what the fuck happened to the militaries of italy and greece? used to have the best fighting men, now if you look at their military, or even special forces, they fucking suck balls.
how do we explain this? was it that the best fighters never had children? or did the fighting race/genetics diminish? why are you guys such pussies now?
I don't see how is Italian or Greek military significantly worse than any other European military is. And if it is it is most likely caused by lower income to the army rather than shitty people like you're implying
>>876853
It's pointless to compare the people of regions over such long time spans.
It would be more useful to ask why Rome was so much better than it's contemporaries or why Italy is so much worse than it's contemporaries. Or you could ask when the Rome's military might began to fail and why.
>>876853
Greeks have... decent military. Outdated but relatively big, or at least they've had it not so long ago, dunno if something changed(and probably something changed since there was crisis etc.).
Economic insignificance leads to military insignificance.
>How was it possible that a certain organisation was replaced by a different one during a time reaching over almost 2000 years? `
You don't happen to come from that nation that lost both world wars and started both?
>>876853
best special forces of the world? The Lagunari from La Spezia (Italy). Also: Italian army is not that bad today. And comparing Rome with Italy makes no sense.
>>876853
Greece and Italy both have great soldiers during WW2 both sides acknowledged this.
Their navies today are above average too.
>>876853
Italy is a nation state. Rome was a multi-ethnic empire. The comparison is pants on head retarded.
>>876892
Yeah, we had great soldiers (look at the Arditi, the Bersaglieri and the Folgore paratroopers, who amazed the Nazis). Unfortnately, our equipment was outdated to say the least and our generals were quite incompetent to be generous.
>>876886
>best special forces of the world? The Lagunari from La Spezia (Italy)
[citation needed]
>>876892
lmao wut
please, provide details/sources
italians fucking sucked BALLS in ww2
>>876927
As I wrote before, Italian soldiers were good, their leadership was rather shit. Individual groups were good (look at the actions of the Folgore paratroopers during El Alamein), but we Italians cannot work properly in large groups (that is why I prefer to have as little Italian co-workers as possible here in the UK).
>>876927
not sure if >>876892 is correct but it's well known that a large part of why Italy did so terribly in ww2 was because of heavily outdated equipment. They literally still had rifles from the 19th century and the thousands of tanks they had were mere practically useless as they couldnt even protect against small arms and only had a machine gun mounted in it and nothing else
>>876927
The German soldier has impressed the world, however the Italian Bersagliere soldier has impressed the German soldier.
-Rommel
There are a bunch of instances where the Italian soldier shows their mettle .
>In Russia, instead of being deployed in the Caucasus mountains as expected, the Alpini were tasked with holding a front on the plains of the Don River. As a result of this disastrous strategic decision, troops armed, trained, and equipped for mountain warfare were pitted in the plains against tanks and mechanized infantry, to counter which they were neither equipped nor trained. Despite this, the Alpini held the front until January 1943, when, due to the collapse of the Axis front, they were encircled by the advancing Soviet Army. The Alpini were able to break the encirclement and fight their way towards the new line of the front established after the Axis retreat.
Seriously go read about the groups anon mentioned, you are doing yourself a disservice by buying the shitty italian soldier meme.
>>876950
could you recommend a book that covers what you've quoted/explained?
>>876892
>Greece and Italy both have great soldiers during WW2
Said no one ever
>>876956
>heavy forward movement of the German armies, already gathered in Austria, was set in motion through Hungary to the northern frontier of Yugoslavia. A ferocious howl of hatred from the supreme miscreant was the signal for the actual invasion. The open city of Belgrade was laid in ashes and a tremendous drive by the German armored forces in Bulgaria was launched westward into Southern Serbia.
>When it was no longer deemed worth while to keep up the farce of love for Greece, other powerful forces rolled forward into Greece, where they were at once unflinchingly encountered and have already sustained more than one bloody repulse at the hands of the heroic Greek Army. The British and Imperial troops have not up to the present been engaged. Further than this, I cannot attempt to carry the tale.
>t.Winston Churchill
>>876956
“Until now, we knew that Greeks were fighting like heroes; from now on we shall say that the heroes fight like Greeks.”
Winston Churchill
>>876866
The Italians in Afghanistan literally bribed the taliban not to attack them. I've read too many stories of joint forces exercises were the Italians just got fed up and left/refused to do what was asked and didn't bother telling anyone.
>>876853
Did you base this on the past century of fighting performance?
American detected I think.
>Be Italian soldier
>bribe the enemy not to do anything so you don't have to patrol at nights
>>876871
>(and probably something changed since there was crisis etc.).
Greece not wanting to scale down military spending was a big part of their refusal for austerity. Not that you'd hear about it in the media, though - it's all just the german vampirette wanting to suck the poor trendy vaguely homosexual semi-leftist greeks dry.
Every nation on Earth is obsessed with having a Rommel quote. The "Give me two divisions of ________ soldiers and I shall conquer the world" quote comes to mind - I've heard at least three variations on this.
>>876853
Men of war do not typically have families. They do, however, leave a string of bastards behind them.
Life got easy. Even the stupid and weak can now survive.
>>877466
The Romans routinely beat people who'd probably had a rougher life than your average legionnaire.
>>876853
remember OP that these guys were Italy's enemies from the very beginning.
Greek and Latin military success came from their organization and equipment. Alpha as fuck Celts would get high as balls before battle, charge in like maniacs with swords swinging in the air, then the Roman infantry would laugh behind their shields and just stab under the swinging arm. Every time the Celts caught the Romans by surprise, it was a Roman defeat. However, Roman supply chains and orderly battles brought consistent victory.
Masculinity =/= military success all the time
>>877325
>The Italians in Afghanistan literally bribed the taliban not to attack them.
Pro tip: everyone does that. All that shit was just some tabloids finally picking up on it when the frenchies decided to try not to pay and quickly found out it wasn't worth it. The french army itself disavowed that story.
>>876886
>The Lagunari from La Spezia
The fuck? The Lagunari are stationed in Venice. Their very fucking name calls back to the Venetian Lagoon.
Also since when are they supposed to be that good? WW2 aside, everytime SF are discussed here it's always Folgere Folgore Folgore.
>>876947
>thousands of tanks they had were mere tankettes
FTFY. It's not that they were bad tanks, it's that technically speaking they weren't tanks at all.
>Italians
>Romans
>>877458
>United States: 2,356
>Taliban: 25,000-35,000
>>877703
Italians: 53
Taliban: 35000
>>877620
It wasn't that bad idea either, they just lacked stuff like tow or modern guns.
Modern tankette like the german wiesel with the tow atgm or the 20mm are pretty good, they mount AA and mortars too.
>>877708
>less than 4000 troops in Iraq at its highest point in the Afghanistan war
>majority of which are placed on engineering or logistical duties with supply and garrison points behind combat lines
>has less causalities
Woahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
>>877710
It wasn't a bad idea not to have tanks? It's not like Italy didn't want them you know, it's just they were too expensive to mass produce so they settled with tankettes for propaganda purposes. Helps too that Mussolini wasn't thinking of world wars when building up the army, just of bullying niggers in Africa.
>>877708
Majority of Italian troops are providing security in safe zones well away from combat from Taliban and insurgent forces in Afghanistan. Big whoop.
>>877719
>nothing to gain from making an effort
>noone asks to make an effort beyond showing up
>doesn't make an effort, just shows up
Wow, big surprise.
>>877722
Heavy tanks are a rather recent thing, most of italian warfare in ww1 was on the mountains so they went for light weight tanks.
I don't know why are you trying to meme so hard.
>>877729
So you're admitting that Italian soldiers are shitty?
>>877734
No, how does that even follows? I'm saying that they didn't go there to fight, so why are you using that "war" to gauge of their fighting skill? Do you actually think that all governments are eager to spend billions to engage in dick measuring contests? Get real.
just admit it bros
greece and italy are nothing but a graveyard of what was.
could they be something in the future? ....:(
Italy wasn't a country until the 19th century. And even then it wasn't a industrial country. I believe more than 50% of the population were still working in farms at the beginning of 1940. Some parts of the country had until that time a quality of life that can only be described as medieval. There were also huge literacy problems : very few people could read and write. Also italy has never had natural resources to finance a industrialization program. For a very long time they depended on coal imports from Germany just to keep the lights on, as you can see they couldn't even produce their own energy. To make things worse the Italian government had huge debt problems in the late 19th century and early 20th century- many Italian institutions were deeply corrupt and literally stole money from its own goverment. Google "the big book of italian debt", when the government decided to audit its debt ot discovered the staff of their own national bank were printing billions and depositing it into their own accounts. The Italian people spoke a variety of dialects that arent intelligible between each other and this made them difficult to organize in a military context that requires quick reactions. Many of these problems were only fixed iduring the cold war when the US pumped tons of money into the country to prevent communism from gaining traction in the poorest
There is a fantastic book about Italy's economic challenges called Lira debola, I strongly recommend it
>>877787
I always say this, I think the biggest thing Mussolini managed to do was convincing people that Italy actually stood a chance playing with the big guys.
>>876853
"Historical justice obliges me to state that of the enemies who took up positions against us, the Greek soldier particularly fought with the highest courage. He capitulated only when further resistance had become impossible and useless."[79]
-Hitler
>>877759
I think you need to work on your reading comprehension because the entire sub tangent started with some cherrypicking moron bringing up non-frontline casualities with front line ones in the first place.
>>877787
just googled that book, and it doesn't exist anon
Jesus fuck these threads suck balls. Who comes up with retarded questions like these?
It's like many people in this board assume civilizations have some sort of "essence" that trascends time and space.
>>877860
Personally I blame germanic inferiority complex.
It's called the Middle Ages
>>877796
Though Italy had many structural problems during ww2 I think what really caused their poor performance was lack of planning and terrible decision making from Mussolini. First of all there was no need to invade Greece. Cyprus which the greeks wanted was under british control and as far as i know italian diplomats never even tried to use this to steer greece into an alliance. Malta was undefended and could have been taken with a surprise attack, but again this was never even contemplated. The germans learned valuable lessons from their intervention in spain but the italians learned nothing. The French and British drilled for oil and gas in the Sahara in the 1930s but Italy never bothered to do the same in Libya which turned out to have huge energy reserves after ww2. They never built a railroad from Tripoli to tobruk, supplies had to be transported in trucks. I could go on all day
>>877838
I guess it's a bit old, I will find more references when I get home
>>877890
Don't forget the Italians actually had a very powerful navy but literally were unable to do more then supply themselves and the Germans in North Africa and the Near East with it because they mismanaged the shit out of it.
>>876874
WE DIDN'T FUCKING START THEM
>>878042
And now you'll tell me you didn't invite millions of refugees to europe either.
JUST DO IT
>>878110
On paper: their navy was on par technologically speaking with the Germans, British, French, Americans, and Japanese. Issue is hilarious mismanagement, and incompetence of army and naval commanders and the poor quality of morale and discipline in the Italian forces is what doomed it.
>>877993
True. Adding to this, the Italians never made any sort of contingency plans to prevent the British from using the Suez canal during the war. They never made any attempts to mine the vicinity or ram ships into it. The convoys to Malta sailed around the horn of Africa and through the red sea without firing a shot, they were never attacked. When the British invaded Egypt during the Suez crisis, the Egyptians reacted quickly and disabled the canal ramming ships into it. The Japanese had also made plans to disable the Panama canal but it was too far away
>>876853
How the fuck is Greek military shit?
I mean we beat back the Shitalians and we held off the Germans for quite a while...
>>876853
At the time of Ancient Greece and Rome, they had not only the most advance technology, trade routes, and abundant resources, but their adversaries were largely further east (See: Persia) or assorted disorganized barbarian tribes to the north. With the advent of the iron age and the abundance of Iron in the north that was now workable, other kingdoms and factions would start to take off. France is quickly united under the Franks thanks to later roman stupidity and the massive hordes of Goths and Vandals are out making cool places like Lombardy and Asturias.
tl;dr Rome fell because other people had more iron and finally got to the whole organizing thing.
>>876955
The Rommel Papers is a good book on the Africa campaign (written by Rommel). He goes to great length to explain that the Italian soldier was good, just that the command was bad.
>>878324
Greeks were poor as fuck compared to asia.
>>877777
HOLY SHIT WITNESSED THOSE GLORIOUS QUINTS
>>878593
But their soldiers and the way the conducted warfare made made them superior to most asia minor and persian enemies.
Turns out when you conscript everyone and give them wicker shields and march them into trained, armored, citizen soldiers, they lose
>>876853
Why are you trying to draw a line between the militaries of cultures separated by two thousand years of history?
>>879455
It's a veiled nordicist thread.
>>877777
quints confirm that greece and italy WILL be something in the future
>>877554
>b-but muh woodland savages were just too manly to win!!
lmao your ancestors probably got reamed in the ass by wealthy patricians m8.
>>877724
Big tardo keep providing excuses our killing ratio is much better you got toasted fat fuck
>>881382
>our killing ratio
lol
>he believes in the warrior race meme
>>876853
It's ponderous, isn't it? Italy went from Roman Legions to "We're lovers, not fighters".
>>881210
Barbs totally infiltrated and stole the western empire though. I mean imagine letting a bunch of people with a different culture and tenancy toward backward, violent behavior and paying them to exploit the good will of your decadent, declining empire. Why was this a good idea? Because otherwise Rome would expend too much on the wars outside the frontiers, making half-baked alliances with their enemies to finish wars that were senseless to begin with?
>>877838
Probably he meant Lira debole
>>876853
I wish /his/ was used for something else than memes without flags. I don't want to discuss interesting stuff with the clinically retarded people who make these threads.
