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Rotation
(From an archive)” British Command, even in quiet periods, did not keep its units in the front line for more than twelve days and, after that, gave them four days’ complete rest in the rear. On the other hand, our soldiers had for months not had any relief from front-line duty; rest was almost unknown to them, as was also the system of relieving for home leave units that were tired and worn from many months of exhausting life and combat in the desert. There were divisions amount the soldiers that had been fighting for more than twenty-four months in the front line, and that had greatly exceeded the theoretical 200 days which American and British experts have set as the maximum limit of physical and psychological resistance in battle, after which, according to them, the soldier becomes exhausted and militarily inefficient.
If the Italian soldier, deprived of means and exhausted has retreated before the superior numbers, strength and buoyant morale organization of the enemy-if he has retreated it is because the limits of human endurance have been exceeded and he could not do otherwise.”
The Italian army was unspectacular and not overly successful, so the individual courage of the Italian soldier was emphasized to give a sense of national pride.
Training
Units were trained for service in the type of terrain in which they were most likely to serve. Great stress was placed on cooperation of different arms, especially between infantry and artillery. For a war of movement, infantry command was greatly decentralized with platoons and sometimes squads acting largely on their own initiative during offensives.
The integration of all arms was desired, but inadequate technology and training limited the effectiveness of cooperation. In the offense, artillery was frequently unable to cover or communicate with the infantry. In the defense, support was generally more effective.
Personnel assigned to support and headquarters units were not given any infantry training whatsoever. They made absolutely no effort to provide all-round defensive perimeters to protect against raids or penetrations. Consequently, service troops were easily routed by minimal enemy forces.
The instructions of the Chief of Staff to a commander sent to Libya in 1937 cautioned him “not to do too much training.” It was assumed that initiative and individual valor counted for far more than training. OJT was the norm…even for such duties as tank drivers and gunners. The officer corps store of talent and experience was so diluted and so outdated that even training attempted did not accomplish a great deal.
Some training, like that of the Bersaglieri, was quite impressive. Liddell Hart gained the distinct impression that the Italian military was training “an army of human panthers,” the physical training of the soldiers being ‘far superior to anything ever seen.” He described the marching endurance of the Italian soldier as “astonishing.”
Officers were overage. Promotions were under a strict seniority system. Officer pay and benefits were high- at the expense of junior officer training. This lack of training resulted in over supervision. Bloated staffs attempted to justify their existence. Older commanders led to “atavistic intellectual narrowness’.” The proportionately high budget for regular officers also cut funds for weapons, vehicles, and even economized at the expense of junior officer development.
Roattas Evaluation of Officers
In a wartime study, Gen Roatta (himself a major contributor to the problem) found the following deficiencies in the Italian officer corps:
1. Lack of command authority. Timidity.
2. Inadequate technical knowledge
3. Poor understanding of communications equipment
4. Poor map reading and use of the compass
5. Lack of knowledge about field fortifications and fields of fire
6. Poor physical conditioning
7. Total administrative ignorance
Some effort was made to correct these deficiencies in junior officers. No such effort was made to improve senior ranks.
A German staff officer evaluated Italian staff work: “The command structure is…pedantic and slow. The absence of sufficient communication equipment renders the links to the subordinate units precarious. The consequence is that the leadership is poorly informed about the friendly situation and has no capacity to redeploy swiftly. The working style of the staff is schematic, static, and come cases lacking in precision.”
The overabundance of older senior officers cultivated an atmosphere of intellectual rigidity and lack of curiosity. The Army began with two mistaken assumptions it had held fiercely through the interwar period: that the Alps were the most likely theater of war and that numbers were decisive. The first assumption fell away in 1940. The second, despite repeated demonstrations of its fallaciousness, determined Italian doctrine and force structure…and hence use of technology…until 1943.
Gen Bastico evaluated reserve officers: “Divisional commanders were unanimous in informing me that while subalterns, apart from a few exceptions, are rendering good service-even when they come from auxiliary sources, the same cannot be said for the majors and captains recalled from the reserve. These latter in general are too old, and even if they have the will and spirit of sacrifice they lack energy and the capacity necessary for carrying out their duty. Also, nearly all of them reached their rank by successive promotions, the fruit of very brief periods of service. They were also unanimous in lamenting the fact that these officers, nearly all of them, come unprepared and therefore unsuited for the command of their units, or they suffer from congenital illnesses and after the briefest stay they have to be removed-because of professional incapacity or poor health.” Senior officers were not culled after WWI, and the junior officers were gutted during the 20’s by the thousands in a cost-cutting move. Italy was faced with a choice then to either cut the generals (and their higher salaries) or the lower officers and Italy made the wrong choice.
Of junior officers Gen Claudio Trezzani observed, “As long as it’s a question of risking one’s skin, they are admirable, when, instead, they have to open their eyes, think, decide in cold blood, they are hopeless. In terms of reconnaissance, movement to contact, preparatory fire, coordinated movement, and so on, they are practically illiterate.”
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