How come Mussolini never got the same success as Hitler? Why

Italy isn't nearly as powerful or relevant as Germany.

Focused too much on irrelevant shitholes like Africa.

>>7873

Italians had a good navy in WWII

Italy lacks German industry

Mainly due to lack of resources, both political and physical, Germany had several times the industrial might of Italy, a unified people, and a huge amount of educated people. Italy had none of those things.

>>7915
This tbqh, the Italian navy was bretty good

Army was a sack of potatos though

>>7873
Because Mussolini was incompetent as fuck, and did things for propaganda purposes instead of practical purposes.

Invading the Balkans using conscripted soldiers of conquered nations was bound to be a failure of epic proportions, yet he still pushed through (forcing the Germans to help him, delaying and absolutely dooming any slight chance of Barbarossa to succeed. Communism was strengthened that day)

>>7873
Italy didn't lose ww1 and didn't have to rethink their whole approach on military including its doctrines and their industrial capacities weren't that big. Also they didn't have a plan, they just followed the germans and hoped to make some territorial gains here and there.

>>7962
they just needed time to prepare
it seems mussolini just wasted time doing what

>>7873
He was too focused on the trains.

>>8027
>forcing the Germans to help him, delaying and absolutely dooming any slight chance of Barbarossa to succeed

Nice meme.

>>7873
the italians always suck balls at warfare desu

they are only good at killing each other.

Believed hitler when he said he wouldnt start shit till 43

Italy was woefully under prepared for war in 1940

Their army and airforce were also backwards in a lot of ways, and needed serious modernization efforts

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Italy wans't united, the north was/is very differ than the south, so they never had an patriot felling like germany, and they din't like Mussolini too, that's why most of the soldiers just surrendered to numbers 10x smaller than theirs.

>>8097
Pretty much.

Come on, OP, this is A-Level (kek bongistan) stuff.

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they had good aeronautics desu

>>7915
But it was useless since they didn't even do the most basic of things with it.

Because Italians, like all Mediterranean people, are utterly incompetent.

>>7873
His problem was the fact that his country was made up of Italians.

>>8300
>Breda Ba88
>so bad that it sometimes couldnt take off
>one pilot found he couldnt turn his plane without stalling
>had to fly hundred of miles in a straight line
>went back to using an outdated biplane instead

JUST

>>8300
Was this a thing? Top kek, Duce.

Italians dont give a shit about anyone outside of their family. what is patriotism?

Reminder that Mussolini was a journalist and Hitler was a painter

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>tfw Italy's only major victory in the time period was against spear wielding Ethiopians

>>7913
An Italian Africa would be a good Africa.

How do you call an congolese person who speaks italian?

A mute

ayy lmao

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MOSTRO
UNICO
SPUDERATO
SENZA
ONORE
LADRO
INTERNAZIONALE
NATO
INFAME

>>8300
Holy cow, was that actually a thing?

It looks like something some kid would throw together in Kerbal Space Program.

>>8379
hey the folgore was a god tier plane.

>>7962
Northern italy had most of those things, they had to deal with the south being still in the middle ages. He never really controlled the whole country.

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EVERY
SINGLE
TIME

>>7988
And since the allied powers generally avoided the mediterranean and focused on atlantic/north sea operations, the italian navy wasnt uo front in combat all too regularly.

>>8300
Italy was the tard of the Axis.

>>8063
But did the trains really run on time? The world may never know.

>>7873

He allied with Hitler, that's why he didn't succeed.

And, he didn't modernize manufacturing and his military.

>>7873
Mussolini was actually pretty popular. Hitler admired him, he even was inspired by him.

>>11072

To be fair he was able to kill off the Influence of the Mafia in the South. Credit is due where credit is due.

>>8049
Mussolini was well aware of how fucked Italy would be if dragged into a war too early. Too bad for him Hitler was a tard.

Wonder if there was any scenario that ever could've come to pass where he actually was able to diplomatically ally with the British and the like instead of being stuck with Hitler.

I actually wonder if there's a good biography on Mussolini (beyond his auto-biography) because he's a pretty interesting guy. He was egotistical to be sure but he also really did want to make Italy a great nation and by the end of his life he was an utterly broken man who knew his time was up and was just waiting for his inevitable end to come.

>>8553
And then they lost it before the war was over.

>>11222
According to most sources.

No, they didn't.

>>11241
I think that the germans succeded because their tactics were very advanced, while the Italians were still warring WW1 style.

I mean, both French, British and Soviets had better tanks than the Germans when they invaded, but they managed to defeat them or at least give them a good beating because they had the right combined arms tactics and the focus on strike on weak points, logistical point and supply depots.

Heck, even in the Spanish Civil war the Republicans had better tanks than the Fascists and they were defeated there too.

>>7873
Germany was a federation for 1000 and eventually became a centralized state with a 200 years old industry that had a rich manufacturing tradition.

Italy was a bunch of city states that focused mainly on Mediterranean trade and hated each other's guts, who only reunited recently and had a massive inequality problem.

Mussolini, as far as authoritarians go, had a lot of excellent ideas and actually made the only significant Italian effort against crime and corruption (which is one of meds' greatest problems) in modern history.

He just didn't have the time, and he knew opposing Hitler meant having Germans put him out of power so they could protect a potential southern front. I hate fascists with a passion but I'd dare say he would have been a net benefit to Italy, all other options were even worse. But ultimately, he was the right man at the wrong time.

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I read somewhere that Mussolini has been heard saying "I want casualties to show to the people" or something along those lines

Would explain this at least

>>7915
They didn't even have a single aircraft carrier

>>7873
The Fascists were extremely conciliatory to the nobility, officer corps and Roman chuch. It's not much of a coincidence that these were the same groups that instigated the armistice.

He was beholden to the King of Italy for the position he was offered. When VE III deposed Mussolini, he very informally told him his services were no longer required. Mussolini promptly left the room and was taken into custody by a couple of ordinary policemen.

Hitler on the other hand made it clear from the beginning that any cooperation with reactionary elements in Germany would be done on his terms, even though that didn't keep them from frustrating his efforts once in awhile and eventually trying to blow him up.

>>7915
Italy had a large navy, but the vast majority of her vessels were of Great War vintage. They never really had any prospect of defeating Britain's fleet in the Mediterranean.

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SI SI SI SI SI SI SI SI SI
SI SI SI SI SI SI SI SI SI
SI SI SI SI SI SI SI SI SI
SI SI SI SI SI SI SI SI SI

>>14940
Propaganda like this and other Fascist art and architecture are super interesting, regardless of how you view them politically. I feel the same way about a lot of the weird architecture that's come out of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Empire.

>>7915
>bunch of battleships
>good

no

>>11277
Then the Americans came by and let it thrive again.

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>>15221
The Yamato might have been a colossal 73,000 ton waste that did jack-shit, but it's sexy as fuck.

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>>7873

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>>11114
>>13719
Oh wow that's fuckin' pathetic

>>13719

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_invasion_of_France

ITS REAL.

>>15181
It's all based on the concept of futurism.

>>7873

He needed his dictatorship to be totalitarian and instead it had very little real control or influence over even the state, let alone the nation.

There was also rife corruption throughout the state, exacerbated during the war, and the industry and economy in general of the country was shit.

Italians are nearly impossible to motivate.

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>>15703
M-Mamma Mia.

>>16678
I wanna fuck that battleship

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>>16740
There's also a destroyer, if you're into that kind of thing.

>>16778
>flat
no thanks senpai

>>15703
Holy fuck.

I am more of an ass man myself, but my dick turns diamonds when a shirt presses on a side boob and leaves that little dip.

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>>7873
>Why didn't Mussolini get a cutting edge military to kick British ass?
They are fucking Italians, they we to busy trying to profit from the war tax free to be bothered to fight.

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>>8628
Because Somalia is so good today?

There's a lot of reasons, some of which are in this thread, though I argue that it's because Italy, even under someone as ambitious as Mussolini, never had the capacity to be a real great power. The Italian people as accounts from the period show were not that motivated on the concept of conquest of foreign land for vague dreams of Roman grandeur, and Italy as a nation was not suited to compare to nations like Germany or even Britain. It had poor coal resources, a populace that still had poor literacy, and an industry that could not support an army that had the aspirations Mussolini had. In short Italy under him was always a second-rate power with dreams of being a great one, and Mussolini if nothing else played it well. On the diplomatic stage he was a genius, and it was only tethering himself to Hitler that guaranteed his failures on an international scale. Even the invasion of Abyssinia, while internationally unpopular, was not something that lead to guaranteed conflict with Britain and France right away, as seen in the Easter Accords (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Accords).

>>7873
Always gave the lower class priority over the military

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>>16892
Regia Marina had great cannon, but didn't use them very well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regia_Marina#World_War_II

>>7873
But he did at the time. Prior to the war Mussolini enjoyed a big reputation in Europe and abroad for what he did in Italy. After the Munich Agreement, he was actually being called celebrated as a great peacemaker. Which is ironic since he never wanted to be thought of as such.

And Mussolini's military was in no position to fight the British, not after they'd fought two wars that were both costly (money and material), but when the army was in the middle of modernizing itself. Didn't help that Grazini managed to fuck up his major advantages in North Africa, and somehow turn a 4:1 advantage in men, with even bigger advantages in guns and planes into the disaster that led to 130,000 men surrendering.

Why do you people link Wikipedia articles? In school my teachers always say it's not reliable etc.

>>8628
I agree but Musso was still retarded for focusing on it when he was getting buttfucked by the Allies

>>17456

It's not really, but it's an easy way to link to general things. It's not good for argumentative history but just to say that something 'exists' it's good enough.

Plus as much as actual professional historians might want it, most people here aren't going to expend the effort to look up sources for things beyond wikipedia.

>>16966
no because the italians actually colonized their colonies with their people

>>17526
This. For something to be on wikipedia, pretty much someone wrote those general things down and had then published, once. It's like putting your hand in a bookcase that has every non fiction book in and pulling one out.

Now that author may have been insanely biased and awful and only have been published in his backwater third world country, and every single one of his claims might be highly controversial or outright rejected by modern scholarship, but ONE PERSON WROTE THAT ONCE, and that is more than nothing.

>>17612
>>17526
Ah I see, thank you for explaining.

>>7873
The jewish people were spread out through out the world. That's what my research says.

>>7915
The British Royal Navy defeated it early on in the war. Making it a non factor for the rest of the war. The Germans even started attacking it to keep it from going over to the Allies.

>>7873
Italy had no great Martial Tradition like Germany had from the Prussians.

Their equipment, arms, and manpower was more than capable. It just never had anything resembling competent leadership. Putting German officers in charge of Italian Units would have probably made them effective enough to change the course of the war for a while.

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>>7873

Mussolini was fucking dumb to put it lightly. He let the invasion of Greece happen without any foresight for planning or whether it was even a practical endeavor or not (which it wasn't).

He was popular with the public but his incompetence made the Italians despise him, which is how pic related happened.

>>17456
Wikipedia, by itself, isn't very reliable (though it's not as bad as the internet likes to make it out either). It's a typical secondary source, reflecting the bias of two writers at least, subject to a terrible community. But: They usually get the basic facts right, and they source their claims, and note if there isn't a source. As such, it's a good starting point, if for no other reason than showing you primary sources to continue with, and it's enough to get a general idea on most subjects.

>>17665
To expand on this: >>17770

For Wikipedia, always try and look in the sources and references section for an article to see what they're drawing from.

Typically if it has a lot there, it's well-sourced and has good names for further reading. If there's not much there or outright nothing, I'd be suspicious over the content of the article.

>>17456
All adults are paranoid of the internet in general, particularly of wikipedia since in its earlier days article trolling was a lot more doable and talked about
Of course you don't trust it on anything remotely controversial, but if it's just to let people know of an event it's fine

We've never been good at war. Mussolini joined Hitler because he knew that if he tried to fight him Italy would be destroyed. I don't blame him too much for that, even though he still was a shithead.