Italian Army Elite Units & Special Forces 1940–43 (Elite, 99)

Another great Osprey military book. The title is a bit misleading though, but that has more to do with what the Italian forces in ww2 would gave called their elite spec ops forces in ww2, which is not the same as we would title such forces today.Still, an informative book about ww2 Italian forces and their organization, uniforms, and equipment with some history about their use and deployments during that era.

I wanted information about units which there seems to be no information in English. This book did a great job. You would need to get the book on none army elite units to get all the basic facts. It also had interesting pictures.

When Italy entered WWII its Army wasn't keen on tactical or technical innovation. The necessities of combat forced Italy to develop specialized units with special equipment and training. Assault engineers, foreign troop units, alpini and paratroopers were all developed during the war but because Mussolini's generals were slow to see the need for such units and because the fortunes of war turned against Italy so quickly they saw little actual combat. Still, this book is an excellent introduction to how these units were organized and equipped. As always, this Osprey book is filled with some great info not available in one place, as well as orginal artwork and great photos.

Nice look at the special forces in the Italian army and some of their limited exploits.

Interesting reading, very detailed and informative. Great pictures and illustrations that help you understand the subject. Much more information that I expected to find in this book.

good source of reference information, a part of my collection on the Italian Army of WWII, it is part of some 8 books I now have on the topic

This book has been very helpful in my research on Airborne Operations during WWII.If you are interested in Italian elite units during WWII this is a another place to obtain some background information.

EXCELLENT REFERENCE BOOK, EASY TO READ,WITH GOOD ILLUSTRATIONS.

Loved this title as many of the pictures and information was new to me, i enjoyed this book get it if you like reference for north africa and italy.

Great to see Osprey making the Kindle leap rather than sticking with pdf, but this title does need some more work on the formatting.The colour plates are great, but the accompanying descriptions don't work on a Kindle Keyboard. You lose the bottom of the text, and there seems to be no way to get to it.Oddly, I can get to the text if I use the Kindle app on my phone, but rather thann the usual page turn, you get an arrow at the botom of the screen which you tap to go down a line or two at a time. Not seen that functiomnality in any other book.Other titles I've recently purchased don't have this problem, so maybe this was one of their earlier Kindle releases, before they'd quite cracked the formatting.All that said, loving the book. Would have given 5 without the format problem.

If like myself your iterest is all things to do with the Italian forces during WW2 then this book is a must have!.It has excellent photos of the units,many rare ones at that and good illustrations to back them up showing detail of insignia,equipment,weapons etc,as well as lots of info on the units background combat role and areas they served in during WW2.The books best side is to show also that the Italian forces during the WW2 were far from the propaganda image that most of us are familiar with,i.e.long lines of P.O.Ws etc,but brave men who often died and fought with Italys name on their lips!.

A well written and informative book with plenty of photographs and well illustrated. A worthy addition to my collection of Osprey Italian army books, quickly delivered and at a good price.

INERESTING GUIDE TO ITALIAN ARMY UNIFORMS-ACCURATE AND DESCRIPTIVE.RECOMMENDED TO ENTUSIASTS-NO PROBLEMS.29TROOPER