Well the lack of immagination, the hard discipline and the stubborn offensive were not relegated to the italian side but widely spread in all the partecipant, but yes i freely admit that Cadorna was a bastard but not for the draconian discipline (more stringent than the other armies yes and a factor to take in consideration for the performance of the army) but becouse he never accepted any responsability for his failure and put all the blame on the cowardice of the soldiers and for change an impressive number of officer for perceived slant or simply for cover is ass.
Quite. Every side had its stupid decisions and its fair share of dead weight (this is true of all wars, of course, but the consequences are seldom so murderous).
As you say yourself, it would be foolish to deny that the Italian army were lumbered with a rubbish commander until 1917 and that contributed to rubbish morale. The problems, as
I said, were fixed. But Eurofed apparently won't so much as admit that the Italians could be a whit worse than anyone else at any time.
And for a clear evaluation of the italian performance is better take in consideration that at the same time there were italian soldiers on the macedonian front and other occupied in colonial duty in Lybia trying to suppressing the last ottoman rebel
Then again, France and Britain were in Macedonia (in comparable or in the case of France greater numbers), that Britain and France embarked on the Gallipoli debacle, and that Britain constantly had to worry about East Africa.
None of it makes a huge difference to the performance of their troops in Europe. Of course more soldiers would have helped, but their leadership would still have been Cadorna, and we're discussing quality not quantity.
And the enemy in Albania was the Austrians. If Italy didn't fight them there, they could fight them in the Alps.
and till Caporetto it was all alone in that only after she finally accepted some help (but this help consisted in just the 10% of the force at Vittorio Veneto and of that a part was recalled in France before the battle).
This started as a
comparison. That Italy was like Britain and France was Eurofed's point. Whichever way you spin it, France never asked the Italians for help.
So yes, with all his industrial and logistical limitation the performance of the Italian army was conparable to the other army
This is why the word strikes me as vulnerable to misuse. What do we
mean by comparable? It is obvious a) that the pre-Caporetto Italian army was not very good and that b) there were reasons for Italy's disadvantages and the reason is not hurhur-Italians-are-silly.
That every army deserves to be considered individually and its situation properly understood is something about which I would absolutely agree. But Eurofed is doing his usual thing: "Italians? Worse than French man-for-man? How very dare you!"
And he's used hurhur-Britons-are-silly to justify things often enough, and when I complain he takes umbrage at my supposed belief that the British armed and diplomatic services never do anything wrong.
Me? An apologist of the British ruling classes? Phtooie.
and after all the A-H knock out of the war Serbia
Bah. How many times have I said this?
Nobody knocked Serbia out. Serbian troops entered Belgrade in 1918, guns blazing. The Serbian army vacated Serbia - having foiled every Austria invasion up to that point despite shortages of nearly everything - after the practically unopposed advance of the Bulgarians put them in an untenable position, but they withdrew in good order, were transferred to Macedonia, recaptured officially Serbian land in Macedonia, and carried on.
and Russia (the latter nevertheless with a lot of German help but still),
That's one way to say that Germany bailed Austria out of it...
The Austrians suffered from poor leadership and patchy morale. By the end - when a large portion of the army was NCOed by Germans - they were rife with pro-Bolshevik sentiment. If you look at the course of the fighting on the eastern front, it's quite clear who is the dreadnought and who the jolly-boat. Russian troops were still in Austria when the February Revolution happened - which in fact raises questions about whether Austria beat Russia at all.
and after Caporetto Vienna use all his force now free from the Eastern Front to force Italy out of the war, but at the Battle of PIave the Regio Esercito beat them pratically eliminating the A-h as an offensive force and that mere months after the Caporetto debacle
Now this I don't deny. One would almost think military circumstances are complicated!