The Italian Army during WW2 is infamous for its poor performance. From their failure to invade Greece, to the insane amounts of Italians who were captured during Operation Compass despite the Italians outnumbering the British 5 to 1, to the.... battle of bardia....., the Italians have become the butt of many WW2 jokes, and somewhat rightfully so; their performance was incredibly poor.
But one may ask, why? Why did the Italians do so badly during the war? Why were they so ineffective militarily for the Axis on land? After all, the individual Italian soldiers were actually brave fighters. Consider what Erwin Rommel, a man who worked closely with the Italians in North Africa had to say:
“The German soldier has impressed the world, however the Italian Bergsagliere soldier has impressed the German soldier.” -Erwin Rommel.
The Italians were brave fighters, so why did they do so badly? It's a combination of multiple factors. Here are the reasons why the Italians did so poorly during WW2:
Equipment
The Italians did not have very good equipment. Although they had some good weapons, most of the Italian weapons were not able to compete with the other European powers that Mussolini was trying to compete with.
Their Artillery was more WW1 era and it wasn't able to compete with the British. Take this account from the Battle of Nibeiwa at the beginning of Operation Compass as an example:
At 7:45 a.m. the British and Indian infantry followed up on board lorries, which stopped 700 yd (640 m) away for the men to disembark and charge into the camp. The Italian and Libyan artillerymen stood by their guns but found that even field artillery shells fired at 30 yd (27 m) range were ineffective against the armour of the Matilda tanks. The Italian and Libyan infantry fought on and isolated parties stalked British tanks with hand grenades but the British methodically occupied the camp, tanks artillery and infantry co-operating to reduce isolated pockets of resistance
The Italian meatballs could not penetrate the British Matildas at Nibeiwa. The Italians were making more than enough Pasta Shells and not enough actual artillery shells. Only 1 Matilda II was knocked out at Nibeiwa.
The Italian infantry weapons were also not good. Mainly their machine guns were poor. The Italian Breda M1930 was the standard light machine gun of the Italian Army. It was prone to frequent jams, especially in North Africa. The Italian FIAT M1914/35 was another Italian machine gun. This gun had a low rate of fire and was prone to frequent malfunctions. Even their best machine gun, the BREDA M1937, was still not really able to compete with other machine guns at the time.
So although the Italians had a good sub-machine gun, their machine guns and some other infantry weapons were poor.
The Italian Tanks were also not good during WW2. The Italians mainly specialized in light tanks and tankettes which couldn't compete with British Matilda 2s and other tanks in North Africa. Italian tanks were captured en masse during Operation Compass, too. Italy lacked the industry and resources to produce better tanks and this hurt Italian armour abilities during WW2.
For more information on this, please watch Potential History's "Italian Tank Meme" video. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB2GINNs3Aw&t=409s)
Generalship
Most of the top Italian generals were not very good.
The man who was at the highest position in the Italian Military during most of WW2, Pietro Badoglio, was the same man who was responsible for the disastrous Battle of Caporetto during WW1. Although he won in the end, he failed multiple times against the Ethiopians who had inferior equipment. Rodolfo Graziani, who seemed like a decent general for his efforts against the Ethiopians and Senussis, chose to send his largely unmechanized force to invade Egypt in 1940 instead of just sending the mechanized units he had, and he did not deploy the War of Rapid Decision doctrine which he had created, which involved employing mechanized units and artillery offensively. He instead chose to send an infantry mass of soldiers who were on foot and he quickly ran out of supplies in North Africa.
In fact, Major Howard R. Christie, in his study of the Italian 10th Army (The army which invaded Egypt in 1940), came to the conclusion that if Graziani deployed the War of Rapid Decision doctrine and reformed his tanks into an armoured division, that the Italians would have reached the Nile River. This was a very poor decision on Graziani's part and it resulted in the failure of the Italian army in North Africa.
The Italians had plenty of other bad generals too. Ubaldo Soddu failed the defense of Albania in November 1940, Ugo Cavallero failed to take Hill 731 from the Greeks 17 TIMES, Visconti Prasca's forces failed constantly to breach Greek defenses, the list goes on. So although the Italians had some good generals like Giovanni Messe and Guiglielmo Nasi, most of their top generals were bad.
Supplies and Industry
The Italian industry was not ready for a full-scale war and almost everyone in the Italian Army except for Mussolini recognized this. The Italian Invasion of Ethiopia, and the Spanish Civil War drained the Italians of much needed supplies. When the Italians joined the war in June 1940, they had 1.5 million men in their army in 73 divisions. However, only 19 of these divisions actually had all their equipment. The rest of the Italian divisions did not have enough equipment, personell, and transport capacity for everyone.
Italian generals like Badoglio and Italo Balbo tried to warn Mussolini about the fact that Italy simply wasn't ready for war, but Mussolini would have none of it; his low-equipped army with outdated supplies would somehow magically conquer the British and create a new Roman Empire!
Italian supply problems really reflected in North Africa, where Graziani didn't have enough trucks to mechanize his entire army. The limited capacity of Libyan ports also added to this problem. The Italians regularly fought in large campaigns while not having the equipment to fully supply these campaigns. For example, during the Invasion of Greece, part of the reason why the Italian defense of Albania failed was due to the limited capacity of Albanian ports; Albanian ports of Vallona and Durres could only transport troops, but not heavy equipment. As such, the Italian army in Greece lacked lorries, horses, and mules.
The Italians in East Africa also had major supply issues that prevented them from going on campaigns that could have been incredibly successful. Something that isn't really known is that the Italians actually had some success in a very small offensive into Kenya. Consider this:
On 1 July, an Italian attack on the border town of Moyale, on the edge of the Ethiopian escarpment, where the tracks towards Wajir and Marsabit meet, was repulsed by a company of the 1st KAR and reinforcements were moved up. The Italians carried out a larger attack by about four battalions on 10 July, after a considerable artillery bombardment and after three days the British withdrew unopposed. The Italians eventually advanced to water holes at Dabel and Buna, nearly 62 mi (100 km) inside Kenya but lack of supplies prevented a further advance.
Once again Italian supplies prevented a possible success.
These factors resulted in the absolute blunders that the Italian army tried to perform during WW2. But when the Italians had good leadership and good supplies, they performed well. The Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia performed well during Barbarossa because of this. They were led by Giovanni Messe, the best Italian general of WW2, and didn't have severe supply issues. As such, they defeated the Soviets multiple times. During the Battle of Petrikowka, the Italians managed to capture 10,000 Soviet troops completely alone, at the loss of just 87 men.
The Italian soldiers were brave individuals, but they were led by incompetent men.
SOURCES:
Playfair, Major-General I. S. O.; Stitt RN, Commander G. M. S.; Molony, Brigadier C. J. C. & Toomer, Air Vice-Marshal S. E. (2004) [1st. pub. HMSO 1954].
Christie H. Fallen Eagles: The Italian 10th Army in the Opening Campaign in the Western Desert, June 1940. Pickle Partners 1999
Knox, MacGregor (1986). Mussolini Unleashed 1939–1941. Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy's Last War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-33835-2
Playfair, I. S. O.; et al. (1959) [1954]. Butler, J. R. M. (ed.). The Mediterranean and Middle East: The Early Successes Against Italy (to May 1941). History of the Second World War, United Kingdom Military Series. I (4th impr. ed.). HMSO. OCLC 494123451. Retrieved 3 September 2015 – via Hyperwar
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