well his aide against the soviets after the war.
 
The greatest mistakes I think for them were -

1. Invasion of Greece.
2. Lack of strategic vision on deployment (forces spread all over).
3. Withdrawing the demands for Tunisia, Corsica, Savoy and Nice after France was beaten.
4. Not have a clear combimed command.
5. Mussolini being involved in military tactical actions.
6. Not taking Malta.
7. Not building forces of quality rather than quantity.
8. Not sending enough mobile and armoured forces to Africa and sending to many infantry forces.
9. Not making Egypt the main target early on.
10. Not asking for German help from the start.
11. Not asking for German weapons licences.
 
Stopping and essentially asking for the British to counter attack in Libya, they should have thrown everything into the initial offensive, to either take Egypt or lose Libya because the former is inevitably going to happen if you don't least take a crack at it.

Not putting enough pressure on his personal friend Franco to join the war.

Letting the Greeks advance into Albania like that, they should have done everything they could to try and keep the Greeks in the mountains, then when the Germnas came the Balkans campaign would have hopefully gone on for a months later than OTL, delaying Barbarossa hopefully indefinately. That gives the Germans a chance to eventually force Britian into a peace or at least a stalemate meaning Mussolini MIGHT survive or even get some spoils.
 
1. Letting Umberto attack into the alps with little preperation (let the Germans just finish the job benny)
2. Greece, god that didn't work out (remember that Salonika thing in ww1, better not to have anything to with that country
3. Not planning for his entry into the war (ie bring back merchant ships so they aren't immeidately captured or interned) and also Graziani (or someone with balls) should have been prepped to attack into Egypt the first day, not give the British months to prepare
4. Malta should have been surprise attacked with the DOW including invasion
5. Benny should have whored himself to Hitler for air groups and panzer divisions BEFORE it was known how bad Italy's divisions and equipment where
6. Participating on the eastern front in anything above corps strength (waste of resources and it didn't help that much)
7. Not going to adolf directly to cut through the red tape to get german weapon's licenses
8. letting the regia marina be too conservative about forcing convoys into forward ports and challenging the RN
9. Not using his leverage on Franco more effectively to induce him to join the axis and close gibraltar
10. Out of vanity and pride allowing a dual command system to exist in africa... Bastico was more than qualified, and if this was demanded up front Adolf would have allowed Rommel and Kesselring to be subordinated to him with teeth (provided the German units fought together he didn't really care then)
 
After the Italian declaration of war?

1) Not assigning planes specifically to the navy and having them work to coordinate with the ships.
2) Not weaponizing and installing the rather good experimental radar systems that they had in prototype stage early on.
3) Spending the summer of 1940 building up for an invasion of Yugoslavia that Hitler then vetoed (rather than building up in North Africa). That has already sort of been mentioned, but is worth emphasizing.
4) Demobilizing 500,000 men in the fall of 1940.
5) Then attacking Greece during the rainy season without much in the way of reserves due to having demobilized so many troops--and apparently with about half the number of battalions that the Greeks could toss at them once they were fully mobilized.
6) Not immediately calling the demobilized men back to their units to meet the crisis in Greece. Instead they 'made a tossed salad' in the words of one Italian general, by tossing whatever pieces of divisions were available into the breach when the Greek invasion backfired, including a lot of half-trained troops.
 
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