{"id":50520,"date":"2015-05-23T09:00:04","date_gmt":"2015-05-23T14:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=50520"},"modified":"2015-05-26T12:43:16","modified_gmt":"2015-05-26T17:43:16","slug":"italy-unredeemed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=50520","title":{"rendered":"Italy, Unredeemed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The enthusiasm was contagious in the Italian Chamber of Deputies. \u00a0As the 482 Deputies out of the Chamber’s 500 poured into their seats, the Deputies applauded were those who wore military uniforms. \u00a0Men hooted, waiving flags amid cries of\u00a0“Viva Italia!”<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0For the dozens of diplomatic attendees, ranging from representatives of the Entente to neutral American observers, the atmosphere was more carnival than political.<\/p>\n

A few minutes before the session began the Italian nationalist poet, Gabrielle D’Annunzio, appeared in the rear of the public tribune which was so crowded that it seemed impossible to squeeze in anybody else. \u00a0But the moment the people saw him they lifted him shoulder high and passed him over their heads to the first row.<\/p>\n

The entire chamber, and all those occupying the other tribunes, rose and applauded for five minutes, crying\u00a0“Viva D’Annunzio!”<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0Later thousands sent him their cards and in return received his autograph bearing the date of this eventful day. \u00a0Premier Antonio Salandra entered, followed by all the members of the Cabinet. \u00a0“Viva Salandra!”<\/em>\u00a0roared the Deputies, with the cheering lasting longer than anyone cared to count. \u00a0After the formalities of the opening of the Chamber, Premier Salandra, deeply moved by the demonstration, arose and said:<\/p>\n

“Gentlemen, I have the honor to present to you a bill to meet the eventual expenditures of a national war.”<\/p>\n

On May 23rd, 1915, Italy willingly chose to enter the horrors of the Great War.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"

The Triple Alliance – Italy was allied with the Central Powers before 1914, but felt very much the junior partner. The animosity was mutual – Austria was contemplating a surprise attack against Italy as late as 1911<\/p><\/div>\n

For most of the combatants in the Great War, their entry into the conflict was, in some way or another, strategic. \u00a0Austria had to punish a nation which had assassinated a royal heir. \u00a0Germany couldn’t afford to be trapped in a two-front war against Russia and France, and thus felt it had to strike first. \u00a0Even Britain, ostensibly fighting for Belgian independence, joined the battle to keep Germany from dominating continental geopolitics. \u00a0But for Italy, the Great War was far more ideological.<\/p>\n

Since the unification of the country, the\u00a0Risorgimento<\/em>, a small but persistent nationalist movement known as the\u00a0Italia irredenta\u00a0<\/em>(Unredeemed Italy) had attempted to expand the newly formed nation’s territories wherever Italians lived. \u00a0Territories like the neighboring\u00a0Austrian Littoral\u00a0and County of Tyrol held high percentages of native Italians, although not majorities, making for fertile expansionist ground. \u00a0Coupled with the Habsburg monarchy’s opposition to Italian unification, a war against the Dual Monarchy seemed inevitable.<\/p>\n

In the decades that followed, Italian expansion would occur overseas, not over the Austrian border. \u00a0Italian imperial conquests in Eritrea and Libya shifted Rome’s view to Africa, while France’s colonial grab in Tunisia moved the nation’s concerns to Paris. \u00a0By the late 1800’s France, not Austria-Hungry, appeared to be emerging as Italy’s most threatening neighbor.<\/p>\n

\"\"

One Shade of Grey: British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey convinced Italy to join the war on the side of the Entente, despite his pessimissic view on the war itself: “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time”<\/p><\/div>\n

Rome’s suspicion of Paris fostered a new alliance with Germany. \u00a0Despite Germany’s close cultural, political and military ties with Austria-Hungry, Italy’s entrance into the Triple Alliance appeared as a relative foreign policy win for both young nations. \u00a0Germany gained a potential southern front in the future event of another war with France. \u00a0Italy gained a protector against French imperial ambitions and a check against Austrian intrigues.<\/p>\n

It was an imperfect fit for an alliance – two autocratic imperial powers joined by a weak, and chaotic, democracy that harbored deep resentment against one of their supposed “allies.” \u00a0And it would not withstand the weight of the Great War.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"

Portrait of the Dictator as a Young Man – Benito Mussolini, serving in the Great War. One of Italy’s most prominent anti-war speakers, Mussolini changed his tune in the fall of 1914<\/p><\/div>\n

Thirty years of history could not save the Triple Alliance once the first shots in Europe were fired.<\/p>\n

While Italian politicians declared the alliance defensive in nature, allowing them to forgo declaring war against the Entente, the Italian populace voted with their feet as to who they supported in the conflict – thousands of Italians volunteered in the French army alone. \u00a0Beyond the carnage in the trenches in France, Rome had good reason to avoid embroiling itself in Europe’s war. \u00a0Strikes and violence between workers group and the government had defined Italy’s politics for decades, and the conflict had seemingly reached its zenith in the summer of 1914 with “Red Week” – a week-long strike across parts of the country. \u00a0Spurred on by the Socialist newspaper\u00a0Avanti!<\/em>\u00a0and its editor, a rabble rouser by the name of Benito Mussolini, Italy seemed more divided that it had been since unification.<\/p>\n

But if Italy’s Socialists were seen as dividing the nation, the war was also dividing the Socialists.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Gabriele D’Annunzio – Italy’s warrior poet. D’Annunzio was one of the foremost private citizens to push for Italy’s entrance into the war. He would later become one of the intellectual founders of Fascism and a Mussolini ally<\/p><\/div>\n

While the initial reaction to the conflict saw the predictable propaganda from Italy’s Socialists that the war was one for imperialism and capitalism, privately, the Italian Socialist Party wondered if the war would create the ideal ingredients for social revolution. \u00a0Certainly Italy couldn’t defend the survival of the\u00a0ancien r\u00e9gimes<\/em>\u00a0in Germany and Austria, but was Tsarist Russia any better? \u00a0Or Imperialist Britain? \u00a0Besides, the war appeared to be a political tonic to the ruling Liberal Party in Rome, who used the promise of entering the conflict as a unifying balm. \u00a0For Italy’s Socialists, politics, as well as prudence, dictated neutrality.<\/p>\n

Not all Socialists agreed. \u00a0With the promise of a quick war done by Christmas all but a distant memory, Italy’s entrance could be imagined as the spark to provide victory to the struggling Entente. \u00a0A victorious Italy could dictate terms to the Central Powers, placing the nation among the powers of Europe. \u00a0“Do you want to be spectators in this great drama?,” Mussolini raged to the Italian Socialist Party in the fall of 1914, “or do you want to be its fighters?”<\/p>\n

As 1914 became 1915, the mood among Italians of all political persuasions was clear – national honor, and ethnic unity, was on the line. \u00a0The promise of the\u00a0Risorgimento\u00a0<\/em>was yet unfulfilled. \u00a0Italy could only be “redeemed” through war.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"

Italy boasted they had “one million bayonets” as they declared war. In reality, the army was significantly under-supplied, having not even made up for equipment losses in the war to seize Libya in 1911<\/p><\/div>\n

In choosing to go to war, Italy also chose their price as an ally.<\/p>\n

Throughout the early months of 1915, the Italians engaged in negotiations with the Entente over the spoils of war. \u00a0In return for a declaration of war against the Central Powers, Italy would receive Austrian territory, chunks of what are now Yugoslavia, and be given a protectorate status over Albania. \u00a0In addition, Italy’s burgeoning empire would gain German African lands, Chinese cities and the Antalya Province in southern Turkey. \u00a0On paper, Italy would acquire a vast, far-flung empire. \u00a0In reality, Italy was joining the madness of the trenches for scraps in the eyes of the Entente.<\/p>\n

Frustrated on all fronts, and losing on some, the Entente was attempting to flog the sinking morale of the alliance’s governments by carving up the empires of their opponents. \u00a0Sir Edmund Grey, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, led this charge, drafting the London Treaty that brought Italy into the war, the\u00a0Sykes-Picot Agreement\u00a0that would slice up the Ottoman Empire, and the early alliances with Arab tribes with the vague promises of independence. \u00a0All of these treaties would become null and void by the end of the war, stoking resentment among the war’s victors, especially nationalist Italians who would eventually call their participation a “mutilated victory.”<\/p>\n

Considering the war would end with Austrian troops still on Italian soil and over 1.6 million Italian casualties, there would be hardly any victory to find among the mutilation.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"

A frozen Italian soldier – the nation would lose over 651,000 men, with another nearly 1 million wounded<\/p><\/div>\n

Such outcomes were unknown on May 23rd, 1915. \u00a0Drunk on nationalist zeal and military overconfidence, the Italians gladly marched off to war, having learned nothing from the combat experiences of their neighboring nations.<\/p>\n

Along the mountainous banks of the Isonzo River, the Italians would the same trench warfare the rest of the participants in Europe had discovered. \u00a0In twelve (12!) battles along the Isonzo, the Italians would suffer nearly half of all the casualties they would incur in the Great War, exhausting their army by 1916 and nearly breaking it completely the following year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The enthusiasm was contagious in the Italian Chamber of Deputies. \u00a0As the 482 Deputies out of the Chamber’s 500 poured into their seats, the Deputies applauded were those who wore military uniforms. \u00a0Men hooted, waiving flags amid cries of\u00a0“Viva Italia!”\u00a0\u00a0For the dozens of diplomatic attendees, ranging from representatives of the Entente to neutral American observers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,281],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-ringer","category-ww1-fact-and-myth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50520"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53589,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50520\/revisions\/53589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}