While the bitter fighting on the Austrian-Italian border has certainly not been forgotten by contemporary Austrians and Italians who stream to the ski slopes and hiking trails of this beautiful region, this front remains only a footnote in the textbooks of the countries which constituted the Entente Powers, consumed as they have been by the brutal trench warfare on the Western Front. Nevertheless, the conditions under which Austrian and Italian troops fought from 1915-1918 were, if possible, more brutal, and the consequences just as fateful.
Since the High Middle Ages, the Tyrol, Trent and Carniola had been under the control of the Austrian Habsburgs. Tyrol was overwhelmingly German-speaking, while Trent
was mixed- to mostly Italian-speaking. Carniola, which also came under Habsburg control in the mid-14th century, was comprised mostly of Slovenes, although the administrative and commercial centers had significant German populations and in territories along the Adriatic the dominant population was Italian.
After the drastic reorganization of Europe following the wars of the French Revolution (1789-1799) and Napoleon (1799-1815) the Austrian Habsburgs significantly expanded their territory in the north of the Italian peninsula.
But the nineteenth century saw the maturation of political nationalism that stimulated wars and revolutions on behalf of the principle that all peoples of one nation should be united in their own nation state. No country was more threatened by political nationalism than the Austrian Empire and the Italians were the first of its dozen or more nationalities to throw off its domination. In the period from 1859 to 1870, Italy benefited from wars among the Great Powers of France, Austria and Germany and emerged as an almost united nation-state. But Romantic nationalists who defined the nation not only by language, but also historic legacy and natural geographic boundaries were still not satisfied.
They spoke of the irredenta, the unredeemed territories that were viewed as justifiably Italian either by virtue of the Venetian, or at the extreme, even the Roman legacy and were ordained by the surrounding seas and mountains to belong to the Kingdom of Italy. Specifically the territories they claimed were Trent and the part of German-speaking Tyrol that lay on the south side of the Alpine divide along the Brenner Pass. Additionally they also claimed the Istrian peninsula and the Dalmatian islands along the eastern coast of the Adriatic that had once been part of the Venetian Empire. Most of this territory had been under Habsburg rule since the fourteenth century, but by the twentieth century nationalism had gained the moral upper ground over historical legitimacy and the First World War offered the opportunity to redress what Italian nationalists regarded as a historic injustice.
In 1914, Italy was, however, allied with Austria-Hungary and Germany in the defensive Triple Alliance. This treaty had initially been contracted to provide a balance of power in Central Europe against France and was strengthened after the formation of the Franco-Russian Alliance in 1890. Italy was additionally concerned that Roman Catholic France might try to reassert its support of the pope who had become a virtual prisoner in the Vatican surrounded on all sides by the new, secular Italian nation and also hoped that friendly relations with Austria might bring territorial concessions in the area of the irredenta as Austria became increasingly oriented toward the Balkans. Austria, however, had remained unwilling to surrender territory in Trent or Istria. When the war broke out, the former Liberal Prime Minister Giolitti, argued that the neutrality required by the Triple Alliance be used as a lever to pressure Austria to surrender Tyrol south of the Brenner Pass, the Adriatic coastline of Carniola and much of the Dalmatian archipelago. Austria agreed with regard to Italian-speaking Trent, but only after peace should be concluded and balked at any further concessions. Although Germany finally pushed Austria into agreeing to surrender most of what Italy had demanded, this concession came too late. On 16. April 1915 the Entente concluded the secret Treaty of London with Italy fulfilling the long and hotly desired aims of the irredentists.
Nationalist mobs reflecting the popular mood that disdained parliamentary liberalism and exhaulted war as a means of redeeming national honor put pressure on Parliament to approve violation of the Triple Alliance and on May 23, Italy declared war on Austria and set about conquering the territory promised them by the Treaty of London. The goal of the Allies was to use Italy's army of 875,000 men to force Austria to divert forces from its support of the German assault on Russia. The topographical nature of the front however neutalized the vast Italian numerical advantage. After the First Army won some initial success in the foothills north of Lake Garda, it ran into entrenched Austrian positions in the mountainous territory to the north where 100,000 men were able to block the advance of the Italians.
Typical of the task confronting the Italians was the need to attack up valleys like this one against
against artillery and machine gun fire from entrenched gun emplacements carved out of the rocky crags such as those shown below.
With relatively few men, the Austrians could hold the passes and then gather concentrations of troops to
pour down upon the Italian forces in the plains below. For Italy, a breakthrough in the Alpine passes was impossible, but she, nevertheless, had to man the lines so as to prevent an encircling action towards the south and east by the Austrians from the Trent salient.
What appeared to be a more favorable point of assault was in the alluvial plain of the Isonzo River where four offensives were conducted in 1915. The goal was to capture the fortress city of Gorizia, but progress along the Isonzo opened the right Italian flank to attacks from the craggy highlands of the Bainsizza and Carso plateaus ---"a howling wilderness of stones sharp as knives." Although the Italian armies succeeded in taking the flatland along the river, they paid the price of a quarter of a million men in four campaigns .
from June into December 1915
In mid-May of 1916 an Austrian offensive in Trent surprised the Italians, but ultimately was unsuccessful because of a lack of troops. The Italians won back most of the territory the Austrians had initially gained, but at a cost of 150,000 men. There was also renewed action on the Isonzo Front and finally brought Gorizia under Italian control.
May of 1917 saw renewed Italian action on the Isonzo front, but after initially gaining territory along the Isonzo, the campaign bogged down, having advanced only about half of the 30 km. to Trieste and after having suffered hundreds of thousands of deaths and casualties. Finally, in late October the nine divisions of Austrian forces strengthened by six German divisions launched an attack on the Italian position at Caporetto and on the first day advanced more against the weary Italian forces than Italy had gained with all its eleven Isonzo campaigns. The Italian armies fled in a chaotic retreat.
The Austrian-German armies drove into Italian territory and won a decisive victory over the Italian army at Caporetto. Italy lost 305,000 soldiers, additionally 275,000 surrendered or deserted.
Within ten days What was left of the Italian Isonzo armies fled in a disorderly retreat to the Piave River. The collapse had been so rapid that the Austrian-German forces had to hold up to permit their supply trains to catch up, giving Britain and France time to rush reinforcements to prevent the total collapse of the Italian front. The liberal parliamentary government was held responsible for the military defeat making patriotic and now shamed Italians susceptible to political forces that denounced political democracy and weak and obsolete.
The last significant action on the Italian front came in in mid-June of 1918 when the Austrians crossed the Piave. But after they were pushed back suffering 100,000 in losses, the Austrian army began to suffer the disintegration along national lines that by October led to the dissolution of the Empire.
In 1919 Italian Prime Minister Orlando took place alongside Clemenceau for France, Lloyd George for Great Britain and Wilson for the U.S. at the peace conferences held in Paris in 1919. The settlement vis-a-vis the tiny new Austrian state was un-problematic. Austria, was not only defeated, but was now just a tiny Alpine republic with a population that was almost monolithically German-speaking. Point IX of President Wilson's 14 Points clearly demanded that in the case of Italy, Austria should surrender surrender Trent and its territories at the head of the Adriatic. Although this ignored six centuries of Austrian Habsburg legitimacy, it conformed with the much-trumpeted principle of national self-determination. What was inconsistent with the 14 Points was the willingness of the Allies to deviate from the principle of national self-determination to grant Italy's strategic demands for a border on the Brenner Pass. This divided Tyrol in two with its historic center around Meran(o) consigned to the Italian region of Alto Adige.
This brought approximately 200,000 German-speaking Tyroleans under Italian rule and, unlike most other national minorities in Europe, they had no right to present their case for minority rights to the League of Nations.
Austria also recognized the absorption of Trieste, the Istrian peninsula and the strategic passes of the Julian Alps by Italy and along with this territory over 250,000 Slovenes whose territory by right of the principle of national self-determination should have gone to the new state of Yugoslavia.
These gains exceeded what had been promised by the Treaty of London; nevertheless the reluctance of the Allies to deliver on hints of promises of colonies in Africa and the Middle East enraged Italian nationalists. It was however the issue of Fiume and the Dalmatian coastline that caused nationalists to shout about a "mutilated peace" and begin the movement away from the Allies, the League of Nations and the principles of parliamentary democracy upon which they were built. The question of Fiume turned out to be the crystallizing issue for the movement towards fascism. Fiume had been a significant port for Austria in the centuries before the First World War, but in the wake of the dissolution of the Empire the question of to what country it sould go became a burning issue. Its commercial and financial center was predominantly Italian, but its suburbs were Slovene. For Italy, blessed with an abundance of fine ports, its significance was mostly symbolic. For the new state of Yugoslavia however, Fiume was as vital an outlet for commerce as it had been for Austria. Nevertheless, when Yugoslavia laid a claim for it, Italian nationalists howled about the national rights of the minority, something that concerned them little in the case of the German-speakers of South Tyrol just incorporated into Italy. Just two days after the Treaty of St. Germain was signed with Austria, on 12 September 1919, the war hero and radical nationalist, romantic poet Gabriele D'Annunzio led a legion of war veterans to seize Fiume "in the name of the Italian people" and thus thwart the national alienation of "Italian soil." Intimidated by nationalist mobs roaring their approval, the liberal Italian government did nothing to call back the adventurers and Fiume existed as an independent state taunting the Liberals for their weakness and a lack of patriotism. Ultimately at the end of 1920 Italy and Yugoslavia reached an agreement for an independent free state of Fiume while D'Annunzio declared war on the Italian government. He and his legionnaires were forced to evacuate the city-state to the outrage of the nationalists, but his followers soon found a tougher and more effective leader in Benito Mussolini who had recently founded the fascist movement.