Mussolini thread

Was he as much of a military incompetent as Hitler or no

I mean yes of course Italy failed pretty badly during WW2 but was that down to him, his generals or both?

Any book recommendations?

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I mean, he was commanding the Italian military so there is not much to work with there.

They did manage to take over Ethiopia and Albania user!

>bald
There's your problem. All successful leaders had hair or at least wore a wig.

Rommel had a pretty high opinion of the average Italian soldier. It was just their commanders who failed them.

Can we pretend to have an intelligent discussion

p-p-please

Prove me wrong. I'd go as far as saying that the amount of hair, potential or current, is directly correlated to a leader's success. Just take Alexander and his beautiful head as an example

Let me put it this way; remember how bad the invasion of Greece went? A large part of it was that Mussolini demobilized half the Italian army on the eve of the investigation to help with the harvest.

Can you explain the whole harvest concept

Did similar things happen in other countries?

He was doing okay until he began to have small penis syndrome with regard to Hitler.

>Can you explain the whole harvest concept

I mean, it's basic agriculture, at least from a ruler's management perspective: It takes a lot of manpower to do planting, and a lot of a lot to pull in the harvest. If you don't want people to starve, you need to have enough manpower in place at those times in order to plant and to reap. If those people are lining up on the Albanian border getting ready to attack Greece, they're not in farms in Italy making sure the crop comes in.
>Did similar things happen in other countries?

Yes and no, depending on how you define "similar things". Germany, the Soviets, the Chinese, and parts of the British empire all had manpower shortages and consequent food shortages because agricultural production was down. In some cases, it was made up by foreign import or confiscation, but in all of the above, the problems didn't start until the war was thrust upon them. None of them were so dysfunctional that they made mincemeat of things while just planning for a war.

It's interesting to think what might have happened had Mussolini postponed the invasion until after the harvest had bee collected

Would this have been before or after Barbarossa had started?

If so how does this affect that

Mussolini revered in some circles, and there's a thread about him every week here. I don't like him very much because he emphasized expansion and conquest much to the detrement of his nation. He had good ideas though.

>much to the detrement of his nation
For the most part he didn't have a choice, he had to have a platform to launch attacks against Yugoslavia.

This. He should of went the Franco rout and he would probably be a controversial, but still respected figure in history maybe

He made a lot of very bad choices. He was good at politics, though. As far as Italy's warmaking goes, it was not nearly ready. This is a very good video on the subject, particularly the comparison of a standard Italian to a standard German division. They didn't have enough equipment nor enough industry to produce more.
youtube.com/watch?v=IqoOk5nZEKw

I'd agree with this. Napoleon, in his early years, had a huge head of hair, though as he grew older he lost it, started winning less decisive battles, ultimately losing.

This must be investigated further. For science.

Thanks for the video

He made the decision to invade France in 1940 to get some clay. Not only did it show Italy as a backstabbing country, it ended being a hilarious disaster as the Italian army was nowhere near ready.

>Any book recommendations?
check these book lists out
pastebin.com/y0N0Ximk

pastebin.com/DhShAReV

>he would probably be a controversial, but still respected figure in history maybe
so not Franco

Rommel was a cunt who ignored the logistics of the North Africa campaign and basically took all the supplies he could for his own units at the expense of the Italian units. Maybe if he had owned up to his own strategic failures instead of blaming the Italians for everything he'd have done better.

C.J. Caesar