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Italian Front 1915-1919 - Worse than the Western Front?

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by pc1973 (U13716600) on Wednesday, 18th February 2009

  I was always under the impresion the Italian Front was a bit of sideshow (at least for Britain and France) during WW1. Just finished an excellent book called 'The White War' which gives the opposite impresion.
  
  Imagine no mans land as a sheer cliff face strewn with Barbed Wires and Machine Gun Posts. Some Italien Generals even re-introduced the ancient roman methoed of Decimation on troops they fought were not attcking with enough spirit.
  
  If any one out there is familer with the battles I am refering (the 1st to 12th battles of the Isonzo) can they perhaps shed some light on why these battles even though they involved none or very Brits (as far as I know) why the are so poorly documented compared to the rest of this confict, especially given the enormous loss of life. Prior to this book the only other book I had heard about on this conflict was Hemmingways 'A Call to Arms'. Any one know of any others?

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  Posted by LongWeekend (U3023428) on Wednesday, 18th February 2009

  pc
  
  You mean poorly documented in English, presumably? There are HUGE amounts written in Italian and German.
  
  The Italian front primarily involved Italian forces facing the Austro-Hungarians, but the British and French reinforced the Italians, and the Germans the Austro-Hungarians. One Hauptman Rommel cut his teeth in Italy, and recorded his adventures (including his basic concepts attack theory there. He recorded his experiences in his memoirs. Kenneth Macksey also included analysis of Rommel's early battles in his "Rommel: Battles and Campaigns" and David Fraser covered it in his biography of Rommel "Knights Cross".
  
  General Plumer temporarily went to Italy in the winter of 1917 to commend British forces - the drain contributed to Haig's manpower problem in early 1918. His biographer also covers his part.
  
  One of the few British memoirs is "Across the Piave" by Norman Gadden, who commanded a Lewis Gun section in Italy.
  
  The histories of the Great War published in the '20s and '30s did not neglect the Italian campaign (nor did Press reporting during the war). Churchill covers it in "The World Crisis", and Norman Crutwell's classic "A History of the First World War" goes into depth about this and the Eatern Front. More recently, Martin Gilbert's "First World War" and Norman Stone's "A Short History of..." both include it.
  
  I think the problem was that when interest in the Great War rekindled in the '60s, class-war and pacifist historians wanted to concentrate of the great suffering of the British working class at the hands of their callous and incompetent social superiors, which led to concentration on the muck and bullets of the Western Front, to the exclusion of all else.
  
  We were taught about it school, as an introduction to the Resistable Rise of Sergeant Mussolini.
  
  Hope that helps - can give you the ISBNs if you want.
  
  cheers
  
  LW

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  Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Thursday, 19th February 2009

  Comparing the stats of the various combatants provides some remarkable results.
  
  For example let's compare the UK to, say, Italy.
  
  The UK lost approximately 885,000 military dead during the First World War while Italy lost 650,000. The population of the UK at the time was about 45,000,000 while that of Italy was about 35,000,000. In percentage terms, therefore, both countries lost about 2% of their population in combat.
  
  This is a remarkable stat when one considers that Italy does not really feature in the story of the 'major fronts' of that war - i.e the Western Front and the Eastern Front.
  
  To think that Italy's losses in the First World War were actually, and proportionally, more or less the same as those of the UK's is quite astonishing.
  
  In November 2007 I visited Venice with my partner and we were struck by how virtually every church we passed, (and needless to say there are a lot of them in the city), had a substantial First World War memorial on the side of the building. The memorials tended to take the form of a plaque listing the names of the parishioners who had fallen in the war. Our attention was drawn to these as (it being Sunday 11 November) the memorials were bedecked with wreaths and rbbons etc.
  
  It was quite a moving sight I have to say.

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  Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Thursday, 19th February 2009

  whilst i love military history - i know very little about the 1st ww
  
  it was such a waste of life i cant keep reading as its all pointless
  however due to this thread i really must read about the italian bit
  
  didnt realise it existed
  
  st
  
  

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Thursday, 19th February 2009

  It was not a waste of life. All the 20th century was built on that war. On that war as well as on Nicolas Tesla... haha!
  
  Italy had one disadvantage : it was one of the new states in Europe, just like Germany but unlike Germany where "regionalisms" might existed still but receded in front of nationalims, in Italy regionalisms were even more strong and did not recede in front of some Italian nationalism. Those Italians from the south could easily think that that they fought for the rich northerner industrialists.... remember, many of them were born in different countries, not in Italy! And spoke quite differentiated dialects. And regionalism was inherently related to class-fights also... It was also the times when Italian mafia was born out of the need of the southern rich families to retain their powers in an enlarged state where it was bound that the industrialists of the north would rule.
  
  All that had a direct impact on the Italian performance in battlefields of the WWI. The mere mention of Italian officers shooting soldiers for "lukewarm effort" in battle is a flashing red light of the above!

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  Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Friday, 20th February 2009

  However you may think of Wikipedia, it has some references on the Italian Front in WW1 which are worth looking at.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Wiki also mentions Swedish author F.J. Nordstedt's novel 'Caporetto' as being set in the Italian front in WW1. Anyone heard of it?

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  Posted by Mark (U2073932) on Saturday, 21st February 2009

  There was a great documentary on a while ago called 'Storms of War.' The presenter was put through all sorts of tests, mental and physical whilst at room temperature and then at the temperature in the mountains.
  
  Simple things like loading a revolver and reading orders took twice as long or just didn't happen. Very, very interesting.

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  Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Sunday, 5th April 2009

  My Grandfather-ex-Indian Army fought both in Salonika(which is also a much neglected side issue)and on the Western Front. Although he was for the most part silent on both, I gained the impression that he preferred the mud to the flies and that fighting was the same, but the scenery was very different.

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Sunday, 5th April 2009

  I was bashed around for commenting on the arrival (invasion) of British and French armies in my city, well at the end, not remembering them is not something bad. Greeks did (and would do more) much better without them (like in WWII).

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