Propaganda and censorship in Italy during the First World War

Public opinion was served by a pro-war nationalist press that avoided the unpleasant details of life on the front, while the army regarded discipline as more important than morale, leaving soldiers’ welfare to the Church.

The momentous Italian defeat at Caporetto saw an end to this laissez-faire approach and the beginnings of a more centralised and managed effort to motivate the public and the army to the national cause.

In the UK, France, Germany and Austria-Hungary, propaganda was mainly a centrally-managed effort by the government and the armed forces from the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914.

[5][6] In fact the majority of the Italian people did not support entering the war, but the government of Antonio Salandra made little attempt to involve parliament in the decision.

It was widely expected that the war would be short and produce substantial territorial gains for Italy, so there appeared to be little need for an organised propaganda effort.

It was generally believed that the conflict would be short, and the conservative leaders Antonio Salandra and Sidney Sonnino did not consider public opinion or support for the war to be essential.

This was a single private body, made up of 80 provincial secretaries and 4,500 commissioners, and it became the main organization used by the government for assistance and patriotic propaganda directed at the civilian population.

Both the Opere Federate and P Service collaborated with a wide range of partners, printed internal bulletins, and organised conferences to mobilise support for the war.

They published talking points for conversations with soldiers and while the Opere Federate put on propaganda plays for the popular theatre, the P Service staged them for the troops.

[10] Towards the end of 1915 Giovanni Papini wrote in Il Resto del Carlino that people limited themselves to looking at the official headlines and press releases and that soon, perhaps, they would not even read these anymore.

[10] As the historian Antonio Monti wrote in 1922, with the passage of time this meant that the press had served to deepen and widen the fatal division of the country into the two camps - the troops in the trenches on one hand and "imboscati" (draft-dodgers) on the other.

The High Command not only forbade them from revealing anything about what was happening at the front, but they also made sure the carabinieri stopped the soldiers from entering cafes or from walking with a girl on their arm.

These proclamations about the reasons for the war were entirely alien to the language and mentality of the soldiers, who regarded the requirement to stand and listen to them as a waste of time, which lowered their morale.

"[12] For the vast majority of soldiers, their willingness to fight was not secured through effective propaganda or strong patriotic motivations, but despite this the Italian army gave proof of its reliability, commitment and obedience throughout the three and a half years of war.

One of them, Don it:Giovanni Minozzi established a network of “Case del Soldato”, rest houses behind the front where infantrymen could relax, read, listen to music, attend theatrical performances, and obtain help writing letters home.

Minozzi sensed that morale and willingness to fight required more subtle methods than lectures imposed by officers, and had to be based on the creation of welcoming and reassuring environments for the soldiers.

Capello then decided to employ the interventionist artist Ardengo Soffici to support propaganda work by illustrating brochures and magazines aimed at the soldier.

Radice had aimed at modernizing the authoritarian methods used in schools, and in the same way he considered the soldiers as children to be taught, enjoying themselves as they learned the Italian language and national ideology.

[12] Defeat at the battle of Caporetto in October 1917 brought about a revolution in Italian wartime propaganda under a new prime minister, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and a new commander more sensitive to the morale of his men, Armando Diaz, who replaced Cadorna.

The country's citizens and industries had to be mobilized in the face of Austrian invasion and the government realized that a major propaganda effort was now needed both on the home front and on the battlefield.

To try to raise the morale of the country, the editor of Corriere della Sera, Luigi Albertini, published several long articles on how and why Italy should not withdraw from the war.

[10] The most ardent interventionists, led by the Comandini, formed the "fascia for national defense", in order to fight what they called the "parliamentary defeatism" of the new Orlando government.

[10] In the wake of this crisis, in November 1917 many of the most notable Italian intellectuals joined in the "Committee for National Self-Examination” in order to rewrite the whole history of Italy, from the Renaissance to the Great War, in the light of Caporetto.

This committee, joined by the philosophers Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile, embarked on a wholesale critical review of Italian history, highlighting how Caporetto was a moral defeat to which an educational and ideological explanation was required.

The goal was achieved, during the meetings held on 14 and 18 December 1917 at the home of Wickham Steed, where the Yugoslav Committee met the men responsible for Italian propaganda in England: the Corriere della Sera journalist it:Guglielmo Emanuel and Colonel Filippo De Filippi.

Supporting a drive to create general positive views about Italy, there were film and theatrical performances, while De Filippi continued to organize meetings and conferences.

The British-Italian League also hosted a charity exhibition at the Mendoza Galleries of London featuring the art of the Cascella brothers, who had served in Albania and in Trentino.

Austria-Hungary immediately grew concerned over the disturbances that might be caused on the front lines and domestically, and was forced to divert some of its attention from active propaganda directed at Italy to establishing defensive anti-propaganda campaigns.

Italian propaganda stating that 'an awful abyss yawns under the feet of the German people', and that Habsburg soldiers ought to break their own chains immediately if they were not to suffer the same dismal fate".

[30] In the summer of 1918 Gabriele D'Annunzio’s flight over Vienna to drop propaganda leaflets was a high profile exercise to demoralise Austria-Hungary's civilian population.