During World War II, the Italian army, like the nation's other armed forces, was under the direct command of Benito Mussolini, who had appointed himself minister for war. He was assisted by Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who exercised no direct command authority but functioned as a personal military adviser to Mussolini. Below this top level, command of the army and the other armed forces was poorly defined. More often than not, Mussolini intervened directly in command decisions that should have been made on the staff or even field level. Like Adolf Hitler, Mussolini fancied himself a military genius, but, in fact, like Hitler, he had no experience in higher command and was an inept, even disastrous, military chief.

At the outbreak of World War II, the Italian army consisted of about 1.6 million men. The peak number of troops ultimately deployed approached 4 million. Throughout Italy's participation in the war, Mussolini frustrated and angered Hitler by insisting that a disproportionate number of these men--about 1 million--be retained within Italy. On the other hand, Mussolini also insisted on contributing forces to the Soviet front, even though the German commanders did not particularly want them to participate in the Soviet campaign, because they considered the Italian troops inferior.

The army consisted of 73 divisions at the outbreak of the war. There were 43 marching infantry divisions, five alpine divisions, three light divisions, two motorized divisions (consisting of 3 motorized regiments), three armored divisions, and 14 self-transportable divisions (capable of moving troops and one artillery regiment by truck). By 1942, one air-transportable division and one parachute division were added, along with 12 coastal divisions for defense. There were also militia and Libyan divisions. In addition, a Fascist Militia (Blackshirts) consisted of 177 legions, of which 39 were attached to the army. The Italian national police, or Carabinieri, functioned as military police but also sometimes fought in combat. This force numbered about 156,000 men.

Besides defending Italy, the Italian army fought in the Balkans, France, North Africa, Italian East Africa, and, at the insistence of Mussolini, the Soviet Union. Leadership, equipment, training, and commitment to the mission were all uniformly poor throughout the army, and the Germans soon learned to look upon their ally as a military liability rather than an asset. After the Italian armistice with the Allies in September 1943, some army units actively opposed the German occupation. The commanders of the Anglo-American forces fighting in Italy, unimpressed with the quality of the Italian military, were not enthusiastic about allowing the Italians to participate in the Italian Campaign; however, a motorized group (the equivalent of single reinforced regiment) fought at the Battles of Monte Cassino, and the so-called Italian Corps of Liberation (with the strength of a conventional division) fought along the Adriatic. In August 1944, after significant numbers of Allied troops were transferred from Italy to the landings along the French Riviera, General Harold Alexander armed six Italian divisions and deployed four in combat. These men fought with a skill and passion not seen among Italian forces earlier in the war. . .

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