We all know that the Italians in World War II were significantly handicapped in many ways: poor leadership, low firepower, bad morale, poor quality weaponry, and rotten "tin can" tanks. For those wondering why, reading Hitler's Italian Allies is a great place to start. The book covers Italy's military-industrial complex, strategic decisions, operational issues, and tactical problems. This is all done as a broad analysis of Italian "military culture". Each section offers damning evidence that the Italian military machine was rotten from the top all the way down to the NCOs.

The argument about the Italian "military culture" is interesting and goes beyond the simplistic explanation that the Italians "didn't want to fight the war". Instead, Knox shows that the Italian military faced a host of problems. This was in part due to Mussolini's disasterous leadership, but other factors played significant roles as well.

For example, Knox demonstrates that the monopolies that the arms industries had significantly reduced the quality of weapons and the efficiency of their production. Bureaucratic inertia in the armed forces also hindered research and development in the arms industry or doctrinal change in the services; several innovations in radar were ignored; the Navy refused to recognize the value of aircraft carriers; the air force did not acknowledge the need for high-performance engines...many of their planes were running on castor oil.

Knox also argues that Italy was poor and lacking in many strategic resources. This argument is less satisfying, as Germany faced similar resource problems (albeit not to the same scale) and the Soviet Union was just as bad off (or worse) on the economic indicators that Knox presents. Greece was also just as bad off, yet was able to defend itself and even mount offensives into Albania, at least until the Germans arrived.

One interesting part of the book was on strategic deployment and structure of the armed forces. Mussolini stressed numbers, not quality, and thus created huge numbers of infantry divisions at the expense of motorizing only a handful. Thus, he created a large but immobile army which would have consequences in North Africa. Furthermore, the Army was overextended, being deployed in a half-dozen theaters at once. Meanwhile, the Navy and Air Force were strategically passive and operationally inept, lacking coordination with the other services.

Other problems that Knox identifies are organizational. The command structure encouraged "buck passing" and prohibited promotion. Logistics were over-centralized, taking control away from divisions. Thus, division commanders would sit in place or risk severing their supply lines. Huge numbers of unmotorized divisions created logistical nightmares in terms of supply and redeployment. The large numbers of divisions also meant that the arms industry could not keep up and sub-par weapons were accepted simply to keep the divisions equipped with something.

Finally, the army suffered from tactical rigidity due to poor training and the fact that NCOs had no chance for promotion (coupled with a caste-like relationship between officers and men). Even platoon-sized training was rare, and Italian troops went to battle green. This produced serious problems at the tactical level. NCOs were unable or unwilling to take risks or make creative decisions in battle. Men were unable to follow complex orders, morale was low, and performance under enemy fire was poor.

Thus, in World War II, which was fought as a war of decisive movement, it is not surprising that the Italian military failed so completely. Armed with poor weapons and structured in a way that precluded offensive operations, strategic movement, or even tactical initiative, the Italians were outmached even if individual soldiers were gallant. Italy lost the war due in large part to self-inflicted wounds, and Knox's book identifies and documents those wounds in a thorough manner.

In a nutshell: High-quality assessment of the reasons for why Italy flopped in WWII.

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