Nothing really, even the divisions Italy sent to the Ostfront were shit. There was a reason why Hitler wished bitterly as Berlin fell he’d instead raised a standard of revolt for the various Arabs in the Middle East against European rule rather than stick with Mussolini especially in Libya.
When Hitler came to power, Mussolini was already established and famous. As others have said, Hitler looked up to him. Also, Hitler was obsessed with uniting all German peoples into one country. To do this, he annexed Austria, the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, and Danzig/East Prussia in Polandt (the net step is then to conquer vast areas of land in Eastern Europe/Russia to give space for all those Germans to live and grow). At the time of the Anschluss of Austria, Italy considered Austria within their sphere of interest, and may have had a mutual assistance pact with them (I don’t recall off the top of my head).
Hitler did not inform Mussolini of the Anschluss beforehand, and was very anxious of his reaction (as well as others), as Germany was not yet ready to start a war. When Mussolini acquiesced and let Hitler have Austria, Hitler was very grateful, and really never forgot it for the rest of Mussolini’s life, even to the point of rescuing him and putting him back into power (somewhat) when he had been deposed by his followers and had no more real benefit for Germany. I wouldn’t say that loyalty was one of Hitler’s defining characteristics (ask Ernst Rohm or Gregor Strasser), but he was always very loyal to Il Duce, in his way (which is not to say that he always treated him well).
On paper Italy seemed like a good partner for Germany since they had a fascist dictator for a leader and a good sized navy and army.
In hindsight it’s easy to see the folly of Hitler’s decision, but at the time the pluses outweighed the minuses… and if Italy were to side with the allies, however unlikely that was, he would then have a southern front to worry about.
What did the Japanese alliance do for him, besides provide a second theater for the Allies to worry about? Did the German and Japanses armies ever fight shoulder to shoulder?
An impressively well-balanced discussion with refreshingly few of the same worn out anti-Italian canards.
Isn’t the premise of the question an anti-Italian canard?
You mean besides the fact that he needed someone to blame for his failures? He also blamed his generals and the German people in those last days.
That’s ridiculous. Lots of Germans had immigrated to the U.S. as well and they had just as many admirers there. Did not stop them from being effective.
I’ve mentioned this before: one of Italy’s biggest problems in the war was it peaked too early. Mussolini took power in 1922 and started building up Italy’s military. Around 1930, Italy was a first-rate military power.
The problem for Italy was that there was no war in 1930. In the next ten years, the Italian military declined as its equipment got worn out and outdated. Meanwhile other countries were building up their own military forces. By then time Italy actually entered the war in 1940, it was an over-the-hill force.
The Vittorio Veneto classbattleship were qualitatively better than any Allied or German battleship except maybe the Iowas. Italian frogmen and sub service were first rate.
The problem was that the Italians expected to fight a war in the Alps or defensively in N Africa. Not what they actually fought.
Their biggest problem was leadership. There have been great officers of Italian stock in the past. Most notably Eugene of Savoy and Napoleon di Bonaparte, but modern Italy’s more of a mixed bag. Some were good like Garibaldi and Armando Diaz and some were bad like Badoglio and Cadorna. Badoglio was the chief of the Italian Army during WW2 which is really saying something. On paper, Italy was strong. Hdck, in 1940, Italy’s Navy was nearly as strong as the British and French Mediterranean Fleets combined (on a whole, either of them were superior, but they had to police globe spanning Empires where as Italy was focused on the Mediterranean Sea). italy’s performance on the whole was poorer than it should have been, but when properly led the Italians fought as hard as anyone else, and when given a reason to fight (like German occupation of tthe peninsula) they fough hard. Kesselring noted rhat thr guerilla war waged by Italian partisans were giving them no end of trouble.
Thefunny thing about Mussolini is that he felt to create his new Roman Empire, he had to jump in on the winningside, but Italy stood to gaij a lot at little cost by staying neutral. Before the weaknesses in the Italian military were known, the British and French were nervous about Italian entry and were willing to make serious concessions to keep them out of it. In May the French were even willing to put Algeria on the table. By accepting the bribe, he’d have aoided the death, destruction of industry and infrastructure, been able to increase Italy’s wealth significantly by selling to both sides, keep it’s seat on the security council and their Empire would have grown nearly 3 times it’s size. Churchill mentions it a few times in his memoirs.
Well, yes, but I think this is relying too much on hindsight. It’s easy to see now that joining the Axis side was a bad idea. But the opposite probably seemed true in the Summer of 1940. After Poland and France both collapsed so suddenly, it looked like Germany would be the new master of Europe. At that point, it probably looked to Mussolini like he needed to join Team Germany if he wanted Italy to survive. In his more realistic moments he was probably glad Hitler was willing to let him sign on as a junior partner in the Axis for old time’s sake.
You’re right. Of course, as long as Germany and Japan are planning on going to war with the US and the USSR, they have no chance of winning. I just think it’s ironic that this megalomaniac who loved the idea of war, saw himself as a modern day Julius Caesar and jumped into a big one to build a new Roman Empire, could have built a large Empire by preserving the peace in the Mediterranean. FDR even guaranteed that Washington help make sure that all territorial concessions promised to Italy by Britain and France would be given (so long as he didn’t ask fpr more when the war was over). There were also a bunch of fascist countries influenced by Italy springing up in southern Europe and Latin America. The Med would have become a fascist lake and it’s entirely possible that a weaker, but significant fascist bloc led by Italy would spring up during the Cold War. Not to mention the tons of oil they were sitting on.
Yes, Mussolini wanted an empire…and he thought tagging along with the Germans was the quickest way to get it. Then came Russia-and Italy sent about 800,000 soldiers to fight there. they were poorly equipped, and the Italian portion of the line was where the Russians attacked first. Italy had a military that was equipped with 1920s weaponry, and had no oil-they depended upon the Germans for that. Once North Africa was lost, Italy was out of the war.
Maybe, but the two battles you cite and the losses in Africa took place while the USSR was in a non-aggression pact with Germany and when the US was trying to stay out the war, not least because public opinion was against it. For quite a period it was Axis vs. British Empire. Pick a side at that point.
I guess it’s okay to say the average Italian wasn’t interested in fighting generally, and probably less so for Hitler, but there is scant evidence of anything as best I know.
To be fair, it was the Soviet Union. I doubt even the British or Americans would have been successful there. The Japanese tried in the late 30’s and they were smashed by Zhukov. The fighting there was fierce and brutal.
When you’re fighting a war, you don’t turn down anyone who wants to be your ally.
Hitler did what he could to keep from having Spain as one, though.
While it was true that in the early stages of the war Hiltler didn’t want Franco’s participation (judging it to be a drain), later Hitler put a lot of effort into attempting to browbeat Franco into joining the war on his side - only to be met with a firm (and to Hitler, totally ungrateful) set of demands as to the price of Franco’s entering the war - demands Germany would not meet.
I can’t remember the exact quote, but after the last unsuccessful meeting Hitler said something to Mussolini about rather having his teeth pulled than negotiate with Franco again.
This isn’t to say that Franco did not favour the Axis - just that he did not wish to commit himself. Events proved the wisdom of that, as he alone survived among the fascist dictators.
Although his meeting with Franco went poorly, Hitler would have loved Spain to acquiesce in a German seizure of Gibraltar. Spanish volunteers also fought for Hitler on the Eastern Front as the “Blue Division”. The British were far more concern about potential Spanish belligerency, as they bribed Spanish officials to stay neutral.
As to the Italians - my understanding is that one primary factor in their shoddy performace was the plain fact that Italy was not a comparatively wealthy country, yet Mussolini committed himself to an expensive program of imperial aggrandizement well before WW2 started. This meant that much of Italian equipment was of a generation older than that the other combatants, who had re-armed immediately before the war, was using; and Italy simply lacked the resources to modernize.
Where Italy excelled was in a small number of high-quality components like aero engines (often very laboriously made by expert craftsmen) - however, modern war was brutal in destroying such equipment. Hitler suffered from this factor, too - in his case, investing in numerous high-quality upgrades rather than churning out massive numbers of “okay” weapons. The point was that display and the ‘wow’ factor tended to be favoured over hard-headed military necessities.
Combine this with Mussolini’s habit of favouring impressive-sounding statistics over military effectiveness - it was remarked that he preferred two ill-equipped and trained divisions over one well-equipped and trained division, as on the books, having two divisions was more impressive; also the fact that none of his pre-war conquests (or those he planned during the war) actually paid in the form of loot, resources, or taxes - and his comparative economic and military weakness is evident.
This weak base would be true even if Italian military leaders were effective, strategic direction of the war was sound, and the Italian people fanatically supported the war with high morale … but none of those factors favored Mussolini’s war effort, either.