The Great War In Italy

Vanda Wilcox’s edited volume Italy in the Era of the Great War analyses the political, military, social, economic and cultural history of war in Italy between 1911 and 1922.

The Italian Empire and the Great War brings an imperial and colonial perspective to the Italian experience of the First World War. Italy's decision for war in 1915 built directly on Italian imperial ambitions from the late nineteenth century onwards, and its conquest of Libya in 1911DS12. The Italian empire was conceived both as a system of overseas colonies under Italian sovereignty, and as an informal global empire of emigrants; both were mobilized to support the war in 1915DS18. The war was designed to bring about 'a greater Italy' both literally and metaphorically. In pursuit of global status, Italy fought a global war, sending troops to the Balkans, Russia, and the Middle East, though with limited results. Italy's newest colony, Libya, was also a theatre of the war effort, as the anti-colonial resistance there linked up with the Ottoman Empire, Germany, and Austria to undermine Italian rule. Italian race theories underpinned this expansionism: the book examines how Italian constructions of whiteness and racial superiority informed a colonial approach to military occupation in Europe as well as the conduct of its campaigns in Africa. After the war, Italy's failures at the Peace Conference meant that the 'mutilated victory' was an imperial as well as a national sentiment. Events in Paris are analysed alongside the military occupations in the Balkans and Asia Minor as well as efforts to resolve the conflicts in Libya, to assess the rhetoric and reality of Italian imperialism.

In May 1915, Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire, hoping to seize its 'lost' territories of Trieste and Tyrol. The result was one of the most hopeless and senseless modern wars - and one that inspired great cruelty and destruction. Nearly three-quarters of a million Italians - and half as many Austro-Hungarian troops - were killed. Most of the deaths occurred on the bare grey hills north of Trieste, and in the snows of the Dolomite Alps. Outsiders who witnessed these battles were awestruck by the difficulty of attacking on such terrain. General Luigi Cadorna, most ruthless of all the Great War commanders, restored the Roman practice of 'decimation', executing random members of units that retreated or rebelled. Italy sank into chaos and, eventually, fascism. Its liberal traditions did not recover for a quarter of a century - some would say they have never recovered. Mark Thompson relates this nearly incredible saga with great skill and pathos. Much more than a history of terrible violence, the book tells the whole story of the war: the nationalist frenzy that led up to it, the decisions that shaped it, the poetry it inspired, its haunting landscapes and political intrigues; the personalities of its statesmen and generals; and also the experience of ordinary soldiers - among them some of modern Italy's greatest writers. A work of epic scale, The White War does full justice to one of the most remarkable untold stories of the First World War.

A study of how the Italian army managed morale and troops responded to its policies during the First World War.

Drawing on both wartime discourse about women and the voices of individual women living at the Italian Front, Allison Belzer analyzes how women participated in the Great War and how it affected them. The Great War transformed women into purveyors and recipients of a new feminine ideal that emphasized their status as national citizens. Although Italian women did not gain the vote, they did encounter a less empowering form of female citizenship just after the war ended with Mussolini's Fascism. Because of the Great War, many women seized the opportunity to participate in a society that continued to recognize them as guardians of the nation.

A major new account of the role and performance of the Italian army in the First World War. Setting military events in a broad context, Gooch explores pre-war Italian military culture, and reveals how an army with a reputation for failure fought a challenging war in appalling conditions - and won.

This is an important reassessment of British and Italian grand strategies during the First World War. Stefano Marcuzzi sheds new light on a hitherto overlooked but central aspect of Britain and Italy's war experiences: the uneasy and only partial overlap between Britain's strategy for imperial defence and Italy's ambition for imperial expansion. Taking Anglo-Italian bilateral relations as a special lens through which to understand the workings of the Entente in World War I, he reveals how the ups-and-downs of that relationship influenced and shaped Allied grand strategy. Marcuzzi considers three main issues - war aims, war strategy and peace-making - and examines how, under the pressure of divergent interests and wartime events, the Anglo-Italian 'traditional friendship' turned increasingly into competition by the end of the war, casting a shadow on Anglo-Italian relations both at the Peace Conference and in the interwar period.