Jono said:Yep but at least we didn't keep on changing to the winning side during the second world war.
That comment (yes, a clear wind-up, I know) is about as accurate and insightful as an amateur propaganda leaflet. And let's face it, without that little Channel getting in Guderian's way, had the Germans captured the BEF in Dunkirk and held them as a bargaining chip, and without US lend-lease materiel and food, Britain would be a German province today. But if it makes you feel better, beat your chest and pretend that it was only your pride and prowess that turned the tide of the war in Europe, especially if it distracts you from the fact that you are a declining power in the world.
I will give you the Battle of Britain (although the Canadians, Free French, Polish and other fighter pilots lent a big hand), but without the Aussies, New Zealanders, South Africans and Indians, would you have been able to hold Rommel?
But who is "we?" England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland? Why does England play football, rugby and cricket (sports they invented) as "England"...yet go to the Olympics (presumably to maximise medal chances) and fight wars as "Great Britain"? (presumably to maximise the fighting prowess of the Scots, Welsh and Irish and bolster manpower numbers?)
But let's just forget that minor digression...read on if you like...
So what should the Italian monarchy (and note I say "monarchy" and not "people", as Italy wasn't a unified modern democracy acting via referendum in the '40s) and its fascist upstarts have done? Should they have opposed the Allies and watched their country get ground to dust in the process (a microcosm of that is the needless destruction of the historic Monte Cassino by Allied bombers)? Just ask the Germans who witnessed the wholesale erasing of the entire eastern half of their historic civilisation at the hands of the Soviets if it wouldn't have been better to call it quits in 1943 and strike an alliance of like cultures with Britain and America against the Red Army? What if Stauffenberg's bomb had killed Hitler and the Germans sued for peace. Would they be considered a population of Quislings? Millions of Germans died senslessly (both in combat and in captivity in Russia thereafter) so that a massive percentage of their cultural and historic heritage could be turned into rubble, and in the process they (unwittingly or not) bought more time for the SS to carry out the Final Solution.
For 1,500+ years Italians have kept their peninsula (in whatever political configuration you choose), with its invaluable historic and cultural treasures, relatively free from the kind of destruction witnessed elsewhere in Europe. Sure the Spanish and French built fortresses throughout Italy and plundered at will, but nothing compared with the 30 years war, for example.
The Italian leadership (weak and reprehnsible as they were in the '30s and WW2) did what any other European monarchy would have done in the face of such overwhelming odds: they fired Mussolini and threw in their lot with their potential conquerors, something the German upper classes simply couldn't muster the guts to do. Why? Perhaps Germans believed a lot more in Nazism than Italians did in fascism? Perhaps they should have kept their Kaiser around?
As a state, Italy did nothing different from what European monarchies have been doing for centuries. Only Germany had so completely abandoned its European roots and in doing so paid the ultimate price. Luckily Rommel didn't exert his genius and push the Allies back into the English Channel in June '44, otherwise there may not be anything left of Germany pre 1940, as the Soviets would have marched all the way to Calais.
In conclusion, people perpetuate this fallacy of gutless Italian capitulation as if 1930's and '40's Italy was some sort of unified modern democracy where the people got to choose their destiny. Sure, there were a million deliriously nationalistic people in Piazza Venezia for Mussolini's famous call to arms ("Italiani, correte alle armi"), perhaps buying the rhetoric of Rome's second coming, but the overwhelming majority of Italians - financial tributaries to Rome's bulging and corrupt "pubblica amministrazione" - had absolutely no say in the decisions of their leadership. Likewise, the vast majority of their conscripted military wanted no part in Italy's foreign warmongering, but went along with it until it became clear that the promises of quick victories in Egypt and Greece were false. Many Italians thought that attacking their Greek cousins was an absolutely idiotic proposition (large parts of southern Italy have more in common with Greek society than traditional Italian society), and many leading Italian statesmen were well aware of IoannisMetaxas' leanings towards Nazi Germany, so the move made absolutely no sense from any point of view as it drove Metaxas over to the British and the Greek people behind their monarchy, which they had all but abandoned before war broke out.
Churchill's letters to Mussolini reveal Churchill's near desperation to bring Mussolini over to his way of thinking, even as late as mid 1940. The British leader leaves little doubt that he had a strong admiration for the Italian and felt that Italy would distance itself from Germany if the BEF and France could hold off the German assault in western Europe., and played hard on Italy's historic hostile relations with Austria. In fact Italy didn't jump into the war when Germany overran Poland, Denmark and Norway, and only declared war on France when it appeared obvious that Germany was indeed the master of Europe and Churchill's pleas appeared little more than the last words of a doomed leader. Mussolini's personal ambitions to climb onto Hitler's podium then pushed the completely unprepared armed forces of his country into a war it had no place fighting, and the move was strongly criticised by his own son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano, who declared the Italian army obsolete and hopelessly outclassed by modern military standards (Ciano eventually paid with his life for his opposition to Mussolini's megalomania).
By military standards, in general Italian troops performed miserably, as miserably as conscript soldiers with inferior equipment and paltry training, fighting in foreign territory for a cause they don't believe in, might perform. As poorly as Soviet conscripts performed in Afghanistan from '79 to '88 and Chechnya in '96, as poorly as many units of British troops in North America in the 1780's, as poorly as American conscripts in Vietnam (despite overwhelming firepower and air superiority, something the Italians never had, except in the initial weeks against the Greeks), as poorly as Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait in '91.
As a rule, only the professional
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