Why were the Italians such bad soldiers during WW2 ?

Why were the Italians such bad soldiers during WW2 ?

-poor equipment/worse than Japs
-poor leadership/worse than Sowejts
-terrible moral, population really wanted no war

>during WW2

It's all Anglo and German propaganda!

The soldiers were all right, the batallions rearmed and retrained by the germans performed on the same level as the other german troops.
It was simply an issue of non-existent training standards and ww1 tier equipment due to an underfunded military compared to the nations it was supposed to fight against.
Also most of the officer class from field grade upward was politically imposed, and the results competence wise were just about what you'd expect: a couple decent generals in a sea of politicians and bureaucrats.

they had really bad high-ranks.
Soldiers were ok tho.

My grandfather was in it, and it sounded like mess. No discipline, no respect for the chain of command, no morale.

He was even put in prison briefly for having a punch up with a senior officer.

Based Ataturk

Reminds me of what was probably an apocryphal story I've heard and never bothered to further research. When Americans landed to take a coastal fort in Tunisia, they were met by a combined force of Vichy French and Italian soldiers. The Italians surrendered immediately. The Vichy French fought for about 10 minutes after this and then gave up.

Still reeling from when Ethiopia fucked them in the ass for trying to invade.

>-poor leadership/worse than Sowejts

"Who is Georgy Zhukov"

>Soldiers were all rigth
>It was the bad equipment

They did awfully bad at Guadalajara in the Spanish Civil War against militias without any significant heavy equipment. I would not dismiss the idea that italians just are not suited for war in the last centuries

out of that picture Italy still won all those conflicts:

We got em good the second time

Aint saying they were good soldiers, just that theyre were decent tier/ok.
Btw spanish soldiers always had been some hard and tought fighters, except today.

They had no interest in fighting. Italy was split in its views on it all and this is reflected in my own family.

he was shitty first few years
and he alone cannot make 1000's of officers and generals good

Someone will post the 10 battles of the Isonzo river.

>during WW2

Not a proper state.

>Guadalajara
>militias
They fought against an international brigade, these were run by the communists were shockingly disciplinarian, and that international brigade was full of Italian anti-fascists.
t. CNT pro

Naturally.

holy fuck how does this even happens

Imagine if you will a highly fertile nation, ruled over by city-states and protected by mountains from every threat imaginable. Now imagine that instead of a dedicated warrior-nobility, these city-states hire their soldiers, resulting in a mercenary class instead. Imagine that these mercenaries are in it purely for the money and purposely use outdated methods to limit casualties among themselves, to the point where they get a reputation for being mockfighters. That is Italy until Napoleon dropped by. Italians never had a tradition of legitimate warfare, and developed their own form of barely lethal warfare. When Napoleon became emperor, he wrote to his brother Joseph (who still ruled Napels at the time) that he considered Napolitan soldiers no better than no soldiers at all.

Between Napoleon and the unification of Italy we have barely 50 years. And guess what? The man who unified Italy through force of arms was... Napoleon III. Venice was conquered back for Italy... by Prussia.

You have a new nation with no military history, no military experience, no military staff, nothing. And this country is thrown into a world war. If the expression "lions led by donkeys" applies to one country in WW1, it's Italy.

Compare Germany which, while having been united later than Italy, already had centuries of military tradition.

International brigades were shit

One man not at all indicative of the vast majority of soviet commanders and even then, nothing extraordinary

Shitty officers and NCO corps, like many shit armies. Coordination and communication among troops is the most important thing after having beans and bullets in the first place.

Italy was also pitifully unprepared for war. Their economy was unsuited for the scale that WW2 took place at, and their actual army, despite having on paper numbers, was poorly trained.

To be fair, that is the absolute worst possible terrain to attack across. Mountains, plus a river. It's legitimately insane to attack across that shit.

It's telling that the Austrians, the most useless fuckers of the war despite being the ones who started it, managed to hold on. Terrain matters quite a bit.

Shit terrain and tactics

the better question would why do they totally fucking suck balls at making warfare for all time after the fall of rome?

This isn't correct.

"Good soldiers, bad officers."

-Rommel

I feel like we have this thread every day

I dont know how he managed not to get court marshalled and dragged through the mud for that let alone keep his job even when Mussolini came in