Some striking things I brought from this book:

1.  In spite of the bombast, Mussolini's political power in Italy was in reality very limited. He could move generals and admirals from position to position, and even sack them for extremely obvious incompetence, but he couldn't bring in new blood from outside the top ranks of the armed forces. The fascist regime sometimes beat up its political enemies, or exiled them to unpleasant places. It very rarely killed them, not because of any moral qualms but because it paid too high a political price when it did so. The Fascists also failed to demand the kind of sacrifices that the other major powers did, probably out of fear of a political backlash. Through most of the war, the military's share of gross domestic product remained low compared to every other major power. While the Fascists nationalized much of Italian industry, they didn't exercise much control over the nationalized companies. Nationalized companies no longer had to worry about bankruptcy or remaining competitive, but in other ways they acted as almost totally independent kingdoms. The combination of freedom from bankruptcy and little government control led to very high prices. Making steel in Italy cost four times what importing it would have. An Italian battleship cost twice as much to build as it would have in a French shipyard. In some cases, companies were given a monopoly on building classes of weapons, and held onto that monopoly in spite of providing poorly designed models throughout the war. A joint venture of Fiat and Ansaldo designed all of Italy's tanks and armored cars. That joint venture put design in the hands of one person throughout the war. The monopoly remained intact in spite of providing mediocre designs throughout the war. The Italians were offered a Czech medium tank design by the Germans early on, and designs and even machine tools for Panzer III's and IV's later. The Italians got an intact Soviet T34 to study early on, but apparently never attempted to copy it.
2. The Italian military was very resistant to innovations. Part of that was structural, part of it was due to the individuals involved. The book cites a case where it took a week to design a Molotov cocktail, and 6 months to get it approved for production by all of the bureaucracies that had to sign off on it. In another case, an innovative little corner of the naval establishment created a series of increasingly effective radar sets and repeatedly tried to get the navy to test the prototypes on ships. From 1936 to 1941, the navy refused to try those prototypes out. They finally got a taste of what radar could do from the British, and tried to get their radar into production. The bureaucracies tied up production long enough that the Italians had to get radar units from the Germans. Remarkably, the Italian units were still in many ways more effective than either British or German radar as late as 1943.
3. In spite of Mussolini's warlike talk, the Italians were very poorly prepared for war in a multitude of ways. The Italian army really was a paper tiger. It had over 90 divisions, but those divisions were small and poorly equipped. An Italian division had roughly half the manpower of a British one for example. The Italian army had an inordinate number of officers, but far too few non-commissioned officers for its size. It was also deficient in most of the inconspicuous little things like trucks, radios, and training that make an army effective. The Italian mobilization process tried to work at nation-building by putting people from throughout Italy in the same unit. Unfortunately, the process just reduced unit cohesion and made mobilization cumbersome. Italian logistics organization was so bad it could barely keep an immobile division supplied, and a war of movement made matters worse. Italian production of war materials would have kept around twenty divisions supplied with adequate quantities of mediocre weapons. Italian industry simply wasn't up to the task of equipping 90+ divisions with war material. Italy's shortage of every kind of fuel made it impossible to expand production.
4. The Italian army and regime was capable of learning to some extent. As the war went on, training improved. Tactics improved. Weapons design improved, especially aircraft design. By 1943 the Italians were producing small quantities of fighter aircraft competitive with the best Germany could offer, though by that time the Italian economy was falling apart and production was far too low.
5. Given all of the handicaps they had to overcome, the average Italian soldier actually fought rather well, at least on the defensive. Most mass surrenders happened when units were cut off and really were in a hopeless position. Italian troops tended to end up in hopeless positions much more often than they should have due to stupid decisions on the part of Italian or in some cases German leadership, but that wasn't the fault of the average soldier. Putting elite but lightly armed mountain divisions up against T34s on the plains around Stalingrad was simply stupid. Attacking Greece with winter coming on, with no logistical preparations, and after having just demobilized 600,000 troops (out of 1.2 million men under arms in Italy) was just stupid. Putting masses of foot-borne infantry out on the North African deserts was stupid.

This is a good book-full of insights, facts, and reasons why things happened. I didn't get many good what-ifs out of it though. The Italian armed forces performed poorly for so many reasons and for such intertwining reasons that it is hard to visualize a point of divergence that leads to Italy doing well in World War II.

 

 Comments are very welcome.