Fixing the Italian Military, 1933~1945 (5 Viewers)

[Shortround6]

OK.

• 1940~1941 medium tank: More or less the original P 26/40 but without the hull MG, the Breda Mod. 38 machine guns replaced with a variant of the Breda-SAFAT 7.7mm, torsion bar suspension with a 250 hp Asso 200, ZF-inspired transmission, and the 75/34 in a three-man turret. 25~26 tonnes. It's not going to be a world-beater but it should last them until 1942.

In 1940-41 the Italians cannot even make a decent 13/40 tank. the 12 liter engine is making 125hp, which is better than the 105hp engine used in 11/39.
The 145hp version does not show up until late 1941.
But somehow the Italians are going to succeed in making a tank that weighs twice as much with an engine twice as powerful using either the most powerful tank gun in the world or the 2nd most powerful gun and figure out how to equip them radios. Of course if you only build 1/2 the number of tanks maybe it is easier to fit them all with radios?
Now we have to figure out how to actually build the tanks. Bolts or rivets? Italians did not have the needed welding technology. Italian tank armor had problems, one reason for the multitude of small plates instead of fewer larger ones? Making the plates thicker helps or hurts?
Italian tank transmission was a decent design, problem was execution. 4 speed with a two speed reduction gear. 8 gears total although there was an overlap. 4 gears in low range and 4 gears in high range. Basicly 6 gears but the tank had to be halted to select either high or low range. Not a bad design/concept in 1940 if it didn't break as often (quality control).
Italians didn't have enough vision devices (nobody did although the Germans were best at this time). Italians did have a power traverse, but it was not problem free. Doubling or tripling the turret weight may have needed some sorting out.

Everybody else went through several steps to get to a 25-30 tank and it took several years. Several very troubled years.
We are expected to believe the Italians could make the leap from the L/3.33 (Bren carrier) to British Cavalier or German Panzer IVG (with better armor) in one jump in 1940?
Or two jumps if we include the M11/39 which was one of the world's worst tanks in concept.

A lot of countries issued specifications and orders for great tanks in 1939-40-41. Actually, being able to build them in quantity was another story.
You need factories that can actually build 25-30 tanks, not 3 ton tankettes.
US contracted with steam locomotive builders and railcar builders while they built dedicated tank factories from the ground up, British used a lot of railroad shops tank construction in 1939-40-41. Soviets built special tank factories and when pressed, they had several large factories making large (10 tons and above) farm tractors. They had to ability to move assemblies inside the factory to one area or another. Car and small/medium truck factories do not have the built-in cranes and equipment to handle large heavy pieces.

Italian industry was weak. Weak is not the same as smart. Italian designers could be as smart as any other nation. I keep saying it doesn't matter what can be designed on paper if you can't turn it into working hardware in quantity.
Wiki claims (could be wrong) that the Italians only built 177 of the Cannone da 75/32 field guns from 1937 to 1943. I will assume they actually built a lot more that wound up in the P26/40 tank and the self-propelled guns. But there is no reserve of 400-500 hundred guns to stick in hundreds of 25-30 tanks in 1940-41 without screwing over the field artillery which did not have very many modern guns to begin with.

 

[swampyankee]

I'm going to wade in again.

Italy was less industrialized than the UK, US, or Germany. Overall, it may have neen more industrialized than Japan. The industrial status of the USSR (geographically, almost completely coincident with czarist Russia) was still recovering from the depredations of years of civil war and mismanagement.

Problems:

• Lack of natural resources
• Extreme differences in economic conditions between regions. The south, after centuries of foreign rule, followed by decades of crappy monarchical rule was an economic disaster (hence the exodus of southern Italians to the US, until blatantly racist immigration laws of the 1920s). The south also had the lowest rate of literacy. The organized crime syndicates were results of centuries of bad and absent government.
• Recent governments, not just Mussolini's had diverted resources into imperialistic ventures for "prestige" and "respect" instead of internal development to enrich its populace as a whole instead of a few members of the elites.
• Politicization of the university and education system under the fascists stifled technological development and may have damaged the development of patriotism. Italians had never had much respect for institutions, as much of Italy was run by autocratic foreigners through most of the 19th Century.

Looking just at the armed forces, the army has been discussed. While the Italian Army had some units, like the Alpini, that were as good as any in the world, they also had many that were inadequately trained and poorly led. Some of their equipment was okay, some was not (especially armor). I don't know about their level of motor transport. The Italian Air Force underperformed mostly because of outdated aircraft, but the had good air-launched torpedoes and a good aircraft to deliver them. (The Luftwaffe used Italian air-dropped torpedoes as these were much better than the German ones). The Italian Navy had good ships -- arguably, the Romas were the best battleships built in Europe -- but doctrinal and tactical failures (and facing a powerful force led by a man who may have been the best admiral of his generation) crippled its big ships. It reacted far better to the need to protect shipping than did Japan. Italian submarines also operated against shipping in the Atlantic.

For all the services, industrialization was a problem. So was the great differences in wealth and education between regions.

Fixing the Italian military would require fixing a lot of internal social problems that a right-wing government or one intent on expansion would be loath to fix.

 

[Airborne2001]

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I've toyed with this alternate history scenario a bit, and generally what I've come to (and it ain't easy) is a revolution in 1924. Have the king say no to Mussolini changine countless institutions (like political ones) in 1924, and then a revolution happens leading to Mussolini deposing the king and taking full power. 1922 is too early, so 1924 would work best. Deposing the king is gonna make it easier to impose the dictatorship that was needed, which was one like Japan/Germany/the USSR where there were more severe consequences for not following orders or not being loyal to government. Then, have the damage from the war be the needed excuse to build up the industry. Steel actually isn't that hard; Japan went from ~300K tons a year shortly after WWI to ~4M+ tons during WWII. Taking advantage of oil reserves, cliche yeah I know, will help in that it can give Italy a natural resource to export and use for industrialization. Italy had oil on the mainland and in Libya. Libya will help with increasing infrastructure in the colony, and thus making it easier to fight a war there. Mainland gives Italy a good fallback in case things still go south (no pun intended) in Libya in a military conflict.

This won't fix every problem that exists, of course, but it will do just enough to make Italy a much more threatening Axis power that doesn't have to be frequently bailed out by Germany.

 

[Howard Gibson]

I've toyed with this alternate history scenario a bit, and generally what I've come to (and it ain't easy) is a revolution in 1924. Have the king say no to Mussolini changine countless institutions (like political ones) in 1924, and then a revolution happens leading to Mussolini deposing the king and taking full power. 1922 is too early, so 1924 would work best. Deposing the king is gonna make it easier to impose the dictatorship that was needed, which was one like Japan/Germany/the USSR where there were more severe consequences for not following orders or not being loyal to government. Then, have the damage from the war be the needed excuse to build up the industry. Steel actually isn't that hard; Japan went from ~300K tons a year shortly after WWI to ~4M+ tons during WWII. Taking advantage of oil reserves, cliche yeah I know, will help in that it can give Italy a natural resource to export and use for industrialization. Italy had oil on the mainland and in Libya. Libya will help with increasing infrastructure in the colony, and thus making it easier to fight a war there. Mainland gives Italy a good fallback in case things still go south (no pun intended) in Libya in a military conflict.

This won't fix every problem that exists, of course, but it will do just enough to make Italy a much more threatening Axis power that doesn't have to be frequently bailed out by Germany.

Will that really fix problems? If Mussolini were some wise, all knowing savant, fought to a standstill by stupid underlings, you have a case. King Victor Emmanuel and the Italian general staff both told Mussolini that Italy was in no shape to get involved in a big war. It turns out they were right! Absolute rulers in Germany and Japan were less than successful at leaving their nations in an improved state.

Remember folks, for any cool new thing you want the Italians to develop, you must delete something they actually did develop. Their resources were very finite.

 

[Airborne2001]

Will that really fix problems? If Mussolini were some wise, all knowing savant, fought to a standstill by stupid underlings, you have a case. King Victor Emmanuel and the Italian general staff both told Mussolini that Italy was in no shape to get involved in a big war. It turns out they were right! Absolute rulers in Germany and Japan were less than successful at leaving their nations in an improved state.

Remember folks, for any cool new thing you want the Italians to develop, you must delete something they actually did develop. Their resources were very finite.

Correct, but remember that I said that this happened in 1924, and that they have enough of an impetus to improve the industry to make it happen. Like I said, Japan was able to massively increase steel production despite being in a similar low-resource situation.

 

[swampyankee]

I've toyed with this alternate history scenario a bit, and generally what I've come to (and it ain't easy) is a revolution in 1924. Have the king say no to Mussolini changine countless institutions (like political ones) in 1924, and then a revolution happens leading to Mussolini deposing the king and taking full power. 1922 is too early, so 1924 would work best. Deposing the king is gonna make it easier to impose the dictatorship that was needed, which was one like Japan/Germany/the USSR where there were more severe consequences for not following orders or not being loyal to government. Then, have the damage from the war be the needed excuse to build up the industry. Steel actually isn't that hard; Japan went from ~300K tons a year shortly after WWI to ~4M+ tons during WWII. Taking advantage of oil reserves, cliche yeah I know, will help in that it can give Italy a natural resource to export and use for industrialization. Italy had oil on the mainland and in Libya. Libya will help with increasing infrastructure in the colony, and thus making it easier to fight a war there. Mainland gives Italy a good fallback in case things still go south (no pun intended) in Libya in a military conflict.

This won't fix every problem that exists, of course, but it will do just enough to make Italy a much more threatening Axis power that doesn't have to be frequently bailed out by Germany.

The king, probably out of some paranoid fantasy about communists or some love of fascism, caved when Mussolini staged his march. Had he the sense God gave a turnip, he would have told Mussolini to stuff it.

One wonders what changes a non-fascist Italy would cause to world history. Franco loses the Spanish Civil War? Hitler has no live fire exercise for the Luftwaffe? Italy neutral in WWII?

 

[TM06]

The king, probably out of some paranoid fantasy about communists or some love of fascism, caved when Mussolini staged his march. Had he the sense God gave a turnip, he would have told Mussolini to stuff it.

Even if Mussolini's march failed that would still leave the entirely incompetent Emmanuel III in power, who is a side-grade at best. Now I'm no fan of Mussolini but I have absolutely zero confidence in Emmanuel's capability as either a politician or a military leader. Perhaps a more capable replacement would be Giovanni Messe?

 

[Shortround6]

Italy needed a lot of things in 1920s-30s.
Alternate histories can follow a lot of paths but just knowing about the location of some resources earlier does not mean the exiting technology (without also changing the history of technologies) can recover them.

Italy was short of many things needed for modern steel. Not just iron ore but just about all elements needed for alloy steels.
Italy was short of coal for power let alone iron production. Italy actually imported a large amount of coal from Britian until the summer of 1940. I don't know if the Germans ever made up 100% of the coal cut off By Britian.
Italy, in their best years, made about 2.1 million tons of iron and steel. Iron and steel often being combined in statics tables.
Japan in several years made over 8 million tons.

Italy designed and started construction of many good weapons, like a 149mm gun, a 149mm howitzer which was very close to the American 155mm M 1) and a 210mm howitzer. But the guns were only built in relatively small numbers compared to the numbers ordered.
Italians could not produce the weapons they could design due to material shortages and manufacturing facilities shortages.

There are things the Italians could do to make better weapons, but the Italians could not try to match the Americans, British and Germans in either numbers or size of certain weapons types.
The Army had way too many left over WW I artillery pieces that looked good on inventory sheets, a lot less good in service. The old guns were short of range, very short on traverse, had not been converted to vehicle towing or not converted well (hard rubber tires on steel wheels instead of wooden wheels only goes so far). This affecting things like towing, transport by requiring light guns to be loaded into truck beds or being loaded into trailers that could be towed faster. At least one type used a single axle trailer (dolly?) to get around the wooden wheel limitations. Did this really save money over more complicated conversions that could just hook up and go?

Better (smarter) weapons can offer more coverage (area of fire) while using less manpower. In an area of operations that requires just about everything (food and water) to be either shipped in and/or transported over large distances reducing manpower requirements might have paid dividends.

 

[Airborne2001]

Italy was short of many things needed for modern steel. Not just iron ore but just about all elements needed for alloy steels.
Italy was short of coal for power let alone iron production. Italy actually imported a large amount of coal from Britian until the summer of 1940. I don't know if the Germans ever made up 100% of the coal cut off By Britian.
Italy, in their best years, made about 2.1 million tons of iron and steel. Iron and steel often being combined in statics tables.
Japan in several years made over 8 million tons.

Thank you for the informative reply! Since I've seen this a few times I am curious, what did Japan have to make more steel than Italy? I know that Japan also had resource shortages, but how did they overcome that while Italy couldn't so they could make more steel?

 

[Shortround6]

You need coal and iron ore to make iron in it's cruder form/s.
Italy in the early 40s was mining under 10% of the coal that Japan was mining at the same time.
Coal can very widely in quality and Italy had low grade coal for the most part. Japan had a lot of low grade but with so much more it had some higher grade stuff.
And steel making requires high grade coal to make coke to use the blast furnaces. Lignite does not make good coke.
Iron ore can also vary widely. I haven't looked it up for either. We know that Sweden had good iron ore.
Turning iron into steel is a complex process. You can't make tanks out of iron
Except in fantasy novels.

Italy got the poor end of stick when it came to mineral resources. Japan didn't do too badly. Their problem was population and ambition.
Japan was slightly smaller than the state of California in the US. Japan did not go to war with California, it went to war with the entire US and the British Commonwealth. The amount of resources controlled by that pair far exceed the rest of the world put together.
Japan's resource shortage was only in comparison to the US and Great Britian.
Soviet Union was making about twice the iron & steel of Japan before the Germans invaded. In 1942 and 43 it was roughly equal due to Soviets loosing so much territory and production facilities. By 1944 the Soviets were making almost 30% more steel than they made in 1943 while the Japanese were making only 74% of the steel they made in 1943, mainly due to
manpower shortages (fewer miners) and shipping shortages.
Japan was trying to be the 3rd largest power in the world without the resources and population to back it up.

 

[ThomasP]

Addition to above by SR6.

Japan had colonized the Manchukuo region in northern China (plus a bit of what is today called Manchuria) and Korea, both of which had significant iron ore & coal deposits, while Manchukuo had aluminum ore deposits and what I think is called shale oil in today's terminology - although their exploitation of the shale oil was limited. Korea had tungsten and copper in exploitable deposits.

 

[swampyankee]

Even if Mussolini's march failed that would still leave the entirely incompetent Emmanuel III in power, who is a side-grade at best. Now I'm no fan of Mussolini but I have absolutely zero confidence in Emmanuel's capability as either a politician or a military leader. Perhaps a more capable replacement would be Giovanni Messe?

Italy was not an absolute monarchy; it was a constitutional one, although the king had an unusual amount of authority for a constitutional monarchy.

 

[TM06]

Italy was not an absolute monarchy; it was a constitutional one, although the king had an unusual amount of authority for a constitutional monarchy.

Aye, but if Italy is to survive the volatile interwar period and subsequent pressure from Hitler, they need a much better head than Emmanuel - neutral or not. If Emmanuel acquiesced due to what little pressure Mussolini applied historically, he's going to fold like laundry the moment anyone with actual strength comes knocking at their door.

 

[swampyankee]

Aye, but if Italy is to survive the volatile interwar period and subsequent pressure from Hitler, they need a much better head than Emmanuel - neutral or not. If Emmanuel acquiesced due to what little pressure Mussolini applied historically, he's going to fold like laundry the moment anyone with actual strength comes knocking at their door.

True. I think Victor Emmanuel III actively approved of the fascist ideology, and was looking for an excuse to put him in power. Of course, his father, Umberto I, was also a vicious SOB, so he'd probably greet the fascists with active joy.

VE-III proves monarchism is a stupid form of government.

 

[Shortround6]

There is a lot of things the Italians could have done differently.
The policy of self-sufficiency needs looking at.
A good goal but implementation may not have been good.
A somewhat self-sufficient but low level/poor economy or a less self-sufficient economy that had a higher standard of living and higher level of industrialization?
A fine line to walk.
A more prosperous population might have allowed demand for more domestic cars and trucks with a resulting increased capacity motor vehicle industry and more recruits into the army with some knowledge of driving and/or repairs.
How much Italian exports were limited by retaliatory tariffs by countries trying to sell into Italy I don't know.
Italians made a number of very fine cars in the 1920s and 30s. But they were not made in large numbers compared to the US or some other nations. Italian tractor production was also low and perhaps more encouragement by the government could have boosted that. Taxing imported fuel may have helped with self-sufficiency in the short term, reducing farm production was not a good long-term plan.

Back to Italian armor (and transport). Warfare needed more and more complicated weapons which needed more/larger factories in addition to raw materials.
Italians can't learn how to build even 15-20 ton tanks by building only 3 ton tankettes during the 1930s. Drawing up a good looking 20-25 ton tank in in 1940 if you don't have the factory or knowledge to actually built it doesn't work. British made hundreds (thousands?) of mistakes on their 1939-40-41 tanks. Some of their tanks went through 3 different types of clutch linings, and they used different brake linings, and had several years of trying to figure out air filters. Or trying to figure out how to fit things inside the fighting compartment. One tank had the parking brake in the wrong place and it could be knocked out of engagement by the driver climbing into or out of the tank. Rather embarrassing when the crewless tank starts to roll down a hill. A quick fix but some tanks need dozens if not hundreds of small fixes.
Many British tanks of 1939-40 were built by existing companies but they were built in new factories with appropriate tooling which included overhead cranes which, at a minimum, could handle a Crusader sized turret, which meant the factory roof had to have been built to handle the load of the crane.
Building tankettes helped but building large numbers of tankettes did not increase either factory capacity or knowledge.

 

[Shortround6]

Italian tank development could have been better (much better) but that could be said about all other major nations.
All other nations followed a zig-zag path of progressively larger tanks from the early 1930s two-man tankettes.
In part to learn how actually design and in part/s to figure how to build the vehicles and to construct factories that could mass produce (sort of) tanks and not build them in ones or twos.

How much money-steel-labor could be transferred from the navy to the army is a question.
How much should be used for better armor vehicles and how much should be used for better artillery is also a question.

Canceling the Roma and Impero are too late, might have helped with 1939-41 production but not with the needed 1936-39 build up.
Canceling both early Litterios helps the army a lot, navy doesn't look so good against the RN.
Perhaps a better solution was not rebuilding the Andrea Doria pair and splitting up some of the resources into one more Roma (3rd ship) finished sooner, and some resources given to the army?

But as I have mentioned before. Barrels are relatively cheap, the hidden cost is the thousands of shells per barrel that are needed.

 

[EwenS]

Inter-war, the Italian navy was initially less concerned about the RN than at least matching the French Navy in the Med.

Post Washington the 4 most modern battleships the Italians had were the Cavour / Doria classes completed 1914-16 plus 5 older ships they discarded 1923-28.

The French came out of the WNT with 7 Courbet / Bretagne classes completed 1913-16 (the France was wrecked in 1922) and 3 older ships that were reduced to training ship status about 1927.

Both nations secured the right at Washington to build new battleships in 1927, 1929 & 1931 but neither was able to do so for financial reasons despite much design work being carried out through that decade. They retained those rights to the first two ships under the 1930 London Treaty.

France also had to consider a war against Germany. Her response to the appearance of the Deutschland class pocket battleships was to build Dunkerque (1932-38) and then the slightly modified Strasbourg (1934-39).

The Italians sought to restore the balance in the short term by reconstructing Cavour & Cesare 1933-37.

Italy & France tried through diplomatic channels in this period to prevent a new naval race between them but those negotiations failed by early 1934. The result was that Italy decided to build the first pair of 35,000 ton Littorios which were laid down to great fanfare in Oct 1934 (Although little work was carried out for some time while the design was greatly modified and finalised). Italy then recognised that the two Duilos would be too slow to operate with either the reconstructed Cavours or the Littorios when they finally completed and, along with the changing political climate, that led to the decision to reconstruct them 1937-40, again as a stop gap.

Meanwhile France reacted to the Italian decision to build the first two Littorios, which would outmatch the Dunkerques, by starting construction of the two Richelieus in Oct 1935 & Dec 1936.

The political situation changed with the Abyssinian Crisis which started in Dec 1934 and dragged on to May 1936 when Haile Selassie fled into exile and Italy secured the Eithiopian capital. At the same time all sanctions imposed on Italy were dropped which eased the problem of acquiring materials for its new / reconstructed ships. Italy however now faced the prospect of fighting both France and Britain in any future war in the Med. That triggered a new armaments programme, approved in early 1938 that was intended to see a fleet expansion that included the second pair of Littorios and 12 "exploratori". The latter emerged as the Capitani Romani light cruisers.

The Duilos re-entered service in 1940.

The intention when the second pair of Littorios were ordered in 1938, was that Roma & Impero would be completed by mid-1942. Design issues and material shortages had been resolved by the time these ships were laid down so construction went more smoothly. Roma completed more or less on schedule in a time of 3 years and 9 months. Only the USA was capable of beating that kind of battleship build time in that period .

Impero was a different case. Fears of the Genoa area coming under sea and / or air attack, led to a decision to transfer her to Trieste starting 1 June 1940, just 9 days before Italy declared war on France & Britain. She made it as far as Brindisi to where men and materials were to be transferred to allow work to continue, but with limited facilities there progress was slow. Following Taranto she was robbed of parts to repair VV. Work continued slowly until she was able to be transferred, under her own power, to Venice in early 1942 and then to Trieste in Nov. Work on her was not finally stopped until mid-1943 when her hull, propulsion and armament were substantially complete.

German reaction to the Dunkerques had been to cancel two more pocket battleships and build S&G instead. Their reaction to the Richelieus was to build Bismarck & Tirpitz. France reacted to that move by planning a second pair of Richelieus. Clemenceau & Gascoyne were each to be built to modified designs. C was laid down in Jan 1939, the same day Richelieu was floated out of the construction dock at Brest.

 

[Shortround6]

Yes, altering the naval program may have been possible, but far from likely. It terms of money the cost of rebuilding the Duilos may have been equal to one (?) Roma.
Perhaps a rather less ambitious rebuild?
Again Italy's eyes were bigger than it's mouth/stomach.
Equaling France (or coming close) was possible. Throwing much of anything the RN had into mix was going to be too much.

 

[EwenS]

Money is one thing, building capacity another. Italian yards had a very limited number (2? IIRC) of 200+ metres length capable of building new battleships. Until the early 1930s they were occupied building fast transatlantic liners for Italian shipping lines.

 

[TM06]

Rather than rebuilding the Andrea Doria and Duilio or using those resources to build another Roma, perhaps a better use of the Regia Marina's resources would be to expedite the construction of larger aircraft carriers? Undertaking the effort to refit the Augustus into the Sparviero could've been done much earlier than it was historically, ditto with refitting her sister ship into the Aquila.