How come Italy sucks balls at war now? The peninsula that brought forth the Roman Empire can't levy an army that's worth a shit anymore.
>>1299169
I don't think ive ever seen this thread before.
>>1299169
Mmodern Italians have nothing to do with Romans, they're descended from arabs invaders
>>1299400
and barbarian hordes along with who ever the fuck from the world over moved to rome over a thousand years
>>1299400
>Implying
They are descendent from Lombards you retard.
The guys who sneaked in, instead of invading.
>>1299169
>now
WW2 was 70 years ago
Resources.
Italy has good soldiers that can spar with most European powers, even defeating Austria-Hungary in World War I.
the game changer for World War 2 was not who is the superior soldier, but who had the more resources to fight on with, where the Axis was at a woeful disadvantage, Italy included.
the Italian colonial empire doesn't have much in the way of iron, oil, or copper/rubber sources, so Italy always had to make do on trade imports for much of its oil and steel from Britain and France.
When WW2 kicked off, Germany started its conquering spree securing resources, iron from Scandinavia, farmland from France, and oil from Romania and the Balkans. Italy didn't have much room to expand in its immediate neighborhood with an oil reserve to capture, so Italian armor and vehicles often ran out of fuel mid-battle and there wasn't nearly enough iron to build lost tanks/aircraft.
by the end of 1942, Italy ran out of oil for their navy, with the remainder of the fleet docked for the rest of the war, with that, the Italian military doesn't have much capacity to fight a global war where their enemies, Britain, the US, and the USSR essentially have a limitless flow of resources to keep the war machine fed.
Germany fell to the same problem, but lasted longer due to seizing the war material they needed early on, then burning through it all by late 1943.
>>1299676
>no oil
>libya
what?
>>1299682
Libyan oil wasn't discovered until the 1950's
>>1299688
oh.
>>1299618
They've been absolute fucking pathetic at war for a while now.
They were defeated by Ethiopia for god's sake...
>>1300216
give a little credit where credit is due, anon
They did win the Crimean War, the Wars of Independence, the Italo-Turkish War, World War I, and Ethiopia round 2: revenge of the poison gas.
>>1299676
>defeating austria hungary in ww1
considering the fact that austria-hungary got their sack smacked by fucking SERBIA of all countries, saying you can beat austria-hungary as a proud accomplishment is laughable
>>1300270
>Crimean War
France won it for them
>the Wars of Independence
France and Prussia won it for them
>World War I
France and Britain won it for them
>Ethiopia round 2
Wow, such a feat
>>1300308
T. Charles Rousseau
>>1300322
He's right though
He only forgot that us Brits helped in Crimea too
>>1300329
It is somewhat down playing the Italians though. It's like giving no credit to America during the revolutionary war because France helped them. Of course France aided the rebels and it would've must likely failed with out France but they still deserve credit. He also neglected to say anything about the Italo-Turkish war which France had no role in.
>>1299400
end this meme, arabs never invaded italy
>>1299400
The arabs rekt the eastern romans and persians pretty hard though.
>>1299460
They are actually extremely homogeneous and unchanged. DNA extracted from Neolithic remains is very comparable to that of modern Italians. This is not only true of Italians but of pretty much all of Europe. Movements of populations before the second half of the twentieth century were extremely limited in scope unlike what most people think.
>>1300270
They won the italo-turkish war because the balkan war broke out and the ottomans cut their losses else the italians wouldn't be able to advance further than the coast.
>>1300388
This.
Let's get rid of this dumbass narrative that Europe saw a constant movement of peoples and cultures.
But I guess it serves political agenda's more to suggest otherwise.
If there's anyone being raped to death today it's Clio.
>>1300298
from what I've always read, A-H completely assraped serbia and proceeded to kill 25% of all ethnic Serbs in the mop-up (60% of their male population)
source:
http://brilliantmaps.com/ww1-casualties/
>>1299169
Italy has a chronic illness afflicting it, poor leadership.
Italian soldiers performed excellently in WW1 and 2 but they were made to go into literal suicide charges and to sit in the open without anything resembling appropiate weapons and supplies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpini#World_War_II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_invasion_of_France
For Italians, the phrase "Lions led by Sheep" is as true as it could ever be. The political leaders of Italy are invariably a pack of corrupt morons that do not know how the world works, this is true for the civilian life as well as the military one.
>>1300537
this
the drafted citizens of Italy were truly descendants of Rome
The main reason here is money. Italy had a much smaller economy than the other powers, much less industrialized, much more reliant on raw resources imports, less high tech. They still retained equipment from the 19th century for the army, air force development programs were stopped in the 20s because no cash, the navy was given the lion's share of the money but they skipped out on main techs like the radar and they didn't have viable fuel provisioning.
>>1300537
It's a shit excuse. Saying they had bad leadership is the same as saying they're bad at war. Which they were, because you can't expect to be successful when you see war as internal propaganda instead of a defined strategic tool.
>>1299169
so why does /his/ have such a livid hatred for ethnic Italians?
every thread I ever see about Italians ranges from how inferior they are at their very base to wishes that the Wehrmacht turned their guns on Italy instead of the Jews.
so what does give?
>>1301048
Imperial envy
it's penis envy, except women can eventually buy a strap-on
Co-opting this thread to educate you faggots on why Italians (yes including Romans, they are the same thing) have produced some of the best military heroes in history. We dont need to go over ancient Rome, so lets get started with a big obvious one. The Battle of Lepanto.
>>1301262
No matter what you faggots think, this guy was 100 percent Italian by blood. If you faggots want to start some thread about how Italians are somehow genetically inferior at war, you can accept that Napoleon was genetically Italian too.
>>1301266
In addition to this, Eugene of Savoy, considered one of the greatest field marshals who ever lived was Italian by blood too.
>>1301269
Another Marshal of the Holy Roman Empire, Raimondo Montecuccoli, considered one of the greatest commanders of the Early modern period. Nearly unbeaten in battle
>>1301281
Ambrogio Spinola. The most successful commander of Spanish forces during the 30 years war who crushed literally everyone who went against him.
>>1301262
Medieval Italy does have a interesting military record. Various city states fighting each other and foreign powers at the same time. Places like Venice survived through fighting in war and only fell since they didn't have access to the new world and got annexed by countries that did.
>>1301286
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Legnano
North Italians BTFO Holy Roman Empire
I used to shit and make fun of Italy a lot for this. After a while I stopped after finding out the reason why Italy performed so poorly in WW2.
It wasn't supposed to really be up against these great powers. Italy was mainly poor as shit. Italy was really fucking good at bluffing to appear as if it's some good state on the same standing as France/Germany/Britain etc. But the truth it, it wasn't. It was still a mostly poor, rural, and not very industrialised nation. It didn't have a lots of money, education, industry like other nations it's compared with did. Nor did it really have manpower on it's side (considering a modern day population smaller than even Britain).
Why did it lose so terribly? It was in a totally different class, and shouldn't have been fighting with the nations it was. It's like being surprised that the Romanian and Hungarian flanks at Stalingrad collapsed when attacked by the Soviets. Of course they would.
>>1301293
Italian cavalry composed of 700 soldiers charges 2500 Russians, takes minimal losses, breaks their lines and captures most of them... on the Eastern Front in WW2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_of_the_Savoia_Cavalleria_at_Isbuscenskij
>>1301307
Bunch of French knights talk shit about Italian knights saying they aint shit, get challenged, and Italians completely BTFO the frogs
>>1301307
That genuinely is a awesome moment in history
>tfw you'll never ride your horse through the cold Russian steppes taking a soviet position and living up to your ancestors legacy
>>1301321
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge_of_Barletta
>>1301323
a couple of Italian frogmen, pioneering modern amphibious special forces tactics, sink a British fleet (albeit in harbor) in one of the most daring raids in history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_Alexandria_(1941)
>>1300405
i agree that constant is a bit much but to deny that migrations were not an uncommon occurrence in the grand scope of things only shows your own denial that human genetics and cultures really aren't as diverse and unique as you wish them to be
>>1301331
This guy named Jomini, I dont know if you ever heard of him, one of the most important military theorists in modern history was Italian by blood.
>>1301336
Giulio Douhet, Italian military general and theorist who pioneered the use of airstrikes, as well as predicting the rise of nuclear weapons and the extensive use of air power as the deciding factor in modern combat.
>people still think, in the year XCIII E. F., that Italians had any reason to fight along the Axis
>>1299169
>now
>not since XVI century
>>1301342
GUglielmo Embriaco, the Genoese Admiral who was key in the Frankish victory of the first crusade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Embriaco
>>1301331
this is like some shit out of a generic steampunk comic
>>1301357
Andre Massena. Napoleons Italian Commander who, without any sort of formal military education, became his most successful marshal on the battle field. Napoleon referred to him as "the greatest name of my military empire."
>>1299676
>even defeating Austria-Hungary in World War I.
Along with the whole entente powers, not alone
>>1301363
John Basilone. Italian American WW2 Medal of Honor recipient whose actions are on par with Audie Murphy's
>>1301307
>Some horses, even though riddled by bullets, would keep galloping for hundreds of meters, squirting blood at every beat, suddenly collapsing only a while after their actual death.[3]
B A S E D
>>1301764
it all goes back to >>1299676
you can have good soldiers and competent leaders all you want, but if there's little to no fuel to put in the tanks and not enough of an industrial base to crank out hundreds of naval ships, millions of guns, and be able to supply it all efficiently without harassment, you're done.
at the end of the day Italy just was not up to the task for operating a total war economy with so few centers for tank and battleship/aircraft carrier production, and not nearly enough iron to build it all or oil to fuel it all.
like anon said, even Germany was running on fumes in 1944. In World War 2, the winner was determine by who could outproduce you the quickest.
there's actually an okay series where the extra history people actually nail it right on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYv-GC8DgMk
>>1300388
>>1300405
What seems strange about this is that during pre-Roman times at least, there were many different people occupying the Italian peninsula including Osci, Greeks, Etruscans, Latins and Gauls. Would that not constitute a heterogeneous mix? Then all kinds of Germanic peoples like the Lombards came in later. Yet you say that their DNA is homogeneous. Is it just that the cultures were different but the peoples were largely similar genetically? this confuses me.
Since this is the closest thing to a roman thread:
In alot of movies and games you see legionaries form testudo when confronted with practically any kind of attack. Weren't testudos pretty much exclusively for defending against missiles?
How would a cohort defend itself against cavalry? Pila? What if it had already used its javelins?
You also see roman soliders often wearing red fabric, is this histortically true?
>>1302042
>Weren't testudos pretty much exclusively for defending against missiles?
Yes.
They were very ineffective against Gauls if my moving pictures are correct.
>>1302042
Testy do formations was pretty much only used for approaching enemy fortifications
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8oJVfHz7kq8
The Romans would've pull out their plum to use like conventional spears and drive the horses
I don't know but it might make sense that red was common for Roman army officials. Perhaps Red was to soldiers what Purple was to royalty
>>1302042
>You also see roman soliders often wearing red fabric, is this histortically true?
Because Romans were the first communists. That's why they've failed.
>>1302086
I thought it was because red is the color of blood which is a common sight in battle and as a symbol of sacrifice in battle and all that.
>>1302094
it's the color of passion in general.
the color red is described to be standarized on the shields of all legionaries well into the empire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwpP8tO6DbA
>>1300415
Serbia still buttfucked austria like two or three times before their German overlords sent aid and that's when they completely fucked over Serbia
>>1300415
Serbia defended itself well in 1914 and early 1915, got quite large part of their population wiped out by some epidemic in winter 1914/1915 and then defeated when Central powers moved Heeresgruppe Mackensen to the Serbian front.
Heeresgruppe Mackensen was the main motor for early 1915 offensives on the eastern front, very well equipped army group with enormous amounts of heavy artillery.
"Good Soldiers, bad officers."
t rommel
>>1301764
Look anon, understand something: Italy, like everybody else, was not ready for a major war in 1940. They'd been fighting wars off and on since the 1920s when the Senussi started a rebellion in Libya that wasn't suppressed until 1932. Then Italy started the war in Ethiopia in 1935, then they got involved in Spain a little after that. On top of all this you had a conservative general staff that was skeptical of modernizing the military, a weak industrial base (something that the Fascists had tried to solve, but decided to do little about), and to top it all off you had the Italians taking the wrong lessons from WW1. There was a skirmish at the beginning of Graziani's advance into Egypt: the Italian officer in charge actually ordered a Napoleonic-era infantry square while his L3 tankettes got chopped up by the British tanks.
People like to talk shit about the Italian performance in Operation Compass, but what they don't understand is that northern Africa is a 50-mile wide strip of coastal plain where all the people are (in Libya, at least) and then it's desert. The Italian armies in Libya were composed almost entirely of infantry, which are worth nothing in a desert campaign. Wavell knew exactly what he was doing, and he pulled off a brilliant operation that also did a lot to critically undermine British opinion of the Italians. An opinion that stuck around for so long that at Bir el Gubi in 1941, the British reported that the Italian tanks and infantry were under German officers. (Actually Italian, but who wants to report getting beaten by spaghettiboos?)
Honestly, there's not much to be puzzled by: they had substandard training, poor leadership at the NCO and regimental-level, poor communications, poor equipment, and an inability to keep up with the opposition. Some units like the X MAS, 136th, 131st-133rd, 101st, and 102nd, along with the Alpini and Bersaglieri performed well.
>>1302173
Another factor that I like to throw into these threads is "class issues".
The Italian Officer corps was drawn from a the same class of Peidmontese aristocrats for the most part. They disliked and disrupted the masses of conscripts that made up the Italian Army (who in turn basically regarded military service as a huge imposition).
Their officers didn't like their men, didn't care about them mostly, and didn't trust them. They mostly worried about them being communists. This leads to the usual measures of political control that hinder armies. Don't trust them with too much freedom of action, don't get them too excited.
The Italian Army was a method of social power, privilege and repression first, and a means of fighting other armies second.
There's a great article on "Why Arabs Lose Wars" and a lot of it applies to the Italian army in 1940s.
>>1302173
>"The German soldier has impressed the world, however the Italian Bersagliere soldier has impressed the German soldier." -Rommel
>>1302189
Picture forotten
>>1302186
True that. Badoglio has a quote attributed to him that goes like this, "wars are fought by men, mules, and machineguns. But not too many machineguns."
This was the guy Mussolini kept in charge.
And then there was Cavallero, who managed some hilariously awful arms-appropriation scandals that involved defective armor plating for the Italian Navy.
Also kept around. Promoted, even.
>>1302186
So they essentially got the crappy version of Prussian officer corps?
>>1301266
I thought we all agreed on this being a ridiculous hypothesis from the start?
>>1302042
Past tense? Actually, some italian public order agents are still using it to this day.
>>1302324
... he was of direct Tuscan nobility. Last time I checked that was about as Italian as that gets. Delete your stupid comment
>>1302350
Was talking about the genetics part. Hey, cool off.
>>1301348
It didn't make sense for the Italians, but Mussolini's philosophy was centered around national struggle, testing you mettle in combat etc. Considering the "Roman Empire" he aspired to was largely controlled by British and French colonies, Germany was a natural ally.
>>1299169
>have 331 aircraft
>still manage to lose 1249 aircraft
WTF
T
F
>>1299169
Lets be real, Australians fought there so the losses by the Italians are understandable.
>>1300298
do you even history?
serbia was pretty much mud land, a big army can't go fast through that and to transport big artillery was nearpy impossible
serbia went to defense and the only reason why the invasion took so long was because of the lack of proper streets
>>1302366
You're right. Sorry
Why are Italians ok with heavy corruption and incompetence
>>1302162
He's one to talk
>>1299400
Italy is not Spain
>>1301262
Lepanto was won by Spain desu.
>>1305175
t. Jose Barbossa
>>1305177
t. Seajew from Veneto.
>>1305175
have you ever actually read about the battle? Or do you chose to just shitpost about things that you have no understanding of?
