Why are italians so bad at fighting wars compared to their ancestors?

Italy isn't a real country so why would Italians want to fight for it?

Kek

Many Italian military leaders were appointed through nepotism, rather than meritocracy. Also Italians didn't have much of a unifying national identity, meaning that a Sicilian wouldn't feel much allegiance towards a Venetian, vise versa and so on. Although, I guess that has more to do with why they were always switching sides.

Italy was much like ancient Greece. A collection of city states with varying degrees of unity.

What's an Italy?

You thread is an insult to Mario Lalli, who died heroically at the infamous Battle of Pont St-Louis and almost wounded one of the nine gods that were killing Italians en mass on the road
If only his grenade had entered the casemate instead of bouncing back on the road and killing even more Italians...

The battle in question btw

...

>join whoever seems to be winning at the time
>if you are losing, surrender immediately
>sit out the war drinking the mountains of ethiopian coffee you obtained in the 30s and your cellar of wine
>re-engineer war industry to produce sports cars
seems like a good strategy to me

Italy is bad at war because it's not a real country.

Why are we Americans dying for the South Vietnamese?

Why are we xxxx region of Italy that was a kingdom with its own language for centuries/more than a millenium dying for this made up thing called Italy?

So did Augustus make a mistake when he created Italy then? The borders are almost the same as it is today.

There is only one question I can ask: Why didn't they just get a tank or mortar?

The officer who lead the attack (Guiseppe Cadorna, grandson of Luigi) decided it wasnt necessary

Romans were only good at fighting technologically inferior peoples and even then they still got wrecked now and then.

Italians have always been good at fighting. Starting from the romans and ending up in inventing a good half of swordmanship schools in the middle ages and early modern age.
Italy wasn't good in the laat two centuries mainly because of bad leadership.
Remember the Alpini have been the best mountain elite troops for all the major conflicts. We also had a really good navy for the world wars considering how economically underdeveloped we were. We also were the first to conduce succesful offenses on high-quote during ww1.
Also, in history military tactic was extremely influenced by Italian tacticians: The Roman Empire, the Condottieri in the middle ages. And funny enough Napoleone was ethnically Italian.

In fact even the modern Italian state has got a very good winrate... I think around 60 percent.

pasta shortage

>it's over Luigi i have the high ground
>you underestimate my power

Italy was suffering economically due of wars and adventures in Ethiopia and Spain. They were also the weakest of the main powers in conflict.
Their industry cannot follow the rhythm of the war.

In other hand, they were the only ones in conflict which had modern war experience. Rommel also said that they were the best creating defences like bunkers, etc...and the soldiers were brave, but they had poor leadership.

I always thought that Italy believed that France would destroy Nazi Germany. So, the Nazi victory were a surprise for them, so they joined the victorious Germany for opportunistic reasons.

It wasn't that bad overall. Italy had just slightly higher casualties than Austro-Hungary over the course of war: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Front_(World_War_I) They couldn't penetrate the alps because it's an extremely good terrain advantage. Cadona was just a retard employing the wrong strategy. When he was replaced by based Armando Diaz Austro-Hungary got BTFO.

>So, the Nazi victory were a surprise for them, so they joined the victorious Germany for opportunistic reasons.

Italy was already with Germany before they defeated France
Italians actually opened another front and tried to help the Germans to invade France but being Italians, they falied

My great grandpa fought as a cavalry man against the Austrians. My great Uncle was killed in combat.

> yfw Armando Diaz wasnt italian

But they joined later.

>join as the front is closing and victory is assured in an attempt to grab some land
>still fail
Literally the Ralph Wiggum of Europe
>I'M HELPING - Ralph "Literally Italy" Wiggum

>Born in Naples to a father of distant Spanish heritage, and an Italian mother (Irene Cecconi)

Lots of terroni have Spanish surnames because because of the Habsburgers.

If people knew about the real reason why Italy was shit in WW2 they'd stop with this meme. Mussolini said to Hitler that he needed until 1942-1943 to prepare for war. Hitler fucked him over by declaring it much earlier. Italy entered the war extremely unprepared with outdated equipment from WW1.

>but Italy was bad in WW1 too

WW1 happened just a few decades after the wars of the Italian unification, which left the everyone economically fucked and caused the North-South economic division that we see to this day.

non-meme reason: industrialization and lack of resources, along with outdated military tactics.

Italy doesn't suffer from bad troops, who performed well fighting the Austrians, Ottomans, and the Germans throughout their history as an Empire. Defeating the Austrians multiple times in their independence wars, and again against the Ottomans in Libya and Rhodes, culminating in the final defeat of Austria-Hungary in WWI.

Italy's main problem however was resources, where the majority of their oil and steel had to be imported from the British, once those supplies were cut between sanctions for their conquest of Ethiopia and later their entry into WWII, there was no way Italy was going to be able to sustain an army to fight a global conflict for very long, as their stockpiled oil reserves only lasted 9 months.

Next is that with Italy being in the Central Mediterranean, naturally they are a naval power moreso than they are a land power, with the Regia Marina trading equal blows with the British in the Mediterranean until the navy ran out of fuel and was forced to remain at port for the rest of the war.

as for the *MASS SURRENDER* meme, the Italians surrendered because of the resource shortages, with no fuel in the tanks and no supply shipments for food, ammunition, and weapons coming in because the Navy is out of fuel too, there was no way they could fight to begin with.

Also the newspaper in the OP is propaganda, as the Italians did have conditions to the peace which the Allies accepted, the largest of which was that the Allies had to defend Italy against the inevitable German invasion in response, which was upheld.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_of_Cassibile#Conditions

Too much de pasta Maremma maiala

No fucking way.

>Next is that with Italy being in the Central Mediterranean, naturally they are a naval power moreso than they are a land power

This.Venetians and Genoans effectively controlled the Mediterranean through their history.

...

>Italy's main problem however was resources, where the majority of their oil and steel had to be imported from the British

You forgot coal as well, the most important resource to fuel the industrial revolution. Italy had a severe lack of that.

Ayy

this. so much evidence points to this

>tfw Napoleon was probably the reincarnation of some Roman Emperor
>used France instead of Italy to achieve his goal of establishing a new Roman Empire because Italy was too divided at the time to try to start anything there

>WW1 happened just a few decades after the wars of the Italian unification
The franco prussian war happened during german unification.
Why did this not affect the germans negatively but did the italians?

Because they couldn't industrialize as effectively as Germany could due to lack of coal, oil and other important resources:

Because Italians just used Spanish soldiers to win their wars.Just look how hard they were stomped by Hannibal until Scipio formed a Spanish army.Overall Italians were always weak they just had the technology or money to conquer regions with better warriors

Bullying Lybia,the Ottomans and Ethiopia is not that hard.Unless you are Italian ...

>Armando Diaz
>Needing an Spaniard to win you a war
You proved nothing Luigi

>because of the Habsburgers.
Naples and Sicily were an Aragonese feud 2 centuries before the Habsburgs inherited Spain.
>Needing the rape babies of your invaders to win a war

When exactly did they switch side? In WW1 they only had a defensive pact with the Central Empires and in WW2 they overtrhrew the fascist government responsible for them joining the war along Germany

>Naples and Sicily

Aka irrelevant shitholes. Venetians and Genoans were still unmatched in the Mediterranean and Papal States were fairly powerful and influential.

>Kingdom of Naples
>Irrelevant
Why do people come to this board with ZERO fucking knowledge and start spewing shit they assume.
Read a fucking 2 minute wiki article before posting about something jesus.

As described by my great uncle: He and 3 men surprised a squad of Italians. One man knew Italian and demanded their surrender. It took around 20 seconds for the enemy to drop their arms and form a line.

Upon being told they were prisoners of war, and the offensive would soon result in an Allied victory, the men shrugged, quipped about coffee being less expensive and offered their captors cigarettes in exchange for sweets from their rations. The men made no attempt at escape in the 4 days they were held, and in fact warned of mines and treacherous roads ahead, saving the lives of their enemy captors.

They may have been a minority, but it would seem the average Italian wanted fuck-all to do with another war in Europe, particularly when command had showed a staggering lack of military competence. I presume most soldiers knew that losing wouldn't result in the mass slaughter and rape of their civilization, so why fight to the death when you can become a reasonably well treated prisoner and then return home once the war is lost?

Terroni were always irrelevant compared to North Italy. In the late WRE, the capital was moved to Milan and then Ravenna. After the collapse of the WRE and some fucking around in the peninsula by the Lombards and Franks, the Northern Italian city-states became extremely wealthy and developed and Papal States manipulated everyone through the papacy. Meanwhile, terroni were busy getting subjugated by the Byzantines, Moors, Normans, Aragonese, Bourbons and fucked in the ass by the Savoys during the unification.

There was literally nothing of value to be found in the Papal States except for the Pope himself.

>what is Rome and the Vatican

Subjected is the wrong term for the relationship between South Italy and the ERE.

Ohshitniggerwhatareyousaying.jpg

Ethiopia was heavily supported by the British in both attampts of Otalian occupation.
The ottomans were destroyed by Italy with no problems. Actually the only ones failing against the Ottomans were the anglo-french in the Gallipoli campaign....

Legitimately thinks Diaz was a Spaniard.

In WW2 by the time of the armistice Italians didn't care about the war. Quite litterally. At least we were smart enough not to waste lives on a lost cause.

>cucked by Greeks larping as Romans

You could make an argument for it still being Roman at the time of Justinian when they at least had Latin as the official language.

antiwar propoganda was pumped into them giving them no united reason to fight

You're underestimating the power the papacy had in the Middle Ages and the eras that followed. The crusades were commanded by them for a start

It's Frances fault that Italy was a divided mess.

>ERE wasn't legitimately Roman meme
Buttblasted Mario detected. You realize Greek was always a more important language that area of the empire, right?

>this kills the Greek larper

Were these lack of resources not taken into account when the war was started?

It's funny that Greek wewuzians litterally got their ass kicked by an Italian guy

Where may I find the source? I am very curious how could they let a parent of that son of a bitch near a position of Command, but after all Mussolini did make him "Marshal of Italy".

Mussolini informed Hitler that he wouldn't be ready for war until late 1942 as he needed to stockpile more resources for the war effort.

Hitler mostly ignored that and declared war on France in 1940, with the astonishing success of the French Campaign and impending surrender, Mussolini declared war expecting it to be done within the year, that the French surrender would make Britain capitulate soon afterward, and the war in Western Europe would have been over before the end of 1941.

I don't know much on Mussolini's reaction to Operation Barbarossa which continued the war, but I do know that once the US entered the war and Britain showed no signs of giving up in North Africa, Mussolini realized he was in way over his head, and dialed back Italian operations to conserve as much fuel as possible, only performing naval operations and offensives in Africa when he had to and so on.

Instead of attacking Ethiopia like a dumbfuck, thus getting kicked out of the society of nations maybe he should have kept out of it like Spain did, but I am glad he did not and thus he got toppled.

He was salty because of 1896 and wanted to teach those nigs a lesson.

>implying Roman culture wasn't one big wewuz of the Greeks

Is Italy the only nation whose colonies were a waste of time?

The bottom right one is an Italian victory though
I see the Italian flag on the winning side

South Italy was never relevant after the fall of Rome

>inb4 muh scuola siciliana

Relevant ebcause of Arabs and Normans who cultured the subhuman peasants, and Tuscans took what they produced and made it a MILLION times better

>inb4 muh amalfi

"""Relevant""" for like a century in the dark dark ages when evey other city lost its relevance, never reached the level of relevance other later and much more powerful city states had like Genoa or Venetia,not even a quarter of it.

Tl; dr: You were never relevant terroni, everything Italy has made came from central-north Italy, asides from a few painting and "illuminist" (therefore shit) writers

Partisans, a victory that resulted in a tragic waste of human lives and among them many brothers, it was like a civil war for them.

But it was still Latin in nature. This is when the ERE stopped being Roman: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclius

>He was responsible for introducing Greek as the Eastern Roman Empire's official language.

Coincidentally, they lost a big part of their territories on the Italian peninsula when they did that.

>after the fall of Rome

Much earlier, m8. Remember that the capitals of the late WRE were both in Northern Italy and Sicily was always poorer than the peninsula (and not even considered Italian by Augustus). It's hard to think of any relevant Roman figure that was born there also.

>be Greek
>massacre Latin people while claiming you wuz Roman at the same time

That's not how it works, Papadopoulos: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Latins

>crusades were commanded by them
hwut

I thought they were just like "Hey we're sanctioning these Crusades", did any religious figure ever exercise any real command over any Crusading force?

They've spent all their sword-mana

This. The Byzantines were devious, cosplaying literally-whos who deserved to get TURKED

Nah, the Crusades were lead by French nobles from France and England

The filename

I mean, it's the Pope who called for it, whatever. You're just being autistic about semantics. Obviously, the Pope himself didn't go to war and command an army of crusaders.

>call Donets Basin "Donets Basin"
>call Donetsk "Stalino"

what did they mean by this

>Padania posters

>Obviously, the Pope himself didn't go to war and command an army of crusaders.

Why is that "obvious"?
Saladin (the muslim equivalent of the pope) commanded himself

Not only that, but there has been instances of popes going at war. Though at the time the concept of the Crusades was already new, so the Pope taking an active part in it would have been too much.

Terronia was never relevant after Vesuvio's eruption. Search it in your heart, you know it's true.

Militarily and politically maybe not.
But Naples was definitely a center of culture and produced many great men.

Chap called Luigi Cadorna spent their entire supply of bravery on banks of Isonzo river. It probably depleted Italy in that respect for more than a century.

Genova was a vassal state of Castille/France depending on the year and Venice got BTFO in the Italian wars

their ancestors were disorganized shiftless barbarians

so of course their military history is just par the course

>Diaz
>Not Spanish.
An Italian bitch got PABLOED