Rommel's North Africa Campaign: 1940-1942

Jack Greene &
Alessandro Massagnini

Forget about the myth of the Italian soldier in WWII as a Captain Corelli figure who was more interested in flirting than fighting. The Italians fought hard and died in their hundreds of thousands. And though other theatres may have cost more Italian lives, the campaign which defined Italy's war was North Africa.

When we think of the war in North Africa we think of Rommel and the Afrika Korps. The Italians have traditionally been ignored - certainly in the English language. But the Germans were very much the junior partner, at least numerically. The Greene & Massignani book (in spite of its title) is one of the very few histories which gives the Italian war effort in the desert proper consideration.

The Italian-German relationship was a fascinating one. The Germans were better trained, better organised and better armed and sometimes regarded the Italians with condescension. The Italian equipment (especially their tanks) was inferior and the quality of the troops was very variable. But a part of the Italian army - the elite - was very effective. There were occasions when the Germans were the first to yield under Allied pressure while the Italians held on. Rommel was especially impressed by the elite Bersaglieri, saying "the German soldier astonished the world, but the Bersaglieri astonished the German soldier".

Naturally, when the war turned decisively in the Allies' favour, the relationship between the Italians and Germans became strained. Greene & Massignani are determined to be fair minded about these disputes. The Italians have complained bitterly that the Germans traditionally seized all the trucks and abandoned their allies whenever there was a retreat. It may have been simply that the Italians - with their poorer communications - were simply too disorganised to locate their vehicles and retreat in good order. On the other hand the Germans were furious that their movements were consistently leaked to the Allies, and blamed the Italians. But we now know the British were reading the German signals relatively easily thanks to Ultra. In fact, it was the high-grade Italian army cipher which proved impossible to crack.

Admittedly Greene & Massignani's account does also contain rather too much dry-as-desert-dust militaria; orders of battle, the exact size of guns, weaponry specifications. The odd paragraph of this kind: "the Aussies had four brigades (the 18th of the 7th Australian division, 20th, 24th, and 26th of the 9th Australian division) at their disposal, though the 24th had only two battalions at their disposal instead of the usual three" will glaze the eyes of even the steeliest armchair general, I would have thought.

But there's plenty to interest the general readers too; how the Italians and Germans coped without a common language (they used Trentini as translators), the fate of Italian paratroopers, how Mussolini mobilised the Blackshirts and the atrocities committed on the Italians by the Australian forces at Tobruk. And lots more. Overall, there's plenty of value here in this worthwhile account of the war in North Africa.