Hitler's Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940-1943 PDF
Preview Hitler's Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940-1943
HITLER'S ITALIAN ALLIES: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940–43 MacGregor Knox Cambridge University Press HITLER’S ITALIAN ALLIES ThisbooktriestounderstandwhytheItalianarmedforcesandFascistregime weresoremarkablyineffectualatanactivity–war–thatwascentraltotheir existence. Military-economic weakness, Mussolini’s ideological fantasies and strategic megalomania, and Hitler’s failure in the wider war made Italian defeat inevitable. But those factors do not wholly account for the peculiarlyundignifiedcharacterofFascistItaly’sfinalruin.Thebookoffers aninnovativeanalyticalcross-sectionoftheItalianwareffort,fromsociety andculture,throughpoliticsandwarproduction,tostrategy,operations,and tactics, and demonstrates the extent to which Italian military culture – a concept with applications far beyond Fascist Italy or its last war – and the blinkeredapproachofItaly’smajorindustrialenterprisesmadehumiliation inescapable.Theresultisastrikingportraitofthemilitaryinstitutionsand regimewhosemostsignificant–iftemporary–conquestin1940–43wasa dusty and useless corner of Africa, British Somaliland. The armed forces proved unable to imagine modern war, much less prepare or fight it. The industrialists, with the connivance of generals, admirals, and dictator, pro- duced the least effective, least numerous, and most overpriced weapons of the Second World War. The regime failed miserably in mobilizing the nation’s resources. Hitler’s Italian Allies analyzes the resulting disasters, and explains why the Italian armed forces dissolved prematurely and 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 ImperialJapan. MacGregor Knox is Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His other works on Fascist and National Socialist foreign and military policies include Mussolini Unleashed, 1939–1941: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy’s Last War and Common Destiny: Dictatorship, Foreign Policy, and War in Fascist Italy and NaziGermany. This Page Intentionally Left Blank HITLER’S ITALIAN ALLIES Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940–43 MacGregor Knox TheLondonSchoolofEconomicsandPoliticalScience PUBLISHED BY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS (VIRTUAL PUBLISHING) FOR AND ON BEHALF OF THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia http://www.cambridge.org © MacGregor Knox 2000 This edition © MacGregor Knox 2003 First published in printed format 2000 A catalogue record for the original printed book is available from the British Library and from the Library of Congress Original ISBN 0 521 79047 6 hardback ISBN 0 511 01454 6 virtual (netLibrary Edition) per Tina, anche questa volta e sempre This Page Intentionally Left Blank CONTENTS Acknowledgements pageix ListofAbbreviations xiii Introduction:Defeat–andHumiliation 1 1 FascistItaly’sLastWar 5 2 Society,Politics,Regime,Industry 23 3 MenandMachines:TheArmedForcesand ModernWarfare 51 4 Strategy 69 5 Operations 111 6 Tactics 143 Conclusion:TheWeightofthePast 169 Chronology 179 BibliographicalNote 195 Index 201 vii This Page Intentionally Left Blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thisshortbookisinonesenseanaccident.Itemergedfromtherewriting of an old essay on Italian ‘‘military effectiveness’’ in the Second World War to fit within a book, Common Destiny: Dictatorship, Foreign Policy, and War in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, that sought to provide a compre- hensive comparative analysis of the Italian and German dictatorships. Thenewquestionsthatpurposeimposed–abouttheunderlyingcauses ofthestrikingcontrastinwartimeperformancebetweenFascistItalyand Nazi Germany – soon cracked open the narrowly military-technical framework of the original essay. The mass of new primary sources and often excellent Italian secondary material on many aspects of Italy’s warthathaveappearedsincethelate1980slikewiseopenedupentirely new questions, especially about the performance of the war economy. I pursuedthose questions obstinately, suppressing theguilty realization thatIwaswritinganessaysolongandcomplexthatitwouldinevitably destroythesymmetryofthebookforwhichIhadintendedit.WhenIhad finished, I found I had written a novella-length piece that could and should stand on its own. Conversely, its sections on army operations andtactics,onceequippedwithanappropriateintroductionandconclu- sion,fitwellwithintheoriginalcollectionascounterparttoachapteron the unique synthesis between Prusso-German military tradition and NazirevolutionthatpropelledtheWehrmacht’sfighttothelastcartridge in1943–45. Inabroadersensethisbook,whateveritsimmediateorigins,isnever- theless no accident. It derives from more than two decades of research ix
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