Description: This book tries to understand why the Italian armed forces and Fascist regime were so remarkably ineffectual at an activity -- war -- that was central to their existence. As Hitler's Italian Allies explains in compelling detail, Italy's defeat in 1940-43 was unique. Military-economic weakness, Mussolini's ideological fantasies, and Hitler's failure in the wider war made Italian defeat inevitable. But those factors do not wholly account for the peculiarly undignified character of Fascist Italy's final ruin. This book offers an innovative analytical cross-section of the Italian war effort, from society and culture through politics and war production, to strategy, operations, and tactics, and demonstrates the extent to which Italian military culture -- a concept with applications far beyond Fascist Italy or its last war -- and the blinkered approach of Italy's major industrial enterprises made humiliation inescapable. The result is a striking portrait of the military institutions and regime whose most significant -- if temporary -- conquest in 1940-43 was a dusty and useless corner of Africa, British Somaliland. The armed forces proved unable to imagine modern war, much less prepare for or fight it. The industrialists, with the connivance of generals, admirals, and dictator, produced the least effective, least numerous, and most overpriced weapons of the Second World War. The regime failed miserably in mobilizing the nation's resources. Hitler's Italian Allies analyzes the resulting disasters, and explains why the Italian armed forces dissolved prematurely and almost without resistance, in a stark contrast to the grim fight to the last cartridge of Hitler's army or the fanaticalfaithfulness unto death of the troops of Imperial Japan.

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