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- General of the Italian Army Sebastiano Visconti Prasca, 1883
- General of the Italian Army Ubaldo Soddu, 1883
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Sebastiano Visconti Prasca (23 January 1883, Rome - 25 February 1961) was an Italian general. He led the initial offensive of the Greco - Italian War, but was relieved of his command after two weeks for incompetence and substituted with General Ubaldo Soddu.
Sebastiano Visconti Prasca was a member of the noble family of the House of Visconti. He took part in World War I, receiving two commemorative medals and a Merit Cross.
Starting from 1924, he served as military attache at Belgrade in Yugoslavia. In 1934 he commanded the Italian corps in Saar. Later he was military attaché at Paris and Berlin, and, in 1938, he became commander of the 2nd Cavalry Division Emanuele Filiberto Testa di Ferro.
In 1940 he was commander - in - chief of the lackluster Italian invasion of Greece. Visconti Prasca's personal propaganda in convincing Benito Mussolini that the initial forces under his command would prove sufficient, and that the Italian invasion would meet a feeble resistance, was one of the factors leading to the disaster. Visconti Prasca was replaced on 13 November, only two weeks after the beginning of the invasion, by Ubaldo Soddu.
In September 1943 he joined the Italian resistance movement. Captured by the Germans, he was sentenced to death, subsequently commuted to life imprisonment in Germany. Visconti Prasca escaped and fought with the Red Army in the final stages of World War II, participating in the battle of Berlin.
In 1946 he published a book of memories, Io ho aggredito la Grecia, in which he tried to justify his personal errors in the War of Greece.
Ubaldo Soddu (23 July 1883 - 25 July 1949) was an Italian military officer, who commanded the Italian Forces in the Greco - Italian War for a month.
Soddu was born in Salerno. During the period of 1939 - 1940, Soddu was under - secretary at the Ministry of War. In November 1940 he was sent to Albania to take over command of the Italian Forces from General Sebastiano Visconti Prasca, who had proven himself to be incompetent. Soddu himself was relieved of command and replaced by the Chief of the General staff Ugo Cavallero just four weeks later, as Soddu had turned out to be incompetent as well.