Mussolini was a megalomaniacal poppinjay who wanted to build a new Roman Empire and didn’t recognize that the times had irrevocably changed. He thought Hitler was going to win and wanted to be at least a junior partner; his own fascist ideology was at least congruent with that of the Nazis. He probably sneered at Franco of Spain for not having the balls to throw his lot in with Adolf & Co. But his military was badly outclassed by everyone it faced, and its “military glory” only supplied a generation or three of anti-Italian jokes and the middle name of Bart Simpson’s best friend.
As Martini Enfield said, the military wasn’t as into it as Mussolini. War, by its very nature, stands in the way of nearly everything a gentleman wants out of life: hot chicks and servants, fine food, wine, and clothes paid for by someone else. Glory is about all you get, but what’s the point if you’re dead?
Not that Mussolini was hot for a world war, not bothering to get into it until the heavy lifting in France was done. He is said to have told the Army’s Chief of Staff, “I only need a few thousand dead so that I can sit at the peace conference as a man who has fought.”
The other side of it is that war was a successful domestic policy. Indeed, if anything that is probably the defining quality of fascism. It certainly appeared to depression era Italy that the Germans were onto something with an authoritarian government and the country on a war footing. So to a lot of Italians fascism seemed to be the solution to the problems of the 1920s and the war was part of the fascist package. One in all in.
Just out of curiousity - how important was the siege/blockade of Malta?
My understanding was that, realisitically, the island was at least once, running on fumes before a tanker made it through the gauntlet to resupply the forces there. And the forces there were key to breaking the Axis supply lines in Africa.
Obviously, I may be mistaken about this, but I thought things were that close.
A further echo for Martini Enfield’s point - I’m also of the understanding that the Italian Navy was generally pretty good on a technical level, but not operating as aggressively, nor as a cohesive force, the way that the RN and its auxiliaries did. There’s also the Taranto raid which did a lot to instill a more timid use of the forces remaining to the Italian Navy. As well as reducing the modern battleships in their fleet by a half. But they did as much damage to their war fighting potential, it seems to me, by moving their fleet bases further north, and away from the theatre of operations.
Of course, off the top of my head, I don’t know how well equipped the Italian Navy’s capital ships of the time were. For example, the USN and RN model was always to include what is laughingly called adequate bunking for their crews, because they anticipate longer deployments, and even continuing to house crews aboard ship while in port. I remember reading that the old German Navy of WWI was designed for shorter cruises, and offloaded crew housing to barracks while in port - with an attendant savings in space/tonnage for their ships. Which is one reason why their generally smaller ships could come so close to matching the generally heavier ships of the RN at Jutland. Given Mussolini’s focus on Mare Nostrum, I can easily imagine a need to keep their ships near bases, because they couldn’t keep the crews embarked for long periods of time.
Which would make moving the bases the ships operated out of (or didn’t operate out of) further north even more of a strategic blunder than I’d already considered it.
I congratulate respondents who, when faced with the question “Italy in WWII-What Were Their War Aims?”, universally avoided the cheap rejoinder:
“Pretty lousy.”
Just before anyone makes any jokes about Italian military equipment, I’d like to point out that the rifle used to assassinate JFK was a WWII surplus ex-Italian military Carcano rifle…
Although, come to think of it, isnt the Carcano (a good rifle) basically a modified copy of the old WWII Mauser?
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So it was the NAZIS’s who killed JFK!!!111
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Old joke… a classified ad, c. 1946: “For sale: Italian infantry rifle. Excellent condition. Never fired; thrown down once.”
Another old joke:
Pub quiz night.
Q.What are the colours of the Italian flag?
A. White cross on a white field