One day at college an African American dorm-mate snidely remarked that the Italian Army was a joke in World War II.
Those were the days just before The Godfather – book and movies – so the main “embarrassment” Italian Americans had to deal with was Mussolini’s military. I knew very little about the subject except from old movies like Sahara and Five Graves to Cairo, both made during the war, both heavy on war-weary soldiers or laughable Italian generals.
I’m sure I had a mild reaction to the ‘bro’ (Blacks at college were gods back then.) but I remember thinking that even Blacks can disdain the sacrifice of Italians. However, like me he was only a product of the propaganda that survived the Second World War. Propaganda so vile that it was, and is, still spouted by historians and ignorant folk long after the war.
Since the founding of our Institute in 1987, we have been on a crusade to document the real history of the Italic people. The facts have always been out there, but rarely collected in publications or in Hollywood. We delved into the Second World War in numerous articles in The Italic Way Magazine. We are currently working on a major report titled Italy at War based on new research and that of thirty years by our team of analysts. It will be a history like none other on the subject. Here is one timely nugget:
In 1941 on November 19th, the desert war in North Africa was in its second year. The Italian Army, which had been pushed back to western Libya by British Commonwealth forces from Egypt, were now reinforced by new mechanized divisions from Italy and Rommel’s Afrika Korps. The tide was turning not only because reinforcements had arrived but because Churchill ordered his African commander to immediately dispatch 57,000 men and air squadrons to help the Greeks. The Greeks, in fact, were exhausted fighting off the Italians on that front. In short, Rommel, who had arrived in February, now had new elite Italian divisions and fewer Brits to fight thanks to the Italian tenacity on the Greek Front.
The Italo-German forces now laid siege to the port city of Tobruk. To break the siege, the British launched Operation Crusader, a massive armored attack on Axis forces. However, they ran into the Italian “Ariete” (“ram”) Armored Division. A tank battle ensued that stopped the British offensive. Ariete lost 34 tanks and British between 30 – 50 tanks. Ariete had won the day. (Its commander General Mario Balotta received the German Eagle and Iron Cross, and later served on the Russian Front.) His division remained in place while Rommel opted to avoid more encounters with the superior British force. Ariete covered Rommel’s successful retreat.
In his diary, Rommel wrote after the loss of Africa: “In the Ariete we lost our oldest Italian comrades, from whom we had probably always demanded more than they, with their poor armament, had been capable of performing.”
The Axis forces did not give up on capturing Tobruk. The next spring the fortress succumbed and some 30,000, mostly South Africans and Indians, surrendered to General Enea Navarini. The victory also yielded 2,000 vehicles, 2,000 tons of fuel, and 5,000 tons of rations. So shocking was the capitulation of Tobruk that Winston Churchill later wrote in his memoirs of the calamity “Defeat is one thing; disgrace is another.” Rommel was promoted to Field Marshal.
This is just one slice of the history that has been omitted in most annals. Italy at the time was a nation of only 44 million people with few natural resources, and only transitioned economically from agricultural to industrial in the 1930s. Yet, Italians fought on more fronts than is generally known: North Africa, East Africa, Russia, the Balkans, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, even the Black Sea and the Battle of Britain. They first fought Americans at the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia where they broke through American lines when their German ally could not. They fought with the Germans and against them – a continuous 6-year agony without pause.
So much has been maliciously buried in cinematic and popular histories. The honorable defeated deserve respect. -JLM
Same for WW1. There are a lot of misconceptions about Italy’s war effort.
I attended college in the US and took a history class taught by a German professor. He said that Italy was out the picture in 1917 after the defeat of Caporetto. After doing some research, I found out that both foreign popular culture and foreign historians emphasize that intermediate defeat and conveniently forget the last half of the war and the final Italian victory of Vittorio Veneto. Many actually believe that Italy lost the war despite the unconditional surrender signed by the Austro-Hungarian empire.
I know it is hard to believe considering that Italy victory marketed the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire and huge areas of land were given to Italy including Alto Adige, Istria and Dalmazia.
Next time you go to Rome stop at the “Palazzo Marina” on the Lungotevere. On the sides of the entrance, you can see the anchors of two Austrian battleships sunk by the Italian Navy in WW1.
I had a teaching colleague (non-Italian) who is into military history. When I mentioned the Italian “frogmen” of WWII–the ace underwater units who gave the British fits–he knew exactly what I was talking about. He also, to my astonishment, praised them to the skies, despite their being on the “other side” (at the time).
He also reminded me that Italy was the first nation to perfect the use of planes in warfare during WWI. And he knew about Italo Balbo’s famous trans-Atlantic flights.
And let’s not forget the Italian Americans during those conflicts, either. Many Italians signed up for WWI to speed up the citizenship process. And Italian Americans were both the largest-ethnic fighting force during WWII also had the most Congressional Medal of Honor winners, a fact which Americans don’t know.
During the Second World War, a lot of Allied propaganda was directed against Italian military performance, usually expressing a stereotype of cowardice and incompetency. Italian troops frequently fought with great valor and distinction, especially well trained and equipped units such as the Ariete, Bersaglieri, Folgore and Alpini divisions. The following is a quote from Rommel on a plaque at El Alamein dedicated to the Italian Bersaglieri: “The German soldier has impressed the world, however the Italian Bersagliere soldier has impressed the German soldier”. In spite of the significant role the Italian Army played in North Africa, most of the documentaries I have seen say virtually nothing about the Italian army.
In the American Italian Heritage Museum, Albany, NY we have a Military Room showing the contribution of Italian Americans in all our wars. Their accomplishments are amazing. In World War II about 10% of the American military was made up of people of Italian descent. Over 22 Italian Americans have won the Medal of Honor.
The record is clear when Italians and Italian Americans are called to serve in a just war the record is clear. They fight bravely!
They are currently making a movie in Italy about WW2 Italian war hero Salvatore Todaro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Todaro_(naval_officer)
He is best known for his participation in the battle of the Atlantic and the two instances in which he towed to safety the lifeboats carrying the survivors of ships he had sunk.
He also joined the X Flottiglia MAS later on (the “frogmen” Bill mentioned above).
Unlike fictional stuff like Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, it is an Italian movie and it shows Italian soldiers for what they really were. Just like Hollywood movies do for American and British soldiers.
In the 20th Century before WWII, Italy defeated the Ottoman Turks just before WWI, fought on the winning side in WWI, and conquered Ethiopia in the mid 1930’s in a one sided conflict in which the difficult terrain gave the Italians much more trouble than the Ethiopians, who did fight bravely. Italian engineers in Ethiopia impressed military analysts in Europe and the USA. Italian soldiers fought bravely and effectively against the British in East Africa and at the battles of First and Second Alamein in North Africa. Italian military intelligence in North Africa was of major assistance to Rommel and the Afrika Korps. And Italian troops fought very well on the Eastern Front. In the Stalingrad campaign, the Italian army supporting the German 6th Army was outnumbered 9 to 1 when the Red Army attacked it and managed to hold out for three days before their front collapsed. Most of the men however managed to fight their way out of the Red Army pocket.