On the eve of the First World War there were two military alliances in Europe: the Entente (France, Great Britain, Russia) and the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy). However, as the Old World bogged down in bloodshed, this diplomatic balance shifted. The kingdom on the Apennine Peninsula refused to support Germany and Austria-Hungary when they started a war, first with Serbia, and then with the Entente. As a result of the demarche, Italy's entry into the First World War was postponed. The country, not wanting to get involved in a fight between neighbors, declared its neutrality. But she still failed to stay away.
Italian goals and interests
The political leadership of Italy (including King Victor Emmanuel III) even before the First World War sought to implement several geopolitical plans. In the first place was the colonial expansion in North Africa. But the kingdom had other aspirations, which eventually became the reason for the country's entry into the First World War. Its northern neighbor was Austria-Hungary. The monarchy of the Habsburg dynasty controlled not only the middle reaches of the Danube and the Balkans, but also the territories claimed byin Rome: Venice, Dalmatia, Istria. In the second half of the 19th century, Italy, in alliance with Prussia, took some disputed lands from Austria. Among them was Venice. However, it was not possible to resolve the conflict between Austria and Italy in its entirety.
The tripartite alliance, which included both countries, was a compromise solution. The Italians hoped that the Habsburgs would sooner or later return their northeastern lands to them. Especially in Rome they hoped for the influence of Germany. However, the "older sister" of Austria never settled the relationship between its two allies. Now that Italy has entered the First World War, it has turned its weapons against the former partners in the collapsed alliance.
Arrangements with the Entente
In 1914-1915, while the European trenches were only getting used to shedding blood on an unprecedented scale, the Italian leadership was torn between the two conflicting sides, oscillating between their own great power interests. Of course, neutrality was very conditional. Politicians only needed to choose a side, after which the militarist machine would start working by itself. Italy, like all other major European countries, had been preparing for a new widespread and incredible war for contemporaries for several decades.
Roman diplomacy was determined for several months. Finally, the old grievances against Austria and the desire to return the northeastern regions won. On April 26, 1915, Italy concluded the secret London Pact with the Entente. According to the treaty, the kingdom was todeclare war on Germany and Austria and join the alliance of France, Great Britain and Russia.
The Entente guaranteed Italy the accession of some territories. It was about Tyrol, Istria, Gorica and Gradiska and the important port of Trieste. These concessions were the price of entry into the conflict. Italy issued a corresponding declaration of war on May 23, 1915. Also, the Roman delegates agreed to discuss the status of Dalmatia and other Balkan provinces of interest to them after the end of the war. The development of events showed that even after a nominal victory, the Italians were unable to gain new territories in this region.
Mountain war
After Italy's entry into the First World War, a new Italian front appeared, which stretched along the Austrian-Italian border. Here lay the impenetrable ridges of the Alps. The war in the mountains required the participants in the conflict to develop tactics that were markedly different from those practiced on the Western or Eastern Front. To supply the troops, the opponents created a system of cable cars and funiculars. Artificial fortifications were built in the rocks, which the British and French who fought in flat Belgium did not even dream of.
Italy in the First World War created special units of combat climbers and assault squads. They captured the fortifications and destroyed the barbed wire. The mountainous conditions of the battle made the then familiar reconnaissance aircraft vulnerable. Austrian technology, which was effectively used on the Eastern Front, acted very badly in the Alps. But Italy in the FirstWorld War II began to use aerial photographic reconnaissance and special fighter modifications.
Positional fights
At the beginning of the campaign on the new front, the Isonzo Valley became a key point of conflict. The Italians, acting under the leadership of the commander-in-chief, General Luigi Cadorna, launched an offensive immediately after the official declaration of war on May 24, 1915. In order to contain the enemy, the Austrians had to urgently transfer to the west the regiments that fought in Galicia with the Russian army. One building was provided by Germany. The Austro-Hungarian units on the Italian front were placed in command of General Franz von Getzendorf.
In Rome, they hoped that the factor of surprise would help the troops to move as far as possible, deep into the territory of the Habsburg Empire. As a result, in the first month, the Italian army managed to capture a bridgehead on the Isonzo River. However, it soon became clear that the ill-fated valley would become the place of death for thousands and thousands of soldiers. In total for 1915-1918. almost 11 battles took place on the banks of the Isonzo.
Italy made several gross miscalculations in the First World War. Firstly, the technical equipment of her army was clearly lagging behind her opponents. The difference in artillery was especially noticeable. Secondly, in the early stages of the campaign, the lack of experience of the Italian army was felt compared to the same Austrians and Germans, who fought for the second year. Thirdly, many attacks were scattered, the tactical impotence of the headquarters was manifested.strategists.
Battle of Asiago
By the spring of 1916, the Italian command had already made five attempts to go beyond the Isonzo valley, but they all failed. Meanwhile, the Austrians were finally ripe for a serious counteroffensive. Preparations for the attack lasted several months. Rome knew about it, but Italy during the First World War always looked back at its allies, and in 1916 believed that the Austrians would not risk active operations in the Alps when they did not know peace because of the Eastern Front.
According to the idea of the military of the Habsburg Monarchy, a successful counteroffensive in a secondary direction was to lead to the encirclement of the enemy in the key Isonzo valley. For the operation, the Austrians concentrated 2,000 guns and 200 infantry battalions in the province of Trentino. The surprise offensive, known as the Battle of Asiago, began on May 15, 1916, and lasted two weeks. Prior to that, during the First World War, Italy had not yet encountered the use of chemical weapons, which had already gained notoriety on the Western Front. The poison gas attacks shocked the entire country.
At first, the Austrians were lucky - they advanced 20-30 kilometers. However, in the meantime, the Russian army began active operations. The famous Brusilovsky breakthrough in Galicia began. In a matter of days, the Austrians retreated so far that they had to re-transfer units from west to east.
Italy in the First World War was different in that it could not take advantage ofopportunities provided by the situation. So, during the battle of Asiago, the army of Luigi Cadorna launched a counteroffensive under the most successful circumstances, but she failed to return to her former defensive positions. After two weeks of fighting, the front in Trentino stopped about in the middle of the path that the Austrians had traveled. As a result, as in other theaters of operations, neither side of the conflict on the Italian front was able to achieve decisive success. The war became more and more positional and lengthy.
Battle of Caporetto
In the following months, the Italians continued their fruitless attempts to change the front line, while the Austro-Hungarians diligently defended themselves. Such were several more operations in the Isonzo Valley and the Battle of Monte Ortigara in June-July 1917. The already habitual order of things changed dramatically in the same autumn. In October, the Austrians (this time with heavy German support) launched a large-scale offensive into Italy. The battle that stretched until December (the battle of Caporetto) became one of the largest in the entire First World War.
The operation began with the fact that on October 24, numerous Italian positions were destroyed by powerful artillery shelling, including command posts, communication lines and trenches. Then the German and Austrian infantry went on a terrible offensive. The front was broken. The attackers captured the city of Caporetto.
The Italians rushed into a poorly organized retreat. Thousands left with the troopsrefugees. Unprecedented chaos reigned on the roads. Germany and Italy after World War I were equally affected by the crisis, but in the autumn of 1917 it was the Germans who could celebrate the long-awaited triumph. They and the Austrians advanced 70-100 kilometers. The attackers were stopped only on the Piave River, when the Italian command announced the most massive mobilization in the entire war. At the front there were not shot 18-year-old boys. By December, the conflict again became positional. The Italians lost about 70 thousand people. It was a terrible defeat, which could not but remain without consequences.
The Battle of Caporetto went down in military history as one of the few successful attempts by the Germans and Austrians to break through the positional front. They achieved this not least with the help of effective artillery preparation and strict secrecy in the movement of troops. According to various estimates, about 2.5 million people were drawn into the operation from both sides. After the defeat in Italy, the commander-in-chief was replaced (Luigi Cadorna was replaced by Armando Diaz), and the Entente decided to send auxiliary troops to the Apennines. In the mass consciousness of contemporaries and descendants, the Battle of Caporetto was remembered, among other things, thanks to the world-famous novel Farewell to Arms! Its author Ernest Hemingway fought on the Italian front.
Battle of the Piave
In the spring of 1918, the German army made its last attempt to break through the positional Western Front. The Germans demanded that the Austrians beginown offensive in Italy to pin down as many Entente troops there as possible.
On the one hand, the Habsburg Empire favored the fact that in March the Bolsheviks withdrew Russia from the war. The Eastern Front was no more. However, Austria-Hungary itself was already significantly exhausted by the long-term war, which was shown by the battle of Piave (June 15-23, 1918). The offensive bogged down a few days after the start of the operation. It was not only the decay of the Austrian army that affected, but also the insane courage of the Italians. The fighters who showed incredible endurance were called "Piave caimans".
The final defeat of Austria-Hungary
In autumn it was the Entente's turn to attack enemy positions. Here we should remember the causes of the First World War. Italy needed the northeastern regions of its country, which belonged to Austria. The Habsburg Empire by the end of 1918 had already begun to disintegrate. The multinational state could not stand the long-term war of attrition. Internal conflicts broke out inside Austria-Hungary: the Hungarians left the front, the Slavs demanded independence.
For Rome, the current situation was the best for achieving the goals for which Italy ended up in the First World War. A brief acquaintance with the figures of the last decisive battle of Vittorio Veneto is enough to understand that the Entente mobilized all the forces remaining in the region for the sake of victory. More than 50 Italian divisions were involved, as well as 6 divisions of the allied countries (Great Britain, France and the US that joined).
As a result, the Entente offensive is almostmet with resistance. The demoralized Austrian troops, disturbed by scattered news from their homeland, refused to fight division by division. In early November, the entire army capitulated. The armistice was signed on the 3rd, and on the 4th the hostilities ceased. A week later, Germany also admitted defeat. War is over. Now it's time for the diplomatic triumph of the victors.
Territorial changes
The negotiation process that began after the end of the First World War was as long as the bloodshed itself that engulfed the Old World. The fate of Germany and Austria was discussed separately. The Habsburg Empire collapsed even in spite of the onset of the long-awaited peace. Now the Entente countries were negotiating with the new republican government.
Austrian and allied diplomats met in the French city of Saint-Germain. The discussions took several months. Their result was the Treaty of Saint-Germain. According to him, after the First World War, Italy received Istria, South Tyrol and some regions of Dalmatia and Carinthia. However, the delegation of the victorious country wanted big concessions and tried in every possible way to increase the size of the territories seized from the Austrians. As a result of behind-the-scenes maneuvers, it was also possible to transfer some of the islands off the coast of Dalmatia.
Despite all diplomatic efforts, the results of the First World War for Italy did not satisfy the entire country. The authorities hoped that they would be able to start expansion in the Balkans and getat least part of the neighboring region. But after the collapse of the former Austrian Empire, Yugoslavia was formed there - the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was not going to cede an inch of its own territory.
Consequences of the war
As Italy's goals in World War I were never achieved, there was public dissatisfaction with the new world order established by the Saint-Germain Peace Treaty. It had far-reaching consequences. Disillusionment was aggravated by the huge casu alties and destruction inflicted on the country. According to estimates held by Italy after the First World War, she lost 2 million soldiers and officers, and the number of those killed was about 400 thousand people (about 10 thousand civilians of the northeastern provinces also died). There was a huge flow of refugees. Some of them managed to return to their former lives in their native places.
Although the country was on the same side as the winners, the consequences of the First World War for Italy were more negative than positive. Public dissatisfaction with the senseless bloodshed and the economic crisis that followed in the 1920s helped bring Benito Mussolini and the Fascist Party to power. A similar sequence of events awaited Germany. Two countries that wanted to revise the results of World War I ended up unleashing an even more monstrous World War II. In 1940, Italy did not abandon its allied obligations to the Germans, as it abandoned them in 1914
