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by Mike E. Bigelow, INSCOM Command Historian
JULY 1943
In July 1943, the Army’s Military Intelligence Service (MIS) published the second edition of its Italian order of battle. The purpose of the 311-page booklet was “to furnish intelligence officers with a detailed picture of the basic composition and disposition of the Italian Army.”
Although largely overshadowed by the German and Japanese armies, the Italian Army was an important target for the MIS until Italy’s surrender in September 1943. Information on Italian equipment and tactics found its way into many of the MIS’s intelligence products. The first edition of the Italian Army’s order of battle came out in September 1942. The July 1943 edition sought to provide comprehensive information in time to facilitate the planning of military operations in Sicily and Italy itself.
The first of the booklet’s two parts provided an orientation on the Italian Army’s structure. Although it described the army’s high command and overall structure, it was more concerned with the Italian field army. While noting the Italian organization was “remarkably fluid and elastic” and “tables of organization are rarely followed in practice,” it laid out the general composition of Italy’s army groups, armies, corps, and divisions. An important side note was the order of battle’s discussion of Italian para-military groups, such as the frontier guards and Carabinieri.
The second part was the order of battle proper with specific data on identified Italian units. About half of the entire booklet gave unit designations, composition, location, and commanders of Italy’s 2 army groups, 13 armies, 23 corps, and 105 divisions. For the divisions, the MIS also gave a brief operational history. Each division was laid out on a separate page with enough space for intelligence officers in the field to make their own OB notes. After this glossary of Italian units, the service included a series of reference tables that would help determine a division by identification of its components.
Finally, the order of battle included forty-two pages identifying almost a thousand Italian general officers. The alphabetical listing included generals from auxiliary organizations, such as the Carabinieri, as well as from the army itself. It included name, age, rank, seniority, and current appointment. Interestingly, the list included twenty-eight septuagenarians, two octogenarians, and one nonagenarian!
The MIS intended this order of battle to be used in the field. “All intelligence personnel concerned with the Italian Army,” it advised, “should become thoroughly familiar with the contents and arrangement of this book so that they can perform their duties more intelligently and can use the great mass of factual data given here as quickly and efficiently as possible.”
Although its order of battle intelligence came from “carefully sifted and evaluated information received from a great variety of sources,” the MIS readily recognized this type of information is constantly changing and sometimes fragmentary. Consequently, it urged anyone “to report promptly and in detail all facts or evidence appearing to deviate from…the data already contained here."
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| Date Taken: | 07.21.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 07.21.2023 15:20 |
| Story ID: | 449770 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 310 |
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