I've been doing a fair bit of reading on armoured units and warfare during the Second World War, and one thing I can't fathom is why Italian armour is so poor, they were allied with the Germans who, even during the early years of war were fielding tank such as the Panzer III and early Mk IV's as well as the fabled StuG's, yet the armour used by the Italians is perhaps more comparable to that of the Japanese, being that they used poorly armoured and armed tanks.
Even when the Allies had begun to standardise the 75mm on the Lee/Grant and Shermans, the Italians primarily used the 47mm which was, by 1942, rather insufficient against newer armour. Even the Carro Armato P40 which used a 75mm gun was only produced in very minute quantities and was still using riveted armour as opposed to being cast or welded.
So how did the Italians remain so far behind in the quality of their armoured units when the rest of Europe was making huge steps forward?
The main reasons that Italy's armor development lagged was the combination of inadequate industry, a fascist state that inhibited efforts to reform these inadequacies, and an army doctrine that channeled tank design into mediocrity. There were two main industrial firms that produced tanks for the Italian army, Fiat and Ansaldo. Both of these firms developed a close relationship with the fascist government which typified the Fascist approach to industry and labor called corporatism. In theory, corporatism was supposed to produce a synergy between the state, industry, and labor that would reduce social tension. In practice, corporatism fostered chronic inefficiencies in the Italian economy. Large fascist trade unions did not produce better living conditions for their members but created a bloated labor executive. The state was disinclined to interfere with the internal running of industry while firms like Fiat used Mussolini's calls for autarky to eliminate rivals. What this meant for tank production was there was very little incentive for industry to innovate in the interwar period as the state provided a degree of guaranteed revenue. Wartime efforts to reform industry also met with resistance because these two firms had become the only real alternative for Italy's armor. The reliance on bolted armor is a case in point of how this chronic industrial inefficiency contributed to poor tanks. Italian industry was incapable of engaging in welding on a large scale, so it relied on rivets. The inability of industry to produce adequate engines further limited the weight of armor, so Italian tanks had the worst of both worlds, they were underpowered and too light. When Italian tanks proved wanting in North Africa, there was little industry could do to remedy these problems. The poor R&D of Italian industry prevented any native solution to this problem. There were several abortive attempts to obtain license production of German tanks, starting with the Panzer III, then IV, and Panther, but Fiat and Ansaldo felt threatened by handing over control over to the Germans, so the Italians went their own way. Italy's status as a junior partner in the Axis meant that it could not benefit from captured French equipment either. So Italian production continued to produce inadequate medium and light tanks with only minor improvements.
Although both industry and fascism bear a good deal of blame for Italy's armor woes, the Italian army also shoulders some of the responsibility. Compared to other major armies, there was little thought given to armor development within Italy. One of the few tank advocates, Ottavio Zoppi, who argued for celeri concept of a light motorized force that would employ speed for dynamic flanking maneuvers. As the celeri concept took hold in Italian military circles, it meant that the army prioritized lighter tanks and saw them as an adjunct for offensive operations. The ease which Italian industry could produce these lighter tanks made it much harder for the army to abandon the celeri concept once Spanish experience had shown its inadequacies. The celeri doctrine also ensured that the Italians had great deal of trouble transitioning towards heavier formations as industry was used to producing lighter tanks.
Finally, it should be added that the problems facing Italy (industrial bottlenecks, governmental interference, poor doctrine) were not unique in Europe. The Germans discovered in 1940 and 41 that the Panzer III's initial armor and armament were patently inadequate for modern warfare and impressed the Panzer IV and StuG into a antitank role they not designed for. Even though American industry was far larger and suffered none of the shortages of raw materials that plagued Fiat and Ansaldo, they still used riveting in early tank designs like the Lee/Grant and casemated their larger gun because of their inexperience with constructing turrets. Armor development during the Second World War did not follow a trajectory of linear progress; there were many cases from both sides of technological dead ends and ad hoc modifications of existing equipment to meet the needs of the battlefield.
Sources
Cappellano, Filippo, and Pier Paolo Battistelli. Italian Medium Tanks: 1939-45. Oxford: Osprey, 2012.
Gooch, John. Mussolini and His Generals: The Armed Forces and Fascist Foreign Policy, 1922-1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Harrison, Mark. The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Sweet, John J. T. Iron Arm: The Mechanization of Mussolini's Army, 1920-1940. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2007.
I may be wrong, but I've always read that the German panzers in the beginning of the war weren't superior in quality to those of the allies: they were just used more efficiently.
Can any historian confirm or debunk this?