Hitler's Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940-1943 [Hardcover]

MacGregor Knox (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0521790476 | ISBN-13: 978-0521790475 | Edition: First

This book explains why the Italian armed forces and Fascist regime were so remarkably ineffectual at an activity-war-that was central to their existence. Italy's economic fragility, Mussolini's strategic-ideological fantasies, and Hitler's failure in the wider war made Italy's ruin inevitable, but did not determine its peculiarly undignified character. Hitler's Italian Allies demonstrates the extent to which Italian military culture-a concept with applications far beyond Fascist Italy-made humiliation inescapable. It offers a striking portrait of a military and industrial establishment largely unable to imagine modern war and of a regime that failed miserably in mobilizing the nation's resources. Above all, it explains why the armed forces, despite the distinguished performance of a few elite units, dissolved prematurely and almost without resistance-in stark contrast to the grim fight to the last cartridge of Hitler's army and the fanatical faithfulness unto death of the troops of Imperial Japan.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This "academic novella," as Knox calls his narrative study, is strongly committed to the "argument from stupidity": the assertion that ineffective or unsuccessful war efforts reflect not merely institutional weaknesses but culpable and comprehensive incompetence. In discussing Italian Fascists, KnoxAa chair of international history at the London School of Economics and Political ScienceAdescribes not merely armed forces but a government and a culture programmed for defeat. Italy's administration was unable to mobilize the country's manpower, to say nothing of its material resources. Its industry, Fiat in particular, was corrupt and incompetent, Knox demonstrates. At strategic levels, the Duce and the generals refused to set priorities or cut losses. As a result, Italy's already limited strength was dissipated after 1940 in theaters from Tunisia to Stalingrad. Logistics, communications, armament, doctrine, trainingAall were not merely inadequate but, Knox finds, seriously defective. Officer corps more concerned with securing the proverbial "good plate of pasta" than with developing the effectiveness of their respective services substituted vitalist rhetoric for objective analysis. Army leadership virtually ignored the connection between training and performance until 1941. Courage and intuition were expected to compensate for discipline and instruction. Until early 1943, virtually all Italian fighter pilots communicated with each other by hand signals, as in the days of the Red Baron. The list goes on and on here, and the result was best expressed by American war correspondent Ernie Pyle. Italy, he mused, was like a dog hit by a car because it tried to bite the tires. Knox's cool, matter-of-fact narrative evenly traces the ensuing tangle. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

This somewhat scholarly but still readable monograph on the Italian war effort 1940-43 dissects the reasons why that war effort was so singularly unproductive. Mussolini himself never had really centralized control over the largely monarchist armed forces, and kept trying to make himself indispensable to the Germans by overextending his military commitments. Italy's industrial base was inadequate, the training of its soldiers even more so, the designs of most of its weapons were either inefficient or obsolete, and its navy was handicapped by disastrously inaccurate heavy guns. Nor was there sufficient enthusiasm for Italian participation in the war to generate the kind of reorganization that both Germany and Japan undertook when their flaws showed up under Allied pressure--and then in 1943 it was all over for Mussolini's Italy. Knox largely cites Italian sources, but there is enough in English, and Knox provides enough background, to make this a valuable introduction to a neglected aspect of World War II. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; First edition (October 30, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521790476
• ISBN-13: 978-0521790475
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #907,448 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A much-needed study on WW2's most understudied participant, January 14, 2001

By 

P. volini "volpg" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hitler's Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940-1943 (Hardcover)

This book is the much expanded version of an essay which appears in the book "Common Destiny" by the same author. It fills an important gap in English-language history of WW2. The Italian participation in WW2 has been minimized, misunderstood or plainly ignored by many English and American historians. There is no shortage of books that lead readers to believe that Rommel had only (or mostly) Germans under his command in North Africa, when in fact they were the smaller part of his troops. Similarly, crude jokes on the Italian army in ww2 have been all too often the substitute for serious analysis.

This book has a rigorous, analytical, well-documented approach to the problem of explaining the extent Italy's defeat in WW2. A defeat that was so comprehensive in spite of the fact that the Fascist regime had regarded war as central to its objectives for 20 years. The author has drawn extensively on a vast number of high-quality, specialized studies by Italian historians (generally not available in English), and this alone would be enough to make it unique. However, the author ties together all the documentary evidence in a convincing thesis.

Basically, the main conclusion is that Italy's defeat was made inevitable by the failure of its "military culture", a concept that encompasses not only the strategic/operational/tactical spheres, but also the relatiosnhip regime-armed forces-monarchy, the military/industrial complex, and the cohesion of society as a whole.

The author's analysis is extensive and multi-faceted; for example, he covers in detail the obtusity of the top brass (and its reverence for the infantryman-mule combination), the neglect and contempt of the rank and file by the officer corps, the inefficiency of the cartelized arms producers, but also the basic cultural deficiencies that made it difficult to turn Italian recruits into cohesive, motivated units.

In short, the author shows that the extent of Italy's catastrophic defeat was made inevitable by intellectual failure -many of the armed forces' shortcomings were, quite simply, self-inflicted, and even the meager industrial resources were squandered by incompetent management. I might add that these mistakes were bound to be penalized devastatingly in a war like WW2, which required outstanding managerial skills at all levels. Indeed, people familiar with Italian history (whether military, economic or social) will recognize the pattern in which, as the author says, "collective inadequacies in research and development cancelled out individual skill and valor": invariably this country, so skilled at brilliant improvization, has found itself ill at ease with long term planning, objectives prioritization and resources allocation.

The book deserves its 5th star for redressing some of the mistaken theories "explaining" why Italy's defeat was so total. The first theory, or I should say prejudice, is that Italians were not willing to fight. The author mentions several occasions when the Italians fought determinedly the only type of warfare which they could fight - non-mobile defence (Cheren, Gondar, Bir el Gobi, El Alamein, Tunisia); moreover, and more importantly, he points out that "units in north africa, Albania, and Russia held together in conditions (...) that would have caused soldiers of the industrial democracies to quail". Another theory is that the Fascist regime was responsible for the disastrous planning and conduct of the war. The book makes it abundantly clear that the regime did have major responsibilities in sstrategic blunders, but they compounded, rather than cause, the faults within the armed forces.

Finally, I would like to note that the book is a valuable case study of an army that prepared for "the previous war" (or even the one before...). As such, it provides general lessons that can have universal validity and transcend the specific case of Italy in WW2.

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An informative descriptive history and analysis, May 23, 2001

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hitler's Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940-1943 (Hardcover)

In MacGregor Knox's Hitler's Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, And The War Of 1940-1943, the military buff and the student of World War II military history is provided an informative descriptive history and analysis of why the Italian Fascist regime was so basically ineffectual in conducting the war. Author MacGregor Knox offers an innovative analytical cross section of the Italian war effort in a broad spectrum of perspectives, the ineptitude of Italian military leadership, and why the Italian armed forces dissolved prematurely and almost without resistance -- especially when compared with the diehard and suicidal resistance of German and Japanese armed forces in their respective theaters. Hitler's Italian Allies is an impressive, unique, and highly recommended contribution to World War II studies and reading lists.

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb analysis!, August 25, 2005

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Dimitrios (Greece) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hitler's Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940-1943 (Hardcover)

The book is well researched and documented and presents myriads of facts regarding the deficiencies of Italian war planning and fighting. Italy was totally unprepared for entering World War II and Musolini's megalomania ruined her in the most devastating way. I really enjoyed the numerous references to the state of the Italian Armed Forces and the incredible problems that the top leadership left unsolved, only to face them with disastrous consequences later in battle. I wish only that Mr Knox had also presented the good side of the Italian war effort, taking into account the important works of some "revisionist" historians, like James Sadkovich.