Retrospect: The Italian Army and the Politicians, 1911-1912
‘When I was military attaché in Rome an impressive Alpini brigadier asked me who were the ten greatest British generals. I thought for a moment then answered that there wouldn’t be much debate about the top five, but for the rest…
He stopped me and with a sigh said: “The point is, we don’t have a single one. How do you think that makes an Italian officer feel?”’
Brigadier Allan Mallinson quoted in History Today, July 20111
A Regiment of Italians well entrenched, under cover of the Fleet big guns, see on the horizon a frieze of wandering Bedouins. Arrives, with orders to attack, the Colonel. He takes off his helmet and shouts Eviva L’Italia! All the regiment follow suit. Then he shouts: Avanti! Avanti! The entire regiment rises as one man, shouts Avanti and… remains where it was! Somehow it reminds me of railway travel in Italy.
Rudyard Kipling writing to Colonel H W Feilden, 29 January 19132
THOUGH it was by any standards something of a military sideshow in terms of what had gone before it, and particularly so in relation to what came later, the Italian Army, despite seemingly winning, did not emerge from the Italo-Ottoman War with any great credit. This was recognised within some of the more thoughtful branches of the Italian military, perhaps most notably by Luigi Capello, considered by some to have been Italy’s best general during the First World War.3 Though his reputation was largely destroyed in 1917 following the Battle of Caporetto, Capello later wrote of the campaign in North Africa as disastrous because of the ‘enormous waste of materials.’ He went on to point out the ‘no less disastrous devaluation of our military reputation.’4 Luigi Cadorna compared his own position as Chief of Staff unfavourably with those of his Prussian/German counterparts. Whereas they led an ever victorious army, he was ‘the leader of the army of Custoza and Adua.’5 Cadorna’s reputation disappeared at the same time as Capello’s and from much the same cause. However, to quote Paul Kennedy, ‘the general antimilitarism of Italian society, the poor quality of the officer corps, and the lack of adequate funding for modern weaponry raised doubts about Italian military effectiveness long before the disasters of Caparetto.’6 ‘Long before’ could of course encompass the pre-unification era and the famous, and inaccurate, ‘Italians don’t fight’ quip.7 In reality, the entire history of the struggle to attain Italian unification comprises military struggles of varying kinds, though they were not of the sort that led to decisive battles with overwhelming victories and were often against other ‘Italians.’
The army that was sent to North Africa was in need of modernisation and reorganisation. This had been recognised and a process of improvement begun, when it was interrupted by the decision to go to war. Italy’s army was organised, trained, and equipped, albeit poorly in the latter context, to fight a European style conflict in conjunction with its allies in the Triple Alliance. The conflict that developed in Tripoli was very different, and unsurprisingly it found some difficulty in adapting to it at the tactical level. At the operational level the plans drawn up for intervening, as reviewed in August 1911, did not envisage moving beyond the seizure of the coastal towns. The occupation of the hinterland and beyond was to follow via political action. Intelligence, both political and military, was hopelessly misleading in predicting that there would be little resistance and therefore fighting, and when combat became necessary it is hardly surprising that the army as constituted was unable to undertake it effectively. The rising in and around the Oasis of Tripoli, the Battle of Tripoli, came as a very unpleasant shock to the invaders, and the repression and atrocities that followed it further alienated the two sides. Indeed, the last strand of Italian pre-war strategy had collapsed with the mutual fear and hatred engendered by the battle and its aftermath and, consequently, all hopes of the conflict being a short, let alone victorious, war.
The other major Italian miscalculation was that it would be fairly simple to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war, and when this element of strategy misfired the Italians were left at a strategic loss. The whole operation to take Tripoli had been predicated on it not disturbing the ‘balance of power’ in Europe, particularly in the Balkan region, and so attempting to find somewhere where pressure could be applied on the Ottoman government, but not cause intervention by either of the Great Power blocs or their members, became a priority. For want of better the Dodecanese were eventually chosen, and the operation to occupy them proceeded smoothly. Indeed, the amphibious capability displayed during the several joint army and navy operations undertaken was, by any standards, impressive. One of the factors that made such operations possible was the withdrawal of the inferior Ottoman Navy into the Dardanelles at the very beginning of the war, leaving the Italian fleet with total command of the sea. Whilst the lack of an opponent left the navy in a state of frustration at being unable to give battle, which it would undoubtedly have won, it did allow it to land military forces more or less where it chose. That virtually none of these landings was against significant opposition, and an opposed amphibious landing was always, and remains, one of the most hazardous operations of war, was deliberate on the part of the Italians. Where there was opposition, or the likelihood of it, then landings were either not attempted or abandoned; the abortive attempt at Zuwarah in late December 1911 being one such example. When the time came to attempt the operation again in April 1912 it was a much more sophisticated affair, with feints and ruses to confuse any potential defenders. Not all the Italian amphibious operations were successful. The flanking operation attempted on 6 November 1911 to retake Fort Hamidije for example had been foreseen and a force deployed to counter it. Some 200 Italians managed to disembark, but they were immediately attacked and very few escaped alive. The operation against the Dodecanese also involved deception as did that to take Misrata in June 1912, when the landing force was put ashore some 12 kilometres to the east of the target – where the enemy were not in other words. Once firmly ashore, and protected by the guns of the fleet, the Italians could not be dislodged and they only had to wait to build up their strength before moving on their objective.
Though the Italians could hold the coastal enclaves that they conquered relatively easily, attempts to occupy territory inland were fraught with danger. Conversely, the guerrilla style of resistance envisaged by Enver Pasa, whereby attempts to lure Italian detachments from behind their defences in order that small numbers of them could be overwhelmed, was not entirely successful. This was largely due to the Italian policy of risk avoidance; the affair at Bir Tobras of 19-20 December 1911 had demonstrated the dangers of attempting to project power into the desert using unsupported columns. Only the cool-headedness and leadership skills of Colonel Gustavo Fara had averted disaster on that occasion and, whether coincidentally or not, Italian operations thereafter operated on the principle of minimum risk. This meant the use of large forces that were strong enough to defend themselves against anything that the Ottoman led resistance might assemble against them. The inevitable corollary of this was that, tactically, Italian moves were ponderous. Junior officers were prevented from being, as the Italian phrase has it, impetuoso. On the rare occasions when one did act impetuously, such as demonstrated by the now Major-General Gustavo Fara on 9 July 1912 during the operations to take Misrata, the result was an unacceptably high casualty list; another demonstration of his supposed ‘inclination to rashness’ and a ‘failure to see difficulties’ perhaps.
Fighting in desert conditions is, in any event, a specialised business because of the hostility of the environment. This is an enduring situation, and though the advent of mechanical vehicles did much to alleviate it the nub of the problem remained. As well as the difficulties of terrain there are factors such as the extreme heat and insect life – flies, sand flies, ticks, lice, and fleas – to consider. The question of water is paramount, and this matter can perhaps be encapsulated in a quote from a late 20th century study:
Inhabitants of temperate zones do not appreciate the importance of water to everyday life as do the inhabitants of equatorial deserts. For example, there is no one word in the English language that means ‘to die of thirst,’ yet in Arabic there are eight degrees of thirst […] Arabs express thirst in terms of simple thirst, burning thirst, vehement thirst, burning thirst with dizziness, and lastly excessive thirst – the thirst that kills.8
Given the difficulties of conducting desert warfare against a foe that was, literally, quite at home there, and noting that for political reasons avoidance of casualties and therefore risk was of paramount concern, then the apparent ineffectiveness of the Italian Army is explicable. The extreme difficulties experienced by the Italian military in physically traversing the desert terrain wherein the enemy lived was a problem further compounded by the amorphous nature of the foe they sought to fight. The Ottoman formations had, as General Caneva acknowledged within three weeks of the initial landings, become ‘meagre detachments’ some six hours march from the main Italian position at Tripoli City. The ability of such ‘detachments’ to concentrate if required, and then disperse again when necessary, was an enduring problem. The answer, from the invaders side, was to be found in vehicular technology. This however was not far removed from its infancy in 1911-12, but nevertheless the Italians were not slow in making the attempt to utilise it. Mobility in desert terrain would eventually be conferred by the use of motorised vehicles, and these were first used in military operations on a significant scale during the advance on Zanzur of 8 June 1912. Armoured cars were also developed, and from these beginnings more powerful and reliable models would evolve. The circa 400-kilometre round trip made by the Duke of Westminster’s command of forty-three vehicles through the desert on St Patrick’s Day 1916, to rescue the shipwrecked prisoners from Tara and Moorina, demonstrated how far the potential of such methods had developed in just a few years.
The same might be said of aircraft. The Italians were the first to use aircraft in a military context, though of course the models available were extremely basic. Nevertheless the experience of, and developments in, aerial warfare were of much value to them. Aircraft were used initially in the context of reconnaissance, and as deserts are mostly devoid of vegetation and offer virtually no natural concealment from aerial observation they were fairly effective in that role. With rather less success they were also used for bombardment. There were 712 sorties by aeroplanes during the course of the war, whereby ‘several hundred’ bombs were dropped, whilst the airships sortied on 136 occasions and released 360 bombs.9 The conclusion in respect of aviation reached after the conflict was that aeroplanes, although representative of a younger and less proven technology, were nevertheless faster, more manoeuvrable, and much more versatile than airships, and thus had more to offer in the field of war in the future.10 This was prophetic, and when combined with armed, and armoured, vehicles able to traverse the terrain they were to provide the key to successful penetration of the desert. Indeed, drawing on their experiences, the Italians were the first to use integrated mobile air and ground units, dubbed compagnie auto-avio sahariane for desert warfare in the 1930s.
Another technology that was to become vital to successful desert warfare was radio, or wireless telegraphy as it was termed at the time. Guglielmo Marconi, the father of the science, was deeply interested in this development and noted in an interview in 1912 how advances in the technology had begun to make it semi-portable:
When the Italian warships bombarded the Turks, scouting parties equipped with wireless apparatus were sent ashore. The sending instruments that they carried were no bigger than [a medium sized travelling bag] and the masts and their antennae were no bigger than fishing rods. Yet with this apparatus the scouts sent messages five and eight miles [8-13 kilometres] – the range of modern naval guns.11
The science had not yet advanced to a stage where the sending and receiving apparatus were combined in one unit, and neither was the equipment entirely reliable, but undoubtedly the ability to give targeting instructions in real time to artillery beyond the line of sight was another valuable addition to Italy’s war-making capability. The Italian forces were not the pioneers in respect of using radio in war; that had been done in 1900 during the Boxer War in China. It had also figured in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 and had been used in colonial warfare by the German army in German South-West Africa (Namibia) during the 1904-09 campaign against the Herero and Nama people.12
It is also worth recalling that during the South-West African campaigns the German Army – which was, contemporaneously, the ideal against which others were measured – found itself stymied. According to the East German historian, Horst Drechsler, the leader of the resistance, Jacob Morenga, ‘[…] stood head and shoulders above the Germans in the art of guerrilla warfare, and even the Kaiser’s top brass had to acknowledge his tactical skill.’ He quotes Hauptmann M Bayer who served on the General Staff on the matter:
[…] a major European power, with about 15,000 soldiers in the field, was locked for years in a struggle with what were even initially only 1,000 to 2,000 and later no more than some hundred Nama whose methods of warfare proved unanswerable.13
In contradistinction to the Italian example, this apparent failure of arms did not lead to accusations of military ineptitude. Neither have the German commanders in South-West Africa, Major-Generals Lothar von Trotha and Berthold von Deimling successively, been charged with timidity and incompetence (as opposed to barbaric brutality and genocide). Nor was the overall reputation of the German Army called into question by its inability to prevail in the given circumstances. Of course the German Army, or at least its Prussian predecessor and allies, had not fought since 1871 if one discounts the contribution made to the Boxer War in China, but had then done so with great success against France. No such success had attended Italian efforts which had experienced some spectacular failures at Custoza and Adowa as ruefully noted by Luigi Cadorna.
Though Cadorna, and Capello, wrote with hindsight and most certainly had an axe to grind, both were no more than reflecting a good deal of contemporary domestic criticism of the apparent timidity of the Italian Army during the Italo-Ottoman War. This was however dwarfed by foreign criticism, which was sometimes nasty in the extreme and reached denigratory levels. Indeed, great indignation was expressed by Italian, and pro-Italian, commentators and journalists on the scathing criticisms of Italian military prowess made by some foreign writers in their accounts of the campaign. Many of these, both Italian and Italophile, stressed the martial qualities of the Italian soldiers and General Emilio De Bono, who served on the General Staff during the conflict and was appointed Governor of Tripolitania in 1925, argued in 1931 that the successful outcome of the campaign had a morally uplifting effect; ‘after more than forty years non-commissioned officers and soldiers with medals on their breasts could be seen again.’14 The vast majority of the soldiers who fought in Italy were poorly educated conscripts and probably had little motivation for the conflict over an immense and valueless box of sand (immenso ed inutile scatolone di sabbia) as Gaetano Salvemini, and then other opponents of the war, termed it.15 Many tried to escape military duty and, as has been noted, the Italian community in Australia ‘increased markedly during the course of the conflict especially as a result of an influx of men trying to avoid call up.’16 Enver Bey, whose forces fought against them for nearly the whole course of the campaign, considered that the ordinary Italian soldiers were cowardly and ‘unwilling to fight [kampfunlustig]’ but he considered the junior officers that led them admirable and willing to ‘sacrifice themselves.’17
The contemporaneous reporting of the war, as has already been shown, became extremely partisan, and opinions of the effectiveness of the Italian Army likewise. Francis McCullagh, probably the most prominent of all the critics of the Italian venture, condemned the Italians as possessing ‘the one and only European army which ever showed twenty thousand clean pairs of heels to niggers.’18 This was vicious stuff, and almost explicitly propounded the concept that there was something inherently unmilitary about Italy and Italians.19 Such nationalist stereotyping would be dismissed without further argument by the late 20th century, but at the time and later was held to have some validity. It should have been completely discounted during the First World War. The numerous gruelling battles along the Isonzo between 1915-1917, when the Italian army attempted to breach the Austro-Hungarian defences first begun by Conrad von Hötzendorf in the Dolomites before the Italo-Ottoman War, proved this. Despite the near impossibility of campaigning in the hostile Alpine territory, the Italian army fought eleven major battles in an attempt to breach the enemy lines. They were unsuccessful, incurring huge casualties, and during the twelfth battle, the Italians were severely defeated by a combined Austro-Hungarian and German offensive. This was, according to Gaetano Cavallaro, an ‘army that knew how to fight and how to die.’20
Italian military incapacity was again amplified by British propaganda during the Second World War following the defeat of the unmotorised and unarmoured Italian forces in Cyrenaica and in Somaliland. No doubt Japanese propaganda made many of the same claims following the defeat of the British in Malaya and Singapore in 1942 – the ‘largest capitulation’ in British history according to Churchill.21 The causes of the debacle in both cases were much the same; the defeated were poorly trained and ill-equipped to fight the type of campaign imposed upon them by their enemies and their own political leaders. The belittling of Italian military prowess did not of course go down too well with the British forces that had fought them, whose achievements were correspondingly downgraded ‘and whose experience often suggested otherwise.’22 As the historian John Whittam put it: ‘the fighting qualities of the Italian soldier have been very severely judged in the twentieth century.’ Whittam went on to argue that this judgment has to be considered in relation to a defective high command, inadequate economic resources and a sometimes inept political leadership.23
Major Eric G Hansen of the US Marine Corps, in studying the subject of Italian military capabilities and performance, is much in agreement, arguing however that the ‘most important aspect’ lay in Italy’s political system: ‘Throughout her history, this confused governing body has been responsible, in large part, for getting Italy involved in conflicts which she was not prepared to fight.’24 That it was the government of Giolitti and San Giuliano that plunged the Italian Army into just such a conflict in 1911 has, hopefully, been demonstrated.
Giolitti and San Giuliano retained complete control of military and naval strategy throughout the course of the war with the Ottoman Empire, steering a narrow course between bringing pressure to bear on the enemy and bringing on Great Power arbitration. The impetus behind the decision to invade the Ottoman vilayet was a form of social imperialism, inasmuch as Giolitti and his Foreign Minister hoped to outflank, and indeed harness, a growing right wing nationalist current as expressed by various organisations and press organs. Having made the move however, the two politicians found themselves captured by the jingo right and unable to adopt any policy other than outright military victory over the Ottomans and the inhabitants of the Tripoli province. Conversely, and no doubt with the example of Francesco Crispi and Adowa some fifteen years before firmly in mind, they exercised a close control over the Italian Army and ensured that it followed a tactical no-risk policy.
Although this was a case of making a virtue out of a necessity, inasmuch as the army was neither equipped nor trained for desert warfare, it was largely successful since it prevented any disasters that might have attended a bolder policy; the near miss of Bir Tobras being an object lesson in this regard. On the other hand, the apparent passivity of Italian arms, and the protracted resistance of the Ottoman Empire and the inhabitants of Tripoli, led to criticism of Government policy for not being bold enough. Indeed, the unexpected difficulties that arose from what had been expected to be a walkover completely paralysed Italian strategy. As the Ottoman politician interviewed by the British journalist W T Stead put it in 1912: ‘a war with Italy […] costs us nothing and cannot possibly do us any serious harm.’25
It was, of course, an attempt to indeed cause ‘serious harm’ to the Ottomans that led to the decision to widen the war into the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean, utilising the Italian naval supremacy that could not be challenged. This was though a course fraught with difficulties, particularly in respect of Italy’s partner in the Triple Alliance, Austria-Hungary, who had effectively vetoed earlier action in the Adriatic. France too had been provoked by the attack at Beirut in February 1912. Any such action also had the potential to, at the very least, annoy the British who were very sensitive to any latently hostile naval presence on the flank of the Suez Canal route. Sir Edward Grey, in whose hands British foreign policy lay, was determined to maintain strict neutrality between the combatants, whilst San Giuliano was able to get Germany, the senior partner in the Triple Alliance, to apply discrete pressure on the Austro-Hungarians to allow Italy to widen the conflict. Being seriously disadvantaged by their lack of a navy, the Ottomans had attempted to get the Great Powers involved, and, when diplomatic attempts had proven unsuccessful, had sought to provoke such intervention by closing the Dardanelles following the half-hearted Italian attack. Britain and Russia, the two powers most directly affected, had taken differing positions on this closure, with Britain complaining to Italy whilst Russia held the Ottoman Empire to blame. Neither power made any move to directly intervene though, to Italian satisfaction and Ottoman disappointment.
The operation to occupy the islands of the Southern Sporades (Dodecanese) was sanctioned somewhat reluctantly by Austria-Hungary after German pressure, and the British were able to tolerate it publicly because they understood that it was only a temporary measure. As an operation of war it was carried out in an efficient manner, with Giovanni Ameglio being able to land his forces, defeat the enemy, and occupy the whole island of Rhodes between 4-17 May 1912.
The other smaller islands were all occupied before the end of the same month with the willing assent of most of their populations, as the Italian invasion was initially viewed as liberation from Ottoman rule by the majority, who wished to be united with Greek State. This view was soon to change when it became apparent that the Italians were going to stay, and it must have been heartbreaking for the Orthodox population to observe the genuine liberation of other Aegean islands when the Greek Navy easily took them following the outbreak of the First Balkan War in October 1912. This conflict had become general, with offensive military action by Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia, on the same day that Italy and the Ottoman Empire had made their peace with the signing of the Treaty of Ouchy on 18 October.
To claim that the relationship between the Italo-Ottoman and First Balkan War was one of cause and effect is stretching the available evidence beyond what it can bear. Conversely, it would probably be going too far to argue that it had no effect at all. Certainly, the military operations in North Africa did not absorb much in the way of Ottoman military strength, though the logistics and support activities of the Teskilat-i-Mahsusa (Special Organisation) must have absorbed a great deal of resources. There were also several hundred officers, including the most able, in action in Tripoli by the middle of 1912 (though they were recalled once the peace treaty was signed and the Balkan conflict erupted). This was a commitment that would not have been impossible to maintain had the political will been there, but the events of July 1912, and the formation of the new government with its ‘Great Cabinet’ changed this. The new foreign minister, Gabriel Noradungiyan (Gabriel Effendi), was of the opinion that, because of the trouble now looming following the formation of the Balkan League, the war with Italy must be brought to an end. Agreeing a peace treaty was though difficult for the new government, as the CUP and the Ottoman army were reluctant to concede territory to a foe that could not conquer it.
Eventually, as we have seen, a formula was arrived at which allowed something to both sides; in other words rather a fudge. As the Italian author of works on law, politics and government, Aldobrandino Malvezzi, explained it in 1913: ‘It is clear that the state of affairs created by the arrangements between Italy and Turkey creates uncertainty concerning our governing of Libya.’26 Giolitti ignored any dubiety in the Ouchy Treaty and proclaimed a clear victory. Others were not so sure, and these included the unfortunate populations of the former Tripoli vilayet, who were to find that Italian occupation meant that ‘the gallows flourished everywhere in Libya.’27 This was of course under the rule of so-called ‘Liberal Italy.’ The reaction caused by Italy’s methods, combined with Italian participation in the First World War and subsequent withdrawal of most forces to the Alpine Front, led to the Great Arab Revolt. When the reconquest, or, more accurately the conquest of the peoples of the interior of Libya (as it became in 1934) began following the defeat of the Central Powers in 1918, technology had advanced to an extent that the desert no longer provided the same degree of protection to its peoples as had previously applied. Using a devastating combination of motor vehicles, aeroplanes, and radio communications, the Italian army was able to penetrate the forbidding terrain. However, to quote Angelo Del Boca again: ‘With the advent of Fascism and the elimination of an opposition capable of criticizing the excesses of colonialism, the reconquest of Libya took on a more intense pace and an unprecedented scale.’ It was thus that the peoples of Libya, much more so than those of the Dodecanese, paid the greatest price for the war started by Giolitti and San Giuliano.
The Italo-Ottoman War was above all else an unnecessary war, only entered into to satisfy the nationalist and jingo right wing that had become a powerful force in Italian domestic politics. Italy could have had effective control of the Tripoli vilayet, in much the same style as Britain and France were effective rulers of Egypt and Tunisia respectively, up to the point of the invasion. Whether this would have resulted in the local population being more accepting of the Italian presence is unknown. But had the local Ottoman forces been withdrawn peacefully, and had the logistical support furnished by the Ottoman government never been forthcoming, and had the Italians attempted to rule with the same light-touch that the Ottoman Empire had employed, then it is conceivable that the outcome might have been considerably more peaceful than it turned out to be. Italy had long coveted the territory as has been shown, and had taken pains diplomatically to try to ensure that it would eventually get it. It was though not enough for Giolitti and San Giuliano to satisfy this long-standing territorial ambition by diplomacy. It had to be done by force of arms with famous victories reflecting the glory of Italy. That the Italian army in particular had made no plans to do anything other than what it eventually did do and occupy strategic locations on the coast, and that political and military intelligence concerning the nature of what was likely to be the reception offered were not factors that seemed to figure in the political calculation.
Neither did the virtual worthlessness of the territory being conquered. McCullagh might have been heavily biased against the Italian venture, but the title of his 1913 book on the conflict, Italy’s War for a Desert, was nevertheless accurate. The Italo-Ottoman War was entirely a conflict of choice on Italy’s part and may be reasonably viewed as a strategic blunder of massive proportions. This was recognised by at least one of Giolitti’s successors. Francesco Nitti, who served as the 36th Prime Minister of Italy between 1919 and 1920, opined thus in 1921:
The Libyan adventure, now considered serenely, cannot be looked on as anything but an aberration. Libya is an immense box of sand which never had any value, nor has it now. Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan cover more than one million one hundred thousand square kilometres and have less than nine hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom even now, after ten years, less than a third are under the effective control of Italy.28
That the Italo-Ottoman War in general, and the Tripoli campaign in particular, ended as favourably as it did from the Italian perspective was entirely due to circumstances outside its control. No advice as to local conditions seems to have been solicited and no intelligence sought as to what conditions would be encountered in the theatre. No assessment as to the likely response of the enemy was carried out. Consequently the venture was launched with the invaders having little or no idea of what they were getting themselves into, and no idea of how to bring it to an end once their initial strategy collapsed.
From a distance of 100 years it should seem incredible that any responsible government would launch itself and its armed forces into such an ill-conceived campaign. However, the early years of the 21st century have surely demonstrated that the Giolitti government was by no means unique in this regard.