De waarheid over het Italiaanse oorlogsbijdrage

Gestart door Do1990, 19/11/2015 | 15:40 uur


Do1990

Is wel een interessant stukje, wat mensen vergeten dat de Italianen grote pioniers waren op militair gebied, hun waren de oprichters van wat nu de "Navy Seals" zijn, en volgens mij ook de eerste parachutisten. En voornamelijk die parachutisten van het "Folgore" divisie vochten tot de dood, zoals het plaatsen van mijnen direct onder Engelse tanks tijdens een veldslag in Libiƫ(El alamein als het goed is).

None of the major participants of World War II have suffered as much unjust and unfounded criticism as the military forces of the Kingdom of Italy. It really is just amazing how this false narrative has taken hold and grown ever stronger and more prevalent over time. According to most mainstream and popular histories, the royal Italian military and the overall part played by the Kingdom of Italy in World War II was totally inconsequential. In a way not seen with any other people, the Italian military is widely dismissed as a comic opera operation with cowardly troops, ignorant commanders and useless weapons totally dependent on their German allies for their very survival. It is truly astonishing that this stereotype has persisted as it is totally, completely, untrue in every way. Obviously, being on the losing side, Italy suffered plenty of losses but they also won their share of victories. It is true that a number of leaders in the Italian high command were incompetent but they also had generals with impressive records of success. The Germans did have to bail them out from time to time but, the truth be known, the Italians also came to the rescue of the Germans on several occasions. Likewise, while Italy was less industrially advanced than most other major participants and so often had to make do with antiquated equipment, there were also examples of Italian weaponry being well in advance of others. In short, as with any country, the Kingdom of Italy had both high and low points, successes and failures just like anyone else.

In the first place, attacks on the Italian character display a blatant double-standard that most people simply never think about. For example, in entering the war, Italy started with an attack on southern France when the French were already, for all intents and purposes, defeated by the German blitzkrieg. American President Roosevelt famously referred to this as a 'stab in the back' on the part of Italy. Does this apply to other powers? The same President Roosevelt, even more famously, referred to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as, "dastardly and unprovoked". That was certainly untrue ("dastardly" is a judgment call but calling it "unprovoked" is demonstrably false) but what of the simultaneous attacks on the British and Dutch? Britain was in a fight for its life but in particular the attack on the Dutch East Indies was an attack on the territory of a country whose homeland had already been completely defeated and occupied by the enemy. Was this then an even worse 'stab in the back' than the attack on France? The same standard does not seem to be employed in viewing the joint Anglo-Soviet invasion and occupation of neutral Iran, possibly because most people have probably never even heard of it. For the Soviets, this is not too surprising as it was a monstrous regime that committed many monstrous crimes but for Britain, under Churchill, to invade a neutral country because of military necessity in a wider war after going to war with the German Empire in the First World War for doing exactly the same in regard to Belgium shows an obvious double-standard.

In the conduct of the war, the Kingdom of Italy did not do well in the opening attack on France but then neither did Britain in their opening clash with the Germans or the Japanese in France and Malaysia nor did the Americans in their opening clashes with Japan in the Philippines or the Germans in north Africa. In Italian East Africa the Italians performed very well and were under the leadership of Prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta who proved a very capable battlefield commander. His forces launched such a sudden and overwhelming offensive against British Somaliland that Churchill was furious at how quickly his forces had retreated with so few losses (his commanders rightly pointed out that suffering needless losses in a hopeless battle was not the mark of good leadership). Italian forces conquered British Somaliland as well as occupying border areas of the Sudan and British East Africa. When the Allies finally gathered overwhelming forces to take on Italian East Africa, the Italians offered fierce resistance that gained them the respect of the British and, when the end finally came, the Duke of Aosta won further admiration for the gallantry he displayed in surrender.

In the early days of the war in Africa, the Italian forces came closer to victory than most realize. One major success that went a long way to allowing the Italians to make a major fight in north Africa was the long-range bombing missions launched by Lt. Colonel Ettore Muti on Palestine and Bahrain which did severe damage to British port facilities and oil refineries. This caused the British considerable logistical problems but also forced them to divert resources to defend the Middle East which were badly needed elsewhere. It also helped relieve the threat to the shipping lanes in the Mediterranean, allowing Italian forces to be moved to north Africa with very few losses. Starting from Italian bases in the Dodecanese Islands, making a wide circle around British bases in Cyprus, the Italian bombers hit British possessions in the Middle East and put the oil refineries in Haifa out of operation for at least a month. British aircraft operating out of Mt Carmel responded but were too late to intercept the Italian bombers as no one had been expecting an attack so far from what most considered the front lines. Also in the field of long-range flights, in 1942 an Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.75 flew from the Ukraine, across Soviet airspace to Japanese-held Inner Mongolia and then on to Tokyo in an effort to warn the Japanese that the Allies had broken their codes. It did no good as the Japanese refused to believe that their codes could be cracked (though they were even before the war began) and were upset by the flight for fear that it would incur Russian anger and after the clash at Khalkhin Gol Japan had a lasting fear of the Russians. Still, it was a remarkable achievement, overcoming Soviet AA fire, air attack, inaccurate maps and a Mongolian sandstorm that all threatened to botch the mission.

Much of the unfair criticism leveled at the Italian war effort undoubtedly comes from operations in the first part of the war in north Africa. Mussolini wanted a quick and crushing offensive against the British in Egypt but his commander in the area, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, was not supportive of such an operation and after advancing about sixty miles into Egypt successfully, stopped and established defensive positions that were later rolled up by much smaller British forces in "Operation Compass". In the first place, Marshal Graziani is often held up as an example of incompetent Italian leadership because of this fiasco but, as distasteful as he is to modern sensibilities, Graziani was an extremely effective military commander. Looking at his career in total, the invasion of Egypt was his one and only failure. He had been misled about the strength of the forces opposing him while he knew all too well how deficient the Italian forces were in equipment and logistical support. The lack of sufficient transport alone would have been enough to cripple such an ambitious invasion as Mussolini envisioned. When the British counter-attacked and advanced so swiftly, taking 100,000 Italian prisoners in the process, many pointed to this as "proof" of incompetence and cowardice. Absolute rubbish.

In the first place, Italian resistance did not simply collapse and, if one cares to look, there are numerous accounts -from the British- of Italian forces fighting effectively and with immense determination, fighting to the death against impossible odds, not in numbers but with shells that were ineffective, outclassed tankettes and artillery that was incapable of penetrating British armor. As for those who surrendered, many of them were colonial troops who were reliable enough under ordinary circumstances but who were not going to go above and beyond to maintain the Italian empire. However, again, we have a double-standard clearly at play. 100,000 Italians were taken prisoner by a numerically smaller enemy force and so they are dismissed as cowardly. Does that mean that the British, Indians, Australians etc were "cowardly" for surrendering 100,000 men to a much smaller Japanese army of 36,000 men at Singapore and Malaysia? Of course not, nor should they be. Japan had many advantages they lacked and the British were unaware of certain pivotal Japanese weaknesses. Numbers alone do not tell the whole story. And, finally, the Italian forces did rally in the end to bring the British advance to a halt, though, again, most mainstream histories do not tell this story, preferring to portray the arrival of the German "Afrika Korps" as the only thing that saved Italian north Africa.

In fact, the British were worn out from their long advance across the desert, their supply lines were over-extended and the Italians were fighting with the tenacity of people who had their backs to the wall. A crucial element was the formation of the Special Armored Brigade under General Valentino Babini. Where this unit is mentioned at all, it is often simply stated that it was formed in 1940 and then wiped out toward the end of 1941 but in the intervening time it did considerable damage to the British, especially considering the handicaps that Italian armor had to operate under. General Babini was an avid proponent of fast, mechanized warfare and his achievements should not be ignored. At El Mechili on January 24-25, 1941 Babini and his men stopped the British advance, inflicting considerable losses on the British Fourth Armoured Brigade. They were forced to fall back, reorganize, reinforce and then focus on trying to encircle the Italians. Babini had to fall back to avoid this but his men still fought valiantly at Bede Fomm where they faced an onslaught by the entire Seventh Armoured Division, fighting to the last against vastly superior British tanks until they were wiped out and the remnant taken prisoner. The Italians had, nonetheless, hit hard enough to force the British to back off from finishing off the Italian presence in north Africa altogether and this provided the 'breathing space' for the arrival of the Germans under General Erwin Rommel.

At that point, of course, the situation changed considerably and Rommel has gone down in history as one of the greatest military leaders of all time for his stunning victories over the British in north Africa. What many fail to realize though is that the forces effectively under his command, which he used to win these masterful successes, were 2/3 Italian and the large majority of his armored forces were Italian tanks. His most able counterpart in this was Italian Marshal Ettore Bastico who had proven himself a very capable commander in his career, particularly his victorious campaign during the Spanish Civil War. The two often clashed (Rommel was notoriously critical of his superiors) but he was one of the few Italian officers that Rommel would at least listen to and Marshal Bastico correctly predicted that the second invasion of Egypt, that ended at El Alamein, would fail and exactly why. Unfortunately, his warnings, along with others, went unheeded.


De rest kan je hier lezen:

http://madmonarchist.blogspot.nl/2015/03/the-truth-about-italian-war-record.html

Hier meer informatie:

http://www.lifeinitaly.com/history/world-war-2.asp