Hitler's Italian Allies
Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940–1943

This book tries to understand why the Italian armed forces and Fascist regime were so remarkably ineffective at an activity - war - central to their existence.

MacGregor Knox (Author)

9780521747134, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 2 February 2009

224 pages
22.7 x 15.2 x 1 cm, 0.31 kg

"...the survey of the Italian Armed Forces during World War II, manages to look deeply into its organizational, technological, doctrinal, and tactical shortcomings, as well as its leadership and cultural problems, while rebutting the wartime Allied propaganda. A very useful work for anyone interested in the Second World War."
-NYMAS Newsletter

Fascist Italy's ultimate defeat was foreordained. It was a pygmy among giants, and Hitler's failure to destroy the Soviet Union in 1941 doomed all three Axis powers. But Italy's defeat was unique; the only asset that it conquered - briefly - with its own unaided forces in the entire Second World War was a dusty and useless corner of Africa, British Somaliland. And Italy's forces dissolved in 1943 almost without resistance, in stark contrast to the grim fight to the last cartridge of Hitler's army or the fanatical faithfulness unto death of the troops of Imperial Japan. This book tries to understand why the Italian armed forces and Fascist regime were so remarkably ineffective at an activity - war - central to their existence. It approaches the issue above all from the perspective of military culture, through analysis of the services' failure to imagine modern warfare and through a topical structure that offers a social-cultural, political, military-economic, strategic, operational, and tactical cross-section of the war effort.

Introduction: defeat - and humiliation
1. Fascist Italy's last war
2. Society, politics, regime, industry
3. Men and machines: the Armed Forces and modern warfare
4. Strategy
5. Operations
6. Tactics
Conclusion: the weight of the past.

Subject Areas: Second World War [HBWQ], Military history [HBW], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]