Say Something Nice about the Royal Italian Army. And Remember;

>>34079697
Competent and surprisingly brave soldiers, almost universally terrible officers and political leaders. Equipment varied between great but too expensive (logistically as well as outright cost) and outdated and too expensive.

>>34079706
Would Italy have been better off if their armament were something like a grease gun or sten gun?

>>34079727
Yes, assuming you mean one of the later models of sten that struck a better balance between cost and reliability. The Model 38 was actually a great weapon but would have been tough even for a nation with actual industrial might to mass-produce never mind Italy.

>>34079739
>>34079727
Though do note that improving the situation with small arms was a secondary concern to getting more and better armour in the field. The correct question to ask is 'what if Mussolini had waited until 1941 to join in as he was advised?'.

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>>34079746
Italian tanks were the best. They had no reason to improved. In fact their tanks are the reason why they won their war with Ethiopia

>>34079697
>The Ethiopians were very poorly armed, with few machine guns, their troops mainly armed with swords and spears.
>Italian Casualties
>Total: c.208,000 killed or wounded.
>Ethiopian Casualties
>Total: c.775,000 combatants and civilians killed or wounded

They might have lost, yes they did take a bit over 3 times the Italian casualties... but for mostly untrained, inexperienced guys armed with sharp objects and old guns- that's actually really fucking good!
I mean, usually it ends up like the Battle of Omdurman where the Brits lost about 430 dead and wounded, vs the Sudanese who lost 25,000 killed/wounded + 5000 captured

>>34079941
Well, he sent them about 10,000 mausers, shitloads of ammo and a couple of PAK-38's I think
They're 'sort of' modern I guess, but at the time Italy was being pro-Austrian independence

>>34079916

Napoleon in 1798 got a pretty good k/d at the battle of the Pyramids with muskets and grapeshot.

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>>34079916
The Ethiopians also did a pretty good counter-offensive called the Christmas Offensive, which BTFO italy for a short time

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>>34079697
They have swagger

>>34080025
Would you remove spaghetti with Ethiopians /k/?

>>34080855
Nah, I would just be the guy looking at the distance with a lawn chair, a sun umbrella, with a drink and popcorn

>>34080828
and they're the last military to still have an alcohol ration in some of their daily field rations

>>34080892
Go on

>>34079697
>Second
because they fucked up so badly the first time

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>>34082559
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GowFRT19yok#t=186

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>proudest moment is ganging up on a poor african state and still losing battles

>>34082632
>Ganging up
>Smaller numbers than Ethiopians

It's like i am replying to a negroid

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>>34080025

>>34080025
they also BTFO'd them in this this thing called the First Italo-Ethiopian war

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>>34082650
i meant ganging up as in having most of the advantages, like having
>more tanks
>more planes
> more artillery
>mustard gas
but yeah the ethiopians had more men, long live the brave itallian underdogs so brave starting wars with the most underarmed countries they could
pic related is italians fighting a semi-competant force

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Italian_War
B T F O

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>>34082681
Italy didn't have tanks back then. It is well know they had the best tanks of the second world war

>>34082698
Would you fight in onr of those /k/

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>>34082698
>>34082730
Polish tankette best tankette

>>34082708
Arent the alpini the best of the best for italy

>>34082684
I forget. Did Italy learn anything from the Spanish Civil War?

>>34079916
>The Ethiopians were very poorly armed, with few machine guns, their troops mainly armed with swords and spears.
The did get a bunch of guns from Nazi Germany to be fair.

>>34083827
10,000 Mauser rifles isn't unsubstantial, but putting them into 800,000 troops, about 300k of those are essentially levy is a drop in the ocean.
Couple of dozen anti tank guns, also a drop in the ocean when the enemy has just under 800 tanks.

132 Ariete Divison

During the Second Battle of El Alamein the Ariete sacrificed its obsolete tanks in the attempt to counter the Allied offensive and cover the withdrawal of the Afrika Korps. On 4 November at about 15:30, the few surviving tanks, surrounded by an overwhelmingly superior enemy, broadcast their last message, quoting:

Enemy tanks broke through South of Ariete Division. Ariete thus surrounded, located 5 kilometers north east of Bir-el-Abd. Ariete tanks keep on fighting!

Rommel mourned the loss of the division, writing that its final action had been conducted with exemplary courage and that "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"

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>>34084281

>"The Italian command was, for the most part, not equal to the task of carrying on war in the desert, where the requirement was lightning decision followed by immediate action. The training of the Italian infantryman fell far short of the standard required by modern warfare. … Particularly harmful was the all pervading differentiation between officer and man. While the men had to make shift without field-kitchens, the officers, or many of them, refused adamantly to forgo their several course meals. Many officers, again, considered it unnecessary to put in an appearance during battle and thus set the men an example. All in all, therefore, it was small wonder that the Italian soldier, who incidentally was extraordinarily modest in his needs, developed a feeling of inferiority which accounted for his occasional failure and moments of crisis. There was no foreseeable hope of a change for the better in any of these matters, although many of the bigger men among the Italian officers were making sincere efforts in that direction."

>>34082708
Have you ever looked at the French-Italian border, ever thought about where this battle took place? Under what conditions? I want to see how you deal with those defensive positions as an attacker. Not that I'm defending the Italians in general but you fools just run through Wikipedia articles and look for any loss without actually considering the surrounding circumstances.

>>34084451
How did they manage to lose a submarine tho?

>>34084491
Funny story.
>On 17 June, the Frenchsloop La Curieuseforced the Italian submarineProvanato surface offOran and then sank it by ramming.

>>34084530
Jesus, it's even more embarrassing then I thought.

>>34084451
>Have you ever looked at the French-Italian border, ever thought about where this battle took place?
Anon. The people who attacked the border were the Alpini. Italians Best Mountain Warare Soldiers.

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>>34084688
Delete this.

>>34085736
Most of the 19 divisions marshaled to the border regular Italian army units. The Alpini were good, but they couldn't be expected to be the driving force.

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>"You mean to tell me our glorious allies tried to Blitzkrieg through the Alps? You would think they'd have learned after their 12th attempt in the last war."

>>34080868
This

Okay /k/.

How do we make Italy not shit in the Second World War?

>>34087865
Two things come to mind:

-Italy waits for a few years to join the war and modernizes its armored forces. With German help its feasible the Italians could of ptoduced better tanks sooner. The P40, as laughable as it may seem, would of done wonders had the Italians had something like it years earlier.

-A complete overhaul of the military culture of Italy. Italians enlisted men were good soldiers, but they were led by perhaps the worst officers of either World War.

Italy, on paper, actually had an impressive military at the start of the war. Its navy cpuld of been a threat in the Mediterrenean and its air force had good aircraft. But Italy would never make a positive impact unless it had better leadership.

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>>34087896
None of that will matter. The Italian war industry was shit and I mean shit. I mean the only thing they could do to improve would be if they adopted something more simplistic in their armament.

>>34079697
i bet their kitchen was the best

>>34088620
only if you were an officer

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>>34084688

talking about embarrassing...

>Italians goes to Tobruk
>realize that their AAA here is below shit tier
>field marshal Italo Balbo (commander-in-chief of Italian forces in Lybia) demanded some of the medium and heavy AA guns that are doing fucking nothing and just slowly rusting at positions around Torino to be delivered
>his demand is completely ignored
>instead he was given "San Giorgio", hopelessly obsolete cruiser (launched in 1908!) with equaly obsolete guns, no radar and not working comms (they actualy require hand speaking tubes to pass the orders to the crew from the bridge) as a "floating AAA battery"
>because of being antiquated piece of slowly sinking junk, they can't hit a shit during British air raids
>crew got frustrated, start blindly shooting at everything in the air everytime when alarm was sounded
>on 28 June 1940 observer at crow's nest reported single bomber approaching the ship
>it's for sure going towards the vessel and descending like aiming for a bomb run, but also going pretty slow and in the straight line
>here_is_our_chance.png
>every AAA crew went complete apeshit and start firing at approaching plane as fast as it could
>the commanding officer are shouting something through his speaking tube, but nobody is hearing him through the noise of all gun blazing
>aproaching plane got hit and went down in flames, crashing into the sea
>WE FUCKING DID IT! HURRAY!!
>the plane that was shoot down was italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 bomber, carrying marshal Italo Balbo for inspection. He was killed, along with 7 members of his staff.

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>>34088676
Thought this was initially going to be how the Brit's meme'd the fuck out of the Italian fleet with the anachronistic Fairy 'fuck you axis cunts' Swordfish torpedo bombers
I'm sort of giving this a 10/10 for hilarity though

>>34088676
Everything was not on our side even tho we were the good guys.
Look at who "won" the war instead: Jewish Britain aka "Europe? What Europe?"

Sad timeline,amici miei

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>>34089275
pic related

>>34085736

>>34088755
Also benito mussolini could have killed him

>>34082756
Do we still use tankettes?

>>34088268
But thats wrong. They had plenty of modern ships and aircraft, and they had then industry to produce thousands of tanks. If they had German help, which I mentioned, they could of feasibly produced something better far sooner. The Italians dont need to be making fucking panthers, just something roughly on par with a PZ 4 or Sherman

>>34088676
Good god

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>>34091141
Sort of. I guess you don't really ride them though, at least not until we can upload our brains in the robot's computer or something.

>>34089300
Poland what the fuck

>>34092641
They have their reasons.

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>>34089300
>>34092641

trauma induced bipolar disorder

>>34079697
I like their chicken hats, and that one Regiment or whatever that marches at a run.

>>34089300
Damn, Greece is salty as fuck.

>>34082658
>have uniforms
>have guns
>no footwear
are ethiopian troops never issued with shoes back then?

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>>34093286

>>34093302
Only the imperial Guard has shoes

>>34093515
What the fuck was Luigi Cadorna problem?

>>34095975
his autism made him think he was a Warhammer 40K Commissar
his idea of increasing morale was to execute his own troops, too

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>>34096018
>his idea of increasing morale was to execute his own troops, too
Why though?

>>34095975

Tbh, he had no "problems" per se. He was an asshat (and if we consider the Isonzo from a more nuanced viewpoint, it's more like a series of 2-3 pushes, not 11 battles. Even the Somme went on for months, after all) but not a particularly terrible general for the standards of the age.

The true problem of Cadorna was that he tried annihilation tactics without an army built to manage them. He failed to learn from foreign experiences and did the same early war mistakes: furthermore, he failed to correct them and to develop new strategies (regarding artillery use or infiltration, for example) as the Italian industry was too weak and the troop training wa subpar.

Thus, Soviet-style, the only way to keep the troops going was to get 'em drunk, keep them in check with terror, and hope that the Austrians would collapse on their own. While the Soviets eventually learnt to fight, Cadorna didn't and he got to be the scapegoat for Caporetto (rightly so, I may add).

>>34091204
>>34087896

Ehhhr no. Italian steel was four times as expensive as German steel, welding skills were subpar, and the FIAT-Ansaldo conglomerate lobbed as hard as they could to avoid getting "foreign designs" into production. Hitler in person offered to the Italians the designs, machine tools and even personnel to build PzIII and PZIV, but the Italians always refused.

Now think for a moment how needed tanks where in the German Army and how the Nazis flat-out refused to give freely designs to their Balkan allies: and the Fascists, utterly controlled by specific interests, had the guts to refuse them. Holy fuck.

>>34087865

You keep it out of the war. But desu, no country "won the war" as much as Italy: in the postwar world they got the best of both worlds, with the Americans showering them with money and the Soviet sphere showering them with contracts (thanks to the PCI). Italian postwar economical growth was so strong that it managed to get them to the first 8 industrial powers, ya know.

>>34079697

Oh, it's the same faggot again.

>>34096502
because apparently soldiers don't like being told to charge machine gun nests after the previous 14 attempts ended with the whole platoon being minced

>>34079916
Brits supported Ethiopians with equipment tho iirc
Also Italians deployed chemical/gas weapons, didn't they?

>>34096581
yes
we regret nothing

>>34096600
And rightly so.
Ethiopians' fault for not having protective equipment

>>34096628
I'm pretty sure they don't even give a shit anymore, the only ones screeching for reparations are our commies
and their butthurt is glorious

>>34096651

Lol. Get back to \pol\, dimwit.

Not even Italian commies give a damn about the Ethiopians, particularly after Mènghistu (we're a tad more focused on thet 40% youth unemployment). I should know, I am a commie.

But I know I should not ask too much of a Fascist, their skills are....limited... as proven by this very thread.

>>34096669
so it was liberals? not too much of a difference, they both hate their own country
>tfw not even fascist, just pissed at fuckwits going spaghetti=ebil
on a side note, don't you have to attend some protest about getting terrorists out of prison or something?

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>>34096703

Terrorists out of prison? Where do you live, in the 70ies?

Get out of your basement, maybe you'll discover that the world has changed. Or get back to your containment board, fuckwit.

"Liberals" in Italy, lol. Do you even know some basics of european political theory or you need stuff to be spoonfed to you? And I probably love our country more than you do. I don't cheer when it's destroyed, as you losers do.

I weep.

>>34097032
>where do you live, in the 70ies?
last time I checked, you guys were still protesting to get your friends from the Red Brigades out of prison
>hurr libruls in itly dont exist durr
then who the fuck is trying to get us to be culturally enriched?
>I don't cheer when it's destroyed, as you do
trying to implement something that failed every time it's been tried is saving the country now? losing you sovereignty to people who only care about their own profit is a good thing now?
>hurr gbt/pol/
you do realize that you're the one who started this argument in the first place, right?

>>34097098
What

>>34096532
Cowards. They were nothing but cowards.

>>34096503
>Ehhhr no. Italian steel was four times as expensive as German steel, welding skills were subpar
This. The Italian Industry was only ready to Fight the Great War of 1914. Mussolini Should have Stayed Neutral and Just Tried to Built his Larping Roman Empire

>>34084316
I read once that a British Dr. was performing surgery on a German office and someone came in the tent and the Surgeon saw a German officer with the blue max around his neck. It was Rommel.
Satisfied that the man was well cared for, he turned on his heels and left. This was behind British lines.
If Rommel had been on the line on D-day, shit might have turned out differently.

>>34079697
They gave their lives.....for something..... Probably in vain but eh

>>34101531
they lost more than they gain.

>>34102654
That can be said about any war t/b/h

>>34102720
You do know Italy "Won" The Second World War

>>34102974
Bunch of turncoats

>>34103000
They saw the writing in the wall

>>34084176
>Couple of dozen anti tank guns, also a drop in the ocean when the enemy has just under 800 tanks.
Italian Tanks