[aspqrz]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

With regards to Africa, I should have made my question a little clearer - what if (and I know it's a stretch) the Italians had actually been capable of looking after themselves and achieving their goals without Germany military assistance? How would that have effected the other fronts?

The problem remains the same. Logistics. Logistics. Logistics.

The Italians, apart from not having many trucks and, indeed, not having many motorised/mechanised units anyway, suffer from the exact same problems.

Made worse by the fact that ...

* Mussolini was a clewless fool. Of the first water. And didn't have a clew what his strategic aims were ... or what they should be if they were to be achievable with the resources available.

* The Italian army was, largely, a joke ... poorly led, poorly trained, with a huge social gulf between officers and men ... and riven with political problems ... and the Fascist Militia Brigades and Divisions were, if possible, worse, as their officers were chosen for political pull and reliability.

* The Italian air force had only obsolete or obsolescent planes, and didn't have the capacity to produce many anyway.

* The Regia Marina was actually quite good. On Paper. In action? Badly commanded and badly organised. And, of course, almost no fuel ... barely enough to keep the boilers ticking over in port.

* The Italian High Command, and the Commander of Italian forces in North Africa ... well, they bring a whole new meaning to the phrase 'grossly incompetent.

The problem is that the Italians had no solutions to any of those problems once they went to war. None.

The only way the Italians could win WW2, in North Africa or anywhere else, is if she had remained neutral ... even siding with the Allies, until probably 1943 or so, would have been a bad choice.

Unfortunately that requires Mussolini to be Not Mussolini and the entire Italian senior military, political and industrial leadership to be lined up against the wall and shot ... and for the shooting to continue until they find someone competent. Probably a Lance Corporal somewhere.

(For anyone who may be interested, this sort of thing is regularly dealt with over at soc.history.what-if on Google Groups ... where I've been arguing back and forth with the denizens there since the early 90s so I have picked up a thing or two)

Phil