The Indispensable Navy: Italy as a Great Power, 1911–43

Abstract

Although it is uneven in quality and coverage, there is an extensive literature on the Italian navy, including an impressive list of publications by the navy’s historical office, and numerous scholarly and popular works by individual historians, from patriotic works on the First World War to critical accounts of the Second and studies dealing with everything from naval policy to strategy and tactics.¹ Italian writers have generally conceded that the Italian state needed a large navy, although they have differed in their assessments of how well their navy was constructed and managed. Yet if a large navy was a burden on the Italian budget and could not alone determine Italy’s destiny, it was nonetheless essential to the Italian state in an era of naval power.