Military history of Italy during World War I

The Italian army repeatedly attacked and, despite winning a number of battles, suffered heavy losses and made little progress as the terrain favoured the defender.

At the end of World War I, Italy was recognized with a permanent seat in the League of Nations' executive council along with Britain, France and Japan.

A few days after the outbreak of the war, on 3 August 1914, the government, led by the conservative Antonio Salandra, declared that Italy would not commit its troops, maintaining that the Triple Alliance had only a defensive stance and Austria-Hungary had been the aggressor.

Thereafter Salandra and the minister of Foreign Affairs, Sidney Sonnino, began to probe which side would grant the best reward for Italy's entrance in the war or its neutrality.

According to the Pact, after victory Italy was to get Trentino and the South Tyrol up to the Brenner Pass, the entire Austrian Littoral (with Trieste), Gorizia and Gradisca (Eastern Friuli) and Istria (but without Fiume), parts of western Carniola (Idrija and Ilirska Bistrica) and north-western Dalmatia with Zara and most of the islands, but without Split.

Taking into account the natural terrain, the many yokes, peaks and ridges with the resulting differences in height, the effective length was several thousand kilometers.

The barren landscape and lack of sufficient arable land led to little development of these high elevations; settlement was largely limited to the lower-lying zones.

[12] FML Cletus Pichler, the chief of staff of the LVK Tirol, wrote:[13] A general attack on the most important penetration points, such as the Stilfser Joch, Etschtal, Valsugana, Rollepass [sic], [and] Kreuzbergpass, [...] could have led to significant enemy successes in view of the extremely weak defense forces in May.That the opportunity for a quick breakthrough was not used was partly due to the slow mobilization of the Italian army.

Due to the poorly developed transport network, the provision of troops and war material could only be completed in mid-June, i.e. a month later than estimated by the military leadership.

[17] At the opening of the campaign, Austro-Hungarian troops occupied and fortified high ground of the Julian Alps and Karst Plateau, but the Italians initially outnumbered their opponents three-to-one.

At the beginning of the First Battle of the Isonzo on 23 June 1915, Italian forces outnumbered the Austrians three-to-one but failed to penetrate the strong Austro-Hungarian defensive lines in the highlands of northwestern Gorizia and Gradisca.

[17] Like most contemporaneous militaries, the Italian army primarily used horses for transport but struggled and sometimes failed to supply the troops sufficiently in the tough terrain.

In the northern section of the front, the Italians managed to overrun Mount Batognica over Kobarid (Caporetto), which would have an important strategic value in future battles.

Both sides suffered more casualties, but the Italians conquered important entrenchments, and the battle ended on 2 December for exhaustion of armaments, but occasional skirmishing persisted.

On 25 August, the Emperor Charles wrote to the Kaiser the following: "The experience we have acquired in the eleventh battle has led me to believe that we should fare far worse in the twelfth.

In order to protect their soldiers from enemy fire and the hostile alpine environment, both Austro-Hungarian and Italian military engineers constructed fighting tunnels which offered a degree of cover and allowed better logistics support.

Working at high altitudes in the hard carbonate rock of the Dolomites, often in exposed areas near mountain peaks and even in glacial ice, required extreme skill of both Austro-Hungarian and Italian miners.

In addition to building underground shelters and covered supply routes for their soldiers like the Italian Strada delle 52 Gallerie, both sides also attempted to break the stalemate of trench warfare by tunneling under no man's land and placing explosive charges beneath the enemy's positions.

Characteristic of nearly every other theater of the war, the Italians found themselves on the verge of victory but could not secure it because their supply lines could not keep up with the front-line troops and they were forced to withdraw.

However, the Italians despite suffering heavy casualties had almost exhausted and defeated the Austro-Hungarian army on the front, forcing them to call in German help for the much anticipated Caporetto Offensive.

The Austro-Hungarians received desperately needed reinforcements after the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo from German Army soldiers rushed in after the Russian offensive ordered by Kerensky of July 1917 failed.

Chlorine-arsenic agent and diphosgene gas shells were fired as part of a huge artillery barrage, followed by infantry using infiltration tactics, bypassing enemy strong points and attacking on the Italian rear.

The situation was re-established by forming a stop line on the Tagliamento and then on the Piave rivers, but at the price of 10,000 dead, 30,000 wounded, 265,000 prisoners, 300,000 stragglers, 50,000 deserters, over 3,000 artillery pieces, 3,000 machine guns and 1,700 mortars.

The Central Powers ended the year 1917 with a general offensive on the Piave, the Altopiano di Asiago, and the Monte Grappa, which failed and the Italian front reverted to attritional trench warfare.

The Central Powers proved finally unable to sustain further the war effort, while the multi-ethnic entities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were on the verge of rebellion.

The Second Battle of the Piave River began with a diversionary attack near the Tonale Pass named Lawine, which the Italians repulsed after two days of fighting.

The other prong, led by general Svetozar Boroević von Bojna initially experienced success until aircraft bombed their supply lines and Italian reinforcements arrived.

The following day the Istrian cities of Rovigno and Parenzo, the Dalmatian island of Lissa, and the cities of Zara and Fiume were occupied: the latter was not included in the territories originally promised secretly by the Allies to Italy in case of victory, but the Italians decided to intervene in reply to a local National Council, formed after the flight of the Hungarians, and which had announced the union to the Kingdom of Italy.

The rhetoric of mutilated victory was adopted by Mussolini and led to the rise of Italian fascism, becoming a key point in the propaganda of Fascist Italy.

Historians regard mutilated victory as a "political myth", used by fascists to fuel Italian imperialism and obscure the successes of liberal Italy in the aftermath of World War I.