Its not so easy. In north africa the problem was that the italian army was completely unprepared to stop a tank attack, in greece the problem was weather (mussolini attacked in the worst moment possible), numbers (thanks to Visconti Prasca, italian invading forces had no where the numerical superiority they had in north africa. Actually, when the offensive began, the greeks were roughly the same number of italians. In november, the greeks were MORE than italians, and in december the italians were more than greeks), crappy logistics and most of all terrain. The italian army in albania was qualitatively just a bit better than the greek one, but it was forced to fight a offensive war while insufficiently supplied and on a difficult terrain. When the regio esercito had to fight a defensive battle in albania, it fought actually well, like it did during ww1. Trench warfare was what the italian army in ww2 was able to do. In france, it was actu
ally impossible to overcome a defense line like the alps.
Except that the Italian Army in WWII was not very good at defensive warfare, either. The Italians were incapable of large-scale combined-arms warfare, and made poor use of what numbers and good equipment they had. The flaws here in various scenarios against an enemy as relatively weak as Greece offer no indication whatsoever that the Italians will suddenly magic up an invasion of Malta that works ITTL. They *had* overwhelming force in Egypt, in Greece, in France, and they failed to make good use of any of it.
There were never 300,000 Italians in Libya and Wavell had little to do with the success, which was more due to O'Connor. Italian cannon could not pierce the Matida and the Brits used heavy naval guns and dominated the air. How many Germans did it take to dominate over a half million Brits and French in Dunkirk, thanks to air superirority. There were 100,000 Brits against 30,000 Japs with 200 tanks and air and naval superiority in Malaya and they bit the dust. Planes ruled, since they covered the ships artillery and destroyed fortifications, supply lines, etc, and at the time tehre were 4 Gladiators iand a couple of Hurricanes in transit n Malta.
With the Italian and German planes suggested, the fleet was secure. Radar would eventually render the fleet 10 times more effective, enabling it to fight at night.
I think most of you are underestimating the effect of surprise in Malta and Tunisia, which the Duce wasted completely attacking France. Italian ships and planes could have approached unchallenged, much like the Japs did in PH. Declaring war in London a few minutes before the attack. Mussolini could have even held negotiations with the allies considering joining them as in 1915.
Yes, you're right, there were merely 36,000 British against 150,000 Italians, giving the Italians an overwhelming preponderance of numbers, aircraft, tanks, and the like had Graziani ever known how to use any of it properly. The Germans did not dominate the British, they attempted the fool's gold quest of attempting to destroy ground troops with air power and like all other attempts at this it invariably failed. They at least had the excuse of being the first to try it. The Italians had enough with the right leadership, to have completely smashed the British. Instead they had very poor leadership, a factor that tends to make superficially overwhelming numbers into a hindrance more than a help.
The axis stopped at el Alamein not for lack of Supplies, but because of millions of mines, tens of thousands of troops, over a thousand tanks and planes and thousands of cannon.
In 1940 the Brits were very poorly equipped with few and obsolete planes, the axis could have easily captured Mersa Matruh to use it for some supplies and captured Alexandria then ports along the route to Iraq.
No, they stopped at El Alamein the first time for lack of supplies, as Rommel yet again was so focused on winning the battle that he didn't pay attention to anything else. Their supply lines were overstretched, and the British were outnumbered against the Italians in North Africa much worse than would be the case in this hypothetical Malta landing and turned that into a great victory. The Italians may well wind up being the British springboard to another morale-boosting tactical victory that strategically amounts to a great big nothing.
Interesting, too, that when the Allies win it's only due to disparity of numbers. When the Axis have disparity in numbers and lose that's due to um, uh, no explanation.
