Mussolini's Army against Greece

October 1940–April 1941

Richard Carrier

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780429015328
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Geschichte
• Categoria: Zweiter Weltkrieg

This book analyses why the Italian army failed to defeat its Greek opponent between October 1940 and April 1941. It thoroughly examines the multiple forms of ineffectiveness that plagued the political leadership as well as the military organisation.

Mussolini's aggression of Greece ranks among the most neglected campaigns of the Second World War. Initiated on 28 October 1940, the offensive came to a halt less than ten days later; by mid-November, the Greek counter-offensive put the Italian armies on the defensive, and back in Albania. From then on, the fatal interaction between failing command structures, inadequate weapons and equipment, unprepared and unmotivated combatants, and terrible logistics lowered to a dangerous level the fighting power of Italian combatants. This essay proposes that compared to the North African and Russian campaigns where the Regio Esercito achieved a decent level of military effectiveness, the operation against Greece was a military fiasco. Only the courage of its soldiers and the German intervention saved the dictator's army from complete disaster.

This book would appeal to anyone interested in the history of the world war, and to those involved in the study of military effectiveness and intrigued by why armies fail.

Part I

The army, the decision, the campaign

1The Italian army, June 1940

Benito Mussolini declared war on France and Great Britain on 10 June 1940. By then, the European war was nine months old, and the stunning successes of the Wehrmacht led many to believe that the conclusion of Hitler’s expansion would soon mean peace. For the Italian army, it was war again, the third time in the last five years. In late 1935, Mussolini launched the invasion of Ethiopia, and in the summer of 1936, he threw Italy into the Spanish Civil War. Before examining some characteristics of the military organisation in the summer of 1940, both campaigns briefly deserve our attention. The purpose here is not to explain the political or diplomatic contexts, but rather to present some features of Mussolini’s wars and some aspects of the forze armate’s involvement in East Africa and on the Iberian Peninsula.¹ As we will see in Chapter 2, there are some enlightening views to gain from this brief digression.

1 Ethiopia and Spain

The invasion of Ethiopia (October 1935–May 1936) was the first Fascist war, and arguably, the most popular war of Italian history since unification.² How the seven-month campaign ended in Mussolini’s greatest political triumph is not my concern here. However, three key characteristics of the military operation are worth noting.³

First, the decision to invade Ethiopia was not an impulse. In late 1932, General De Bono, a long-standing Fascist leader and then minister of colonies, initiated, with Mussolini’s agreement, a plan to invade Ethiopia.⁴ The initiative opened, the following year, a debate among the military circles about the relevance of the operation, its feasibility, and on the role that the forze armate would play.⁵ Still, fears and resistance faded away, especially when General Bonzani, the army chief of staff and an opponent to the project, was sacked in September 1934. By the end of the same year, all non-technical obstacles vanished. Mussolini’s desire for a national, all-out war of aggression against Ethiopia, expressed in a secret memorandum in December 1934, could become a reality; it was just of question of time.⁶

A second consideration concerns the spiral of conflicting interests and how personal ambitions played in preparation for war.⁷ First, it was Mussolini’s first war as leader of Fascism, capo di governo, and minister of war. Although his involvement became critical only at the end of 1934, the role he played in 1935 was determined for the success of the operation.⁸ Intriguing was the trial of strength between the Ministry of Colonies (the Minister De Bono and other gerarchi) and the armed services.⁹ On one hand, De Bono and his staff wished to keep the control of planning and command of the operation, considering the affair as a simple colonial war.¹⁰ On the other hand, the army leadership rapidly questioned the ability of the minister and his collaborators to organise such an undertaking. The new chief of the army general staff, General Baistrocchi, and his deputy General Pariani were determined to play a central role in the planning since the army would be the backbone of the operation.¹¹ In such a context, the highest-ranking military in the country and Capo di Stato Maggiore Generale (CSMG, or Chief of the Armed Forces general staff ), Marshal Pietro Badoglio, had no intention to stay on the sidelines.¹² Ceva and Rochat noted the marshal’s ability to navigate the rivalry between De Bono and the armed services, to criticise De Bono’s position astutely when necessary, and to avoid questioning Mussolini’s desire for an “empire.” Still, his ultimate success was to make himself the natural replacement of De Bono as commander-in-chief if things went wrong, as they eventually did.¹³ Finally, a last key player in the making of the war was General Rodolfo Graziani, named by Mussolini governor and commander-in-chief of Italian Somalia in early March 1935. With the dictator’s support, he made sure that Somalia – that was until the end of 1934 confined to a defensive role in the army planning – and himself would play an active role in the invasion.¹⁴ Graziani’s ability to develop a personal relationship with Mussolini provided him with a degree of latitude that guaranteed not only an important role in the conquest but also after the victory.¹⁵ Rochat underlined the overall result of these clashes, intricacies, and ambition-driven agendas: the complete absence of a functional chain of command and a central body capable of coordinating the actions of the three services, De Bono’s ministry, and Graziani’s staff.¹⁶ As Badoglio’s interventions did not smooth the path, the preparation of the invasion – that spanned almost over three years – took place in a somewhat awkward way. No doubt that Mussolini favoured this abnormal structure in order to consolidate his power.¹⁷

The third consideration concerns the RE.¹⁸ The invasion was its most important operation since the end of the First World War, and indeed the largest colonial war ever.¹⁹ The army faced two colossal challenges. First, how to assemble such a massive expeditionary corps without weakening the army’s readiness on the peninsula? Second, how to surmount the enormous challenges of the logistics, in Italy but especially abroad? An agile process of calls of conscripts and recalls of reservists took place in 1935, enabling the army to send, between February 1935 and January 1936, a grand total of seven army divisions to Eritrea and one to Somalia.²⁰ On 1 October 1935, one day before the invasion, there were 111,200 Italian combatants (army and MVSN) supported by 53,200 ascari (colonial troops) in Eritrea while Graziani’s forces in Somalia amounted to 24,350 Italians and 29,500 Eritrean and Somali local troops.²¹ After the outbreak of hostilities, reinforcements from Italy came as needed; so much so that on 1 June 1936, there were 330,000 Italian combatants (army, air force, navy, and militia) and 87,000 ascari in East Africa.²² Such a deployment of troops had one purpose: to assure a crushing victory over the Ethiopian forces.²³ Clearly, Mussolini decided that Adua would not repeat itself.²⁴

The Italian forces enjoyed an abundance of weapons and equipment that assured an overwhelming superiority over the enemy: 10,000 machine guns and light machine guns, 1100 guns, 250 light tanks, 90,000 quadrupeds, 14,000 vehicles, and around 350 aeroplanes.²⁵ However, this military effort of “an uncommon prodigality” meant a gigantic challenge for logistics.²⁶ Although Eritrea and Italian Somalia (both Italian territories since the end of the 19th century) served as invading bases, it remained a full-scale oversea operation to conquer an inhospitable and underdeveloped territory. Hence, it was not only men, weapons and equipment that had to be shipped in Africa, but also oil, wood, stones, and concrete to list only a few.²⁷ At home, the railway network transported men, weapons and material towards ports of embarkation, while 563 trips were necessary to ship everything needed in Eritrea and Somalia.²⁸ Using the data of the Italian navy, Rochat indicates that 560,000 men (military and civilian) and three million tons of weapons and material travelled to Africa.²⁹

These considerations lead to an undeniable conclusion: the conquest of Ethiopia was, from a strictly military point of view, a success even when considering the weaknesses of the Ethiopian forces. The massive military effort based on unlimited resources overcame De Bono’s limits as commander-in-chief or the poor showing of the troops in terms of training (and other similar failures and inadequacies). In such a context, Badoglio’s careful and ruthless command guaranteed the ultimate victory, the capture of Addis Abeba, less than eight months after the launch of the attack.³⁰ Mussolini’s dream of an African empire became a reality, although he had no idea that pacification would never happen.

The participation of Italy in the Spanish Civil War tells a very different story.³¹ Some of its characteristics sharply contrast with...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART I: The army, the decision, the campaign
• PART II: Analysing military ineffectiveness
• Epilogue: Downfall
• Annexe 1: The Regia Aeronautica in the campaign
• Annexe 2: The Regia Marina in the campaign
• References
• Index