Italy in the Great War
23 May 1915 Italian Premier Antonio Salandra's Declaration for the Allies
I address myself to Italy and to the civilized world in order to show not by
violent words, but by exact facts and documents, how the fury of our enemies has
vainly attempted to diminish the high moral and political dignity of the cause
which our arms will make prevail. I shall speak with the calm of which the King
of Italy has given a noble example, when he called his land and sea forces to
arms. I shall speak with the respect due to my position and to the place in which
I speak. I can afford to ignore the insults written in Imperial, Royal, and Archducal
proclamations. Since I speak from the Capitol, and represent in this solemn hour
the people and the Government of Italy, I, a modest citizen, feel that I am far
nobler than the head of the house of the Hapsburgs.
The commonplace statesmen who, in rash frivolity of mind and mistaken in all
their calculations, set fire last July to the whole of Europe and even to their
own hearths and homes, have now noticed their fresh colossal mistake, and in the
Parliaments of Budapest and Berlin have poured forth brutal invective of Italy
and her Government with the obvious design of securing the forgiveness of their
fellow-citizens and intoxicating them with cruel visions of hatred and blood.
The German Chancellor said he was imbued not with hatred, but with anger, and
he spoke the truth because he reasoned badly, as is usually the case in fits of
rage. I could not, even if I chose, imitate their language. An atavistic throwback
to primitive barbarism is more difficult for us who have twenty centuries behind
us more than they have.
The fundamental thesis of the statesmen of Central Europe is to be found in
the words "treason and surprise on the part of Italy toward her faithful
allies." It would be easy to ask if he has any right to speak of alliance
and respect for treaties who, representing with infinitely less genius, but with
equal moral indifference, the tradition of Frederick the Great and Bismarck, proclaimed
that necessity know no law, and consented to his country trampling under foot
and burying at the bottom of the ocean all the documents and all the customs of
civilization and international law. But that would be too easy an argument. Let
us examine, on the contrary, positively and calmly, if our former allies are entitled
to say that they were betrayed and surprised by us....
The horrible crime of Sarajevo was exploited as a pretext a month after it
happened -- this was proved by the refusal of Austria to accept the very extensive
offers of Serbia -- nor at the moment o the general conflagration would Austria
have been satisfied with the unconditional acceptance of the ultimatum. Count
Berchtold on July 31st declared to the Duke of Avarna that, if there had been
a possibility of mediation being exercised, it could not have interrupted hostilities,
which had already begun with Serbia. This was the mediation for which Great Britain
and Italy were working. In any case, Count Berchtold was not disposed to accept
mediation tending to weaken the conditions indicated in the Austrian note, which,
naturally, would have been increased at the end of the war....
Where is, then, the treason, the iniquity, the surprise, if, after nine months
of vain efforts to reach an honorable understanding which recognized in equitable
measure our rights and our liberties, we resumed liberty of action? The truth
is that Austria and Germany believed until the last days that they had to deal
with an Italy weak, blustering, but not acting, capable of trying blackmail, but
not enforcing by arms her good right, with an Italy which could be paralyzed by
spending a few millions, and which by dealings which she could not avow was placing
herself between the country and the Government.
The effect was the contrary. An immense outburst of indignation was kindled
throughout Italy and not among the populace, but among the nobles of the country,
which is ready to shed its blood for the nation. This outburst of indignation
was kindled as the result of the suspicion that a foreign Ambassador was interfering
between the Italian Government, the Parliament, and the country. In the blaze
thus kindled internal discussions melted away, and the whole nation was joined
in a wonderful moral union, which will prove our greatest source of strength in
the severe struggle which faces us, and which must lead us by our own virtue,
and not by benevolent concessions from others, to the accomplishment of the highest
destinies of the country.
With these words on 23rd May 1915 Anthony Salandra, Prime Minister of the Italian
government, broke the delays and denouncing the accords of the Triplex Alliance,
pronounced himself in favor of intervention of our country in favor of the Allies,
going out of the neutrality that was declared since the burst of World War I,
happened in the July of the preceding year. However, behind the words pronounced
in public there were some negotiations anything else other than clear, already
concluded on April 25th. He held to the dark of these not only the population,
but also the Parliament. The motivations that had pushed the Italian executive
to launch itself in the adventure of the war can be reassumed in the desire, badly
hidden in truth, to arrive to the conclusion of that national unification that
was attended since the taking of Rome. The dream was the annexation of the Trentino,
of the Southern Tyrol, of the Istria except Fiume and of part of the Dalmatia.
A similar widening of the confinements would have been ly possible with the war
against Austria, previously allied in an impossible defensive coalition and now
hostile as always in all the wars of the Irredentism. These same territories were
included in the Treaty of London as right compensation for the expenses at gotten
victory. Analogous negotiations had been brought ahead also with the Triplex Alliance,
but with small fortune.
The speed with which was expedited to tightening the alliance with the western
states rather than with the central powers, it was due in maximum part to the
wrong hypothesis that, after the Anglo-French landing in the Dardanelli, occurred
in February 1915, the war was next to its conclusion without Italy could draw
some advantage of it. The illusion that the conflict would have been of brief
duration was largely diffused either at political level either between the military
hierarchies. Anthony Salandra was so sure that in dealing with the Allies the
terms of cooperation had not foreseen any type of war restocking. He arrived to
denyinthe evidence of the enormous massacres of men that they were already verified
on the French front, confusing a now evident war of position, fought through technologically
advanced weapons, with a war as those that have had seen us busy first Eritrea
and then in Libya. Secondarily, it was certain that victory would not have been
able to escape the allied powers. It is impossible ' to know with certainty what
reasons were at the base of this hypothesis, We can only conjecture that the Italian
government considered enough our army's intervention to break the equilibrium
that has been created in the preceding year. The impetuousness of the Salandra's
government would have brought us unprepared on all accounts to the first World
Conflict, now we will see in which manner.
War preparation in Italy
On the economic side, the period of neutrality, instead of benefiting the Italian
industry and the commerce, had weakened them subsequently. The serious financial
fluctuations caused by the war had forced the Exchange to close the leaves. Since
the burst of the hostilities the raw materials that were necessary to an industrialized
country, such we still remember Italy was not, came to miss, having tied in maximum
part to the importation, threatened by the contrasted blocks of the nations in
struggle. About 87% of the fuel used in our country was imported from the Great
Britain, but as we have remembered, this supply was not included in the pact of
collaboration with the Allies. The closing of the traditional commercial markets,
such as France and Germany, pushed numerous firms that could not be anymore sustained
through contributions type government to being down and out. Great industrial
strengths saw in the war the only acceptable result to allow the descending inside
demand f to climb again, safeguarding e national capitals at the same time. They
wanted all the productive advantages of the armed clash without taking in consideration
the negative sides.
Perhaps, the tightly military preparation was still more insufficient than
the economic one. Two principal defects would be outlined themselves during the
first months of war: first a whole strategic backwardness in the thought of the
Head Command commanders of the Italian army and, great lack, a shortage of suitable
provisioning. The general Cadorna, supreme commander of the strengths on the Austrian
front, belonged to that kind of military men born under the Garibaldian myth of
the assault with cold steel. In his administrative circular "Attacco frontale
e ammaestramento tattico" he upheld the theory according to which the better
defense would be the attack and, in most of cases, the frontal attack of infantry
after preparation of artillery. Napoleon in the battle of the Moscova had already
experimented how much self-defeating such formulation was when in front of you
there were some entrenched and well disciplined troops and the Austrians perfectly
answered to this stereotype. During the period of our neuality Austria had provided
to strengthening the whole border from the Trentino to the Venezia Giulia, because
it didn't rely on the word given from Italy to being extraneous to the war. So
the Italian Army was not going against unprepared men, but it would have faced
motivated infantrymen, often already tried by the fire on the Russian front.
lterior factor of breakup with past military was the introduction of a revolutionary
light weapon: the belt-fed machine gun. Tested with success by English during
the Boer war at the beginning of century, it was well soon adopted by all the
other powers. With a least employment of personnel, this tool of death could guarantee
the coverage of a breadth line of ground, against whatever assault of infantry.
The Italian commanders seemed to ignore this simple truth. Not only our soldiers
were sent to die against the Austrian repetition weapons, but a lot of month has
gone before our trenches saw sprouting enough machine-gun to sufficiency to countering
the attacks of the ay of the Hapsburg. The sole true strength that will be revealed
such up to the moment of the victory it was that of the poor Italian infantryman.
The army could count since immediately on a number of men that it potentially
fluctuated between a 1.000.000 and a 1.500.000 individuals, plus the reservists;
clearly a superior figure to this the Austrians could prepare on the same front.
Unfortunately for those people that had to venture that arduous test of resistance
that was the military service, numerical superiority became the greatest handicap
for the survival on duty. The commands, aware of the advantage situation, considered
the assault divisions nothing more than tools as all other weapons, only easily
replaceable. The term “gun meat” although was not coined in that time
it became sadly famous for the useless and repeated orderly assaults that were
ordered to earn few hundred meters of earth to the moderate price of thousand
of victims for time.
Attitude of the political Strengths and the population towards the declaration
of war.
Talking about entrance in war of Italy it is often affirmed that in the May
1915 the whole population wanted the intervention, moved by authentic fury against
the accusations of betrayal of which Germany and Austria accused us. Well, a similar
affirmation does not find any comparison in the historical reality of that month
and in none of the previous ones. The tensions that happened were not dictated
by the wish to fight, at least for that that it concerns the very popular demonstrations
(others were organized by not well identified agitators hired to the penny of
“strong powers”). The people, as Salandra himself recognizes in his
declaration, it was not so shaken as it was tried to let believe. The feeling
of unity that the President of the Council attributed to Italians it was still
too little rooted into individuals to be able to be the cause of a conflict. Contrarily,
as well it can be deduced by the relationship commissioned to the prefectures
in the April of 1915 and now preserved in the Central file the State, the population
was clearly contrary to the declaration of war.
he proletariat, either agricultural either worker, did not see any utility
in being recalled to the weapons to fight, as it was told in that time, “for
the masters”. The socialist nervousness of beginning century was decreasing
in number and in consistence, but only for contingency (It was always necessary
also to bring bread home!). In the war against Turkey, the government had already
used the mirage of a new earth where the opportunities of job would have been
manifold. Then Libya, fresh of conquest, had revealed itself a sterile earth and
not the heaven of the poor man. In the conquest of the unredeemed territories,
the well-to-do classes saw only new mouths to satisfy that would have arrived
to make competition on the market of the job. Not less contrary it was small and
average middle class, particularly that tied up to the commerce and the export,
which saw in the war only a suspension of its relationships with the foreign couries.
It now comes spontaneous to wonder which strengths were that provoked, with
their descent in plaza, the upheavals that were at the base of the decision of
the government. Among them, there was the “cultured middle class”, formed
by intellectual of center right or, in every case, moderated that craved the completion
of the unity of Italy through the liberation of Trento and Trieste. However, they
would not have been strong enough as group of pressure if the support of the big
industry had not arrived. That so offended nobility that Salandra paints in his
declaration, it may coincide with the exponents of the financial capital, ready
to forage the war venture in exchange for lavish remuneration back, that is the
orders for the construction of the war material. It does not have to surprise
a similar attitude, from the moment that it was also well diffused in other European
nations. The conviction that new markets could be conquered to the export of the
inside good with the bayonets did not have even disappearedfter the massacres
of World War I. Before passing over, we have to make a precise statement. Even
if the pressure and the solicitation of the industry it was enormous, the liberty
of action of the Italian Government and the Parliament was unchanged. The Parliament
itself voted in favor of declaration of war, despite three hundred deputies had
been agreed, under the guide of Giolitti, to declare themselves for the neutrality
openly. It was, in conclusion, a political decision, facilitated by the support
of the nobility and of the economic power, but in any case consciously taken.
Attitude of the soldiers and condition of the troop in the first months of
war.
Once entered in war, we had to fight. It was immediately clear that the obligatory
conscription would not have picked up great estimators between the assigned classes.
There were, surely, some voluntary enlistments above all between the well-to-do
young people, but they were resolved in little thing in comparison to what it
happened, for instance, in Germany or in Great Britain. Most part of the army
had to be looked for between those same categories, in primis the farmers, who
more had opposed to the war. In addition to this, the government politics of enlistment
favored the rising up of envies and discords. In fact, the workers had to remain
in the factories, at least so it had to happen in the first months of the war,
otherwise the production would have been irreparably invalidated. Instead, the
farmers had been recalled in mass, just to the beginning of summer, season of
the crops. The agrarian families that founded their own economy on the strength
of the arms of the young people were not be able to beadepartures of the soldiers.
Certainly, the miserable pay of the infantryman could not be enough; in fact,
it amounted to ninety cents a month. For irony, such figure was a miserable part
of the pay of a worker (7 monthly liras). Therefore, those people who worked in
the factories were named “dodger”, putting poor against poor. In the
same little honorable category, we can find the officers, which gain that position
because of their habit to attack in the rear of their platoon. What was a clear
sign of cowardliness to the eyes of the simple soldiers, responded instead to
a needed priority discovered after few weeks of struggle. The officers that had
driven the assault among the first lines had been accustomed to do so to unsheathed
sword and with the badges of the full uniform well in sight, transforming each
one in perfect targets for the Austrian machine-guns in every condition of visibility.
The Italian Head Officers, already tried by the casualties of the war of Libya
that we remember occurred in 1912, he to be protected putting them in rearward,
risking so the general hate.
Also for who was not ranked, there were some unexpected and bitter surprises.
The foolish conviction of a brief war had prevented the government to handle for
time the manufacture of winter uniforms, so that to the arrive of bad season the
soldiers on the front of the Trentino (a region of the Alps) were found themselves
without even the cape for take refuge from the rain and from the snow. The summary
training that was imparted to the men, immediately sent in trench often in the
imminence of an attack, resulted entirely useless. The most experienced only (those
people who survived to the baptism of the fire and they didn't overcome 40%) understood
that a field shovel could be a surest weapon of the bayonet that had the tendency
to get jammed between the ribs of the enemies, making unusable the rifle or that
it was absolutely to avoid the service of corvée for the ration considering
that the Austrians shot on attendants of kitchen, trying of starving the adversary.
Under this aspect, it was a simple work becse the daily meal of the Italian soldier
was limited to soup of cabbages or potatoes and bread (not always available).
The survival in trench had tied to the facility with which some simple makeups
were learned: a) don't smoke at night, b) not to urinate lowering the pants risking
the frostbite in the zones of mountain, c) to divide the food with the companion
even if you didn't know him (it was frequent that there was not even the time
to know the name of the neighbor before attacking, hence the high numbers of unknown
fallen). To the beginning the corpses were also recovered to risk of the life
of nurses who risked in the earth of anybody between the contrasted trenches,
in a second time the bodies were left there where they fell, also inside the same
communication trench. Rats and lice became the first companions of the infantryman.
Suitable sufferings afflicted not only our part of the barricade. I would like
to quote some footsteps from a book of the lieutenant of Austrian artillery Fritz
Weber, fighterf World War I:
"Where do you go?" I asked to an officer.
It lifts the shoulders: "I don't know anything".
Here is an aspirant from the pale face of a baby.
"What does it happen, therefore?" I ask him.
"English have passed the Piave, but they have been rejected", he answers.
"Everything well... if there was not this accursed rain... it's the whole
night that we march. Don't you have for case a piece of bread or something similar?
I have certain cramps to the stomach."
I run after the boy looking through me in the pockets. I know very well I have
not anything, but I want to persuade the aspirant of it. Although officer of artillery,
I am a mendicant as him, with thousand paper liras in the portfolio and the empty
belly. The youth smiles and makes a gesture of excuse.
"Are you not angry, aren't you?" He says. I hope that English has forgotten
some cans of meat! Everything well then!" And he begins marching in the mud.
Everything well! These words act on me as they were a message of the sky. I think
that the night, the tiredness and the loneliness accumulate in the mind scary
ghosts.
And here what is told in an other page of his book:
It is almost already evening when we land to Caorle. The village is miserable
as the whole plain that surrounds it. Few meaningless and dirty lanes, flanked
from painted houses to vivacious colors. Only the old church with its beautiful
Romanesque bell tower testifies of the magnificence and of the wealth, that once
the Republic of Venice succeeded in bringing here. In the country, besides the
soldiers, there are some dozens of women and old men. Of what they survive it
is not known. They must not fish and on the other hand the few fields of ricino
along the coast have been requisitioned and guarded by us. We have also taken
their wine, their only protection against the malaria. Some children run after
us asking charity, they throw them in front of our feet, they shout, they implore
with the strength of the desperation some coffee, a piece of bread! Instead, the
eyes of the adults launch us looks loaded of hate. This people know that we are
also as mendicants and that we cannot help them. But their impott hate is assembled
on the rifles that we bring on the shoulders and that represent our only strength.
To our advantage there was the italic art of "making shift" that
allowed us of using the helmets as dishes, the oilcloth that contained the bullets
of artillery as mantles and lining the insides of the boots with whatever piece
of paper came under hand for avoiding the chronic lack of wool stockings.
Home life of soldiers’ families
The unfortunate life to the front did not differ then very from that the civilians
conducted. The families of the recalled service men were the most suffering. The
lack of young people it involved great job for the one who had remained, not only
to continue to eat personally, but also to send some provisions to our fellow
countrymen who fought. In the country the call of something as 2.600.000 young
people in the arc of the war had removed vitality from the agricultural sector
in the moment of maximum application, once it came to miss the importation of
wheat from Russia, because of the block of the Dardanelli. It was provided for
the enormous demand of laborers with the female and juvenile work that had an
increase in the 200% order. Government politics of controlled prices didn’t
favor the traditional cultivation what the wheat and the rice that were progressively
abandoned in favor of other more profitable crops, upsetting the market of the
bread and of the kinds of first necessities. To the limit of the nger, it was
the existence of the family of the sharecroppers who departed for the war. Being
without land of ownership they were not able to take advantage of self consume
good that had to be acquired necessarily with cash payments. The only government
help was the institution of a benefit that was maintained for the whole war, but
to too low levels to serve as maintenance. In addition, the donation of the contribution
had been delegated to the local authorities that exploited it in many cases as
mean to consolidating old nepotistic relationships. Other negative element was
the assignment to the military authorities of the food provisioning. The requisitions
of livestock and wheat became well soon notorious because they were operated (especially
in the Venetian hinterland) without producing suitable food coverage of the population.
If in the countries it was possible, at the cost of serious sacrifices, to
survive, in the cities the conditions for the survival were: a fixed salary and
a good personal knowledge of the black market. For the first point it was preferred
to try of being assumed in the public administration that had a 33% dependent
increase in a two year-old turn, for the other aspect it had to entrust to the
fortune. Very more suffering than the workers were the classes of the middle class
and of the professionals. Although they had some saving that allowed of pass without
damages at least the first winter, they exhausted the deposits soon and without
land that gave incomes in nature, they were reduced to live of what was lavished
through the provision enrollment. This system, that would have been taken back
on wider measure during World War II, did not guarantee even narrow necessary
to live. The daily ration of bread was reduced up to the 200 g, but there are
testimonies of serious lacks in the metropolitan cities, where sultorily the distribution
was suspended. If recalled, the exponents of these classes had the possibility
to go between the officers, without however to maintain the same pay that they
could get as civil, reducing the family entrances accordingly. To increase the
difficulties, it came the awful news brought by the soldiers in license, only
medium to know the reality of the front.
Military discipline under Cadorna
During the visits to the families, It had been revealed one of the most threatening
events of the existence of the soldiers: the cruel discipline that was imparted
for forcing the squads to fight. The bloody reality of the war shocked hundreds
of thousand of young people causing an inexhaustible series of desertions. To
limit the phenomenon some extreme measures were adopted arriving to the point
to let fear more the own superior officers than the enemy. The most truce was
decimation. In the case of insubordination or of cowardliness of a unit someone
was chosen at random for being shot, a man every ten. The Cadorna himself was
concerned to the philosophy that a good command “it has to set the soldiers
in front of the choice between the probable death to the front and that inevitable
behind the front”.
istorians have discussed for a long time about the utility of the decimation
for the success of the war and it is undeniable that it served as deterrent against
the escape in mass, otherwise unavoidable. Hower, it was the application in practice
that produced aberrant distortions. The platoons were decimated even if they were
only suspected only of betrayal and, in certain cases, for the accusation to have
between their own line a thief. Close to the decimation that was a solution legally
recognized and officially approved with circular of the Supreme Command, there
was the summary execution that was executed by the noncommissioned officers of
squad or company. The refusal to go out of the trenches was considered enough
guilt to receive a bullet on the place, without need of any martial court. Some
so arbitrary methods originated deep hate between the troop and the officers that
it was resolved in different episodes of open insubordination (then punished with
the decimation) or of summary justice (some officers were murdered by their subordinates).
The Italian gendarme ("Carabinieri") had bad fame among the soldiers
because they had to recover the deserters and therefore they were hated as the
officers. If we wa to look for a positive side in the applied discipline it was
that it created a strong spirit of community among the soldiers, letting disappear
that initial distrust of class that had divided the farmers from the workers and
both from the bourgeoises.
1917 and the defeat of Caporetto.
For two long years the positions on the Italian front remained nearly unchanged.
None of the two parts had strengths to break down the hostile lines and the fights
were resolved in fruitless attacks of infantry punctually rejected. In the few
cases in which we succeeded in conquering a trench or a tactically important hill
it was not rare to have to abandon it for a following counterattack. Nothing different
of what happened in France. The two armies were slowly worn out losing, according
to reliable respects, little more than 700.000 men altogether. Perhaps the war
would have been able to continue so if an event from the huge consequences had
not intervened: the revolution in Russia. The upheaval happened on the oriental
front allowed the states of Central Europe to free an imposing number of strengths
that were immediately available for a reemployment against the western nations.
The skirmishes of an imminent offensive were manifold: the more and more frequent
movements of the Austrians, prisoners' relatio on the move of restocking and weapons
and the interception of radio messages communicating to the tactical commands
the formalities of the attack.
As it always happens in every big defeat the merits and the demerits of the
factions in field added each other and unfortunately for Italy, the mediocrity
of the generals who lead it was fully shown in that occasion. A government investigation
done immediately after the cessation of the hostilities it identified as fist
responsible Cadorna himself and the general Capello, responsible of the line of
front on which the first hard hit stroke (near the city of Caporetto). He would
have had to maintain a defensive formation, instead it was worried, sole general
among so many, to safeguard the life of his own soldiers and he allowed the retreat.
It was transformed in practice in a rout, so much that after having abandoned
the positions around Udine, our army was forced to demote first on the Tagliamento
and therefore up to the Piave. The limited appointment of the German troops to
the side of the Austrians allowed us to reorganize the lines on the river and
to limit the advance.
wo imported consequences derived fm the defeat of Caporetto. In first place
the definitive taking of conscience that the motivations of territorial widening
that had pushed to the war was seriously threaten, straight the same Milan would
have been able to fall in hostile hand! Then it was found that Cadorna could not
remain to the place of command. He was fortunately replaced with Armando Diaz,
a soldier from the amplest views that analyzed the motives for the low moral of
the soldiers, looking for an urgent remedy. For the political level it was a true
revolution. Boselli, who has taken the place of Salandra after the 1916 stalemates,
had to discharge in favor of Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. The moment was serious.
Approximately 300.000 had been imprisoned and half of the divisions had been destroyed.
A sole positive aspect could be noticed in all this and it consisted of the shortening
of the front of well 250 kms. This involved a great density of soldiers for km
of front and it allowed making up for the reduced available number. To return
tfill regiments the government was forced to also recall the class of the seventeen
year-old that was launched in the fray as last hope. Also our allies’ life
was not simple. In France, some division threatened with marching on Paris and
the open disobedience was the only answer in front to foolish orders that did
not keep track of the tall number of victims that they provoked. A victory of
the Triplex Alliance was outlined to the horizon.
The overturn of the situation and the 1918 victory
Which were the changes that allowed Italy to arrive to the victory in 1918?
There was a complete change of the soldier's treatment that can be synthesized
in an only word: respect. It was, in fact, the infantryman's consideration not
more as simple fight automaton, but as resource to safeguard that it let increase,
although of few, the moral of the troop. It didn't certain arrive to a sense of
pure homeland love that was extraneous to the Italian soldiers but the adoption
of a defensive tactic in the first months of 1918 limited the daily losses to
little more than 600 against the 2000 of the precedent semester. A larger survival
did possible the formation of a nucleus of veterans that sustained with their
own experience the new arrivals (still less trained that in the precedents years).
The intervention of the United States, further to a military contingent. brought
new and essential supplies of provisions and war material. The serious military
crisis served to let unite all the political strengths in a natnal front that
gave a new center formulation to the state. Also, the socialists gave their support,
even if contrary to the war for principle. The concentration of the power in the
hands of the government finally gave rush to the national production that was
coordinated toward a solo purpose: the victory. With such formulation, it was
possible to replace the whole-lost material during the retreat toward the Piave.
The ameliorations effected towards the soldiers did not let suspend the fierce
repression that had characterized the period of Cadorna, rather it became even
more pressing and violent, with the increase of shootings and incarcerations.
Nevertheless, It did not have anymore those characters of partiality that terrorized
the men. The summary trials clearly decreased and the sentences to death were
always motivated.
Entirely different it was the formulation that was generally effected toward
the political minor parties and the common people. The socialists that had also
sustained the government were attacked with judicial persecutions that brought
to the incarceration of many exponents of relief. The fear to see to repeat in
Italy what was happened in Russia had increased with the veil threats of the workers,
whom conducted with little prudence by leader of low profile, did not hide their
malcontent. It was so that the notification and the betrayal took to rage to all
the levels of the social staircase. In name of the unity of the Country in front
of the enemy, it was easy being sentenced guilty also for not fraudulent or unpremeditated
behaviors, provided that the elements of facts integrated the case in pint of
the norm. A real absolute responsibility in penal law! The censorship, already
active toward the soldiers, was also extended to the civil population that remained
to the dark, for official streets, of which serus risk there was on the Piave.
Activity of more hidden propaganda was brought ahead among the farmers, the
most quarrelsome class of the army, so that it was recognized in the war a noble
cause for which to fight. It referred there to the principles of the Catholic
Church, painting the Austrians as "without God", because they allowed
populations to profess their own religion freely (Note: the Moslem Bosnian population.).
An agrarian reform that favored the sharecroppers and the small laborers not owners
was promised, also knowing that it would not ever be applied. Finally, It was
bought the consent with pensions of war invalidity for the widows of the soldiers.
It is difficult ' to know how many of these initiatives had only partially success.
A sure datum is that Italians, soldiers and civilians, were really united to look
for the victory and it had been achieved. The referenced political men that risked
speaking in public meeting, they were systematically whistled, but nevertheless
the feeling of union, which Salandra preached in his declaration, was finally
reached. The last offensive of the Triplex had been conducted in June 1918 and
it never passed the trenches of the Piave. Since that moment Italy would have
taken back in hand the initiative, producing a series of consecutive offensives
that would have, as final result, the definitive surrender of the Hapsburgic Empire.
Our enemy had suffered in the same way the years of the war with, in addition
the difficulties to be a multiethnic and multinational state. This produced tensions
and attritions in the adversaries of Italy in the same measure of our victories
on the field. It was not a chance that after the deat, Austria-Hungary was shattered
in a multiplicity of states. We have had a legendary victory on a state that was
already dying well before ours two armies were clashing!
Consequent social changes to the war.
In figures the war had cost 571.000 dead and a million wounded among which
450.000 great invalid. The public debt had increased from 15 billion liras in1915
to 69 in 1918. The inflation had grown in the order of ten or twelve times in
comparison to the period before war. However, the figures cannot represent everything.
Italy reached those that were thought, to blame or to reason, its natural borders,
finishing the phase of unification initiated in the distant 1859. However, its
cost in social terms was enormous. 5.600.000 soldiers had to have brought back
to a civil life that was not able of reabsorb them in the full occupation. Their
place in factory had been taken by female workers that cost 30% less than the
men and the war industry had had a development that could not be sustained in
time of peace so much that the dismissals were not let attend. The promises of
territorial expansions had reduced and they were limited to already densely populated
zones that were not able in any way to receive other immigrant population. The
farmers did not have the promised lands and, in some cases, they did not find
the occupation they had before the war. These facts pushed them toward the large
cities, ending in the proletariat that was already exhausted by the war. The women
that had tasted for the first time in Italy the sher of the economic independence
didn't use for time the contractual weight that they had assumed and they were
progressively rejected to a marginal zone of the world of the work. The socialists
that so much had influenced on the fate of the war had been stricken harshly and
weakened either in the moderate wing either in that extremist one. Even if we
have had fought with the western powers together, we had not reached their level
of social progress and the effects would be noticed with the born of first totalitarian
parties. Italy became fertile land for them because nation of poverty and labor
union repression with forty million inhabitants and 18% of unemployed person.
The “radiant May” of 1915 would have given foundations to dark and deprived
of liberty twenty years.
Quotation from: “The bitter side of our victory” by Matteo Giambattista,
“Italy in the Great War” by Giovanna Procacci, “Stages of the defeat”
by Fritz Weber, “Penal legislation of war” by V. Manzini, “The
war and the Italian rural classes” by A. Serpieri).
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