Military history of Italy during World War II

During the era of World War II (1939 - 1945), Italy had a very varied and tumultuous military history.

The Italian empire in 1940

Italian biggest control of mediterranean areas (within green line & dots) in 1942. Within red the British control.

The start of World War II

Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, but Italy remained neutral for the following ten months.

Mussolini's Under-Secretary for War Production, Carlo Favagrossa, had estimated that Italy could not possibly be prepared for such a war until at least October 1942. Although a major power, the Italian industry was relatively weak compared to other European major powers. One might not consider Italian industry to have equalled more than 15% of that of France or of Britain should one compare the number of automobiles in Italy (~372,000) to those of Britain and France (~2,500,000). The lack of a stronger automotive industry made it difficult for Italy to mechanize its military. Italy had also given large number of weapons and supplies to the Spanish forces fighting under Franco in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 - 1939.

The Italian Royal Army (Regio Esercito) remained comparatively weak. The Italian tanks were of poor quality. Italian radios were small in numbers. Much of the Italian artillery dated from World War I. The Regia Aeronautica's primary fighter was the Fiat CR-42, biplane, although roughly comparable to some fighters still wielded by Britain and France. The Regia Marina had no aircraft carriers. Bierman and Smith state that the Italian regular army could field only about 200,000 troops at the start of World War II. They estimate the Regia Aeronautica could field approximately 1,760 aircraft, only 900 of them considered as "front-line machines".

Following the German conquest of Poland, Mussolini would change his mind repeatedly as to whether he intended to enter the war. The British commander in Africa, General Wavell, correctly predicted that Mussolini's pride would ultimately cause him to enter the war. Wavell would compare Mussolini's situation to that of someone at the top of a diving board: "I think he must do something. If he cannot make a graceful dive, he will at least have to jump in somehow; he can hardly put on his dressing-gown and walk down the stairs again."

Some historians believe that Mussolini was induced to enter the war against the Allies by secret negotiations with Churchill, with whom he had an active mail correspondence between September 1939 and June 1940 . The journalist Luciano Garibaldi wrote that "in those (disappeared at lake Como in 1945) letters Churchill may have exorted Mussolini to enter the war to mitigate Hitler's demands and dissuade him from continuing hostilities against Great Britain as France was inexorabily moving toward defeat. In light of this, Mussolini could urge Hitler turn against he USSR, he common enemy of both Churchill an Mussolini".

Italy enters the war: June 1940

On June 10, 1940, as the French government fled to Bordeaux before the German invasion, declaring Paris an open city, Mussolini felt the conflict would soon end and declared war on Britain and France. As he said to the Army's Chief-of-Staff, Marshal Badoglio, "I only need a few thousand dead so that I can sit at the peace conference as a man who has fought." Mussolini had the immediate war aim of expanding the Italian colonies in North Africa by taking land from the British and French colonies.

Of Italy's declaration of war, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, said: "On this tenth day of June 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor."

Italian forces in France: 1940 - 1943

See also: Italian invasion of France

In June 1940, after initial success the Italian offensive into southern France stalled at the fortified Alpine Line. On June 25 1940, France surrendered to Germany. Italy occupied some areas of French territory along the Franco-Italian border. During this operation, Italian casualties were 1,247 men dead or missing and 2,631 wounded. A further 2,151 Italians were hospitalized due to frostbite.

In November 1942, the Italian Royal Army (Regio Esercito) participated in invading south-eastern Vichy France and Corsica as part of what was known as Case Anton. From December 1942, Italian military government of French departments east of the Rhône River was established and continued until September 1943 when Italy quit the war. This had the effect of providing a de facto temporary haven for French Jews fleeing the Holocaust.

Battle of Britain: 1940 - 1941

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini insisted on providing an element of the Italian Royal Air Force (Regia Aeronautica) to assist his German ally during the Battle of Britain. Mussolini's expeditionary air force was called the Italian Air Corps (Corpo Aereo Italiano, or CAI). The CAI went to Belgium on 10 September 1940 and first saw action in late October 1940. The Italian aircraft took part in the latter stages of the battle. The Italian equipment, which included biplane fighters, did not compare favorably with the aircraft of the British Royal Air Force or of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe). As a result, the CAI achieved limited to no success. The aircraft of the CAI were redeployed in early 1941. The last Italian fighters were redeployed by mid-April.

Hostilities commence in North Africa: 1940

An Italian soldier in Libya

Things did not go well for the Italians in North Africa almost from the start. Within a week of Italy's declaration of war on 10 June 1940, the British 11th Hussars had seized Fort Capuzzo in Libya. In an ambush east of Bardia, the British captured the Italian Tenth Army's Engineer-in-Chief, General Lastucci. On 28 June, Marshal Italo Balbo, the Governor-General of Libya was killed by friendly fire while landing in Tobruk.

Mussolini ordered Balbo's replacement, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, to launch an attack into Egypt immediately. Graziani was the commander of the Italian Tenth Army in Libya. He complained to Mussolini that his forces were not properly equipped for such an operation. Graziani further complained that an attack into Egypt could not possibly succeed. Mussolini ordered Graziani to attack anyway.

On 13 September, a large element of Graziani's Italian Tenth Army re-took Fort Capuzzo, crossed the border between Libya and Egypt, and advanced into Egypt as far as Sidi Barrani. Sidi Barrani was about 100 kilometers inside Egypt from the Libyan border. The Italians then stopped and began to entrench themselves in a series of fortified camps.

At this time, the United Kingdom had only 30,000 troops available to defend Egypt against 250,000 Italian troops. However, the Italians were not concentrated in one place. Rather, they remained spread out from the Tunisian border in western Libya to Sidi Barrani in Egypt. Graziani, not knowing the British lack of strength, chose to stockpile fuel and ammunition, a task which the British Royal Navy forces operating in the Mediterranean obstructed by attacking Italian supply-ships. At this stage Italian losses remained minimal, but the efficiency of the British Royal Navy would improve as the war went on.

In addition, Graziani lacked faith in the strength of the Italian military, one of his officers wrote: "We're trying to fight this...as though it were a colonial war...this is a European war...fought with European weapons against a European enemy. We take too little account of this in building our stone forts...We are not fighting the Abyssinians now." (This was a reference to the Second Italo-Abyssinian War where Italian forces had fought against a relatively poorly equipped opponent.)

Campaigns in East Africa: 1940 - 1941

Main article: East African Campaign (World War II)

In addition to the well-known campaigns in the western desert during 1940, the Italians opened an additional front in June 1940 from their East African colonies of Ethiopia, Italian Somaliland, and Eritrea.

As in Egypt, the Italian forces with ~70,000 Italian soldiers and ~180,000 native troops outnumbered their British opponents. But Italian East Africa was isolated and far away from the Italian mainland. The Italian forces in East Africa were thus cut off from re-supply. This severely limited the operations that they could seriously undertake.

The initial Italian attacks in East Africa took two different directions, one into the Sudan and the other into Kenya. Then, in August 1940, the Italians advanced into British Somaliland. After suffering and inflicting few casualties, the British and Commonwealth garrison was evacuated from Somaliland by sea to Aden.

The Italian conquest of British Somaliland was one of the only successful Italian campaigns of World War II accomplished without German support. In the Sudan and Kenya, Italy captured small territories around several border villages. After doing so, the Italian Royal Army (Regio Esercito) in East Africa adopted a defensive posture against an expected British counter-attack.

The Italian Royal Navy (Regia Marina) maintained a small squadron in the Italian East Africa area. The Italian "Red Sea Flotilla" was based at the port of Massawa in Eritrea. It consisted of seven destroyers and eight submarines. Despite a severe shortage of fuel, the Red Sea Flotilla posed a threat to British convoys traversing the Red Sea. Unfortunately, Italian attempts to attack British convoys resulted in the loss of four submarines and one destroyer.

On 19 January 1941, the expected British counter-attack arrived in the shape of the Indian 4th and Indian 5th Infantry Divisions, which made a thrust from the Sudan. A supporting attack was made from Kenya by the South African 1st Division, the 11th African Division, and the 12th African Division. Finally, the British launched an amphibious assault from Aden to re-take British Somaliland.

From February to March, the outcome of Battle of Keren determined the fate of Italian East Africa. In early April, after Keren fell, Asmara and Massawa followed. The Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa also fell in April 1941. The Viceroy of Ethiopia, Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, surrendered at the stronghold of Amba Alagi in May. He received full military honors. The Italians in East Africa made a final stand around the town of Gondar in November 1941.

When the port of Massawa fell to the British, the remaining destroyers were ordered on a suicide attack in the Red Sea. At the same time, the last four submarines made an epic voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to Bordeaux in France.

The Italians, after their defeat, waged a guerrilla war mainly in Eritrea and Ethiopia, that lasted until summer 1943.

Italian forces in the Balkans: 1940 - 1943

Main articles: Greco-Italian War, Axis Occupation of Greece, and Yugoslavian Front (WWII)

Mussolini's imperial ambitions focused on Albania. Italy's erratic army had been humiliated in 1920 by a few thousand disorganized but fiercely patriotic Albanians which had driven Italy out of Vlorë. If there was a single thread running through the fabric of Mussolini's imperial ambitions it was the need to restore Italy's honour.

Mussolini invaded and occupied Albania, while the world was focused on German military actions in Czechoslovakia and Poland. As Hitler began his aggressions, the Italian dictator set his eyes on Albania across the Adriatic from Italy. Despite some strong resistance, especially at Durrës, Italy invaded Albania on April 7 1939 and took control of the country. Mussolini decided to remain non-belligerent in the larger conflict until he was quite certain which side would win.

File:Hitlermusso2 edit.jpg

Mussolini and Hitler

On 28 October 1940, Italy started the Greco-Italian War by launching an invasion of Greece from Albania. In part, the Italians attacked Greece because of the growing influence of Germany in the Balkans. Both Yugoslavia and Greece had governments friendly to Germany. Mussolini launched the invasion of Greece in haste after Romania allied itself with Germany.

However, the Greco-Italian War went badly for the Italians. After an initial Italian offensive, the Greeks launched a counter-offensive and drove the Italians back into Albania. The Italians remained on the defensive during much of this war. An Italian "Spring Offensive" amounted to little.The Italian Army was still bogged down in Albania by the Greeks and the Albanian resistance when the Germans invaded Greece.

After British troops arrived in Greece in March 1941 British bombers operating from Greek bases could reach the Romanian oil fields, vital to the German war effort. Hitler decided that he had to help the Italians and committed German troops to invade Greece via Yugoslavia (where a coup had deposed the German-friendly government).

On 6 April 1941 the Wehrmacht invasions of Yugoslavia (Operation 25) and Greece (Operation Marita) both started, while the Italians attacked Yugoslavia in Dalmatia and pushed the Greeks finally out of Albania. On 17 April Yugoslavia surrendered to the Germans and the Italians. On 30 April, Greece too surrendered to the Germans and Italians, and was divided into German, Italian and Bulgarian sectors. The invasions ended with a complete Axis victory in May when Crete fell. On May 3, during the triumphal parade in Athens to celebrate the Axis victory, Mussolini started to boast of an Italian Mare Nostrum in the Mediterranean sea.

Some 28 Italian divisions participated in the Balkan invasions. The coast of Yugoslavia was occupied by the Italian Army, while the rest of the country was divided between the Axis forces (an Italian puppet State of Croatia was created, under the sovereign of an Italian Savoia). The Italians assumed control of most of Greece, while the Germans and the Bulgarians occupied other areas. Italian troops would occupy parts of Greece and Yugoslavia until the Italian armistice with the Allies in September 1943.

In spring 1941 Italy created a Montenegro client state and annexed most of the Dalmatian coast as Governatorato di Dalmazia. Yugoslavian partisans fought a guerrilla war against the occupying forces until 1945.

The Italian Navy in the Mediterranean: 1940 - 1943

Main article: Battle of the Mediterranean

The Regia Marina (Italian Navy) could not match the overall strength of the British Royal Navy in the Mediterranean Sea in 1940, and (after some initial setbacks) declined to engage in a confrontation of capital ships. Since the British navy had as a principal task the supply and protection of convoys supplying her outposts in the Mediterranean, the mere continued existence of the Italian fleet (the so called Fleet in being) caused problems to Britain, which had to utilise warships sorely needed elsewhere to protect Mediterranean convoys.

On November 11 1940, Britain launched the first carrier strike of the war, using a squadron of Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers. This raid at Taranto left three Italian battleships crippled or destroyed for the loss of two British aircraft shot down. Some claim that the success of the raid on a fellow Axis-member led the Japanese to plan the Pearl Harbor attack of 7 December 1941, while others claim that the Japanese had at least considered this very operation earlier. In any case, Japanese military planners studied the attack on Taranto with great care.

The Regia Marina found other ways to attack the British. The most successful involved the use of frogmen and riding manned torpedoes to attack ships in harbour. The 10th Light Flotilla, which carried out these attacks, sank or damaged 28 ships from September 1940 to the end of 1942. These included the battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Valiant (sunk in the Harbor of Alexandria on 18 December 1941), and 111,527 tons of merchant shipping.

Following the sinking of these two battleships, an Italian-dominated Mediterranean Sea appeared much more possible to achieve. However, this was only a brief happy time for Mussolini. The oil and supplies brought to Malta, despite heavy losses, by Operation Pedestal in August and the Allied landings in North Africa, Operation Torch, in November 1942, turned the fortunes of war against Italy. After years of stalemate, the Axis forces were ejected from Libya and Tunisia in six months after the Battle of El Alamein, while their supply lines were harassed day after day by the growing and overwhelming aerial and naval supremacy of the Allies in what has just been the Mussolini's "Italian Mare Nostrum".

Italy in North Africa: 1940 - 1943

Main article: Western Desert Campaign

On December 8 1940 the British Operation Compass began. Planned as an extended raid (see Battle of the Marmarica), it resulted in a force of British, Indian and Australian troops cutting off the Italian troops. Pressing the British advantage home, General Richard O'Connor pressed the attack forward and succeeded in reaching El Agheila (an advance of 500 miles) and capturing tens of thousands of enemies. The Allies nearly destroyed the Italian army in North Africa, and seemed on the point of sweeping the Italians out of Libya. However, Winston Churchill directed the advance be stopped, initially because of supply problems and because of a new determined effort that had gained ground in Albania, and ordered troops dispatched to defend Greece. Weeks later the first troops of the German Afrika Korps started to arrive in North Africa (February 1941) to reinforce the Italians.

German General Erwin Rommel now became the Axis commander in North Africa, however the bulk of his forces consisted of Italian troops. Under Rommel's direction the Axis troops pushed the British and Commonwealth troops back into Egypt, with their victory of Tobruk. The Axis in spring 1942 seemed on the verge of sweeping the British out of Egypt, however at the First Battle of El Alamein (July 1942) General Claude Auchinleck halted Rommel's advance and the Allies assumed the offensive with the Second Battle of Alamein (October/November 1942) under General Bernard Montgomery. After the Operation Torch landings in the Vichy French territories of Morocco and Algeria (November 1942) brought the arrival of American forces, the Allies defeated the Axis armies in North Africa by May 1943.

Italian troops on the Eastern Front: 1941 - 1943

Main article: Italian war in Soviet Union, 1941-1943

In July 1941, some 62,000 Italian troops of the "Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia" (Corpo di Spedizione Italiano in Russia, or CSIR) left for the Eastern Front to aid in the German invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa).

In July 1942, the Italian Royal Army (Regio Esercito) expanded the CSIR to a full army of about 200,000 men known as the "Italian Army in Russia" (Armata Italiana in Russia, or ARMIR). The ARMIR was also known as the "Italian 8th Army."

From August 1942 to February 1943, the Italian 8th Army took part in the Battle of Stalingrad. At Stalingrad, the 8th Army suffered heavy losses (some 20,000 dead and 64,000 captured) when the Soviets isolated the German forces in Stalingrad by attacking the over-stretched Hungarian, Romanian, and Italian forces protecting the German's flanks.

By the summer of 1943, Rome had withdrawn the remnants of these troops to Italy. Many of the Italian POWs captured in the Soviet Union died in captivity due to the unfavourable conditions in the Soviet prison camps.

"The soft underbelly": 1943 - 1945

Main article: Italian Campaign (World War II)

On 10 July 1943, a combined force of American and British Commonwealth troops invaded Sicily in Operation Husky. German generals again took the lead in the defence and, although they lost the island, they succeeded in ferrying large numbers of German and Italian forces safely off Sicily to the Italian mainland. On 19 July an Allied air raid on Rome destroyed both military and collateral civil installations. With these two events, popular support for the war diminished in Italy.

On 25 July 1943, the Grand Council of Fascism ousted Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and a new Italian government, led by General Pietro Badoglio and King Victor Emmanuel III, took over in Italy. The new Italian government immediately began secret negotiations with the Allies to end the fighting and to come over to the Allied side. On 3 September, a secret armistice was signed with the Allies at Fairfield Camp in Sicily. The armistice was announced on 8 September. By then, the Allies were on the Italian mainland.

3 September 1943, British troops crossed the short distance from Sicily to the 'toe' of Italy in Operation Baytown. Two more Allied landings took place on 9 September at Salerno (Operation Avalanche) and at Taranto (Operation Slapstick). The Italian surrender meant that the Allied landings at Taranto took place unopposed. The troops simply disembarked from warships at the docks rather than assaulting the coastline.

German troops, once they had discovered that the Italians had signed an armistice, moved quickly to disarm the Italian forces and to take over critical defensive positions (Operation Achse). These included Italian-occupied south-eastern France and the Italian-controlled areas in the Balkans.

On 9 September, a German Fritz X guided bomb sank the Italian battleship Roma off the coast of Sardinia.

In Cephallonia after the surrender on 8 September 1943 General Antonio Gandin, commander of the 12,000-strong Italian Italian 33 Infantry Division Acqui, requested clarifications from the commander of the Italian 11th Army in Greece, General Carlo Vecchiarelli, on how to act following the surrender and was told to surrender all arms to the German forces on the island in return for safe passage to Italy. While he and his staff were considering their options two ships with German reinforcements arrived to the island and the Italians attacked them with artillery, sinking one of them. The Italians were then attacked by elements of German 1st Mountain Division with support from Stukas, and forced to surrender on September 22, after suffering some 1,300 casualties. The Germans began executing the Italians who had surrendered and did not stop until over 4,500 Italians had been shot. The ca. 4,000 survivors were put aboard ships for the mainland, but some of them sunk after hitting mines in the Ionian Sea, where another 3,000 were lost. The Cephallonia massacre serves as the background for the novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

About two months after he was stripped of power, Benito Mussolini was rescued by the Germans in Operation Oak (Unternehmen Eiche). This was a spectacular raid planned by German General Kurt Student and carried out by Senior Storm Unit Leader (Obersturmbannführer) Otto Skorzeny. The Germans re-located Mussolini to northern Italy where he set up a new Fascist state, the Italian Social Republic (Repubblica Sociale Italiana or RSI).

The Allied armies continued to advance through Italy despite increasing opposition from the Germans. The Allies soon controlled most of southern Italy. The Allies organized some Italian troops in the south into what were known as "co-belligerent" or "royalist" forces. In time, there was a co-belligerent army (Italian Co-Belligerent Army), navy (Italian Co-Belligerent Navy), and air force (Italian Co-Belligerent Air Force). These Italian forces fought alongside the Allies for the rest of the war. Other Italian troops, loyal to Mussolini and his RSI, continued to fight alongside the Germans. From this point on, a large Italian resistance movement located in northern Italy fought a guerrilla war against the German and RSI forces.

Winston Churchill had long regarded southern Europe as the military weak spot of the continent (in World War I he had advocated the Dardanelles operation and during World War II he favored the Balkans as an area of operations, for example in Greece in 1940 and so on). [2][3][4][5] Calling Italy the "soft underbelly" of the Axis, Churchill therefore advocated this invasion instead of a cross-channel invasion of occupied France. But Italy itself proved anything but a soft target: the mountainous terrain gave Axis forces excellent defensive positions and it also partly negated the Allied advantage in motorized and mechanized units. The final Allied victory over the Axis in Italy would not come until the spring offensive of 1945, after Allied troops had breached the Gothic Line, leading to the surrender of German forces in Italy shortly before Germany finally surrendered ending World War II.

Italy's declaration of war to Japan

Although Italy and Japan were part of the Axis Powers, Japan reacted with shock and outrage to the news of the surrender of Italy to the Allied forces in September 1943. Italian citizens residing in Japan and in Manchukuo were swiftly rounded up and summarily asked whether they were loyal to the King of Savoy, who dishonored their country by surrendering to the enemy, or with the Duce and the newly created "Repubblica Sociale Italiana", which vowed to continue fighting alongside the Nazis. Those who sided with the King were interned in concentration camps and detained in dismal conditions until the end of the war, while those who opted for the Fascist dictator were allowed to go on with their lives, although under strict surveillance by the Kempeitai.

The news of Italy's surrender did not reach the crew members of the three Italian submarines Giuliani, Cappellini and Torelli traveling to Singapore, then occupied by Japan, to take a load of rubber, tin and strategic materials bound for Italy and Germany's war industry. All the officers and sailors on board were arrested by the Japanese army, and after a few weeks of detention the vast majority of them chose to side with Japan and Germany. The Kriegsmarine assigned new officers to the three units, who were renamed as U-boot U.IT.23, U.IT.24 and U.IT.25, taking part in German war operations in the Pacific until the Giuliani was sunk by the British submarine Tallyho in February 1944 and the other two vessels were taken over by the Japanese Imperial Navy upon Germany's surrender.

Upon suggestion from Alberto Tarchiani, and anti-fascist journalist and activist appointed as Ambassador to Washington by the cabinet of Badoglio, which acted as provisional head of the Italian government pending the occupation of the country by the Allied forces, Italy issued a formal declaration of war to Japan on July 14, 1945. The purpose of this act, which brought no military follow-up, was mainly to persuade the Allies that the new government of Italy deserved to be invited to the San Francisco Peace Conference, as a reward for its co-belligerence. However, the British Prime Minister Churchill and John Foster Dulles were resolutely against the idea, and so Italy's new government was left out in the cold.

Although Italy and Japan negotiated the resumption of their respective diplomatic ties after 1951, and later signed several bilateral agreements and treaties, a formal peace treaty between the two nations was never sealed, and thus they have remained theoretically at war with each other up to the present time.

Bibliography

• Bierman, John; Smith, Colin. The Battle of Alamein: Turning Point, World War II. Viking Books, 2002. ISBN 0670030406.

• Garibaldi, Luciano; foreword by Blitzer, Wolf Century of War. Friedman/Fairfax Publishers. New York, 2001 ISBN 1-58663-342-2

See also

• Italian Army equipment in World War II
• Regia Aeronautica - Royal Italian Air Force
• Regio Esercito - Royal Italian Army
• Regia Marina - Royal Italian Navy
• Italian Campaign (World War II)
• Italian conquest of British Somaliland
• Italian Mare Nostrum
• Italian guerrilla war in Ethiopia
• Yugoslavian Front (WWII)
• MVSN (Blackshirts)
• Black Brigades
• Italian 132nd Armored Division Ariete
• Battle of Gazala
• Axis occupation of Greece during World War II
• Decima Flottiglia MAS
• Italian resistance movement

External links

• "Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia" (Corpo di Spedizione Italiano in Russia, or CSIR), by Shawn Bohannon.
• "Italian Army in Russia" (Armata Italiana in Russia, or ARMIR), by Shawn Bohannon.
• "AFRIKAKORPS" , by AFRIKAKORPS/AANA.