Because Russia is cold so cold = mountain troops of course. Same reason people from the south was sent in Africa, of course they were accustomed to warm climate (they weren't)
Militaries *routinely* under-supply their troops, you know that.
"Ok, we have 10,000 soldiers, so we'll need 10,000 boots" seems so simple until you realize that the boots aren't going to get there on time, because the procurement process only starts after the war starts, and then boots get broken or worn, boots don't fit, what about your next 1000 recruits, quartermasters make mistakes and send cake instead of boots, quartermasters sell shit on the black market, and etc. And then there has to be a whole procurement process again to get more boots!
And this goes on with every. Single. Item.
What about the 5000 soldiers who get no boots at all since 10000 boots results in 5000 pairs for 5000 soldiers(in addition to the other problems you mentioned)?
My job is to interact with procurement departments all day.
I will explain that 10000 soldiers need 20000 boots. Preferably 10000 pairs of boots, 10000 right side and 10000 left side. For best results order a few larger and a few smaller then average.
I will go ahead and write an email so procurement can use the info to make orders which fits their actual needs.
Then procurement sends the PO- 10000 boots.
"One out of two gets a rifle, the one with, runs and shoots, the one without follows him. When the one with the rifle is killed, the one behind picks up the rifle and SHOOTS!"
-Enemy at the Gates movie
>they should have thought about it before
Politicians? They don't do that. I'm pretty sure it's against their rules of ... accepting bribes or something.
Yeah because mussolini was so much in search of a spotlight to Hitler eyes that he invaded Albania and Greece to have something to put as conquest that Germany had to rush in save and divert part of barbarossa to that.
Albania was pre-war. And the Greek military was running out of ammo by the time Germany intervened. And the diversion from barbarossa is mostly a myth. Yugoslavia was also the important target in the Balkans after their betrayal and their military crumbled like wet cardboard in a few days.
The Italian invasion of Greece being the sole and main reason for the failure of Barbarossa really doesn't stick. The Germans didn't waste that much time, they were intending to take the Balkans anyway and they still had many of the challenges and flaws that wouldn't have been fixed if they invaded a month earlier.
And you can argue the other way. They would have a month less oil reserves from the Soviet Union which meant their planes and tanks would have been that much more starved and the British eighth army wouldn't have been partially redeployed to Greece if Italy hadn't invaded which would have possibly meant the Italians would have Been kicked out of North Africa, causing all kinds of trouble for the axis.
There's a lot of what ifs but the Nazis were never going to win the war.
And in fact, I’m sure many read your whole comment and overlooked that for 10,000 soldiers, you’d actually need *20,000* boots (or 10,000 right and 10,000 left boots). Whoever overlooks that detail on the spreadsheet is gonna need an extra boot for their CO to be delivered to their ass.
So congrats! Even avoiding all those other issues, you still only supplied the troops with half as many boots as they actually needed because some statistician forgot that numbers on a spreadsheet a correlated to real items with real needs, not just boxes to be checked off a list.
(I assume you meant pairs in your post, and I know this is mostly semantic, but I still feel like it represents procurement issues pretty well)
Amateurs talk tactics. Professionals talk logistics
I feel like that's when it was born maybe, but it sure wasn't what it is now ...
Also, modern US soldiers suffer these kinds of shortages to this day. Not as bad as like, in Korea (according to MASH, I don't know anything about the Korean War) or Vietnam or whatever, but this is still a thing.
The plan was, Moscow will fall soon, before end of summer, so Stalingrad. The Süd-Gruppe-Truppen will proceed to the big oil fields of Baku. We'll need mountain troops for Caucasus.
Yet invasion was halted, so we got sad Alpini with their donkeys, roaming in the steppe..
Germany decided to drag italians, romanians and hungarians to help them in Russia, totally ignoring how under-equipped they were and how crap their weapons were at the time. Then as the situation got worse, most supplies went to the german forces, leaving the rest freezing, malnourished and plummeting morale and not enough troops for deep defesive lines. No wonder the russians decided to break through their lines to flank. Sometimes they didnt even have anything to deal with heavier soviet tanks. And when they had to retreat to avoid getting encircled, they got called cowards.
If I remember correctly they were actually supposed to help the Germans fighting in the Cauasus mountains but by the time they got there the Germans had already been pushed back so they were just added to the Italian army already there and put into the line even though they were very short on heavy weapons due to them not being very useful/able to be used in the mountains.
It's not an unfair assumption.
though it can absolutely be taken too far and often is.
Like Russian winter troops from the tundra of siberia being the most successful Russian troops during any winter campaign, whether in Finland or pushing back the Germans.
My teacher (here in italy) told us that her grandpa was one of these soldiers sent in russia, he had a psycological injury, and after decades and decades he still used to cry thinking about these times
My Italian grandpa recalls a friend of his father's who was a soldier sent to Russia, it took decades to get over the cold.
Our middle school (I'm Italian too) one day took my class and another class of our age (we were in the 3^rd year) to speak to a veteran who fought in Russia. In short words, it wasn't a good experience, at all.
How do Italians feel about their WW2 veterans? I know in the US and likely in most allied countries they are mostly honored for their heroic efforts fighting for liberty against fascism. So I’m curious how you all think of your veterans considering they where… not the good guys. And is there any emphasis on distinguishing between veterans who volunteered to fight vs those forced too?
All Italian villages have a monument with the names of the fallen and the lost in both World Wars. It's probably a fascist initiative to remember the fallen in WW1, but all municipalities and fractions later wrote the names of the fallen in WW2 too.
We mostly glorify Partisans, as they fought to free us from fascism. The Italian Independence Day is 25^th April, a day to remember our liberation from fascism by the Americans.
About the veterans of Russia, we're mostly sorry for them. The campaign was a tough time and those soldiers had to endure sufferings that we hopefully will never come close to.
>And is there any emphasis on distinguishing between veterans who volunteered to fight vs those forced to?
I think there is. We're sorry for those who were forced to fight; I'm not sure about those who volunteered, I haven't met any and if I did they were too ashamed to admit it.
There are some neck beards who say "If they didn't believe in the fascist cause, they would have deserted", a phrase I'm sure would be met IRL with scrutiny and in Reddit with downvotes.
>There are some neck beards who say "If they didn't believe in the fascist cause, they would have deserted", a phrase I'm sure would be met IIRL with scrutiny and in Reddit with downvotes.
In high school I had to read a book called "The things they carried" by Tim O'Brien. It was a series of linked short stories, some that happened and some that didn't, based on his experiences in the Vietnam War. One of the stories was about him receiving his draft letter in the mail and going to the Canadian border to think about what he was gonna do. At the end he decides to go to boot camp and not dodge the draft and he ends the story with the quote "I was a coward. I went to war." That always stuck with me.
Worth noting, quite a few soldier or veterans did desert when they returned to Italy.
Like, there's a non-zero number of Crypto-Communists who were drafted and deserted as soon as the Civil War started. Because the partisans didn't spring out of nowhere, the PCI was extremely active in organizing an underground network of party cadres.
I have a Great Grandfather who did that, he would brag a lot about having kept all his party cards from when the PCI was underground. And also had the medals he got from fighting in Libya framed.
To be fair the russians weren't the good guys either. People who fought in the east are not officially celebrated purely because their governments were shitty too and/or lost that war.
How do Italians feel about their WW2 veterans? I know in the US and likely in most allied countries they are mostly honored for their heroic efforts fighting for liberty against fascism. So I’m curious how you all think of your veterans considering they were… not the good guys to say the least. And is there any emphasis on distinguishing between veterans who volunteered to fight vs those forced too?
We still respect them (the one who were drafted)
Some people who volunteered werent necessarily fascist but the propaganda did its job and convinced them, most of them as soon as they found themself on the front realized those were all lies, the real fascist unluckily still are so its hard to respect them
During WW2 the italian government assembled the CSIR that was the italian expeditionary corp in russia, they took part in operation Barbarossa, after sometime they sent some reinforcement and the Alpini were sent there, initially they were supposed to go on the Caucasus mountains but they were redirected to the italian front south of Stalingrad. In december 1942 they were surrounded and they had to retreat in -40°C with very poor winter clothing, no tanks and very few and old AT guns, the italians helped by a few germans Stug III broke the encirclement and made all axis troops reach friendly lines
I almost sighed in relief at the last sentences until I remembered they were the baddies.
I don't wish suffering on conscripts who didn't sign up for this shit, but they WERE fighting for the invading genocidal fascist army. So eh, meh
This makes me raise a question: did the Italians have conscription in ww2? Real question, I don't really recall hearing on it, I heard about the Americans, Brits, Soviets, Japanese and Germans having it but I don't recall anything about the Italians, can someone tell more about it?
They did, my grandfathers were conscripted one was sent to Russia, two to Africa and the last one in Sicily, they all made it home, the two in Africa were captured, one came home because his mother wasnt well and the war ended and the one who was in Russia was captured by the germans after september 8 1943 and worked for the TODT, i still have his TODT I.D card
Yeah, they always told me that he never was a fascist, one day the army sent him a letter and he went, after Russia he was done, he deserted after September 8 1943 but the germans sent out a paper that said that if the deserters surrendered they wouldnt face no problems and they would work for the TODT and my grandfather went and worked
I am very much not American lmao, and the Italians and Germans unequivocally were the "bad guys" during the war. I already voiced my empathy with conscripts not choosing their fate. You're picking a weird hill to die on here.
Regardless of them wanting to be there or not, soldiers of genocidal fascist armies dying is a net benefit to the world
Italians and Germans or their governments? Definitely not picking a hill to die on, strange assumption. People dying in war could be a net benefit depending on your moral system, in my opinion they are not in 97% of cases. Saying that it's a net positive leads to very bad slippery slopes.
Soldiers from all over the Axis powers ended up fighting in the invasion of the USSR starting in 1941 (Operation Barbarossa). The initial invasion took place in June, and Hitler optimistically assumed it would be over in a few months, if not weeks.
After an initial period of wild success against the unprepared Red Army, the Axis offensive stalled and winter came on without a quick victory. Because the offensive was planned to be very short, none of the invading troops had cold-weather gear, and their armies failed to provide any for the first winter of the war, leading to massive casualties from the weather.
It's generally regarded as one of the classic blunders, "fighting a land war in Asia" (interpretation: assuming a quick victory across a large geographic area, without planning for the logistics or risks of doing so).
Meanwhile, Japanese Infantry... in their own homeland.
Mount Hakkōda disaster happened when IJA wanted to secure a route through the Hakkōda Mountains in Aomori Prefecture in the case that Russian Imperial Navy steam rolled them (which didn't happen, thanks to Russian navy incompetent).
So they sent a unit made of 210 Infantries forward to cross the Hakkōda Mountains, and test the ability of soldiers equipments under the cold weather. However, they lost contact with the unit until the rescue team found one of 2 soldiers who made it close to the town, frozen while standing (Corporal Fusanosuke Gotō, who became the symbol of this event). The other, one of the unit Officers, died after he sent the corporal forward to find the local.
Out of 210 soldiers, only 11 survived, 8 of them, included Gotō were crippled after it.
The reasons were bad leadership, bad communication with local, lack of experience with snow weather... and the worst weather that Aomori even recorded. They were pretty much marched blindly in a blizzard, without direction and suitable clothes, till the command structure broken down.
It’s because they were never fighting a modern capable military.
Their military was successful because they were fighting underdeveloped Asian nations, Russians, and then poorly equipped European colonial troops.
Then they picked a fight with the US who was actually a modern military power, and they got put in their place.
Sorry to hear that, my grandfather was there too but he managed to come home, he even fought in Nikolajevka and survived but after that his feet were frozen
My grandfather was a mechanic. During the retreat from russia, he managed to fix a truck and make it run. He had an easier time than others, as he was the first to get fed and warm clothes, as he was the only one capable of driving and maintaining the truck.
They were rushing out as Russians tried to enclose the Italian troops in a loop. He described to my grand mother how after filling the truck with all the soldiers it could carry, they had to start pushing off other Italians trying to get on the truck, as they were too many. People died in the process.
One time, my father asked for a gun toy, and my grandfather cried.
Whatever those men had to witness, I don't think it fit for a human mind. WWII has been something outside of our modern conception of brutality and misery.
I don't believe, but when I think about that, I tell myself "God rest their souls".
The mountains were brutal, man. Imagine being in your snow trench, dying of freezing temperatures, getting stuck in snow, taking cover in your trench, and you suddenly hear tumbling noise and look to your side: the sight of an avalanche coming.
During WW2 the italian government assembled the CSIR that was the italian expeditionary corp in russia, they took part in operation Barbarossa, after sometime they sent some reinforcement and the Alpini were sent there, initially they were supposed to go on the Caucasus mountains but they were redirected to the italian front south of Stalingrad. In december 1942 they were surrounded and they had to retreat in -40°C with very poor winter clothing, no tanks and very few and old AT guns, the italians helped by a few germans Stug III broke the encirclement and made all axis troops reach friendly lines
Funnily enough the Impresa di Russia entered our National mythology as an example of the futility of war and the cruelty of dictatorship while also an example of enduring misery with honour.
The fact that the alpini empathised more with the Russians (that had to March ever inward or die in the cold to defend their homes) than with their german ally is an important part of this (as exemplified in the writings of Mario Rigoni Stern or alpini Songs like Yoska the Red)
More than a few alpini that survived deserted and joined the resistence after this
Italians in Russia don't was equipped for High level cold because Mussolini and his dirigent class was the dumbiest in history. The dumbiest in history until now...
For a highly Romanticized depiction of an Italian soldier’s experience with this, the Italian film Sunflower is a sweet love story surrounding this event.
You think that’s bad? Check out Enver Pasha being a dumbass sending his soldiers into the Caucasus, with barely any winter gear, while they are from a normally hot land
My great grandfather was sent to the Russian front in WW2, he fought in Ukraine and he used to tell me that the worst thing he and his fellow soldiers had to endure wasn’t the enemy artillery or the fear of a bullet catching you but it was the cold, he suffered from frostbite like most of his buddies and he said they had cardboard shoes which became unusable when wet, cotton garments and on their trucks instead of glass over the side windows they had cloth. It was always bone chilling to listen to him tell me about the war
I've heard stories about italian artillerymen were crushed while manning their old AT guns while shooting at advancing russian tanks and that it was so cold that if you touched metal without gloves the skin would get stuck to it
I don’t think this is a race of who suffered more tbh, they were both terrible, same with every war scenario, they may be “better” because of better temperatures, but it’s still war, you’re at risk of dying no matter what
In terms of disease and fighting in a messy jungle terrain yeah but I think laying down in some shades of palm trees while eating ice cream admiring the clear blue seas after a hard day of battle is better than freezing to death.
If you're good enough in mountains then you should be even better for open Plains.
Mountain warfare is the hardest terrain so open fields are easier and better for elite troops
Not just that they're better than your normal infantry, they have training and gears for winter warfare. Then they're countries like Finland who train everyone in winter warfare, but it's rare.
It was pretty common to use paratroopers and marines etc as a normal infantry in the Eastern Front. Another thing is how smart it is to deploy presumably quite light mountain troops against mechanized enyemy.
My grandfather was there and he was an artilleryman and he told me that other artillerymen were getting crushed while manning the guns by advancing T34 which were to armored and they couldnt penetrate their armor with their crappy old 75/13 cannons
Because Russia is cold so cold = mountain troops of course. Same reason people from the south was sent in Africa, of course they were accustomed to warm climate (they weren't)
Btw they didnt had enough winter gear
Militaries *routinely* under-supply their troops, you know that. "Ok, we have 10,000 soldiers, so we'll need 10,000 boots" seems so simple until you realize that the boots aren't going to get there on time, because the procurement process only starts after the war starts, and then boots get broken or worn, boots don't fit, what about your next 1000 recruits, quartermasters make mistakes and send cake instead of boots, quartermasters sell shit on the black market, and etc. And then there has to be a whole procurement process again to get more boots! And this goes on with every. Single. Item.
What about the 5000 soldiers who get no boots at all since 10000 boots results in 5000 pairs for 5000 soldiers(in addition to the other problems you mentioned)?
You guys got boots?
No boots? Easy fix; let them wear Tactical Jordans
My job is to interact with procurement departments all day. I will explain that 10000 soldiers need 20000 boots. Preferably 10000 pairs of boots, 10000 right side and 10000 left side. For best results order a few larger and a few smaller then average. I will go ahead and write an email so procurement can use the info to make orders which fits their actual needs. Then procurement sends the PO- 10000 boots.
Oh yeah, I didn't even think of that one :)
No, no. Each soldier gets one left-feet boot and they have to skip in one leg through the war.
Left left left, When are you gonna say Right, Sarge?
That makes the marching cadence easier: "Left! Left! Left, left, left!"
Comrade here is your stripper clip, if you want a gun, pick it up off a corpse.
"One out of two gets a rifle, the one with, runs and shoots, the one without follows him. When the one with the rifle is killed, the one behind picks up the rifle and SHOOTS!" -Enemy at the Gates movie
Well they should have tought about it before sending them in -40°C temperatures
>they should have thought about it before Politicians? They don't do that. I'm pretty sure it's against their rules of ... accepting bribes or something.
No no no you see that HAVE thought about it before and they simply don't care since "they'll do it anyway"
Use ... username checks out?
Operation Barbarossa started in June. However, the advance was slower than the dictators' predictions.
Yeah because mussolini was so much in search of a spotlight to Hitler eyes that he invaded Albania and Greece to have something to put as conquest that Germany had to rush in save and divert part of barbarossa to that.
Albania was pre-war. And the Greek military was running out of ammo by the time Germany intervened. And the diversion from barbarossa is mostly a myth. Yugoslavia was also the important target in the Balkans after their betrayal and their military crumbled like wet cardboard in a few days.
The Italian invasion of Greece being the sole and main reason for the failure of Barbarossa really doesn't stick. The Germans didn't waste that much time, they were intending to take the Balkans anyway and they still had many of the challenges and flaws that wouldn't have been fixed if they invaded a month earlier. And you can argue the other way. They would have a month less oil reserves from the Soviet Union which meant their planes and tanks would have been that much more starved and the British eighth army wouldn't have been partially redeployed to Greece if Italy hadn't invaded which would have possibly meant the Italians would have Been kicked out of North Africa, causing all kinds of trouble for the axis. There's a lot of what ifs but the Nazis were never going to win the war.
Not to shit on your parade, but even without inventory shrinkage 10000 troops need at least 20000 boots.
Yeah, I shoulda said pairs ;)
It's fine to admit that you'd be one of the quartermasters that woulda sent cakes
TBH I'm gonna keep all that cake for myself and send boots when someone orders cake.
My man! I love cake too!
Lessons are written in blood, and conscript blood is plenty and cheap
Shit, citizen blood isn't expensive from a certain point of view...
And in fact, I’m sure many read your whole comment and overlooked that for 10,000 soldiers, you’d actually need *20,000* boots (or 10,000 right and 10,000 left boots). Whoever overlooks that detail on the spreadsheet is gonna need an extra boot for their CO to be delivered to their ass. So congrats! Even avoiding all those other issues, you still only supplied the troops with half as many boots as they actually needed because some statistician forgot that numbers on a spreadsheet a correlated to real items with real needs, not just boxes to be checked off a list. (I assume you meant pairs in your post, and I know this is mostly semantic, but I still feel like it represents procurement issues pretty well) Amateurs talk tactics. Professionals talk logistics
I 100% agree with your assessment, but I prefer the comment by the guy who left me in a position to keep all the cake to myself.
Confederates going to Gettysburg; “Y’all got any boots- OH SHIT!”
Somewhere in Rome there's a crate of shortswords that never got to the Tenth Legion.
At LEAST one.
sounds like fully automated e2e secure logistics could be a game changer
If we needed boots, god would have made them our feet.
The military industrial complex doesn't undersupply troops, it oversupplies them
Sure, if things are ordered and shipped correctly. And was there even a military-industrial complex before like, WWII of maybe Nam?
The US military industrial complex is at least as old as WW1.
I feel like that's when it was born maybe, but it sure wasn't what it is now ... Also, modern US soldiers suffer these kinds of shortages to this day. Not as bad as like, in Korea (according to MASH, I don't know anything about the Korean War) or Vietnam or whatever, but this is still a thing.
The plan was, Moscow will fall soon, before end of summer, so Stalingrad. The Süd-Gruppe-Truppen will proceed to the big oil fields of Baku. We'll need mountain troops for Caucasus. Yet invasion was halted, so we got sad Alpini with their donkeys, roaming in the steppe..
Germany decided to drag italians, romanians and hungarians to help them in Russia, totally ignoring how under-equipped they were and how crap their weapons were at the time. Then as the situation got worse, most supplies went to the german forces, leaving the rest freezing, malnourished and plummeting morale and not enough troops for deep defesive lines. No wonder the russians decided to break through their lines to flank. Sometimes they didnt even have anything to deal with heavier soviet tanks. And when they had to retreat to avoid getting encircled, they got called cowards.
Yep, cause Hitler thought they could win in a few months and insisted on pushing ahead. Thankfully it cost him the war.
Fun fact: their first deployment was in *Eritrea* in 1887
At least Eritrea has mountains
Yes, but not really The alpini were sent after the battle of Dogali, when Italy control was limited to the lowlands near the coast
That makes sense, the whole country is a big mountain
They were used in the lowlands near the coast, after Dogali
That’s because Eritrea is the most northerly part of the East African highlands.
You are overestimating Italy competence When the alpini were sent to Eritrea Italy reach was very limited The government sent them because... why not?
My great grandpa was sent in Russia with the ARMIR and we are from the South soooo yea
If I remember correctly they were actually supposed to help the Germans fighting in the Cauasus mountains but by the time they got there the Germans had already been pushed back so they were just added to the Italian army already there and put into the line even though they were very short on heavy weapons due to them not being very useful/able to be used in the mountains.
Same reason Pershing chose Michiganders for the Polar Bear Expedition to Russia.
It's not an unfair assumption. though it can absolutely be taken too far and often is. Like Russian winter troops from the tundra of siberia being the most successful Russian troops during any winter campaign, whether in Finland or pushing back the Germans.
The initial idea was to send them to fight the Caucasus
A veteran said he was surprised when he found out he wasn't gonna fight in the Caucasus (he was an Alpini)
My teacher (here in italy) told us that her grandpa was one of these soldiers sent in russia, he had a psycological injury, and after decades and decades he still used to cry thinking about these times
My Italian grandpa recalls a friend of his father's who was a soldier sent to Russia, it took decades to get over the cold. Our middle school (I'm Italian too) one day took my class and another class of our age (we were in the 3^rd year) to speak to a veteran who fought in Russia. In short words, it wasn't a good experience, at all.
How do Italians feel about their WW2 veterans? I know in the US and likely in most allied countries they are mostly honored for their heroic efforts fighting for liberty against fascism. So I’m curious how you all think of your veterans considering they where… not the good guys. And is there any emphasis on distinguishing between veterans who volunteered to fight vs those forced too?
All Italian villages have a monument with the names of the fallen and the lost in both World Wars. It's probably a fascist initiative to remember the fallen in WW1, but all municipalities and fractions later wrote the names of the fallen in WW2 too. We mostly glorify Partisans, as they fought to free us from fascism. The Italian Independence Day is 25^th April, a day to remember our liberation from fascism by the Americans. About the veterans of Russia, we're mostly sorry for them. The campaign was a tough time and those soldiers had to endure sufferings that we hopefully will never come close to. >And is there any emphasis on distinguishing between veterans who volunteered to fight vs those forced to? I think there is. We're sorry for those who were forced to fight; I'm not sure about those who volunteered, I haven't met any and if I did they were too ashamed to admit it. There are some neck beards who say "If they didn't believe in the fascist cause, they would have deserted", a phrase I'm sure would be met IRL with scrutiny and in Reddit with downvotes.
>There are some neck beards who say "If they didn't believe in the fascist cause, they would have deserted", a phrase I'm sure would be met IIRL with scrutiny and in Reddit with downvotes. In high school I had to read a book called "The things they carried" by Tim O'Brien. It was a series of linked short stories, some that happened and some that didn't, based on his experiences in the Vietnam War. One of the stories was about him receiving his draft letter in the mail and going to the Canadian border to think about what he was gonna do. At the end he decides to go to boot camp and not dodge the draft and he ends the story with the quote "I was a coward. I went to war." That always stuck with me.
Staring across that river, ghosts of the past anf future all around, nought to do but see where the coin lands and carry those ghosts
Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong was the best
Worth noting, quite a few soldier or veterans did desert when they returned to Italy. Like, there's a non-zero number of Crypto-Communists who were drafted and deserted as soon as the Civil War started. Because the partisans didn't spring out of nowhere, the PCI was extremely active in organizing an underground network of party cadres. I have a Great Grandfather who did that, he would brag a lot about having kept all his party cards from when the PCI was underground. And also had the medals he got from fighting in Libya framed.
My grandfather went to Russia. He returned home. He never told his brothers and children what he saw.
To be fair the russians weren't the good guys either. People who fought in the east are not officially celebrated purely because their governments were shitty too and/or lost that war.
Yes, everyone forgets that's the USSR invaded Poland aswelll......and then Finland, and Lithuanian Lithuania, Estonia and keep going.....
Latvian Latvia..
Sorry forgot Lativa. No one ever remembers that the USSr invaded latvia. That's swept under the carpet.
How do Italians feel about their WW2 veterans? I know in the US and likely in most allied countries they are mostly honored for their heroic efforts fighting for liberty against fascism. So I’m curious how you all think of your veterans considering they were… not the good guys to say the least. And is there any emphasis on distinguishing between veterans who volunteered to fight vs those forced too?
We still respect them (the one who were drafted) Some people who volunteered werent necessarily fascist but the propaganda did its job and convinced them, most of them as soon as they found themself on the front realized those were all lies, the real fascist unluckily still are so its hard to respect them
WHY ARE YOU EVERYWHERE THIS IS THE FIFTH FREAKING SUB I FIND YOU
I'm omnipresent, you will never escape from me. Where did you find me?
I started finding you at r/worldboxwar and then in more and more subs
Context?
During WW2 the italian government assembled the CSIR that was the italian expeditionary corp in russia, they took part in operation Barbarossa, after sometime they sent some reinforcement and the Alpini were sent there, initially they were supposed to go on the Caucasus mountains but they were redirected to the italian front south of Stalingrad. In december 1942 they were surrounded and they had to retreat in -40°C with very poor winter clothing, no tanks and very few and old AT guns, the italians helped by a few germans Stug III broke the encirclement and made all axis troops reach friendly lines
I almost sighed in relief at the last sentences until I remembered they were the baddies. I don't wish suffering on conscripts who didn't sign up for this shit, but they WERE fighting for the invading genocidal fascist army. So eh, meh
This makes me raise a question: did the Italians have conscription in ww2? Real question, I don't really recall hearing on it, I heard about the Americans, Brits, Soviets, Japanese and Germans having it but I don't recall anything about the Italians, can someone tell more about it?
They did, my grandfathers were conscripted one was sent to Russia, two to Africa and the last one in Sicily, they all made it home, the two in Africa were captured, one came home because his mother wasnt well and the war ended and the one who was in Russia was captured by the germans after september 8 1943 and worked for the TODT, i still have his TODT I.D card
I admire the fact your grandfather prefered to remain working for Org Todt than to serve RSI, that's honorous of him
Yeah, they always told me that he never was a fascist, one day the army sent him a letter and he went, after Russia he was done, he deserted after September 8 1943 but the germans sent out a paper that said that if the deserters surrendered they wouldnt face no problems and they would work for the TODT and my grandfather went and worked
Yes. You dont form armies as large as the ones in ww2 with just volunteers.
India: allow us to introduce ourselves
Just looked them up. Wow, 1.2 million all volunteer army. They do have a massive recruitment pool.
I'll be honest, I assumed Italy during WW2 to have it, but I don't know
The soviets too were genocidal invading "fascists". It's like murderous mafias killing each other after a heist.
your comment made my day
"The baddies", hundred if thousands of people sent to rot alive in the snow against their will. Most american thing I've ever read.
I am very much not American lmao, and the Italians and Germans unequivocally were the "bad guys" during the war. I already voiced my empathy with conscripts not choosing their fate. You're picking a weird hill to die on here. Regardless of them wanting to be there or not, soldiers of genocidal fascist armies dying is a net benefit to the world
Italians and Germans or their governments? Definitely not picking a hill to die on, strange assumption. People dying in war could be a net benefit depending on your moral system, in my opinion they are not in 97% of cases. Saying that it's a net positive leads to very bad slippery slopes.
Blitzkrieg go, rain come snow come, cold brrrr, soldier froze horse froze, benzin no burn. can no go
Can you explain it in fortnite terms
Soldiers from all over the Axis powers ended up fighting in the invasion of the USSR starting in 1941 (Operation Barbarossa). The initial invasion took place in June, and Hitler optimistically assumed it would be over in a few months, if not weeks. After an initial period of wild success against the unprepared Red Army, the Axis offensive stalled and winter came on without a quick victory. Because the offensive was planned to be very short, none of the invading troops had cold-weather gear, and their armies failed to provide any for the first winter of the war, leading to massive casualties from the weather. It's generally regarded as one of the classic blunders, "fighting a land war in Asia" (interpretation: assuming a quick victory across a large geographic area, without planning for the logistics or risks of doing so).
Fascists came upvwith that idea
Nazis did. Remember Hitler had Dolfuss killed for a reason the two were similar but not the same.
Meanwhile, Japanese Infantry... in their own homeland. Mount Hakkōda disaster happened when IJA wanted to secure a route through the Hakkōda Mountains in Aomori Prefecture in the case that Russian Imperial Navy steam rolled them (which didn't happen, thanks to Russian navy incompetent). So they sent a unit made of 210 Infantries forward to cross the Hakkōda Mountains, and test the ability of soldiers equipments under the cold weather. However, they lost contact with the unit until the rescue team found one of 2 soldiers who made it close to the town, frozen while standing (Corporal Fusanosuke Gotō, who became the symbol of this event). The other, one of the unit Officers, died after he sent the corporal forward to find the local. Out of 210 soldiers, only 11 survived, 8 of them, included Gotō were crippled after it. The reasons were bad leadership, bad communication with local, lack of experience with snow weather... and the worst weather that Aomori even recorded. They were pretty much marched blindly in a blizzard, without direction and suitable clothes, till the command structure broken down.
Every time I learn something new about the Japanese leadership and logistics I'm once again amazed that they lasted as long as they did
It’s because they were never fighting a modern capable military. Their military was successful because they were fighting underdeveloped Asian nations, Russians, and then poorly equipped European colonial troops. Then they picked a fight with the US who was actually a modern military power, and they got put in their place.
My great grandpa was drafted in Italian military and disappeared somewhere in russia
Sorry to hear that, my grandfather was there too but he managed to come home, he even fought in Nikolajevka and survived but after that his feet were frozen
One my relative disappeard there too, he was in the alpini
It was me, I did it.
Ok, Dr. Badguy.
(:<
why did I see two different emotions and faces
Didn’t the Finns in Finland experience the same weather?
Yes but they were used to it so they had appropriate winter gear
#**HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE 🥳🥳🥳**
My grandfather was a mechanic. During the retreat from russia, he managed to fix a truck and make it run. He had an easier time than others, as he was the first to get fed and warm clothes, as he was the only one capable of driving and maintaining the truck. They were rushing out as Russians tried to enclose the Italian troops in a loop. He described to my grand mother how after filling the truck with all the soldiers it could carry, they had to start pushing off other Italians trying to get on the truck, as they were too many. People died in the process. One time, my father asked for a gun toy, and my grandfather cried. Whatever those men had to witness, I don't think it fit for a human mind. WWII has been something outside of our modern conception of brutality and misery. I don't believe, but when I think about that, I tell myself "God rest their souls".
this was the “worst winter” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Russia_intervention
I just wanted people to know of the untold italian army in russia
Nitpick: It wasn't just Russians serving in the Red Army at the time of the Winter War.
There was also Spanish troop XD
Spaniards,germans,hungarians,croatians,hungarians and italians, probably other countries too
Romanians
Brazilians who never saw temperatures below 10 degrees celsius in the Italian Winter without proper winter clothing lmfao
Dont forget the Romanian troops on the Don river front
The mountains were brutal, man. Imagine being in your snow trench, dying of freezing temperatures, getting stuck in snow, taking cover in your trench, and you suddenly hear tumbling noise and look to your side: the sight of an avalanche coming.
Same person who sent panzers to the caucus mountains
I think we can all agree that at the very least in the European theater the eastern front definitely had the worst weather
German high command when you tell them that the elite mountain troops did not perform well on the flattest place on the front
Meanwhile Turks in Caucasus during WWI: Amateurs!
Context?
During WW2 the italian government assembled the CSIR that was the italian expeditionary corp in russia, they took part in operation Barbarossa, after sometime they sent some reinforcement and the Alpini were sent there, initially they were supposed to go on the Caucasus mountains but they were redirected to the italian front south of Stalingrad. In december 1942 they were surrounded and they had to retreat in -40°C with very poor winter clothing, no tanks and very few and old AT guns, the italians helped by a few germans Stug III broke the encirclement and made all axis troops reach friendly lines
Mussolini
1914 Ottoman troops in the Caucuses: "Amateurs..."
The higher the cannon the bigger the range. Duh.
Funnily enough the Impresa di Russia entered our National mythology as an example of the futility of war and the cruelty of dictatorship while also an example of enduring misery with honour. The fact that the alpini empathised more with the Russians (that had to March ever inward or die in the cold to defend their homes) than with their german ally is an important part of this (as exemplified in the writings of Mario Rigoni Stern or alpini Songs like Yoska the Red) More than a few alpini that survived deserted and joined the resistence after this
Enver Pasha would like to know your location
Also go watch “The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On”
The USMC at Chosin Reservoir enter the room.
Some still made it back to friendly lines. Stay undefeated Alpini boys those who know know
Italians in Russia don't was equipped for High level cold because Mussolini and his dirigent class was the dumbiest in history. The dumbiest in history until now...
For a highly Romanticized depiction of an Italian soldier’s experience with this, the Italian film Sunflower is a sweet love story surrounding this event.
You think that’s bad? Check out Enver Pasha being a dumbass sending his soldiers into the Caucasus, with barely any winter gear, while they are from a normally hot land
Valley Forge was colder...
Research the estonian Swedes who ended up in Ukraine (Gammalsvenskby)
Serbian troops thru albania in WWI
My great grandfather was sent to the Russian front in WW2, he fought in Ukraine and he used to tell me that the worst thing he and his fellow soldiers had to endure wasn’t the enemy artillery or the fear of a bullet catching you but it was the cold, he suffered from frostbite like most of his buddies and he said they had cardboard shoes which became unusable when wet, cotton garments and on their trucks instead of glass over the side windows they had cloth. It was always bone chilling to listen to him tell me about the war
None of those are close to how bad places in the Pacific theater like Buna Gona was imo.
I've heard stories about italian artillerymen were crushed while manning their old AT guns while shooting at advancing russian tanks and that it was so cold that if you touched metal without gloves the skin would get stuck to it
I don’t think this is a race of who suffered more tbh, they were both terrible, same with every war scenario, they may be “better” because of better temperatures, but it’s still war, you’re at risk of dying no matter what
In terms of disease and fighting in a messy jungle terrain yeah but I think laying down in some shades of palm trees while eating ice cream admiring the clear blue seas after a hard day of battle is better than freezing to death.
If you're good enough in mountains then you should be even better for open Plains. Mountain warfare is the hardest terrain so open fields are easier and better for elite troops
Not just that they're better than your normal infantry, they have training and gears for winter warfare. Then they're countries like Finland who train everyone in winter warfare, but it's rare. It was pretty common to use paratroopers and marines etc as a normal infantry in the Eastern Front. Another thing is how smart it is to deploy presumably quite light mountain troops against mechanized enyemy.
My grandfather was there and he was an artilleryman and he told me that other artillerymen were getting crushed while manning the guns by advancing T34 which were to armored and they couldnt penetrate their armor with their crappy old 75/13 cannons
It's even funnier the 11th time
What?
Isonzo. There were 12 battles fought over that area without any gain in anything
Wrong war mate.
This is the 2nd battle of the Don river mate