Italian Navy Lacks Officers, Fuel And Practice

Northern Advocate, 22 May 1941, Page 8

Italian Navy Lacks Officers, Fuel And Practice

(By John T. Whitaker, in the “New York' Post.”) Beyond the Italian Frontier. —“What is the difference between Italy in this war and in the last?” the Roman asks you. Assured that you -have never heard the anecdote before, he says, “In 1914 we prepared, then we fought; finally we made the armistice. In 1940, we made the armistice, then we fought and now we must prepare.” There is more truth than humour in this. Italy was not prepared for this war, and never would have come in if Hitler had not persuaded Mussolini that Britain, like France, would capitulate. This is the first reason for Italy’s defeat. The second reason is that Fascism as a system made it impossible for the army, the navy, and the air corps to function as armed services. They became merely appendages of the Fascist Party, and political instruments. Same Ideologies. Knowing Russia as I know Italy, I marvel that the Communists get more like the Fascists and the Fascists more like the Communists each day. Their ideologies, like their systems, though different in theory, prove essentially the same in practice. It is my opinion that neither can build an efficient military machine. Nazi Germany has built the greatest military machine in history, but I do not think that an exception. I think that the totalitarian ideology is less important in Germany than the Prussian tradition of military conquest. Nazi ideology, is still being used for the corruption and political conquest of one country after another, but it has not mattered in Germany since the purge of June 30, 1934.

Nazism served the Germans for industrial mobilisation in peace time, but for seven years Hitler and his generals have worked together for military efficiency alone. The party has become only an instrument in that work, not an end in itself. I was in Berlin during the purge, and I saw the party storm troopers dissolved. Within a brief space they were in the uniform of the army and answerable to the generals. In Italy army units are always brigaded with the Blackshirt militia, an independent force with its own general staff. Until the eve of Italy’s entry into the war the militiamen even received twice the pay of the regular army troopers.

Political Boss,

A Blackshirt general is a political boss who can appeal to the party and cause the removal of any regular army general who has crossed him. If a Blackshirt general through incompetence breaks liaison, leaves a flank hanging in the air, or moves the whole command into ambush the regular army career general cannot relieve him of his command. Instead he must and does recommend him for the highest medals.

The Blackshirt general who took a column into ambush in Ethiopa through criminal negligence—and I know him personally—should either have been reduced to the ranks or shot. Instead he was given the highest award. The 'Blackshirt generals who were responsible for Guadalajara in Spain were all decorated and promoted. Every career general knows this or should. General Pirzi-Biroli, one of the ablest professional soldiers in Ethiopa, reprimanded Blackshirt officers for their incompetence. After the Ethiopian war, Pirzi-Biroli was retired, and has only been called back in the last two months because Mussolini needed a competent general at any price to retrieve the situation in Albania.

Impossible Situation

This is an impossible situation with which to confront any army. And yet under Fascism it cannot be changed. The militia are necessary because otherwise a united army, independent of politics and loyal to the King, would make Mussolini and his patronage machine dependent upon public opinion. With the army loyal to him and with no Fascist fighting force, the King could dismiss Mussolini and call for elections. Staying in power is more important to the Fascists than building an efficient army. Not only must Mussolini keep the Blackshirt militia, he must also see that the highest posts in the army, go to generals who are politically amenable. That explains why the work of the Italian general staff is criminally incompetent. The general staff on the eve of Italy's entx-y into the war was packed with officers who would not oppose Mussolini’s Axis policy on military considei’ations and who have no other qualifications for the task. Let me illustrate the results in inefficiency. Two steamships in Trieste were requisitioned by the general staff and ordered to proceed urgently to Naples, where they were to pick up troops for Libya. At Naples there were no troops ready for transport. The local military commander queried the war ministry, which replied that it had no recoi'd or knowledge of the two steamships. To my own knowledge those two ships lay in Naples harbour for six weeks while troops in Genoa waited vainly for transports. This illustration is typical rather than exceptional.

Navy Even More Tragic

What Fascism has done to the Italian Navy is even more tragic and the gallant corps of professional navy officers hang their heads today in shame. For years the navy has been run on political considerations and the personal whims of Mussolini rather than upon the recommendations of professional officers.

In order to bargain diplomatically, Mussolini constructed 122 submarines when officers cried for more money for submarine personnel. In the fleet review for Hitler which I watched several years ago, 90-odd submarines were on parade, but a submarine commander told me later that 18 of them were under the command of yeomen and that the admiralty had held its breath for fear that these petty officers with no training in navigation might wreck them all. An Italian admiral once said to me, “We can get a new battleship out of Mussolini but we can’t get the paint to keep the old ones in condition.” Never Fired Guns Thus half the gun crews of the Italian Navy have never fired the guns themselves. British target practice requires the relining of the gun tubes about once a year." Italian battleshios and cruisers have gone six years without the necessity -of relining the tubes while Italian naval officers have burned their hearts out in anticipation of the failure of their gun crews once actual battle was" joined.'

By way of recognising the gallantry and loyalty of these helpless officers,

Mussolini sent orders early 'in the war that commanders. must go down with lost ships—an unheard-of thing. A half dozen officers who can never be replaced consequently have blown their brains out on the bridges of Italian cruisers and destroyers after actions of gallantry which the British themselves recognised. Never Have Chance Naval officers' who gladly die for their counfry have never been given a chance. I talked in the second month of Ihe war with one who later died on the bridge of his destroyer after he had torpedoed a' British cruiser against which it was suicide to go. “In the first weeks we had a chance to smash the British Navy a crippling blow,” he said. “The navy itself wanted to move the submarine and destroyer force into the harbour of Alexandria. • We would have taken heavy losses, of course, but we could hjtve sunk Britislv capital ships and cruisers. We could have moved toward parity jn the sea since we would soon have been able to put six capital ships of our own out in the Mediterranean. Mussolini flatly refused. He was con. fident of quick victory. We wanted the fleet intact for bargaining with Hitler at the peace. The navy protested in vain. Now it is too late for that type of action. Now we are short of fuel oil. Now we have orders not to give fight to the British fleet because of the fuel shortage and the political repercussions of the British shelling of our coastlines if we should lose our capital ships.”

Four Battleships Less The tragedy of this statement lies in the fact that since then the British have sunk or crippled four of Italy’s six battleships. Taranto, one of the most impressive if least important naval defeats in history, is less a reflection on the Italian Navy than an indictment of Fascism.

The Italian ships were trapped. Short of fuel, they did not have steam up because of the direct orders of Mussolini. They were caught flat footed. “My God,” said a naval officer to me. “why won’t they at least let us go out and lose our ships fighting?”

In the more recent debacle in the lonian Sea, Italy paid the penalty for Mussolini’s refusal to build aircraft carriers.

Caught unawares off Cape Matapan, the Fascist navy saw three of its cruisers and three of its destroyers sunk and a battleship of the Littorio class crippled, by the British Mediterranean fleet, which itself suffered no losses and was formidably supported by the powerful aircraft carriers, Illustrious and Eagle.