Rommel's Italian Generals In North Africa 1941-1943

Book excerpt: Rommel's Italian Generals in North Africa, 1941-1943Rommel's Italian Generals in North Africa, written by Dr. Libro Di Zinno and Rudy D'Angelo, is a must-have for anyone who takes an interest in the role of the Italian military in the Second World War. My own interest in the Italian Royal Army, or Regio Esercito Italiano, began a few decades ago, when I noticed a certain lack of information, regarding its role in the North African Campaign. I thought, 'More than half of the combat formations in North Africa were Italian - how could they only merit a few footnotes, or sentences in passing, in any book that covers 3 years of fighting?' For a long time, it was necessary to turn to foreign-language literature, in order to find a more substantial discussion about the Italian Armed Forces in World War 2. Providentially, authors such as Jack Greene and Alessandro Massignani, and Ian Walker (among others), whose works cover the war in the Mediterranean and North Africa, came to the scene with detailed, English-language studies of those struggles. Now come Dr. Libro Di Zinno and Rudy D'Angelo, with their book, Rommel's Italian Generals in North Africa. Where Greene, Massignani, and Walker have provided much of the what and where, concerning the Regio Esercito in North Africa, Di Zinno and D'Angelo provide the who. Both of these men, trained and experienced observers - Di Zinno as a physician and D'Angelo as a detective - applied their knowledge in unraveling a persistent enigma of the North African campaign, namely, the identities of the senior Italian field commanders, who led Italian formations back and forth across the desert, in the swaying fortunes of that war. And the particular knot they untie is connected with photo identification. Over the decades, Rudy and Libro discovered that in various publications, the names of Italian generals had been mismatched with the photos of other officers. Moreover, they discovered that these errors were not infrequently repeated, as new generations of researchers, relying on works written generations ago, assumed the correctness of the images and information they came across. As someone who has done some measure of research about the Italian military in that period, I have a particular appreciation for this problem, especially where it concerns unit identification. With the patience of scientists, Dr. Di Zinno and Detective D'Angelo took up the colossal task of comparing and contrasting the hundreds and hundreds of images of Italian generals, which they, as historical military collectors, had accumulated. And well that they had the patience, as what had started as an academic journey, turned into a scientific quest of many years. The product of this undertaking is Rommel's Italian Generals in North Africa. In this work, we learn not only the correct photographic identities of the many Italian generals who fought in North Africa, but also of their careers and fates, many of whom met honorable ends in combat. Rommel's Italian Generals in North Africa is a book of enduring worth for anyone who wants to add to their military history library, be they collector, researcher, or enthusiast. This book will not disappoint and indeed casts much-needed light on a topic that deserves more attention. Patrick Cloutier Author of Mussolini's War in Spain 1936-1939. Italian Intervention in the Spanish Civil War.