True, the Esercito possessed almost 8,000 pieces of artillery, but Mussolini was not informed that only 246 of them had been manufactured after 1930. Most were not even made in Italy, but First World War field-guns received from the defunct Austro-Hungarian Army as part of reparations provided by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919! To cover their antiquity, Army brass secretly ordered the original wooden spokes of the carriage wheels replaced with shiny steel, a deliberate fabrication that deceived Mussolini and the outside world.

Francesco Pricolo, the Major General of Aviation, boasted he had 3,296 warplanes at his disposal. But this impressive figure was misleading. In fact, Italy operated only 166 modern fighters, Fiat G.50s and Macchi-200s, and both types were inferior to French and British frontline interceptors. The Regia Aeronautica’s remaining 1,334 aircraft were outnumbered and mostly out-matched by the Allies.

Ciano suspected that division strength had been multiplied beyond actual availability, just as the number of men serving in the infantry was grossly exaggerated to cover the failure of army brass. “Fantasies are being woven around the Air Force,” he wrote in his diaries. “I have advised an investigation by the Prefects. They are to count the aircraft in the hangars, and get at an accurate figure, which should not be an impossible undertaking. Up to today, we have not succeeded in getting at the truth.”²⁷

Sixty years later, Romano, Mussolini’s son, remembered that “the reports Il Duce received talked about ‘flawless aeronautical equipment fully prepared to meet future challenges.’ In reality, the Spanish exploits had drained Italy’s arsenal, which had been greatly reduced during the Ethiopian War.”²⁸ It was the success of these two campaigns after all, that engendered over-confidence in man like Pricolo, who were additionally anxious to camouflage their failings and neglect with bloated statistics.

Had Mussolini known his commanding generals were lying to him about Italy’s lack of military preparedness, he would have doubtless refrained from entering the fray when he did. As he later regretted, “I took the airmen’s word for it, who, after all, were the experts who ought to have known more than I did. For that matter, Marshal Badoglio, who was Chief of General Staff for seventeen years, never pointed out these mistakes or that situation to me.”²⁹

Most Italian equipment was worn out, steeped in obsolescence, or sub-standard. By the end of World War Two, most Italian artillery still dated to the First World War or earlier. There were some state-of-the-art field-pieces in the Esercito, such as the Cannone 18 Models 35 and 37, firing 75mm shells with efficiency equal to German assault guns. But their numbers were never sufficient enough to replace the old artillery. The vast majority of Italian artillery shells were badly understrength. The Carcano Modello 91, the Italian soldier’s standard bolt-action rifle, dated back to 1891, before the Battle of Adowa! Its small, 6.5mm caliber made it altogether inferior to the English Lee Enfield or French Lebel. Even after the 91/38 version firing a 7.35mm round was introduced, Germany’s old-standard 8mm Mauser still out-classed it.

Italy’s worst deficiency by far was her inadequate armor. Again, things seemed good on paper. Her 700 tanks were numerically comparable to most other major powers in 1940. But she began World War Two with no heavy or medium tanks. Crews of the L.6 were poorly protected, while its short-barreled 37mm gun lacked punch. Worse yet, the Italian Army still relied on its Carro CV 33, which had performed so poorly on Abyssinian and Spanish battlefields. Some 2,000 of these ‘tankettes’ and their similarly worthless CV 35 variants were manufactured to be slaughtered with impunity by the British in the Libyan Desert.

In at least one military vehicle, however, the Italians excelled: the Camonietta 42 or Sahariana. Bristling with 20mm Soluthurn and 47/32 anti-tank guns, plus 13.2mm heavy machine-guns, the armored car was far ahead of its time, comparable to early 21st Century ‘Humvee’ all-terrain patrol cars. Strong, fast and reliable, it operated within an incredible range of 970 kilometers. Also excellent was the 81/14 Model 35. Able to throw a heavy bomb at 1,500 meters or a light one at 4,052 meters with pinpoint accuracy, the 81 mm mortar was the finest in the Second World War. Captured specimens were highly prized spoils of war by British soldiers, who knew to their misfortune that the Model 35 seriously outclassed their own versions. Throughout the war, in every campaign the Italians fought, their mortar teams were invariably the best, and often redeemed otherwise disastrous confrontations with the enemy.

One more bright spot in Italy’s mostly bleak military condition was the ‘Voluntary Militia for National Security’ (MVSN), the Fascist Party’s military arm, composed of ideological fanatics as young as 17 years old or into their 50s. Regarded as a fourth armed service, it escaped the corruption and incompetence of House of Savoy dynasts in charge of the Army, Navy and, to a lesser extent, Air Force. As such, MVSN personnel coalesced into a kernel of military renovation after the royal failures of 1940. As some indication of the popularity of Mussolini’s war in Ethiopia, enough men volunteered to flesh out seven MVSN divisions. Another four campaigned in North Africa, where they were virtually annihilated in the first months of combat, attesting to their fearlessness. Battle-hardened survivors and new recruits formed the ‘M Battalions’, known for their ruthless hunting down of partisans in Yugoslavia and victory-or-death attitude on the Eastern Front. Meanwhile, MVSN volunteers contributed to the sorely needed reorganization of the Italian military, beginning in 1941. Worse even than its materiel deficiencies, the Italian army chain of command was badly organized, and Regia Aeronautica cooperation with the navy was virtually non-existent, leaving the Supermarina almost blind at sea.

Mussolini’s foreign enemies were well aware of these deficiencies. According to historian Alexander Gibson, closing the English Channel to his trade with the Third Reich was a deliberate provocation by the Allies to force the Duce into the war while he was still unprepared.³⁰ French and British politicians were convinced Italy would link up with Hitler as soon as she was ready; hence, their determination to bring Mussolini into the fighting when he was still militarily disadvantaged.

While the outside world believed Fascism wanted to conquer the Earth, Mussolini knew that entering into hostilities with the ‘plutocratic West’ would be no ordinary war. It was a contest not over trade or territory, but between diametrically opposed ideologies for global domination, a life-or-death struggle between fundamentally different worldviews and those who believed in them. With his declaration of war against France and Britain on 10 June, Mussolini described the coming struggle as “the logical development of our Revolution. We have actually been at war since 1922–that is, from the day when we lifted the flag of our Revolution, which was then defended by a handful of men against the Masonic, democratic, capitalist world.”³¹

Allied success, he explained, would mean Italy’s re-enslavement by international capitalists and the debasement or even outright obliteration of European culture under the spell of gross materialism. War with France and England was perceived as a fight for existence against international financial oligarchs. “This conflict must not be allowed to cancel out all our achievements of the past eighteen years,” he declared, “nor, more importantly, extinguish the hope of a Third Alternative held out by Fascism to mankind fettered between the pillar of capitalist slavery and the post of Marxist chaos. The proponents of these obsolete doctrines must understand that the Fascist sword has been unsheathed twice before, in Ethiopia and Spain, with known results.”³²

Despite his confident rhetoric, Mussolini knew from the beginning that something was wrong. Mobilization proceeded with maddening slowness. Hitler’s triumphant campaign in Scandinavia came and went, but still the Esercito was far from ready. In May, the German Panzer armies flashed through France, scoring one victory after another, as officers of the Italian General Staff still struggled to line up their forces. Cowed by Mussolini’s enraged impatience, they lied again, assuring him that everything was at last in readiness. Once more misled, he immediately declared war on the Western powers.

From a propaganda perspective, the timing was awful. The French Campaign was winding down, with just two weeks of fighting left. Allied newspapers announced that Mussolini, sure of a cheap and easy victory, joined the invasion only after France was already on her knees. It certainly did look that way. But even after his general staff officers told him the army could move out at his command, General Badoglio confessed that the army needed at least another twenty five days to mount any kind of offensive. In a towering rage, the Duce demanded that an invasion commence at once through the Alps, ready or not. Meanwhile, he was ridiculed throughout the West as a cowardly bully riding on Hitler’s coat-tails, attacking the French when they were already vanquished. President Roosevelt, referring to Mussolini, told Americans in a radio broadcast, “the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.”³³

If the Italians were still mired in organizational chaos, their new enemies were not slow to act. As early as 31 May, Churchill had discussed the Allied response if Italy entered the war. “I proposed that we should strike by air-bombing at the northwestern industrial triangle enclosed by the three cities of Milan, Turin and Genoa,” he later recalled his discussion with French generals in Paris. “Many Italians were opposed to war, and all should be made to realise its severity.”³⁴

Twelve days later, Wellington medium-bombers took off from airfields in France. Meeting no resistance as they crossed into northern Italy, they tried to knock out Fiat’s corporate headquarters and home manufacturing plant in Turin. The bombs went wide of their targets, exploding near the city center, killing fourteen non-combatant men and women, and badly injuring another thirty, including children. No air raid alarms sounded, and not a shot had been fired at the enemy aircraft, which returned to France without encountering a single interceptor.

The American historical writer, Nicholson Baker, tells how “the Italians took some foreign correspondents on a bus tour of the bomb damage in Turin and Milan. Four British bombs had fallen in a square in a poor section of Turin, near an oil tank,” where ten civilians died. In Milan, reporters saw the Breda airplane factory, the Pirelli tire factory and a steel mill. All were undamaged. Five bombs had, however, hit a building at a Catholic children’s home.”³⁵

From the Italian perspective, the raid was a deliberate act of terrorism aimed at innocent civilians, and national hatred for the British erupted. Until then, most Italians were not entirely sure why their country found itself at war with the West. They had been virtually unanimous in their support of military operations in Ethiopia, Spain and Albania, where the issues seemed unambiguous. Hostilities with Britain and France appeared far less clear until the Wellingtons’ air raid.

With the ‘terror attack’ on non-combatant men and women, however, Mussolini got the popular support he needed from his fellow countrymen. They cried out for retaliation, and pilots of the Regia Aeronautica were glad to oblige. Less than twenty-four hours after the Turin ‘massacre’, Fiat Cicognas struck at Toulon, Hyeres, Saint-Raphael, Calvi, Bastia, and Bizerta. Their bombing accuracy was spoiled, however, by intense anti-aircraft fire, which broke up their formations. Little damage was incurred by the Allies in these attacks.

Units of Fiat fighters were hurriedly posted near Turin to intercept future enemy sorties, but, lacking night-interdiction capabilities, the antiquated double-deckers failed to oppose another appearance by the foe, this time by French Potez bombers, which struck the city after dark. Regia Aeronautica commanders then hastily improvised a Sezione Caccia Notturna, or ‘Night Fighter Flight’, of just three almost wholly inadequate CR.32s fitted with extended exhaust manifolds to shield tell-tale exhaust flames from the engine. Based at Rome’s Ciampino airport, the trio of specialty biplanes did not have long to wait.

On the evening of 13 August, the British returned, but only one of the Fiats was able to make contact with them. It was flown by Capitano Giorgio Gaffer, who closed on a twin-motor Whitley. At the critical moment, his guns jammed, so he rammed the enemy airplane, then bailed out. The British pilot struggled to keep his critically damaged bomber airborne, but, gradually disintegrating during the return flight, it crashed into the English Channel. For his dramatic interception, Gaffer received the Bronze Medal. He went on to become an ace with another four victories during the Greek Campaign, where he was killed in a dogfight with Gloster Gladiators over Delvinakion three months after deliberately colliding with the Whitley bomber. Mussolini posthumously awarded him Italy’s highest citation, the Gold Medal for Military Valor.

On dawn of the day after Capitano Gaffer’s debut with the Sezione Caccia Notturna, heavy cruisers of the French Navy’s 3rd Squadron, escorted by a flotilla of light cruisers, opened fire on the port of Genoa. Potez ground-attack aircraft joined in the attack, bombing the industrial areas of the ancient city defended only by several, slow-firing coastal batteries. One of these lobbed a 152mm shell at the French destroyer, Albatros, which then disengaged from the action after this near miss. Her companion vessels–the Foch, Algerie, Dupleix and Colbert – proceeded unscathed, leaving Genoa under a pall of smoke.

“Where is the Regia Marina?!” people demanded. Only the Calatafimi, a mere destroyer-escort, plus some motor torpedo boats from the 13th MAS Squadrilla, tardily approached the enemy cruisers, which ignored them, and turned away to renew their mission by blasting the helpless ports of Savona and Vado with impunity. Down to their reserve shells, the 3rd Squadron warships returned to Toulon minus any serious interdiction from either sea or sky.

A worse blunder was committed by the Regia Marina even before the first shots had been fired by the French fleet. Supermarina commanders had failed to alert Italian captains overseas before Mussolini’s declaration of war, which would have allowed the merchant men time to return to Italy. As a consequence of this unpardonable neglect, the Allies effortlessly seized 212 freighters, tankers and transports of various kinds amounting to 1,236,160 tons the moment hostilities officially began. A quarter of the Italian merchant marine was lost without a fight in one, fell swoop. To prosecute the war, the Italians had been suddenly reduced to 604 serviceable ships totaling 1,984,292 tons.

With French warships’ almost leisurely bombarding Italy’s west coast, the Regia Aeronautica’s thorough inability to defend its homeland from attack was now all too apparent. There were not enough warplanes in the entire Italian Air Force to shield half of the country’s major cities. Every type of aircraft had been committed to the campaign in the West, leaving the country virtually unprotected. Meanwhile, two more French cruisers, the Duquesne and Tourville, sortied from their base at Alexandria, Egypt, to shell Italian holdings in the Aegean, again without encountering any opposition. A week later, destroyers sank the first Italian submarine lost in the war, the Provana. By then, the French suffered their sole loss in the Mediterranean when one of their own submarines, the Morse, struck a mine.

On 16 June, the Breda Aviation Company’s much-heralded though over-valued Ba.88, the Lince, got its baptism of fire when a dozen of the aeroplano di combattimento of the 19th Gruppo Automono bombed and strafed airfields at Corsica, losing a trio of the twin-engine planes to French ground-fire. Three days later, the remaining nine Ba.88s descended on Corsica once more. All survived the raid, but inflicted only light damage on the enemy.

So far, the war had been conducted exclusively by warships (predominantly French) and aircraft (mostly British). Even at Mussolini’s emphatic insistence, the army could only get a move on for another eleven days after his declaration of war. Marshal Badoglio was right. The Esercito was woefully unprepared. It did not even have enough pots and pans with which to feed its troops, let alone equipment sufficient to carry forward a real offensive. In spite of these grave inadequacies, nineteen of the thirty-two divisions massed in the Alps lurched at designated enemy positions after dawn. In overall charge of the invasion was Prince Umberto, heir to the throne–a bad omen for Italian prospects, which would suffer the worst effects of royal duplicity for the next three years.

Naturally, much of southern France’s regional defense had been siphoned off long before to fight the Germans, who now threatened the Alpine Army’s rear by marching down the Rhone Valley from the northwest. By splitting his forces to fend off the Wehrmacht, General Orly, the French commanding officer, could oppose the Italians in the southeast with only half of his already severely diminished strength. In the brief campaign that followed, soldiers on both sides fought with extraordinary fortitude. While Mussolini’s troops sought to compensate material draw-backs with death-defying determination, the French were entrenched and resolute.

The Italian invasion began promptly on 21 June at 0530 hours with a heavy barrage aimed at La Turra. But Italy’s World War One-vintage shells bounced off the defiant fort. Italian guns performed no better at Briancon, where French 280mm howitzers silenced Italian fortifications at Chamberton. The Regia Aeronautica was called in to break the defenders, but the pin-pointed targets were beyond the accuracy of level-flight-bombers, which passed overhead without effect. Italian aviation needed an efficient dive-bomber, but its sole attempt–the Lince–had been a complete failure.

Against the Bourg-Saint-Maurice, Mon, Petit Saint-Bernard and Seigne passes, defended by just four battalions and forty four pieces of artillery, the Italians advanced with a dozen battalions, retracing the route Hannibal took more than two millennia before to invade Italy. Coming to the aid of General Orly’s outnumbered men was a freak snow-storm of almost cataclysmic proportions. The invaders’ light tanks bogged down, and ordinance froze in place. All aircraft were grounded, and the Italian infantry suffered 2,000 cases of frostbite.

In the midst of extraordinarily inclement conditions, the poorly out-fitted Italians succeeded in surrounding a fortified post near the Petit Saint-Bernard pass, but were unable to take it. They stormed Modane in an effort to breach the passes at Bellecombe, Clapier, Mont-Cenis and Solliers, but were rebuffed. A pair of Italian battalions outflanked French reconnaissance units, which retreated to the La Tuille dam, then Le Planey. But by the end of the first day of fighting, the Italians had been stopped all along the front, save at the Le Queyras headland, where they encircled Abries, a fortified village.

The next day was better for the Italians, but not much. Although they took the eastern approaches of Menton, the rest of their renewed advances were frustrated. The arrival of substantial reinforcements on the 22nd afforded them no headway. By the 24th, they were still unable to move forward when, at 2100-hours, came word of the armistice with Germany.

An hour later, General Orly stated, “Of the thirty two divisions of the Italian army, nineteen were wholly or partly engaged against the outposts, and, in a few cases, the main elements of our six divisions. We were outnumbered seven to one at Tarentaise, four to one in Maurienne, three to one in Brianconnais, twelve to one in Queyras, nine to one in Ubaye, six to one in Tinee, seven to one in L’Aution and Sospel, and four to one in Menton. Our adversary only made contact with or approached our main positions in Tarentaise and near Menton. All our fortified advance posts held out, even when encircled.”³⁶

Against 40 French soldiers killed, 84 wounded and 150 unaccounted for, the Italians lost 631 dead, 2,361 wounded, and 600 missing. After four days, the invasion had crawled a scant five miles from the French border with Italy before being stopped.

At least, the Regia Aeronautica had gone farther. Its airmen flew 1,337 sorties, carrying out 715 raids to drop 276 tons of bombs with precision and effect, representing extraordinarily intense activity compressed into only two weeks. Even so, the Italians’ antiquated biplanes were decidedly inferior to Dewoitine, Bloch and Morane-Saulnier interceptors. On 15 June, for example, a dozen Falcos of the 23th Gruppo were bounced by half as many Dewoitine D.520s of GCIII/6’s fifth squadron. Its Vice-Commander, Adjutant Pierre Le Golan, immediately shot down a pair of CR.42s before his flight accidentally strayed into another formation, from which he downed a third Fiat over Hyeres.

Returning to base, he discovered it was under attack by the 75th Squadriglia, and promptly destroyed the first enemy plane he could catch in his sights. It belonged to Capitano Luigi Filippi, the Squadriglia’s Commanding Officer. Le Golan’s success represented the Regia Aeronautica’s blackest day of the Campaign, during which its fighter pilots flew 1,770 hours over the front, carried out eleven strafing runs, and were credited with ten ‘kills’ in aerial combat. Nearly a third were claimed in a single combat, when Giuseppe Ruzzin, the noted Spanish Civil War veteran, shot down a trio of Bloch MB.152 fighters in cooperation with three other Falcons.

Dozens more warplanes of all types belonging to France’s Armee de l’Air were destroyed on the ground at Provence, together with airfield supplies and facilities, by Savoia-Marchetti and CANT bombers. Their important success was the Regia Aeronautica’s high-point in an otherwise less than brilliantly executed invasion, and justified Mussolini’s faith in tactical bombing. Indeed, his aviators’ relative success may have saved their comrades on the ground from something worse than a stalemate. During the brief campaign, the Regia Aeronautica lost twenty-four airmen killed, but destroyed an additional fifty French aircraft on the ground.

On 30 June, the Duce drove to Lanslebourg, in Maurienne, where he frankly congratulated his troops at the Alpine front for their valor in spite of sub-zero conditions, sub-standard equipment and insufficient supply.

“Looking into their fatigued, joyful faces,” he admitted to Ciano, “I swore then that I would have a military we could be proud of once more, no matter what the cost in career officers!”³⁷

Driving from the Mont-Cenis pass, he was surprised to see the French tricolor still fluttering over a battered installation. An army advisor informed him that this was the same La Turra fort that had successfully resisted bombardment and encirclement from the first hour of the invasion. It continued to be defended by Sub-Lieutenants Prudhon and Chandesris with nine NCOs, plus forty-one Chasseur riflemen and gunners. After a moment of poignant silence, the Duce ordered the French heroes freed and given special honors of war with his compliments.

He had more trouble with Paris politicians. They refused to recognize his contribution to their defeat, until he threatened to renew aerial attacks against Merton. That brought them back to the negotiation table, but their capitulation offered small compensation for the exceedingly poor performance of his ground forces. The Allied historian, Raymond Klibansky, concluded that Mussolini’s “attack on an almost defeated France, far from bringing the Italian Army any laurels, had revealed it parlous state.”³⁸