1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910455062003321

Autore

Knox MacGregor

Titolo

Hitler's Italian allies : Royal Armed Forces, Fascist regime, and the war of 1940-43 / / MacGregor Knox [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2000

ISBN

1-107-12131-0

0-521-74713-9

1-280-16237-6

0-511-04662-6

0-511-15725-8

0-511-30442-0

0-511-11893-7

0-511-61348-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xiv, 207 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Disciplina

940.54/1245

Soggetti

World War, 1939-1945 - Italy

Fascism - Italy

Italy History 1922-1945

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-200) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Cover; Half-title; Title; Copyright; Dedication; CONTENTS; ACKNOWLEDGMENTS; ABBREVIATIONS; INTRODUCTION: DEFEAT ... AND HUMILIATION; 1 FASCIST ITALY'S LAST WAR; 2 SOCIETY, POLITICS, REGIME, INDUSTRY; 3 MEN AND MACHINES: THE ARMED FORCES AND MODERN WARFARE; 4 STRATEGY; 5 OPERATIONS; 6 TACTICS; CONCLUSION: THE WEIGHT OF THE PAST; CHRONOLOGY; BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE; INDEX

Sommario/riassunto

Fascist Italy's ultimate defeat was foreordained. It was a pygmy among giants, and Hitler's failure to destroy the Soviet Union in 1941 doomed all three Axis powers. But Italy's defeat was unique; the only asset that it conquered - briefly - with its own unaided forces in the entire Second World War was a dusty and useless corner of Africa, British Somaliland. And Italy's forces dissolved in 1943 almost without resistance, in stark



contrast to the grim fight to the last cartridge of Hitler's army or the fanatical faithfulness unto death of the troops of Imperial Japan. This book tries to understand why the Italian armed forces and Fascist regime were so remarkably ineffective at an activity - war - central to their existence. It approaches the issue above all from the perspective of military culture, through analysis of the services' failure to imagine modern warfare and through a topical structure that offers a social-cultural, political, military-economic, strategic, operational, and tactical cross-section of the war effort.