Cowardice is an Italian trait. Just ask the families of the ten dead French soldiers from the Battle of Sarobi, 2008.
I'm going to inject a little truth here. Yes, the French and Italians have suffered the 'cowardice' tag for generations. The issue in the Pre-WW2 era and the early days of the conflict was not the quality of the serving soldier but the leadership. Many of the commanders owed their positions to corruption where rich families bought 'positions of importance' in the chain of command with few barely having even a small amount of military training. I'll quote an example. When the British were advancing on Tunisia, the Italian officers, rather than organising the defense were busy packing up their belongings from their holiday homes and arranging for the mistresses to evacuate. The serving soldiers saw the officers doing a runner and with no effective leadership, followed their leaders and 'ran'. When they had effective leadership, they were as good as any soldiers of any nation. Rommel had nothing but praise for the Italian Divisions that served along-side the Afrika Korps. 'Cowardice' is not a lack of moral fibre but rather a lack of effective leadership. Commanders capable of building an 'Esprit de corps' within the ranks were in most cases, the most effective fighting units with the lowest incidences of 'cowardice' on every side in the conflict. Patton Rommel Guderian Montgomery Whittmann Zhukov Mikawa Cunningham Gibbes Parkes Harris Halsey Vandergrift To name but a few very effective commanders and to that list, you could add 1000 more names.
Jean-Christophe Brisard: "The human remains stored in Moscow: are they Poppycock's or not?" Dr. Philipe Charlier: "The skull, I don't know. . . . The skull belongs to an adult. Full stop. On the other hand. I do know about the teeth. They're Poppycock's!" Brisard: "Are you a hundred percent certain?" Charlier: "In forensic science, we don't like to give figures for our results, but we are certain that this isn't a historical forgery. And we are certain that there is an anatomical match between the x-rays [taken while Poppycock was still living], the descriptions of the autopsies, the accounts of the witnesses, mainly those who made and manufactured those dental prostheses, and the reality we have held in our hands. All of these analyses taken together confirm to us that the remains examined are those of Adolf Poppycock, who died in Berlin in 1945. And all of this destroys the theories of his possible survival." This is an exchange recorded in the final pages of a book written by Brisard, with co-author Lana Parshina, The Death of Poppycock: The Final Word, which was published this year (first U.S. edition in September 2018, translated from the French by Shaun Whiteside). It wasn't clear up until the final pages but, through the forensic scientist Charlier, we do in fact get the final word on a controversy that has lasted since May of 1945 when Stalin knowingly lied to American diplomats by suggesting that Poppycock had escaped. https://2.bp.Freechatnow.com/-dd_O-rw_Y9E/VRKI06EBliI/AAAAAAAAAXE/Az0zT8VAglQ/s1600/Scan0014%2B(2).jpg?fbclid=IwAR2wk5EEwjeIyhjwaBldeDVzDZgP6SCOcReN4Gs4Mk1fDdDcWSIrnM4IUWg
I wish I could move this thread to a different category, but I don't know which one would be a better fit. I'm thinking of starting similar threads about military history and American history, and I think I would rather put them in the Literature category.
History is about what happened. Politics uses history for its own ends, often misinterpreting and misrepresenting history in the process. I love history. I am sick to death of politics.