Hey guys, I have a few ideas why the Italians in North Africa lost the battle.
1.) Because of lacking in supplies.
2.) The German Afrika Armee didn’t put them to a right location.
3.) They didn’t have enough support.
I need to be corrected guys, so, what do you say why the Italians lose to the British in North Africa?
All feedbacks will be respected. 
No’s 1, and 3 are pretty much the same thing, and was there such a thing as a"right location" in N. Africa? I suspect that nearly any google search will answer your questions.
Other potential issues for you to ponder:
Yeah, what pdf said. The Italian Army was completely outmoded and was years away from a projected modernization program in September 1939. And I think we can add to the leadership question here. From (what little) I’ve read, the Italian Army had one of the worst levels of junior leadership and a systemic class divide between officers and enlisted men/NCOs that was poisonous to any sort of espirit de corp and resolve the Italian fighting man might have had. That doesn’t mean in certain circumstances that they weren’t often fierce and effective, like when under senior German leadership and when properly equipped and supported. Or in cases where their enemies couldn’t use their mechanized advantage. There were instances of fierce fighting in the mountains of North Africa where Italian soldiers sometimes were throwing rocks at American soldiers when they ran low on ammo and many only surrendered well beyond the end of their means of resistance. Some sons of Italy were said to have resisted to the bitter end fighting from caves…
just to add a bit to written above.
Italian army fought much worse then germans under the GErman command either.Their soldiers were also no match for Germans soldiers.And the war professionalism wasn’t the only the difference.The reason was another- the Italian soldiers were MUCH less motivated in THAT war. If it was war for survival for Nazi Germany.Italian troops ( as most of German European allies) were not that much involved itno that Ideological battle that “Hitler waged against the Jewry”
Albert Speer in his memours wrote that Hitler almost despised the his Italian “ally” for its pure military helplessness. In Stalingrad, Speer added, the Romanians and Italians surprised German unpleasantly by “lack of will to fight”.
Will power.
Yes the will to win. An awful lot of Italians didn’t want the war.
Yes their material support as bad. Their pistols were pitiful, their rifles inadequate, their tanks and artillery obsolete, and their aircraft few in number and quality. Even their navy’s ships were nowhere near enough to challenge such as Great Britain.
But it was their will power, or lack of it. Mussolini may have had dreams of a second Roman Empire, but most of his country men didn’t.
Deaf
Here is a useful consideration of the Italian armed forces and some aspects bearing on their capacity to fight and willingness to surrender: http://www.scribd.com/doc/9344344/Italian-Army-in-Wwii
Another factor which might explain the huge surrenders of Italian troops is that, despite the issues covered in the link and despite Mussolini’s posturing, Italy was in many areas outside, and perhaps even in, the major cities still little more than a village society with citizens who had no great conception of nationality or nationhood, let alone undying allegiance to Mussolini’s new Roman republic to be wrought from their blood sacrifice in North Africa and elsewhere.
Oddly enough, much the same could probably be said of Japan in WWII, but its citizens were at the other extreme in being willing to die rather than surrender in a national cause.
There is probably a significant element of national character (whatever that means and involves in any given nation and however it is influenced by various national circumstances) which helps to explain the performance of a nation’s armed forces in WWII, and no doubt in other conflicts.
But the Japanese had the Emperor, and the benefit of the mythology of Bushido to unify the masses…
Yes, and as P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” And the Japanese were the suckers who took it, hook, line, and sinker.
Deaf
Good point. I didn’t think it through when posting.
Japan under the Emperor gave a sense of unity or nationality that was absent in Italy.
Moreover, Italy wasn’t united as a nation until the 1860s where Japan’s Emperor had been there for about 2,600 years, albeit with varying degrees of significance and control in that period.
Then again, Germany wasn’t united as a nation until 1871 and that didn’t seem to cause any absence of national identity or nationalistic feeling in Germany before and during WWII.
To be fair, I don’t think the average Japanese had much choice and most were indoctrinated from birth…
yet Japaneses had an effective race Ideology though.
Formally they fought for “freedom of Asia from western colonial system”.Their “yellow brothershood” also had the race roots - the fight against WHITE in asia.
The Chinese would have found this a rather ironic pretension…
Their ‘fight’ against Western colonialism was somewhat inconsistent with their own pre-war imperial colonialism in China and with the whole purpose of their imperial colonial expansion in WWII.
As for a ‘yellow brotherhood’, it went beyond China to the systematic massacre of thousands of Chinese in Singapore to the deaths of an unknown but very large number, perhaps around 100,000, of Asian labourer deaths on the Burma Railway. The Asian labourers died in numbers roughly six or more times higher than the Allied POWs.
Put another way, maybe a quarter of the roughly 60,000 Allied POWs employed on the Railway died while roughly half of the roughly 200,000 Asian labourers died.
(I’m relying on ancient memory for these figures and calculations, but they’ll be close enough to show that the forgotten - and in the West not even heard of - Asian labourers were even worse off than the Allied POWs in some terminal respects, whether or not they were volunteers or conscripted labourers.)
The Japanese made some attempts to implement their supposed anti-colonial campaign, such as in the Philippines by creating a supposedly independent government, but only to the extent that these attempts supported Japan.
hmmmn, but problem is that the CHina itself look rather ironic complaining to Japane. We well known the own CHinese cruel imperialism toward the neighbourd asiatic nations. And their own Civil war succesfully competite with Japanes in reducing the own population.
But the same did all the european nation, didn’t they?
The entire ww1 has been started and waged for , in sense ,colonies.
The own Japane “invention” was a yellow race based imperialism.
As for a ‘yellow brotherhood’, it went beyond China to the systematic massacre of thousands of Chinese in Singapore to the deaths of an unknown but very large number, perhaps around 100,000, of Asian labourer deaths on the Burma Railway.
The systematic massacre in China was in sense , the anti-guerrials punitive actions in their new colony
Let me remind you the same did the :
Britain in India,
USA in Phillipines,
Russia in Caucause,
France in Algire
and so on…
Why nobody wish to calculate how much locals died becouse of that colonisation?
Put another way, maybe a quarter of the roughly 60,000 Allied POWs employed on the .
Railway died while roughly half of the roughly 200,000 Asian labourers died.
I’m relying on ancient memory for these figures and calculations, but they’ll be close enough to show that the forgotten - and in the West not even heard of - Asian labourers were even worse off than the Allied POWs in some terminal respects, whether or not they were volunteers or conscripted labourers.)
Allied POWs were much more organized and had a primary medical treatment though. It seems you told me this.
From the another hand this fact tells that Japanese didn’t creat the special worst condition for Whites labourers, that tells, sure, not about their humanity but rather about pragmatism.
The Japanese made some attempts to implement their supposed anti-colonial campaign, such as in the Philippines by creating a supposedly independent government, but only to the extent that these attempts supported Japan.
That imply at least they provided them a chance to for self-determination. For Japane profit , but though. The chance they had never before.
Poor commanders, italian industrial capacity wasn’t sufficient, poor tanks, little help from hitler, italian navy was designed to combat the french, not the english, they didn’t conquer malta. Those were, summarizing, the reasons of the Italian defeat.
Dear Jugleguerilla , we answered these questions in a post, but you just summarize the situation, you just understand that when Mussolini declared war his army is just not ready. The material is in the majority of another age and there are few modern equipment. This has nothing to do with the pugnacity of the Italian soldiers, there’s ask the Australians and New Zealanders who have fought on the other the German retreat is made through the sacrifice of soldiers Italians and especially the Folgore.
Friendly Fred
fred109 YOU JUST SAID IT! i totally agree with you!
The Italians were not bad fighters at all; they gave good account of themselves on several occasions during the NA campaign in spite of their very poor weaponry. Like every other army, there were good formations and poor ones. In the Italian army it seemed that the formations tended to be extreme in this regard; they either fought with great valor or crumbled with little or no fight. I have read accounts of German troops breaking during combat while the Italians next to them held their ground to the last man.
It’s true that the Italians did not care for the conflict but that doesn’t mean they weren’t willing to fight. They fought out of duty, not for nationalism (the common soldier was typically not a hard-core fascist). Most had little love for Germany and disliked being treated like the little brother in the alliance, but the general viewpoint was to “win this war now, and settle accounts later”.
Their war plans were for a war in the Alps and Balkans. They expected to “hold on the defensive” in Libya and the army was built with this in mind. (It is one reason their tanks were so small; they had to be able to fit through mountainous terrain). The army in Africa was given short shrift early on; the generals told Mussolini it was not fit for an advance into Egypt but he would not listen.
Their industry was terrible as well and, just as important, it was not controlled by the government. In fact, the companies making the weapons for the armed forces could dictate what would be produced and their main goal was to make money not equip the armed forces adequately.
Leadership was either good or very, very bad. However it, as well as combat performance, improved dramatically once the colonial mindset was discarded and the better formations, such as the Ariete, were sent to Africa.
To my mind, the central reasons for the Italian defeat had nothing to do with “fighting spirit” or the common soldier, but were instead rooted in a regime that was “far more style than substance” and a corrupt and inefficient industry that would have been hard-pressed to adequately supply the army if had been a picture of nationalistic efficiency. Just my thoughts.