Hitler's Italian Allies

Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940–1943

Bibliographic Data

ID19935895
AuthorsMacgregor Knox (London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author)
Year2000
Publication date2000-10-30
Open AccessYes
TypeBOOK
VenueHitler's Italian Allies (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/cbo9780511613487
OpenAlexW4245323990
Open LibraryOL6779309M
ISBN9780511613487
LanguageEN
Citations received9

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

Ancient history · Economic history · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology) · Sociology · Soviet union · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · 1939-1945 · Fascism · Germany · Italy · Military · Military history · National socialism · politics and government · World War · World War II

Tools

Open DOI