German Military Incompetence

Through Italian Eyes

James J. Sadkovich

I German efficiency and Italian incompetence

So many writers have so regularly contrasted Italian military incompe-
tence with German efficiency that the one has become a corollary to the
other.l It is beyond the scope of this paper to ascertain why this corollary
exists, but ’Anglo-Saxon racism’ - which Gaetano Salvemini believed ’less
severe’ than its Nazi cousin, only owing to Anglo-American ’priggishness’
-

permeates our historiography, and it can hardly be coincidental that

depictions of competent Germans repeatedly ’rescuing’ inept Italians are
congruent with a general denigration by Anglo-American authors of
Italian society and culture.22
In 1943 Mario Einaudi cautioned that ’The attitude of condescension
which not infrequently obscures the consideration of Italian problems
should be done away with’. Yet three years later an American diplomat
believed that the ’wops’ could be won over by ’a kind word and a slice of
bread, some public homage to Italian culture and discrete allusions to the
virtues of American-style democracy’; and the State Department viewed
Italians as politically immature and Italy as an ’undeveloped’ country in
need of ’benevolent paternalism’ where the USA could dump surplus
3
product and excess capital.3
According to H. Stuart Hughes, even where Italian ’society follows the
more normal Western European model ... the middle classes have

1
Williamson Murray, The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938-1939. The Path to
Ruin (Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 110-18, 396 n. 56, esp.
p. 112 discerned ’a general incompetence’ in Italian military forces during the First
World War and like Knox views the Italian military as the mirror-opposite of the
German. W.D. Puleston, The Influence of Sea Power in World War II (New Haven, CT, Yale
University Press, 1947), pp. 63, 57 observed that ’On paper Italy had a more balanced
and formidable fleet than Germany, but its personnel was not as efficient’, i.e., were
less competent.
2 Gaetano Salvemini, L’Italia vista dall’America (Milan, Feltrinelli, 1969) p. 141; and Gian
Giacomo Migone, Problemi di storia nei rapponi tra Italia e Stati Uniti (Turin, Einaudi,
1971), pp. 115-17, for Salvemini’s approval of a ’gaullist’ response to the Allies because
’Italia liberata significava Italia ubbidiente alle autorità anglo-americane’.
3 Council on Foreign Relations, Studies of American Interests in the War and the Peace, E-C13,
p. 12; E-C11, pp. 36, 47-53; Marco Finzi and Roberto Faenza; Gli Americani in Italia
(Milan, Feltrinelli, 1976), p. 135; Migone, Problemi, p. 135.

39
40

demonstrated a curious lack of self-confidence and faith in their own

values’. Alan J. Levine has argued that only Mussolini’s ’imbecilic attack
on Greece’ forced Hitler to move into the Mediterranean, and John
Gooch concluded that among modern nations ’Italy seems to stand
alone’ in displaying ’common patterns of inadequacy which can be
discerned in btoh the liberal and the fascist state’ and which have
4
repeatedly led to incompetent military performance.4
Cyril Falls thus found it hard to rank the First World War Italian
generals, Cadorna and Diaz, on a par with such ’outstanding figures’ as
the Austrians, Krauss and Conrad, even though the Italians beat their
Austrian opponents. And Major H.A. DeWeerd, associate editor of
Infantiyjouma4 excluded Italians from his list of ’great soldiers of World
War II’, which included Hitler, Gamelin, and Chiang Kai-shek.5 Even a
sympathetic writer like John Diggins concluded that if America’s admira-
tion for Mussolini owed something to the misapprehension that he was
’Americanizing’ the ’indolent’ Italians, Americans - ’nursed on &dquo;Poor
Richard&dquo; and rocked to the rhythm of the industrial machine’ - could
’hardly be expected to see ... the beauty of (Latin) idleness’.6
Given such convoluted ethnocentric reasoning, it is not surprising that
Giuseppe Mancinelli, who served as liaison between the Italian and
German armoured forces in Africa, believed that ’the preconception of
Italian inferiority inevitably was applied to every unfavourable and
unfortunate episode from which the Germans were certainly not im-
mune’, and ’the responsibility for failure’ was thus assigned solely to the
Italians.77
4
H. Stuart Hughes, The United States and Italy (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press,
1953/65), p. 39; Alan J. Levine, ’Was World War II a Near-Run Thing?’
Journal of
Strategic Studies (1985), pp. 57-59; and John Gooch, ’Italian Military Incompetence’,
The Journal of Strategic Studies (1982), esp. p. 264.
5
Cyril Falls, The Great War, (New York, Capricorn, 1959/61), pp. 10, 308-10, saw the
Italians ’as little more than capable organizers’ and believed that the mere arrival of
British and French troops in Italy persuaded the Austrians to abandon their attempts to
cross the Piave in November 1917. H.A. Deweerd, Great Soldiers of World War II (New

York, Norton, 1944), was even-handed with the Italians compared to writers such as
Norman Kogan, Italy and the Allies, (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1956),
pp. 32-33, who interpreted Castellano’s efforts to negotiate with the Allies ’a classic
Italian reversal of alliances’. For an early Italian reaction to this sort of treatment of
Italy’s performance, see Angelo Gatti, La parte dell’ Italia. Rivendicazioni (Milan,
Mondadori, 1926).
6
John Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: the View from America (Princeton, NJ, Princeton
University Press, 1972), pp. 316-17. Hughes, Italy, pp. 112-13, praised the Italian
soldier for not ’showing bravery in a futile war for a bad cause’, arguing that ’In his
sober and unheroic fashion, the Italian soldier who fought listlessly, who deserted, or
who surrendered to the enemy, had made the only contribution he could to the
triumph of the Allied cause’. Alexander De Conde, Half Bitter, Half Sweet. An Excursion
into Italian American History (New York, Charles Scribner’s, 1971), p. 237, for some

7
interesting similarities between American and fascist policy.
Giuseppe Mancinelli, Dal fronte dell’Africa settentrionale (1942-1943) (Milan, Rizzoli,
1970), p. 62; also Ugo Cavallero, Comando supremo, diario del capo di stato maggiore
(Bologna, Cappelli, 1948), 15 September 1941 for Gambara’s complaints along the
same lines; and Paolo Caccia-Dominioni, Alamein, 1933-62. An Italian Story (London,
Allen & Unwin, 1966), pp. 106-107, for the German tendency to shift responsibility for
failure to the Italians, and Gause, Bayerlein, and Westphal, who all ’disliked and
 41

Although a detailed effort to assess responsibility for Axis failures is also

beyond the scope of this paper, it is instructive to see what Italian sources
made of Germany’s performance during the war. What emerges is far
from the standard Anglo-American interpretation of the bold, genial and
competent Germans weighed down with a perfidious Italian ally and
defeated by the doughty British. Rather, the Germans appear to have
been cautious to the point of timidity and careless to the point of
ineptitude. Easily discouraged, they refused to confront the British, whom
they saw as formidable racial cousins, and instead foolishly attacked the
Russians, whom they perceived as genetically and culturally inferior.8
Arrogant and ignorant, their refusal to take their ally seriously made
defeat in the Mediterranean inevitable; and their inability to assess their
enemies accurately led them to botch the diplomatic preparation and
military planning for every major operation they studied, from Sealion to
Barbarossa.9
In the spring of 1943, Mussolini’s chief of staff, Vittorio Ambrosio, drew
up what amounted to an indictment of Germany for losing the war.
According to Ambrosio, the Germans had failed to invade Britain in 1940,
then botched efforts to bring Spain into the war, thereby leaving
Gibraltar in British hands. They had denied Italy the use of Tunisian ports
in 1941-2 and, because they viewed the Mediterranean theatre ’con la
faciloneria di Rommel’, they had forced Italy to postpone the invasion of
Malta in mid-1942, thereby fatally compromising Axis logistics to North
Africa. The Germans had also foolishly attacked the Soviet Union in 1941,
and thereafter stubbornly resisted Italian efforts to get a separate peace.
More, German intelligence had mistaken the timing, significance and
place of the Allied invasion of North Africa in late 1942, thereby assuring
that Axis forces were not deployed to meet it. Finally, Ambrosio ex-
coriated Hitler for provoking a European war in 1939, despite his
promises not to do so prior to 1942 and Italian efforts to dissuade him.10
As a frustrated Mussolini told Giuseppe Bottai in late 1942, his relations
with the Germans had been ’a continual &dquo;I told you so&dquo; ’.111

despised’ Italians in general. For the Italian war effort, see J.J. Sadkovich, ’Of Myths
and Men: Rommel and the Italians in North Africa’, International History Review (1991),
’Understanding Defeat: Reappraising Italy’s Role in World War II’, Journal of
Contemporary History (1989), and ’Re-evaluating Who Won the Italo-British Naval
Conflict, 1940-42’, European History Quarterly (1988).
8
8/13), doc. 476, for
Documenti Diplomatici Italiani Series 8, Vol. 13 (hereafter DDI
Magistrati’s 30 August report that Hitler had asked Henderson if a German-British war
could be avoided, and the bewildered reaction of German leaders when Britain
continued to urge Poland to resist after the conclusion of the Nazi-Soviet pact. The
Germans rationalized their blunder by claiming that Mussolini’s letter of 25 August
announcing Italy’s inability to enter the war had emboldened London. See DDI9/3,
docs. 126, 171, 203.
9 Mario Roatta, Otto milioni di baionette, l’Esercito italiano in guerra dal 1940 al 1944 (Milan,
Mondadori, 1946), pp. 156-58, 195-96, for lack of co-ordination in the Mediterranean
and his anger at the niggardliness of German aid.
10 Renzo De Felice, Mussolini l’Alleato (Turin, Einaudi, 1991), II, p. 126.
11
Giuseppe Bottai, Vent’annie un giorno (Milano, Garzanti, 1977), 19 November 1942.
42

II Diplomatic incompetence: provoking war in 1939

Germany’s first blunder was to provoke war in 1939, despite repeated
warnings from Rome that Italy would not be ready to fight until sometime
after 1942.12 Like the Austrians with the Serbs in 1914, so Hitler and
Ribbentrop gambled that they could ’localize’ their conflict with the
Poles in 1939. They thus brushed aside Ciano’s reminders that they had
promised to refrain from any bellicose action for three years, and they
ignored Mussolini’s warning that an attack on Poland would trigger a
European war that Italy did not approve and could not Their join. 13
complete disregard for their ally struck Maurizio Belloni, military aide
a
in Berlin, as disloyal; and Ciano traced the roots of the ’Italian tragedy’ to
the ’cynical German determination to provoke’ war in 1939. Hitler’s
foolish attack on the USSR two years later only confirmed the Italian
Foreign Minister’s belief that the Germans could not be trusted. 14
According to Mario Luciolli, Germany’s attack on Poland left Mussolini
and Ciano full of ’bitterness and contempt’ for their ’arrogant and
reckless ally’. Ciano privately fumed that he would ’never wage war
alongside these scoundrels’, and in December he publicly denounced
Germany’s breaches of faith in a speech to the Italian Chamber.15 As early
as August, Italian leaders correctly assumed that should they enter the

war, Britain and France would seek to defeat them in the Mediterranean
before taking on Germany. 16 By mid-September, while G6ring predicted
a short war, Mussolini argued that the British would draw the conflict out
for at least three years, given their strategy of blockade and attrition. In
short, the Italian leader displayed a grasp of British strategy that generally
eluded the Germans, whose recklessness had forced Italy into an embar-
rassing ’nonbelligerancy’ that Mussolini could end only at the peril of
attracting the main weight of the Allied war effort against Italy. 17
Despite German assertions that the fates of Nazi Germany and Fascist
Italy were inextricably intertwined, Bernardo Attolico, the Italian ambas-
sador in Berlin, thought that Germany’s ’absolute lack of any moral
sense’ in dealing with the Poles made entering the war on Berlin’s side

12
8/13, doc. 129; also Donald S. Detweiler, Charles Burdick and Jürgen Rohwer,
DDI
), (New York, Garland, 1987), XIV, B-495, pp. 4-
German Military Studies, (hereafter GMS
6,8-9.
13
8/13, docs. 1, 4, 21, 27, 36, 130, 250; GMS, V 14, B-495, pp. 11-12; and Enno
DDI
Rintelen, Mussolini als Bundesgenosse. Erinnerungen des deutschen Militärattachés in Rom,
1936-1943, (Stuttgart, Hermann Leine, 1951), pp. 68-72.
14 Maurizio Belloni, Uno come tanti (Rome, Faro, 1948), pp. 21-34; Galeazzo Ciano, The
Ciano Diaries, 1939-1943 (New York, Doubleday, 1946), 23 December 1943.
15 Mario Luciolli, Palazzo Chigi: anni roventi. Ricordi di vita diplomatica italina dal 1933 al
1948 (Milan, 1978), pp. 68-71; and Dino Alfieri, Dictators Face to Face (New York, New
York University Press, 1955), pp. 32-3.
16
8/13, doc. 130.
DDI
17
9/1, docs. 155, 249. For Mussolini’s letter to Hitler, see DDI
DDI 8/13, docs. 102, 298;
for events leading up to 1 September 1939, see Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il duce
(Turin, Einaudi, 1981), passim; and Mario Toscano, The Origins of the Pact of Steel,
(Baltimore, Johns Hopkins, 1967), passim.
 43

‘repugnant’.18 Berlin’s cavalier dismissal of Italian warnings that an attack

through Belgium would alienate the United States also indicated a lack of
diplomatic sense.19 And Germany’s refusal to sell weapons and machinery
to Italy, while it shipped fighter aircraft to Yugoslavia displayed a lack of
common sense. 20 Consequently, Efisio Marras, Giuseppe Teucci, and

Corso Pecori Giraldi - Italy’s military, air, and naval attaches, respectively
-

urged Rome to obtain as much materiel as possible from Germany

before entering the war, since what little Italy might get later would
probably be contingent on ’an increasingly great deal of interference by
the German command’.21
In early 1940, Italian observers reported that a hard winter, a stagnant
Western Front, shortages in urban areas, and frustration at Hitler’s
inability to end the war had depressed morale at the front and increased
the German public’s desire for peace. Even those German leaders who
believed wholehartedly in the efficacy of ’brute force’ were paralysed by
their ’fear of the English bloc’ and hoped for a negotiated peace.22
Unable to admit that their attack on Poland had been a disastrous
miscalculation, German leaders could not imagine a strategy save that of
pursuing the war to its bitter end, even though it was obvious that
Germany would have difficulty winning a long war. 23 Marras reported that
despite eight weeks of preparation, the Germans had failed to foresee
that Norway would resist and consequently had suffered heavier losses

18
9/3, docs. 137, 376, 492, 578. The leitmotiv of intertwined fates resurfaced every
DDI
time Hitler became desperate. Outraged at German treatment of Poles and Jews,
Attolico advised Rome display ’great reserve’ with Berlin.
19
Op. cit., docs. 126, 137, for Attolico’s observation that like other German leaders,
Göring wanted peace, but could conceive of no alternative to an attack through
Belgium, even though the Italians were trying to make the Germans understand that
doing so would mean delivering the United States to Britain.
20
Op. cit., docs. 640, 657, 661 for Teucci’s report that 67 of 90 Messerschmitts had been
sent to Yugoslavia and for his impression that Berlin had little intention of providing
Italy with a hundred 88 mm anti-aircraft batteries, or machinery. Also DDI 9/5,
doc. 771, for German negotiations to sell Polish aircraft engines to Belgrade in October
1940.
21
9/3, doc. 694; and Roatta, Baionette, pp. 148-52, notes that the Germans took part
DDI
in operations ’not to collaborate but rather to direct them’, thereby creating problems
for Italian staff officers and field commanders.
22 8/13, docs. 389, 407, 463; DDI
DDI 9/1, docs. 81, 103, 118, 199; and DDI 9/3, docs. 95,
111, 226, 326; Attolico and Magistrati reported that high-ranking members of the
armed forces had hoped to avoid war, and that an admiral had even suggested that to
avoid bloodshed, Hitler trade Memel for Danzig.
23 9/3, doc. 567, for Lieutenant-Colonel Damiano Badini’s analysis, which notes
DDI
Germany’s lack of trained reserves, cadre, and heavy artillery. For analyses by Mario
Roatta and G. Roero di Costanze, Italy’s military and air attaches in Berlin in 1939, see
National Archives Microfilm (NAM), Reel 109, Frames 74-77, Mario Roatta, Berlin, 15
October 1939, and Reel 383, Frames 886-87, G. Roero di Costanze, Berlin, 25
September 1939. Roatta and Roero di Costanze were most impressed by Germany’s use
of air, not armour, and by the drive and initiative of the ’young’ German officer corps
rather than the ’traditional’ tactic of ’enveloping on the wings’ with deep thrusts by
armoured and motorized columns, many of which would have been annihilated by a
stronger enemy.
44

there than expected.24 Its forces bogged down in Norway and encounter-
ing stiffer resisance than expected in Belgium, Germany ignored even
modest Italian requests for materiel and seemed as interested in dividing
the Balkans with the USSR as in defeating France.25
Because German meddling in the Balkans in spring 1940 threatened to
create a ’delicate’ situation for Italy, Attolico urged Rome to ’speak even
more cearly than has been done up to now’ with Berlin, and Mussolini
railed against ’the meddlesome and overweening nature of the Ger-
mans’. 21 Germany’s refusals to honour its economic accords with Italy
gave a hollow ring to Ribbentrop’s promise of aid, should Britain attack
Italy, and prompted the Italian ambassador to wonder ’What trust, in
effect, an Italy at war, or about to be, could have in a German ally? 27 It
was an easy question to answer. Because he could not count on his ally,
Mussolini knew that he could not wage a long war when he made his
decision to enter the war, but in May of 1940 he fully expected a
negotiated peace. Explaining his strategy of assuming the defensive to
Badoglio on 30 May, he noted that ’I am inventing nothing new: I am
copying the Germans and the French, who stood toe to toe for six months
without doing a thing’.28

III Strategic incompetence: Operation Sealion

France fell three weeks later, but victory in the West did not end the war,
and in late June 1940, Michele Lanza, secretary to the Italian embassy in
Berlin, found the Germans touchy regarding their provocation of war,
elusive regarding plans for an invasion of Britain, and loath to co-operate
with Italy.29 Alfieri considered Germany distrust of Italians and ’a great

24
9/4, docs. 100, 115, 130. The Italian military attaché also noted that if the attack
DDI
showed German decisiveness and an ability to organize, the objective was marginal,
since the Danubian basin and western borders were the keys to victory. OKW evidently

25
thought the war might last another four years.
Op. cit., docs. 694, 706, 726, 163, 164, 188, 228, 277, 371. According to Renzetti, Hitler
had forced the German generals to go to war. Göring had suggested that Italy take over
US oil fields in Hungary and occupy Greece, but a German publication ran an article
in February depicting the Balkans as Germany’s ’economic space’.
26
DDI9/3, docs. 718, 721, 727; DDI 9/4, docs. 37, 40, 50, 99, 115, 116; Stato Maggiore
dell’Esercito and Ufficio Storico, (hereafter SME/US), Verbali delle riunioni tenute dal
capo di SM generale (Rome, SME/US, 1983), I, n. 3.
DDI
27 9/4, docs. 153, 288, 291, 323, 491, 527, 528, 678. German meddling was partly the
function of its need for food to feed the Low Countries, Denmark, and Norway, which
supplemented German coal, iron, and steel production, but were a drag on the Italian
economy, because Berlin appropriated southeastern Europe’s agricultural production
to feed them.
28
SME/US, Verbali, I, n. 5; DDI
9/4, docs. 642, 646, 668, 669, 679, 680. Mussolini had no
intention of attacking in the Balkan-Danubian region because he did not want to
jeopardize Italy’s supplies of raw materials.
29 Leonardo Simoni (Michele Lanza), Berlino. Ambasciata d’Italia, 1939-1943 (Rome,
Migliaresi, 1946), 24, 25, 28, 29 June and 1 July 1940, noted that the Germans would
have preferred the British to the Italians as allies. In February 1940, Giacomo Carboni,
Memorie segrete, 1935-1948. ’Più che il dovere’ (Florence, Parenti, 1951/55), pp. 45-58
and 63, found the German high command pessimistic and Halder particularly
 45

deal of mental sluggishness’ on their part as being responsible for the

difficulty he had gathering information and getting answers to even ’the
most urgent and important questions’ .30 Rather than co-operate, the
Germans preferred to boast. Ribbentrop had greeted the new Italian
ambassador with the observation that Hitler was ’the greatest military
genius since Napoleon’. Unconvinced, Alfieri dismissed the German
foreign minister as ’full of himself’, found his boasting ’insufferable’, and
thought his dinner party ’tedious’. As he got to know the German
minister better, the Italian concluded that Ribbentrop displayed not only
a ’lack of tact’, but an ’infuriating obstinacy and stupidity . , 31
Peace negotiations were also tedious, because Hitler’s desire to tender
’acceptable’ terms to the French effectively crippled Italy’s war effort by
precluding the occupation of Tunisia. 32 Tedious as well were the delaying
tactics adopted by the Germans to avoid fulfilling their economic accords
with Rome, even while they demanded workers and raw materials from
their poorer ally. 33 Particularly tedious were German boasts of the ease
with which they defeated the Allies in France, a campaign followed closely
by the Italians.34 And perhaps most tedious of all was Berlin’s announce-
ment of a ’New German Order’ in Europe, which prompted Alfieri to urge
Rome to define its Wirtschaftsraum, develop its industrial base, encourage
ties with the Americas, and be prepared to compete with its ally in the
postwar world.35

defensive when Carboni alluded to German bad faith in provoking the war, which
confirmed the Italian’s ’long-standing contempt’ for the ’disloyal character’ of
Germans. According to Carboni, Mussolini doubted the Germans would win, but got
conflicting information from Marras and Colonel Giuseppe Bodini.
30 Rintelen, Mussolini, p. 78; and Alfieri, Dictators, pp. 41, 72-73, for Hitler’s distrust of
Italians.
31
9/4, doc. 151, for Hitler’s parochial
Alfieri, Dictators, pp. 21-24, 28-29, 168; and DDI
vision of fighting Britain ’from Narvik to the Spanish coast’.
32
9/5, docs. 60, 65, 76, 83, 85, 91, 93, 95 and 114. Mussolini limited his demands
DDI
only after Ciano’s message of 19 June from Munich that Hitler wanted terms mild
enough to preclude a government-in-exile and the flight of the French fleet to the
British. The fascist leader thus modified his earlier, more comprehensive demands in
order to accommodate his ally, on whose goodwill even the armistice with France
depended. See De Felice, Alleato, I, pp. 118-36, who thinks Mussolini put off his
demands until Britain was defeated.
33
Germany was especially interested in bauxite and in Italian workers, who were treated
by them like slave labour, e.g., DDI9/5, docs. 16, 608.
DDI
34 9/5, docs. 161, 200, 288, 584; Carboni, Memorie, pp. 95-102, for German lies about
the ease with which they attained victory in France, a campaign followed closely by SIM
(Servizio Informazioni Militari). National Archives Microfilm, Series T-821, Reel 130,
Frames 895ff., M. Roatta, 10 July 1940 and M. Marcatili, 21 July 1940; Frames 503ff.,
E. Marras, 26 May and 23 July 1940. Hitler told Alfieri that German forces needed a
rest after the French campaign, and he was evasive regarding an invasion of Britain,
explaining that such an action involved ’numerous fronts’ and was therefore
’complex’. In the mantime, he encouraged the Italians to settle accounts with Greece
and Yugoslavia and to attack Suez. Marras played down the difficulty of taking the
Belgian forts, and Hitler dismissed the British as hopeless in the attack, badly
commanded, and contemptuous of their French ally, thereby providing an interesting
counterpoint to Ribbentrop’s earlier observation that British troops in Norway had
behaved as abject cowards.
35
9/5, docs. 311. 341.
DDI
46

None the less, their inability to finish off Britain led many Germans to
worry that they would ultimately lose the war.36 Mussolini considered a
German invasion of Britain to be purely ’hypothetical’, and Lanza noted
it was unlikely, owing to tension with the USSR and repeated postpone-
ments, apparently due to bad weather.37 Even Hitler’s assurances to
Ciano that he was ready to ’deal the (final) military blow’ to Britain were
quickly followed by explanations that weather had again delayed the
invasion.38
Repeated delays caused consternation in Rome, especially since the
reasons for the delays were not clear because, as Ciano complained, ’the
Germans keep us in the dark about everything’.39 At the same time, the
Italians were amused at the contrast between Germany’s dithering and
Britain’s air offensive, which had disrupted production in the Ruhr valley
and shaken civilian morale in Berlin. Commenting on a scandal involving
two high Nazi officials and a ’minor’, Lanza noted that while the Germans
might ’blindly obey’ the Nazis, they actually ’despised’ them because they
were ’all petty individuals, ignorant, vulgar, greedy and immoral’.4° If

nothing else, Berlin’s failure of nerve enhanced Italian prestige in the fall
of 1940, because while Hitler made excuses, Italian forces advanced into
Egypt and expelled the British from Somaliland.41
Despite German assurances they were doing well against the Royal Air
Force (RAF), Quirino Armellini, Assistant Chief of Italy’s General Staff,
considered a German invasion unlikely, and Lanza guessed - correctly -
that Berlin might instead be planning to attack the USSR.42 On 18 August
Keitel remarked that ’bad weather’ might delay an invasion of Britain
until mid-October, and two days later Alfieri reported that the Germans
would not risk an invasion, owing to the failure of the German Air Force
(GAF) to destroy the RAF. 43 As Armellini noted, ’No one knew what the
36
Op. cit., docs. 242, 244, 252, 264, 272, 252; and Simoni, Berlino, 13, 15, 19 and 20 July
1940. Although the GAF was preparing to mount massive air attacks on Britain, Göring
rejected offers of IAF units, noting that Italy could help most by fixing the Royal Navy
in the Mediterranean. A week later Ribbentrop told Ciano that an invasion of Britain
was not imminent. It thus seemed that the Germans were awaiting Italy’s attack on

Egypt before acting themselves.

37
Simoni, Berlino, 21 and 29 July, 3 August 1940; Alfieri, Dictators, pp. 75-77.
38
9/5, docs. 274, 327, for Alfieri’s report of 12 August that a low-pressure zone off
DDI
Ireland had again delayed German landings in Britain.
39
Op. cit., doc. 370; Simoni, Berlino, 6 and 7 August 1940; Ciano, Diaries, 8 and 10 August
1940; also De Felice, Alleato, I, p. 282.
40 docs. 393, 600; Simoni, Berlino, 8 and 13 August 1940; Ciano, Diaries, 18, 19,
9/5,
DDI
28 August and 1 September 1940.
41 hesitant Hitler’s 29 August remark that the occupation of
9/5, docs. 516, 602 for
DDI a
Somalia was a ’potente colpo al prestigio britannico’ and that Berlin was awaiting the
outcome of the Egyptian offensive.
42
Simoni, Berlino, 17 August 1940; DDI
9/5, docs. 427, 433, 451; Quirino Armellini, Diario
di querra. Nove mesi al Comando Supremo, (Milan, Garzanti, 1946), 15 August 1940; for
German planning see Barry A. Leach, German Strategy against Russia, 1939-1941
(London, Oxford University Press, 1973), esp. pp. 66-71; and Rintelen, Mussolini,
pp. 94-95, who notes that in July 1940 Hitler overruled Jodl’s suggestion to intervene
in the Mediterranean in favour of beginning plans to invade the USSR.
43 Keitel speculated that an invasion might have to be delayed indefinitely while the
German Air Force hammered away at British morale. DDI 9/5, doc. 456; and Ciano, 27
 47

Germans want to do against the English’, although it was obvious that

Berlin’s lack of resolve had made Churchill confident to the point of
becoming downright cheeky.44
Despite repeated German assurances that the defeat of Britain was
imminent, by late August Alfieri had concluded that Hitler was not ready
for ’the final struggle’ with Britain, since any large-scale invasion was
impossible after mid-September.45 German indecision now threatened to
put the Axis war effort on hold, because Graziani was to co-ordinate his

attack in Egypt with the German invasion of Britain, and as Armellini

noted on 28 August, ’If he co-ordinates his attack with the Germans, he
won’t move for a long time’. In the end, the Italians wasted three months
waiting for Operation Sealion, whose cancellation allowed Britain to
rebound, gave France hope, and caused other states either to gravitate to
the British orbit or, like Spain, to remain neutral. 46
By early September, German officials were nervous and pessimistic;
ordinary Germans were demoralized by RAF raids and worried that the
war would drag on indefinitely; Lanza and Ciano had concluded that the
GAF had miscalculated the strength of the RAF; and Marras doubted the
Germans would invade in 1940.47 Writing to Mussolini on 17 September,
Hitler argued that Germany’s need to consolidate its gains and to
reinforce the eastern frontiers, the difficulties of preparing an invasion

August 1941, for Keitel’s remark to Mussolini that Cairo was more important than
London. Alfieri, Dictators, pp. 77-80, noted Keitel’s claim on 17 August that weather
had delayed Sealion, as well as remarks by Raeder and Hitler later that the enterprise
had simply been too risky to attempt.
Armellini, Diario, 21 and 28 August 1940; GMS, VIII, C-065 1, 12 August 1940, for
44
OKW’s appreciation of the importance that Britain attached to the Mediterranean; and
GMS C-065 j, 30 August 1940, and C-065 1, 2 September 1940, for Berlin’s
understanding that Graziani would attack only if Sealion was executed; and GMS III,
C-065 1, 12 August 1940, for OKW’s belief that Britain’s will to fight would be broken
by springtime. By not invading, Berlin may also have been trying to paralyse Italy in
order to wait for a negotiated settlement.
45
9/5, docs. 475, 507, 513, for Brauchitsch’s observation that the latest date for
DDI
invasion would be mid-October; and Simoni, Berlino, 26 and 28 August 1940, for
Göring’s boast to Giuseppe Teucci that the GAF needed only five days of ’good
weather’ to destroy the RAF, and German assurances to Alfieri that the air offensive,
which was about to begin in earnest, would be followed by invasion and certain victory
even though Lanza concluded that Berlin’s request on the same day that IAF (Italian
-

Air Force) units be sent to Belgium as quickly as possible meant that GAF losses over
Britain had been heavy.
Armellini, Diario, 28 and 31 August 1940; De Felice, Alleato, I, pp. 176-77; and DDI
46 9/5,
doc. 516. At Vienna Hitler claimed that if the weather cleared the GAF would be able
to defeat the RAF in two weeks, but Ciano doubted that this would occur since the
Germans had not only been notably diffident toward Russia and stressed the difficulties
involved in invading Britain, but had also finally admitted that the war would likely last
through the winter.
Hitler had never believed in Operation Sealion, and interservice rivalries had delivered
47
the coup de grâce to the operation. GMS, VII, C-059, for Warlimont’s opinion, shared by
Halder, Blumentritt and von Wedel; also GMSVIII, C-065j, 13 August 1940, for the
decision to pursue Sealion only after all other alternatives had failed; and 23
September for interservice rivalry. Simoni, Berlino, 1, 2 and 16 September 1940; Ciano,
Diary, 14 September 1940, for Marras; and DDI 9/5, doc. 600; Mario de Monte, Uomini
ombra. Ricordi di un addetto al servizio segreto navale, 1939-1943 (Rome, Nuova Editoriale
Marinara Italiana, 1955), pp. 158-63 for Canaris.
48

force, and - of course - delayed the invasion of Britain.

bad weather had
He thus believed that Spanish participation was mandatory because the
war would last through the winter.48 Berlin now placed its hopes in an

Italian victory in Egypt. But if Badoglio and Mussolini saw the Medi-
terranean as the ’baricentre’ of the conflict in September, lack of Axis

planning - due in no small part to the unilateral nature of Germany’s war

effort - precluded any joint Axis ventures in that theatre in 1940.49
According to Ribbentrop, Hitler considered the war ’already won’, the
GAF had won the air battle over Britain, and the invasion would occur as
soon as there were eight to 10 days of good weather. Ciano and Badoglio
were understandably sceptical, and Alfieri interpreted the German failure

to invade as the ’first error of psychological and technical calculation’

made by Berlin .50 Germany had lost both its sure touch and its con-
fidence, and Armellini saw the initiative passing to Britain as the centre of
gravity shifted to the Mediterranean, because it was ’no use relying on the
famous invasion any more’.51
As Hitler made excuses for Germany’s failure to invade, Raeder
stressed the difficulties of conducting amphibious operations.52 By early
October, Mussolini was even using his ally’s repeated postponement of
the invasion of England to explain the problems faced by Graziani in his
preparations for a further advance into Egypt.53
As Fuller has noted,
’Hitler did not clearly see where the center of gravity of the war lay’, and
by late 1940 Germany had lost the initiative to London. Stunned by their
failure to defeat England, the Germans were busy mulling the lessons of
1914 when Ciano visited Berlin in late September.54
Had the Germans lent the Italians adequate material support, had they
attempted seriously to plan with the Italian general staff, or had they
risked an action across the English Channel in 1940, the war would have
taken a very different turn. Even a German failure would have disrupted
Britain’s buildup in the Mediterranean, and a partial success might have
led to a negotiated peace. Instead, mixed signals from Hitler and
Ribbentrop, Germany’s invasion of its ally’s sphere of influence, and
Berlin’s indifference to Italian requests for raw materials and weaponry at
9/5, doc. 602, 617; Armellini, Diario, 5 September 1940, for Marras’ report that the
DDI
48
Germans placed their hopes in an Italian victory in Egypt.
49
SME/US, Verbali, I, n. 12 and 20. Badoglio saw the need for German co-operation, but
noted that since it would take three months to transport armoured units to Africa and
Italian soldiers were ’superiori ai soldati tedeschi’, the Germans could help most by
supplying 80 Ju.87 dive-bombers and a hundred Bf.109s — the same number shipped to
Yugoslavia in the spring. But Berlin offered only an armoured division. For lack of Axis
planning, GMS, XIV, B-495, pp. 16-17, for Rintelen’s comments, and Alfieri, Dictators,
pp.99-102.
50 docs. 617, 619, 656; Ciano, Diary, 19 and 20 September 1940; and Simoni,
9/5,
DDI
Berlino, 30 September 1940.
51
Armellini, Diario, 24 and 25 September 1940.
52
Alfieri, Dictators, pp. 78-79.
53
9/5, doc. 753, for Mussolini’s explanation to Hitler that the offensive had been
DDI
delayed because it was ’subordinata a un rude lavoro di preparazione logistica, simile a
54
quello che avete dovuto compiuto Voi in previsione dello sbarco in Gran Bretagna’.
J.F.C. Fuller, The Second World War, 1939-45. A Strategical and Tactical History (New York,
Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1962/1948), pp. 90-91; Ciano, Diaries, 27 and 28 September
1940.
 49

a time when the German army was idle, triggered an Italian attack on
Greece and distracted Rome’s attention from Africa just as Germany’s
failure to invade Britain allowed London to reinforce Egypt. In short, it
was German timidity that botched the Axis war effort in 1940; German

arrogance that led Hitler to order his staff to begin planning an invasion
of Russia even before he had cancelled the invasion of Britain; and
German duplicity that kept Mussolini in the dark and generated suspi-
cion. Repeated assurances that the war would soon be over by Ribbentrop
and Hitler made them appear ridiculous, especially when set against the
fear of most Germans that the victories of 1940 would prove as pyrrhic as
those of 1914.55

IV Operational incompetence: Operation Barbarossa

In late 1940 and early 1941, the Germans not only cut off a potential
source of raw materials for Italy by blocking Rome’s rapprochement with
Russia, they either ignored Italian requests for trucks, aircraft and
armoured vehicles, or countered by offering German units.56 As Armel-
lini remarked in late September, ’To have Germany as an enemy is hard,
but it’s no easy thing having them as a friend either’.57 German refusals to
offer Italy no more than an armoured brigade simply underlined their
inability to grasp the strategic situation.58
Given the time needed to ship units and OKW’s (Oberkommando der
Wehrmacht) belief that a large armoured force would be constrained to
operate along a narrow coastal strip in North Africa, Berlin delayed
transport of any forces, even after Mussolini had accepted an offer of
German tanks for Egypt on 4 October at his meeting with Hitler on the
Brenner.59 At the same meeting Marras and Keitel agreed that the top two
55
Ciano, Diaries, 3 November 1940; Alfieri, Dictators, pp. 99-102, for the Axis failure to co-
9/4, docs. 15, 30 for Attolico’s complaint that Berlin had used ’the
operate ; and DDI
usual system, that of acting and then communicating the fait accompli, explaining that
they could do nothing else’.
56
Ciano, Diaries, 17 August and 6 September 1940; Alfieri, Dictators, pp. 145-46, notes
9/5, docs. 677, 719, 355, for
Ribbentrop’s displeasure over Italo-Soviet trade talks. DDI
Mussolini’s request for equipment to Hitler on 4 October 1940, Marras’s talks with
Keitel and Jodl, Axis agreement that Egypt took precedence over England as the
primary Axis objective, and Favagrossa’s suggestion that Mussolini get Berlin to agree
to ’una soluzione totalitaria del problema dei rifornimenti’ based on the productive
capacities and needs of each partner.
57
Armellini, Diario, 20, 22, and 23 September 1940.
58 Hitler and OKW had been discussing the possibility of sending first an armoured corps,
then a brigade, to Egypt since late August, but had rejected doing so primarily because
transport would take until early December and because the Italians wanted equipment,
not German units. GMS, VII, C-065 e, pp. 4-9; GMSVIII, C-065 j, 21 August and 5

September 1940; and Rintelen, Mussolini, pp. 101, 104. Marras had asked for anti-tank
guns, trucks, and prime movers.
59
GMS, VIII, C-065 j, 26 August 1940, and VII, C-065 e, pp. 8-9, 17-18. The Germans set
1 December as a departure date, assuming three months would be needed to transport
an infantry and an armoured regiment with supporting units. DDI 9/5, doc. 677;
Ciano, Diaries, 4 October 1940. Hitler spent agood deal of his time with Mussolini at
the Brenner on 4 October proffering lame excuses for Germany’s failure to invade
Britain. In need of more IAF units on the English Channel, Hitler offered support for
an Italian attack on Suez in return for them.
 50

priorities for the Axis were Suez and Gibraltar, but the Germans were
evasive regarding their plans to invade England and the effect Axis air
attacks would have on Britain. Far from reassured, Marras and the Italians
interpreted such an attitude, coming as it did with the deployment of
German units to Romania, to mean that Germany was considering an
attack on the USSR and was deliberately appropriating Italy’s sphere of
influence. 60
Such suspicions were reinforced by Berlin’s unwillingness to live up to
its contractual economic obligations, and Ciano remarked to Lanza that if
the war was long, Italy would not fight for Germany. Although Hitler still
believed in ultimate victory, most Germans were obsessed with the
ephemeral victories of 1914 and increasingly saw defeat as the most likely
result of so many inconclusive victories in 1940. The arrival of Italian air
units in Belgium on 1 October had further depressed the Germans, who
saw Italian aid as a sign of how desperate the situation was. 61
In Rome, Mussolini struggled to redress the imbalance created by
Germany’s initial victories, which had given Hitler control of France and
a chance to win over Spain; and OKW’s failure to invade Britain, which

was free to focus its efforts against Italy. 62 But the Italians were
fully
occupied in Greece, and a bitter Mussolini compared Italy’s check there
to Germany’s earlier failure against Britain. 63
Obsessed with safeguarding the newly won prestige of the German
armed forces and sensitive about their failures, in early 1941 Hitler,
Ribbentrop and Mackensen were anxious to avoid putting German troops
’in a risky situation’. According to Alfieri, fearful of ’a failure’, the
Germans would not invade Britain until they could be assured of
complete control of the air. 64 Marras added that German forces were
simply unsuited to attack the British Empire, although perhaps capable of
holding the Soviets at bay. 65 In short, Berlin had no intention of fighting
the British, and Lanza’s impression by the spring of 1941 was that they
either considered the war lost or hoped for a stalemate ’indefinitely’
prolonged. 66
60
DDI9/5, doc. 719; Simoni, Berlino, 13, 15-17, and 18 October 1940.
61
Simoni, Berlino, 28 September and 1 October 1940; also Ciano, Diaries, 16 July and 11
62
August 1940.
In mid-September, Ribbentrop had asked Italy to help to get Spain into the war in
order to seize Gibraltar. DDI 9/5, doc. 617. Mussolini’s attack on Greece must be seen
in context, not as some sort of aberrant action by an imbecile. For his letter to Hitler,
which justified the attack on Greece by referring to the meeting at the Brenner, see Op.
cit., doc. 753, and for Lanza’s suspicion that the Germans ’lost’ the letter, 24 October
1940. Cesare Amé, Guerra segreta in Italia, 1940-1943, (Rome, Gherardo Casini Editrice,
1954), p. 85, for SIM’s reports in early January 1941 that Britain was moving troops
from the home islands to Africa.
63
Armellini, Diario, 30 November 1940.
64
DDI9/6, doc. 791.
65
Simoni, Berlino, 28 January 1941, noted that the Germans had suffered ’parecchi
scacchi’ in the theatre and were ’irritatissimi’; and DDI 9/6, docs. 457, 469, for German
caution and Marras’ impressions.
66
Simoni, Berlino, 1 and 3 March 1941. Also DDI 9/6, docs. 296, 463, 469, for Alfieri’s
report of ’Mormorii, barzellete politiche, senso generale di depressione’, and Marras’
impression Germans saw the failure to defeat the RAF and to invade Britain as a
 51

By late March there were strong hints that Hitler was using Franco’s
refusal to enter the war to justify ignoring the Mediterranean, but
considering some sort of action against the USSR.67 In April, Hitler
informed Mussolini that a quick victory in the Balkans was essential so
that Germany could relocate its forces to the ’East’, where the situation
was ’malsicura’. A German minister confided to Lanza that Germany
could not indefinitely tolerate a Bolshevik regime in the USSR and that
everything had ’been prepared for a long time’ to eradicate it. 68
The Italians understood the need to invade Britain and to keep the
USSR neutral, but German efforts to scuttle an Italo-Soviet rapproche-
ment indicated that they did not do SO.69 In May rumours of an attack on
the USSR pullulated in Germany, one of Lanza’s sources warning that an
attack on the USSR was imminent, another noting that the Germans
expected to ’exterminate’ the Soviets in three months .70 And Alfieri
informed Ciano that a ’good source’ had reported that armoured units
en route from the Balkans were to be ready to move ’at any moment’

against Russia. 71
Although Rome continued its trade talks with Moscow, by late May the
Italian ambassador, Augusto Rosso, was relating rumours that war
between the USSR and Germany was imminent. Rosso’s efforts to find out
more from the German ambassador, Schulenberg, were futile, but in

early June Italian sources reported that a massive military buildup along
the Soviet frontier was almost complete.72 On 12 June Rosso reported that
the evacuation of German families confirmed unofficial warnings that a
German attack was ’imminent’, and he obtained permission from Rome
to do likewise. 73 The transfer of Kesselring’s 2nd Air Fleet to Poland and a
reduction in shipments of coal and oil to Italy indicated that major
operations were about to get underway, despite denials by German
officials.74 By 13 June, the Italian military attach6 in Slovakia was counting
a military convoy passing to the east every seven minutes, and six days

later Schulenberg warned Rosso that war would break out in two or three
days.75
’check’, but did not think that they could be beaten either. The Italian general staff
considered it imperative to focus the Axis war effort on the Mediterranean after
Germany’s failure to invade Britain.
9/6, docs. 661, 778 for massing of forces to the east and for Spain, whose entry
DDI
67
into the war Hitler and Berlin had botched.
Simoni, Berlino, 29 April 1941; and DDI
68 9/6, doc. 865.
Simoni, Berlino, 5 and 16 January 1941; and DDI
69 9/6, docs. 414, 446, 470.
70 Simoni, Berlino, 3-4, 7-8, 13, and 15 May 1941.
71
9/7, doc. 144.
DDI
72
Op. cit., docs. 152, 170, 181, 188, 225, 231, 235, 243, 254, 257, for trade talks; for
Formentini’s reports from Bucharest indicating that an attack might be imminent; and
for Cicconardi’s report from Helsinki that Finnish and German troops were massing at
the same time that the Soviets were
building up their forces around Moscow. Also
Cavallero, Diario, 15 and 21 June 1941.
73
DDI
9/7, doc. 251, 252.
Simoni, Berlino, 3, 5, 7, 10,
74 and 11June 1941. Lutze, SA Chief of Staff, assured Renzetti
that there would be no war with Russia, but a German naval attaché in Budapest put
the start of operations anytime after 15 June.
Simoni, Berlino, 13 June 1941; and DDI
75 9/7, doc. 275.
52

At noon on 21 June, Alfieri telephoned Rome to warn of a German

attack on Russia, then wired Ciano that evening to report that the
Germans would justify their attack as protection of Finland and Roma-
nia.76 Although he expected the German assault in early July, Alfieri was
not surprised when Ribbentrop called him early in the morning of 22
June to announce the German attack. And if the Italian press echoed
Goebbels’ assertion that the invasion was a European crusade, Mussolini
was enraged and Italian diplomats less than enthusiastic over the German

action.77 But initial reports seemed to confirm German predictions that

the war would be short, and by 23 June Italy had declared war on the
USSR and Rosso was packing his bags for home.78
But Spain and Japan stayed out, and in early July, OKW was frustrated
at their inability to rout the Soviets, who were staging orderly retreats.
Within a week, Lanza noted that the Germans were ’upset’ owing to
reports of heavy casualties, and after the Soviets dealt ’a sharp rebuke’ to
the Germans at Smolensk, it was clear that the war would last longer than
anticipated.79 By late July German forces had taken up to 50,000
casualties, including relatives of such highly placed men as Keitel; and
their attack had stalled, leading some to blame Hitler, and others to
awaken from pleasant dreams of victory to the harsh realities of war.8°
Hitler’s rash attack on the USSR had drastically shifted the baricentre
of the Axis war effort to the east and disjointed Italy’s war effort, much to
the chagrin of Lanza, who noted in mid-February that while Egypt was an
easier and more logical objective than the Caucasus oil fields, the
Germans had ’an instinctive fear’ of the Mediterranean.81 Perhaps more
to the point is Fuller’s observation that to lose one’s line of operations ’is
so great a blunder that the general who does so is a criminal’. Hitler, who

’purposely abandoned’ his line of operations, eventually lost the war by

doing so.82
But there was a silver lining for the Italians, who enjoyed the drubbing
that the Germans were taking. Mussolini hoped that the Germans would
’lose a lot of feathers’ in Russia and wanted a ’long and exhausting’ war to
wear Germany down.83 Bottai noted a joke making the rounds in Vienna
which pointed out that while Hitler had talked about landing in Britain,
the first German to do so, Hess, was whisked away to an insane asylum.84

76 docs. 285, 290.

DDI
9/7,
77
Simoni, Berlino, 22 and 28 June 1941; Alfieri, Dictators, pp. 138-39; Ciano, Diaries, 30
78
June 1941; and DDI
9/7, doc. 291.
9/7, docs. 296, 302, 310; Cavallero, Diaries, 22 June and 2 July 1941. Mussolini’s
DDI
reasons for entering the war against the USSR are complex, but without the German
attack the likelihood was that Italy would have strengthened, not cut, its ties with
Moscow. See De Felice, Alleato, I, pp. 391-409.
79
Simoni, Berlino, 1, 5, 14, and 18 July 1941; also Alfieri, Dictators, pp. 147-48.
80
Simoni, Berlino, 26 July 1941; and DDI
9/7, doc. 406.
81
Simoni, Berlino, 14 and 18 February 1942; Roatta, Baionette, pp. 187-88. To move
ARMIR’s 250,000 men and equipment required 900 trains and three months.
82
Fuller, Second World War, p. 91, was citing Napoleon.
83
Ciano, Diaries, 1 and 20 July 1941; De Felice, Alleato, I, pp. 393-95.
84
Bottai, Vent’anni, 26 June 1941.
 53

None the less, the likelihood that Germany would be stalled in Russia
through the winter, not only gave Britain a free hand in the Medi-
terranean, but made the public even more hostile toward Italian workers,
who were taking the place of Germans called up for duty in the East.85
Also Mussolini - livid over German treachery and incensed at the
treatment meted out to Italian workers - was concerned over the military
repercussions of Hitler’s blunder. 81
Predictably, the Germans were slow to realize that they were over-
matched in Russia, although by mid July the wife of one German
diplomat in Rome was referring to Hitler as an ’idiot’, and Ame foresaw a
very long and hard war in the East.87 Civilian morale deteriorated
noticeably as German forces in Russia stalled, and one German veteran
commented that the Germans had finally found a worthy opponent (einen
ebenbürtigen Gegner) . Many recalled the ephemeral victories of the First
World War and interpreted each setback as a step toward final defeat.88
That things had gone seriously wrong by early August was clear from
Ribbentrop’s claim that the slow pace of the advance was calculated to
save German lives and his observation that not even the capture of
Moscow would end the war.89 The Russian front was obviously biting into
Germany’s supplies of fuel and war material, and while Goebbels played
up victories in the Ukraine, it was clear that the Wehrmacht had been
unable to destroy the Red Army.9° According to Marras, some Germans
doubted that the Axis could win the war and blamed the ’delay’ in the
East on Hitler’s decision to attack Yugoslavia. At best OKW hoped to
reach the Volga and Caucasus by winter, then go over to the defensive
until 1942 to await a strategic thrust up from the Middle East. German
forces had already suffered 500,000 casualties, and the GAF could gain no
more than parity against the Red Air Force.91

According to Ribbentrop’s Chef de Cabinet, Steengracht, Russian

resistance had been ’extremely tenacious’ and Russian troops had shown
both a ’fatalistic contempt for danger’ and ’a reckless and unexpected
spirit of initiative’. Nonetheless, he foresaw a general Soviet collapse
’within a few weeks’, and assumed that the Germans could establish
’winter’ positions on a line running from Leningrad to Moscow to Kiev.92

85
DDI doc. 438; also Ciano, Diaries, 9 and
9/7, 11 July 1941.
86
Ciano, Diaries, 7 and 16 July 1941; and Bottai, Diario,7 June 1941, who noted that
Mussolini had told the Council of Ministers that he would send no more workers to
Germany, since Italians were not Sklavenvolk and Germans Herrenvolk.
87 Ciano, Diaries, 18 July 1941.
9/7, docs. 444, 445. Alfieri noted that while an Italian saw a lost battle as a lost
DDI
88
battle, the German viewed it as a portent of ultimate defeat.
89
Op, cit., doc. 452; and Simoni, Berlino, 4 August 1941, for Ribbentrop’s discussion of
efforts to stabilize a ’winter line’.
9/7, doc. 472, for Alfieri, who noted that the public was still awaiting the ’final
DDI
90
battle’ against ’the principle enemy, England’; and Simoni, Berlino, 14 and 15 August
1941.
91
DDI9/7, doc. 501.
92
Op. cit., doc. 506.
54

But as one Italian said of Hitler’s headquarters in late August

diplomat
1941, ’Reality ceases and detached and isolated world begins here’.93
a

Although the fall of Kiev in September encouraged the Germans to

make one last effort to take Moscow and Leningrad before winter, Alfieri
doubted they could do much after having suffered a million casualties.94
Yet on 30 September Otto Dietrich, Press Chief for the Reich, declared
that Germany would defeat Russia within six weeks or Alfieri could
publicly denounce him as a liar; on 2 October, Hitler announced the ’last
decisive battle on the eastern front’ was about to take place; and
Ribbentrop predicted that ’within a year Russia would no longer exist as a
military power’.95 In early October, the German government and press
both implied that ’decisive’ victories at Vyazma, Bryansk and Karkhov
made the end of the war imminent, but the German military were less
sanguine, and Alfieri speculated that the government was preparing its
citizens for another winter of war and the announcement of heavy losses
in Russia. Lanza simply dismissed Dietrich’s announcement of a ’con-
clusive victory in the decisive battle on the eastern front’ and ridiculed
German efforts to convince foreign observers that the war would soon
end as ‘absurd’.96
By mid-October, the Germans seemed worried only about how many
forces it would take to occupy a defeated Russia.97 But the prospect of a
German victory enthused neither Lanza nor Alfieri, who had learned of
German plans to occupy Italy as well. 98 Nor could renewed rumours of an
Anglo-German peace that included the sacrifice of the USSR to Germany
and of Abyssinia to Britain have reassured Rome.99 Indeed, by October
both Mussolini and the Italian public were patently anti-German.loo
Happily for Rome, worries about a German victory were premature.
’Bad weather’ was hindering German operations, and Ribbentrop’s
elation over reports of victories in Russia was not shared by a dispirited
German public.101 In late October, as Ciano ridiculed the Germans for
singing their ’hymn of victory too soon’, Alfieri guessed that the German
93 Cristano Ridomi, La fine dell’ambasciata a Berlino, 1940-1943 (Milan, Longanesi, 1972),
pp. 82-83; also Alfieri, Dictators, pp. 151-59.
94
9/7, doc. 593; also Simoni, Berlino, 25 September 1941, who noted that his German
DDI
contacts were uncertain whether the fall of Kiev was due to a simple tactical error by
Budyenny or signalled the beginning of a Soviet collapse.
95
Simoni, Berlino, 2 October 1941; and DDI 9/7, docs. 597, 603.
96
Simoni, Berlino, 3, 8, 9, and 11October 1941; DDI 9/7, docs. 628, 634. Although the
Germans as of yet had no idea of how many forces they had destroyed in the Vyazma-
Briansk pocket, they took the fall of Moscow for granted.
97
9/7, docs. 638, 640; and Simoni, Berlino, 14 October 1941.
DDI
98
Simoni, Berlino, 5 and 15 October 1941. During a visit to Weimar by Bottai, Minister
Rust announced that Hitler would deal with Mussolini after finishing off Stalin, a threat
taken seriously by the Italians whose information on Walkirien from various sources
indicated that the OKW intended to dispatch three divisions as ’aid’ to Italy, then use
them to arrest the king and his family and install Mussolini or Farinacci as ’a kind of
Quisling’.
99
The
100
rumours were reported from Madrid by Leuquio; see DDI
9/7, doc. 668.
Simoni, Berlino, 3 and 13 October 1941.
101
9/7, docs. 638, 654, 658; Simoni, Berlino, 14 October 1941, noted that liquidation
DDI
of the Bryansk-Vyazma pocket had needed ’mezzi notevoli’.
 55

offensive was in ’a phase of particular difficulty’, and the German press

office scrambled to deny its earlier ’absurd announcements of victory’ in
Russia.’o2
On 24 October Alfieri reported that too rapid an advance by Gu-
derian’s armoured units, stiff Soviet resistance outside Moscow and - of
course - bad weather, had precluded anything more than a ’compromise’

solution in the east before winter. Despite having seized large areas of the
USSR and destroyed Timoshenko’s armies, the Germans had not broken
the Soviet will to fight and were unable to liquidate the Eastern Front and
free a hundred divisions for use elsewhere.103 As an amused Ciano noted,
Ribbentrop now made ’a big jump’ from confident predictions of
imminent victory to a timid guess that the war might end in 1943.104
Italian sources reported that failure to secure victory in 1941 had
triggered a heated debate within both OKW and the government over
whether to continue the offensive, and if so, whether to move against
economic and military objectives in the south or ’political’ objectives in
the north. To what extent repeated German excuses that ’soft’ ground
precluded movement was an effort to cover their indecisiveness was not
clear, but the Italians perceived a serious split between Brauchitsch and
Halder on one side and Keitel and Hitler on the other. 105 Additional
evidence of chaos within the German high command in early November
came from Otto von Bismarck, who told Anfuso that the German
military
considered the war in the east lost, and from reports that Ernst Udet had
killed himself after being dismissed because he insisted that the GAF,
built for a short war, could not match Allied air power.106 According to
Bottai, Hitler had even confided to Ciano that Soviet resistance had been
a brutal surprise, admitting that he would have hesitated to attack had he
known what tough opponents the Russians would be. 107
Predictably, despite a propitious opening, the German offensive against
Moscow quickly stalled, owing to low-level Soviet air attacks and - of
course - bad weather.10’ So desperate did the situation appear by mid-
December that rumours circulated of a ’pronunciamiento’ by German
generals.l°9 The disastrous situation in the east was particularly embar-
rassing to Berlin because as racially inferior Russian troops routed
German armies outside Moscow, well-disciplined Italian forces stymied a
superior British opponent in Africa, where Auchinleck’s offensive barely
102
Simoni, Berlino, 24 and 25 October 1941; DDI
9/7, docs. 666, 681; and Ciano, Diaries, 18
and 20 October 1941.
103
9/7, docs. 681, 775. Alfieri speculated that premature announcements of victory
DDI
might have been a ploy aimed at Britain because German ’dirigenti’ feared that they
would lose their gains if the war was not ended quickly. He thus worried that if unable
to deal with London, Berlin would create a German-dominated fortress Europe, in
which Italy’s role remained uncertain.
104
Ciano, Diaries, 27 October 1941.
105
9/7, docs. 701, 717; and Simoni, Berlino, 2 and 9 November 1941.
DDI
106
Simoni, Berlino, 10 November 1941; and Ciano, Diaries, 6 November 1941.
107 Bottai, Vent’anni, 1 November 1941.
108
9/7, doc. 828; and Simoni, Berlino, 20, 22, and 30 November 1941.
DDI
109
Simoni, Berlino, 4, 6, and 10 December 1941.
56

succeeded, and then only thanks to Rommel’s ’recklessness’ and Hitler’s

vetoof Rome’s request to ship supplies through Tunisian ports
In Germany Hitler blamed his generals for the debacle in Russia,
Goebbels used Japan’s victories in the Pacific to mask Germany’s setbacks
in the east, and Himmler gleefully exploited the split between the NSDAP
1
(Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) and OKW. 11 Lanza
judged Brauchitsch’s fall and Hitler’s assumption of overall command
stupid, because he considered the German leader ’a nut and a fantastic
dilettante’; and Alfieri noted that the use of the military as a ’scapegoat’
for the failure to take Moscow had evoked ’great surprise and deep
emotions’ in Germany.&dquo;2 More succinct was the remark by Bismarck, who
told Anfuso that Hitler was ’a blundering ass’. Naturally, Mussolini was
elated at the German debacle in Russia, if dismayed at Rommel’s
3
propensity to blame the Italians for his own ineptitude.’ 13
By Christmas the Germans, who had only a few days before portrayed
the creation of a winter line as a question of reorganization, were clearly
in the midst of a profound crisis in Russia, retreating up to 150 km from
their most advanced positions and barely able to hold the Soviets, who
had pierced the German line all along the front.&dquo;4 Although German
units began to regain some composure in mid January, the war in Russia
was in ’a difficult and delicate phase’, with the Soviets pressing

everywhere.&dquo;5
To the amusement of Ciano and Mussolini, the Germans suddenly
became almost cordial, as they invented excuses for their failures and
Hitler rallied against the ’weather’. 116 As in 1940 when the Germans
elicited Italian air units to help in the offensive against Britain after it was
clear that the GAF was inadequate to the task, so in 1942 Hitler now asked
Romania and Hungary, as well as Italy for more army units to use in
Russia, to the dismay of Marras, who asked for clarification. But unlike the
Romanians and Hungarians, who balked at sending more units to the
east, Mussolini overcame his bitterness at German efforts to blame Italian
units for their failures and assured Hitler that he would ready new
divisions for Russia. But the fascist leader also dismissed both Hitler
and FDR (F.D. Roosevelt) as ’big jackasses’ .118
110
Ciano, Diaries, 26 and 28 November, 7 and 17 December 1941.
111
Simoni, Berlino, 5, 8, 10, and 18 December 1941. DDI
9/8, doc. 57, for Alfieri’s censure
of Hitler for the débâcle outside Moscow because the Nazi leader had forced the
military to attack and his demoralization of the army by replacing key generals, and for
friction between regular army and SS units.
112
9/8, doc. 54; Simoni, Berlino, 21, 23, and 31 December 1941.
DDI
113
Ciano, Diaries, 20, 22, and 27 December 1941; Cavallero, Diario, 15 September and 2, 8,
and 16 December 1941.
114
9/8, docs. 52, 62, 76, 84.
DDI
115
116
Op. cit., docs. 111, 146; also Simoni, Berlino, 7 and 14 January 1942.
Ciano, Diaries, 1 January 1942; DDI 9/8, doc. 80. That Germany’s setbacks were
reminiscent of those suffered by Italy for in Greece a year earlier made their search for
excuses all the more interesting, especially since bad weather had also been crucial in

117
Italy’s débâcle in the Epirus.
Simoni, Berlino, 8 and 23 January 1942; DDI 9/8, docs. 57, 126, 155, 180, 181; and
Ciano, Diaries, 6 and 15 January 1942 for the bitterly anti-German Magyars.
118
Ciano, Diaries, 13 January 1942.
 57

It was now the minor powers who rushed to rescue the Germans, who
were desperately trying to supply 95,000 men in a Soviet pocket at Lake
Ilmen. Despite optimistic German assessments, Marras predicted that
Russia would be ’the tomb of the German army’; Alfieri reported that the
Germans were desperate enough to use gas against Soviet troops; and
Bismarck told d’Aieta that Germany’s inability to advance not only
hindered a deal with the Anglo-Saxons but was also ’a disaster for the
white race’ because it allowed Japan to humiliate Anglo-American forces
in the Pacific.119 Ciano underlined how ridiculous the Germans had
become in late February when he noted that ’every time the Germans
issue a communique that everything is going well on the eastern front,
they get a thrashing’.’ 20
While Mussolini was pleased with Germany’s setbacks, they left Italy to
occupy and pacify the Balkans, a task made more difficult by German
refusals to cooperate with the Italians and by brutal German occupation
policies which stimulated partisan resistance. German policies also made
it difficult for the Italians to attract others to the banner of a ’New Order’
and stymied Rome’s efforts to seek a separate peace with Moscow.121
Perhaps De Peppo caught the mood in Europe best when he reported
from Ankara that, ’The Turkish ideal is that the last German soldier will
fall upon the last Russian corpse’.122
In the spring of 1942 Pavolini found Berlin depressed, the Nazi regime
in crisis, and jokes about Hitler’s incompetence making the rounds in
Berlin.’2s The German soldier had learned to fear his Soviet counterpart
and to dread the expansive steppes, while heavy losses and returning
veterans had triggered premonitions of disaster in the German public,
even though by early April the Eastern Front was quiet and the German

Army apparently ’solid’ again.124 But few Germans foresaw a chance for
victory over the Soviets in 1942, and while Alfieri hoped Mussolini would
talk more frequently and plainly to Hitler, Lanza and Luciolli wanted the
ambassador to urge the Duce to find a way out of the war and free Italy
from its duplicitous and incompetent ally.125

119 Lanza reported the use of poison gas by the Germans at Kerch in May. DDI9/8, docs.
257, 337, 343; Simoni, Berlino, 21 February, 8 March, and 9 May 1942; Ciano, Diaries, 24
February 1942; and Belloni, Uno come tanti, p. 47.
120
Ciano, Diaries, 26 February 1942.
121
Cavallero, Diario, 4 February 1942; DDI
9/8, doc. 263. To feed the Greek civilian
population as well as the 600,000 men and 100,000 animals of their own occupation
force, the Italians used 34 merchant and 22 naval vessels daily in early 1942. Ciano,
Diaries, 24 March 1942 for Luciolli’s comments on Germany’s alienation of Europe.
122
9/8, docs. 368, 369, for Amè’s report that the
Ciano, Diaries, 11April 1942; also DDI
German population was suffering, families falling apart, and the social fabric fraying;
Luciolli’s report on the dismal situation in Germany.
123
Ciano, Diaries, 19 and 26 March 1942. Amé reported a depressed German public and a

deep split between the NSDAP and the Army.

124
9/8, doc. 462; Simoni, Berlino, 2, 5, and 7 April 1942; and Ciano, Diaries, 9 April
DDI
1942, for Bismarck’s prediction that Germany would be finished by October and his
advice that Italy seek a separate peace.
125
Simoni, Berlino, 2 and 5 April 1942; DDI
9/8, docs. 474, 614; Ciano, Diaries, 5 February
1942; and Luciolli, Palazzo Chigi, pp. 100-101.
58

By late April, when the Italians met Hitler and Ribbentrop at Salzburg,
Alfieri doubted that the Germans could even occupy the Caucasus, and
while some hoped for a negotiated peace, others saw the war dragging
through 1942. 126 Even the Japanese military attach6 had publicly la-
mented German ineptitude, and Ciano observed that the courteous
welcome accorded the Italians at Klessheim castle indicated that things
must be very bad in Russia because, ’The courtesy of the Germans is
always in inverse ratio to their good fortune’. Hitler proved to be merely
an inept boor. With his armies being bled white in the east and his cities

being hammered by RAF bombers, the Nazi leader blamed his problems
on inadequate logistical support, a loss of nerve by ’very many’ German

generals, and - of course - bad weather.127 That the Germans con-

demned the RAF for its ’brutality’ amused Ciano, who was aware of what
the Germans were doing in Eastern Europe.128
By mid-1942, RAF activity and German failures in the east had left the
German public despondent and reliving the closing days of the Great
War. 129 But Mussolini was ambivalent, pleased that the Germans were
losing a good many feathers in Russia, yet worried that they might actually
lose the war in the east and bring down Italy as well.130 Morale in the
German Army was so bad that even the SS representative in Rome was
pessimistic. In Russia, neither Gariboldi nor Messe saw any immediate
prospect of a German victory, and the latter had come to ’detest’ the
Germans for their brutal occupation policies and their falure to honour
their obligation to feed Italian units in Russia.131 By the summer of 1942
most Italians were sick of their ally, and Ciano noted that Ribbentrop had
come off ’his high horse’, because he no longer boasted in German that

’K7ieg ist schon gewonnen’, but insisted in English that ’We cannot lose this
war,.132
But few Germans were even this optimistic, and in September Lanza
had begun to detect popular revulsion with Hitler. After the Allied
landings in North Africa, he noted that ’the Germans give the impression
of having completely lost their head’.133 This indeed seemed to be the

126
9/8, docs. 435 and 497 for the lukewarm reaction to Hitler’s speech.
DDI
127
Op. cit., docs. 492, 493, 495, 506, 507 for Jodl and Keitel, who stressed the role played
by winter weather and the T-34 (sic KV), and for more realistic appraisals by
=

Bodenschatz and Schmundt. Ciano, Diaries, 24 April 1942.

128
Ciano, Diaries, 29 and 30 April, and 1 and 2 May 1942. Marras estimated that the
Germans had already suffered 700,000 dead in Russia.
129
9/8, doc. 490.
DDI
130
Alfieri, Dictators, p. 163; Ciano, Diaries, 2 May and 26 June 1942. For Mussolini’s
131
diplomatic goals in 1942, De Felice, Alleato, I, esp. pp. 391-466.
Ciano, Diaries, 17, 19, 20, 27, 31 May, 4 June and 16 August 1942; and DDI 9/8, doc.
622, for infighting among Himmler, Göring, and Ribbentrop.
132
Ciano, Diaries, 27 August 1942 for Ribbentrop, 22 and 1 November 1942 for Bismarck
and low German morale. Mussolini had reached this stage in late 1940, Bottai, Diario,
31 December 1940, noting that the fascist leader had gone from ’vinceremo’ to ’non
possiamo essere vinti’.
133
Simoni, Berlino, 14 September, 14 and 21 October, 7 and 8 November 1942; Alfieri,
Dictators, pp. 219-23; also Belloni, Uno come tanti, p. 38, who discerned a ’sottile
inconfessata angoscia’ in Berlin when he arrived in September 1942.
 59

case, and in early October a bitter Mussolini commented to his son-in-law

that ’if we lose the war it will be because of the political stupidity of the
Germans’..134 That the Germans seemed more concerned with salvaging
Rommel’s reputation than saving Italian troops in Africa in November
only increased Italian bitterness at Germany’s arrogant incompetence.135
Both Alfieri and Ciano considered the war lost by mid-November, but if
’scared to death’, the Germans were too obtuse to admit that defeat was
inevitable. 136 Lanza and Alfieri therefore warned Mussolini that the
Germans considered Africa lost and hoped to gain control of Italy, whom
they blamed for all their misfortunes, and drag out the war indefinitely.
Saddled with a disoriented and obtuse ally, there was little the Italians
could do except take some comfort from the slow pace of the Allied
advance, which the Germans attributed to the ’Congenital incapacity of
Anglo-Americans to exploit a success’.137
Hitler was in a panic when Ciano and his entourage visited him at
Rastenburg in mid-December, but he still refused to discuss a separate
peace. Ciano himself had adopted a fatalistic attitude.138 Luccioli, who
accompanied Lanza, Alfieri, and Ciano to the eastern ’lair’, also de-
spaired of the Germans, noting that one could not discuss art and
literature with the Nazis, and to discuss ’politics with Hitler and his men
was like playing the violin in front of a rabid dog’.13s
Massive losses at Stalingrad created fear of defeat and a general
loathing of Italy among the German public, which increasingly blamed
the Italians for German failures, perhaps to rationalize leaving Italian
forces stranded in Russia and Mrica.140 In fact, the collapse of the Italian
8th Army was in part due to German pressure to deploy Messe’s forces in
a continuous line on the banks of the Don rather than in mutually

supporting strong points along the heights as the Italian command

wanted. That the Germans then fled in Italian vehicles made their
arrogance as painfully clear as their incompetence.141
Although Ribbentrop blamed the collapse in Russia on Germany’s
allies, Major Perego attributed the failure of the German summer
offensive to a serious undervaluation of the Soviets, an overly ambitious
strategy, Hitler’s errors, and the movement of German troops to the west
after the raid at Dieppe.142 While Mussolini and the Italians pressed for a
separate peace or a defensible line in Russia, the incompetent and
ideologically blinded Germans continued to pursue their dreams of
134
Ciano, Diaries, 30 September and 8 October 1942.
135
Op. cit., 6 and 12 November, 1 and 2 December, and 22 January 1942.
136
Simoni, Berlino, 10 and 11November 1942.
Op. cit., 16, 17, 18, and 22 November 1942.
137
138
Op. cit., 18 and 19 December 1942.
139
Luciolli, Palazzo Chigi, p. 107.
140
Simoni, Berlino, 16, 19, 23, 24, 27, and 31 January, and 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 11February
1943; Belloni, Uno come tanti, pp. 64, 74-83; Luciolli, Palazzo Chigi, p. 103; and Ciano,
Diaries, 18 December 1942 and 16 January 1943.
141
Roatta, Baionette, pp. 189-92; and Alfieri, Dictators, pp. 213-16.
142
Simoni, Berlino, 12, 19, and 22 February 1943.
 60

Lebensraum as their Aryan birthright.143 It was thus Hitler, not Mussolini,

who was the inept dilettante, and the Germans, not the Italians, who
failed to grasp the realities of contemporary warfare, which were political
as much as they were military. If Hitler was a ’tragic buffoon’, as Mussolini

finally decided he was, the German general staff were childish militarists
who followed the Pied Piper of Linz in his arrogant aggression and
connived in his racist brutalities.144

V Who was incompetent?

That Anglo-American historians have tended to reflect the German
rather than the Italian point of view has meant that they have stressed the
errors and failures of judgement made by the Italians rather than those

committed by their German allies. Hence our impression that the Italians
were singularly incompetent. Yet it is clear that the Germans committed
as many blunders as their ally and showed themselves to be woefully

incompetent on more than one occasion. But perhaps incompetence was

less the cause of German shortcomings than the exacerbated racism of
the Nazi leadership and the pervasive ethnocentrism of the German
armed forces and diplomatic corps, which contributed to the failure of
the Axis powers to co-operate. The more interesting question therefore
might be whether the Italians and Germans could have co-operated, and
the answer seems to be a resounding ’no’.
Ciano and Mussolini had tried on more than one occasion to get their
point of view across to Berlin, but usually in vain. In August 1940, for
example, they warned their ally that attacking Poland risked a general
conflagration that could easily destroy Europe, and they stressed that they
were unprepared and unable to participate in a major conflict. But
neither an Italian list of deficiencies that was ’enough to kill a bull - if a
bull could read it’ nor von Mackensen’s support for the Italian position
were able to sway Hitler from his decision to attack Poland. Ciano, who
had gone to Salzburg in early August ’in order to adopt a common line of
action’ and had instead found himself ’face to face with a diktat’,
concluded that the Germans had ’betrayed the alliance’ in which the
Italians ’were to have been partners, not servants’.145
Like Ciano and Mussolini, Marras also discerned the outlines of a
tragedy in Germany’s rush to war, but there was little any of them could
do, and once the Germans had won their unexpectedly quick victory in
Poland and their totally unexpected victory in France, the Italians were
swept along. Military observers like Roatta tended to focus more on the
winning tactics of the Wehrmacht while Mussolini and Ciano sought to
143
Belloni, Uno come tanti, pp. 91-93, noted ’il profondo
disprezzo’ the German military
had for the Nazi leadership; De Felice, Alleato, I, p. 668 for Mussolini; DDI
9/8, doc.
188; and Simoni, Berlino, 18 March 1942, for Berlin’s hope that defeating the USSR
144
might deter Allied landings in the Mediterranean.
De Felice, Alleato, II, p. 1300.
145
Ciano, Diaries, 26 and 21 August 1939, and the entries for 11-31 August 1939.
 61

secure as much for Italy as possible so that in a postwar Europe

dominated by Germany they would not become their ally’s ’servants’. As
De Felice has observed, the Italian ’parallel war’ was a ’political-strategic’
policy, not an ideological preconception, forced on Mussolini, whose
’deep-rooted distrust’ of the Germans was justified. 146
As Canevari noted
as early as 1949, Mussolini sought to defend Italy against Germany by

declaring war in June 1940, then competing for spheres of influence and
territory with his ally.147
The irony, of course, was that the Germans did not trust the Italians
either, but they were in a position to monopolize Europe’s economic
resources, and the consequences of their mistakes and prejudices were
more profound than the results of Italian errors and mistrust.148 How
difficult dealing with the Germans could be was illustrated by Italian
efforts to obtain a license to produce the German Mark III and IV tanks,
which they wanted to replace their M13/40 medium tank. Negotiations
dragged on from June 1941 until March 1942, when the Italians dropped
the idea because they would have had to pay a high price for the license
and then produce tanks for the German army as well as for their own.
How long-lasting the effects of German errors could be was made clear in
January 1942 when Keitel, owing to the demands of Germany’s front in
Russia, reneged on a promise to cede 250 captured Belgian anti-tank guns
to the Italians, who needed them desperately in North Africa.149
Part of the problem was that the Axis had few organizations with which
they could co-ordinate their war efforts. Staff talks were sporadic rather
than regular and usually conducted as adjuncts to diplomatic conversa-
tions. As a result, such meetings rarely went beyond an exchange of views,
a bit of boasting by both sides, and vague agreements on what should be

done. The Italians, who hoped for more from such encounteres from the
Germans, were thus repeatedly disappointed, to the point of feeling
betrayed. For example, when the Axis leaders and their general staffs met
at the Brenner on 4 October 1940, the Italians thought that they had
arrived at an understanding regarding spheres of influence in the
Balkans, only to learn a week later that Berlin was sending advisers to
Romania, a move that clearly infringed on what Rome saw as its sphere of
influence. Organizations such as the armistice commission in France were
largely confined to busying themselves with administrative matters be-
cause both sides used personal contacts and other diplomatic channels to
deal with Vichy, Croatia, and other states. There was therefore no more

146 De Felice, Alleato, I, pp. 106-107.

147 Lucio Ceva, Africa settentrionale, 1940-1943 (Rome, Bonacci, 1982), p. 168.
148 For a summary of the Axis war economies, Gerhard Schreiber, ’Les structures
stratégiques de la conduites de la guerre italo-allemande au cours de la deuxième
guerre mondiale’, in Revue d’histoire de la deuxième querre mondiale (1980), pp. 1-32.
149 Lucio Ceva, La condotta italiana della guerra. Cavallero e il Comando supremo 1941/1942
(Milan, Feltrinelli, 1975), pp. 67-70, 200, and doc. 13.
62

co-ordination in the operation of the Axis diplomacy than there was in

150
general staff planning.
Such a failure to co-operate was exacerbated by Germany’s efforts to
appropriate Italy’s sphere of influence and to take over Italy’s war effort.
The regular inclusion of German liaison officers in the Italian General
Staff’s meetings on the conduct of naval operations only convinced the
Germans that they had to manage the Italian war effort themselves. 151
Contacts between the Italians and the Germans therefore tended to be
either the sporadic and disingenuous correspondence and conversations
carried on by Hitler and Mussolini, the often contentious contacts
between liaison officers and theatre commanders like Rommel and
Bastico, or the rather ambiguous relations between Italian and German
troops in Russia, Yugoslavia, France, and North Africa. 151
It was therefore the failure to co-operate rather than the competence of
either partner that determined their defeat. 153 Because each Axis partner
fought its own ’parallel’ war, the strategic consequences of errors by one
ally affected the other, and failures appeared abnormally large because
each Axis partner tended to inflate its initial successes, whether in Greece
or in Russia, and to blame its failures on its ally. Because both Germany

and Italy were fighting parallel wars, neither was interested in co-
operating with its ally so much as it was in undercutting a competitor. The
strategic errors, tactical mistakes, and diplomatic blunders of one’s ally
were therefore translated into expressions of ridicule and accusations of

incompetence and served as the salve for disappointed expectations and

the magic balm that dissipated one’s own shortcomings, just as sub-
sequent assertions of incompetence by historians have become a method
of simplifying analysis, justifying policy, and avoiding unpleasant
realities.

University of Southern Mississippi

150 For example, Lucio Ceva, ’Altre notizie sulle conversazioni militari italo-tedesche alla
vigilia della seconda guerra mondiale’, Il Risorgimento (1978), ’Appunti per una storia
dello Stato Maggiore Generale fino alla vigilia della "non belligeranza" (giugno
1925-luglio 1939)’, Storia contemporanea (1979), ’La campagna di Russia nel quadro
strategico della guerra fascista’, Il Politico (1979), ’L’incontro Keitel-Badoglio del
novembre 1940 nelle carte del generale Marras’, Il Risorgimento (1977).
151The minutes of the meetings are contained in SME/US, Verbali, I-IV. For the German
decision to take over the Italian war effort, see Josef Schröder, ’L’ Allemagne et ses
alliés’ and ’Les prétensions, allemands à la direction militaire du theâtre italien
d’opérations en 1943’, Revue d’histoire de la deuxième querre mondiale (1972 and 1974).
152 Vittorio
Zincone, ed., Hitler e Mussolini. Lettere e documenti (Milan, Rizzoli, 1946) has
provided some top-level correspondence, and works by scholars like Lucio Ceva, De
Felice’s Alleato, and such publications in the SME/US Verbali and collections of
diplomatic documents have provided an insight into relations between theatre
commanders, general staffs, and diplomats, there is little on the relations between
Italian and German soldiers, although what little there is seems to paint a picture of
arrogant Germans and resentful Italians. For an example, Ceva, Africa settentrionale,
passim, esp. pp. 173-9.
153 De
Felice, Alleato, I, pp. 199-274, for Axis competition for control of the Arabs, which
effectively destroyed any chance that they might be used effectively against the British.