Military history of Italy during World War II
entered World War II on 10 June 1940 by invading France, joining the German offensive already in progress. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini did so opportunistically as the Allied powers seemed on the verge of collapse. Mussolini's war aim was to expand Italy's national borders, colonial empire and establish client states at the expense of the French, British, Greeks, Yugoslavs and others. While France surrendered on 22 June 1940, the United Kingdom and its allies continued to fight far beyond the point which Mussolini had thought possible, ultimately leading to the defeat and dissolution of Fascist Italy in 1943 when Mussolini was deposed in a bloodless coup d'état.
Italy's Axis partner, Nazi Germany, was ready for its defection and occupied central and northern Italy after the armistice of Cassibile in September 1943. After freeing Mussolini from captivity, the Germans set him up as the leader of a new puppet state in the north, the Italian Social Republic. This provoked Italian resistance against the German occupation and also a civil war between pro- and anti-fascist Italians in central and northern Italy. In the Allied-held south, the Kingdom of Italy, which faced no resistance movement, officially became a co-belligerent of the Allies and declared war on Germany on 13 October 1943.
The Allied Italian campaign after the invasion of Sicily in July of 1943 progressed slowly. The Italian campaign was not given priority in resources in Allied strategical planning as the invasion of France was considered more important. The mountainous terrain of Italy also aided the defenders and reduced the Allied advantage in mechanized units. Allied victory in Italy came with the 1945 spring offensive prompting the Axis surrender at Caserta on 29 April 1945, which came into effect on 2 May. April 25 is celebrated in Italy as liberation day.
Unlike in Germany and Japan, senior Fascists and military leaders did not face a war crimes tribunal before a panel of Allied judges, and many of Italy's war criminals either escaped justice or only served part of their sentences or received pardons; although the Italian resistance summarily executed some prominent figures, including Mussolini on 28 April 1945. In the 1947 treaty of Paris with the Allies, Italy agreed to pay 360 million dollars in war reparations, formally gave up its empire, and lost some national provinces at the frontier with Yugoslavia; the relatively lenient treatment, with Italy avoiding the harsher conditions imposed on Germany and Japan, owed to the post-1943 co-belligerence with the Allies and other factors. The treaty was signed by the Italian Republic, which had replaced the Italian monarchy after the 1946 Italian institutional referendum.
Background
Imperial ambitions
Although Italy was one of the victor nations in World War I, during the inter-war period Mussolini's Fascists felt a sense of grievance towards Britain and France on the issue of territorial gains. Also, the Fascists were irredentists and laid claim to parts of France, Switzerland and Yugoslavia, as well as British-held Malta. This ultimately led Rome to gravitate towards those countries who felt aggrieved with the Treaty of Versailles and sought a new political order in the world, such as Nazi Germany and Japan.A goal of the Fascist regime was political "hegemony in the Mediterranean–Danubian–Balkan region", more grandiosely Mussolini imagined the conquest "of an empire stretching from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Strait of Hormuz", with the Roman Empire cited as a model. The regime hoped to turn countries like Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania into client states, creating an Italian sphere of influence in Europe.
Mussolini wanted Italy to assert itself in Africa, and in 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia, one of the few independent African countries and a soft target, given its army was mostly irregular troops and had few modern weapons. Time was taken to build up overwhelming invasion forces, with the necessary logistical support - in contrast to Italy's unprepared and badly planned entry into World War Two in June 1940. The trump card of large quantities of modern arms won the day for Italy.
Intervention in Spain
During the Spanish Civil War Mussolini sent considerable aid, including an expeditionary corps of the Italian air force and ground forces known as the Corpo Truppe Volontarie, to support Franco's Nationalists, viewing the conflict as an opportunity to install a dictatorship that might become an Italian client state. Despite an embarrassing defeat at Guadalajara, the CTV evolved into an effective addition to Franco's forces. Successes achieved by Italy's troops and biplanes in the battles of Santander, Ebro, Aragon, Catalonia, and in the final offensive, caused overconfidence in the leadership of the Italian military and air force. Errors of judgment and the cost of the campaign delayed modernization. While the war had highlighted the shortcomings of Italian tanks and showed better co-ordination was needed between infantry and armour, these issues had not been adequately addressed by the time Italy entered World War II.Drawing closer to Germany
The aftermath of the war in Ethiopia saw an improvement in German-Italian relations following years of a previously strained relationship, resulting in a treaty of mutual interest in October 1936. Mussolini referred to this treaty as the creation of a Berlin-Rome Axis, which Europe would revolve around. The treaty was the result of increasing dependence on German coal following League of Nations sanctions, similar policies between the two countries over the conflict in Spain, and German sympathy towards Italy following European backlash to the Ethiopian War. The aftermath of the treaty saw the increasing ties between Italy and Germany, and Mussolini falling under Adolf Hitler's influence from which "he never escaped".File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R69173, Münchener Abkommen, Staatschefs.jpg|thumb|right|The signing of the Munich Agreement, 1938. From right to left, Count Ciano, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Édouard Daladier, and Neville Chamberlain.
In October 1938, following the Munich Agreement, Italy demanded concessions from France. These included a free port at Djibouti, control of the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railroad, Italian participation in the management of Suez Canal Company, some form of French-Italian condominium over French Tunisia, and the preservation of Italian culture on Corsica with no French assimilation of the people. The French refused the demands, believing the true Italian intention was the territorial acquisition of Nice, Corsica, Tunisia, and Djibouti. On 30 November 1938, Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano addressed the Chamber of Deputies on the "natural aspirations of the Italian people" and was met with shouts of "Nice! Corsica! Savoy! Tunisia! Djibouti! Malta!" Later that day, Mussolini addressed the Fascist Grand Council "on the subject of what he called the immediate goals of 'Fascist dynamism'." These were Albania; Tunisia; Corsica; the Ticino, a canton of Switzerland; and all "French territory east of the River Var".
On 4 February 1939, Mussolini addressed the Fascist Grand Council on foreign policy in a closed session, delivering "the familiar lament that Italy was a prisoner in the Mediterranean". He called Corsica, Tunisia, Malta, and Cyprus "the bars of this prison", and described Gibraltar and Suez as the prison guards. Increasingly, Italian foreign policy was dominated by plans for territorial conquest, putting the country on a road to war with Britain and France.
Military
The Italian Royal Army was comparatively depleted and weak at the beginning of the war. Italian tanks were of poor quality and radios few in number. The bulk of Italian artillery dated to World War I. The primary fighter of the Italian Royal Air Force was the Fiat CR.42 Falco, a biplane which was technically outclassed by monoplane fighters of other nations. The Italian Royal Navy had several modern battleships but no aircraft carriers.While there are some examples of well-made, high-quality Italian weapons, such as the Beretta Model 38 submachine gun and the 90/53 AA/AT gun, these were exceptions that proved the rule that the bulk of the military's equipment was obsolete and poor. The relatively weak economy, lack of suitable raw materials and consequent inability to produce sufficient quantities of armaments were major reasons behind Fascist Italy's military failures.
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-177-1451-03A, Griechenland, italienischer Panzer.jpg|thumb|right|L3/33 Tankette in Greece. Italy made extensive use of Tankettes in the interwar period, but despite being outdated by the time of World War II, they were still in use with the army.
On paper, Italy had one of the world's largest armies, but the reality was dramatically different. According to the estimates of Bierman and Smith, the Italian regular army could field only about 200,000 troops at the war's beginning. Irrespective of the attempts to modernize, the majority of Italian army personnel were lightly armed infantry lacking sufficient motor transport. Not enough money was budgeted to train the men in the services, such that the bulk of personnel received much of their training at the front, too late to be of use. Air units had not been trained to operate with the naval fleet and the majority of ships had been built for fleet actions, rather than the convoy protection duties in which they were primarily employed during the war.
Senior leadership was also a problem. Mussolini personally assumed control of all three individual military service ministries with the intention of influencing detailed planning. Comando Supremo consisted of only a small complement of staff that could do little more than inform the individual service commands of Mussolini's intentions, after which it was up to the individual service commands to develop proper plans and execution. The result was that there was no central direction for operations; the three military services tended to work independently, focusing only on their fields, with little inter-service cooperation.