Morale and the Italian Army during the First World War

Morale and the Italian Army during the First World War PDF

Author: Vanda Wilcox

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-07-04

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1316692469

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Italian performance in the First World War has been generally disparaged or ignored compared to that of the armies on the Western Front, and troop morale in particular has been seen as a major weakness of the Italian army. In this first book-length study of Italian morale in any language, Vanda Wilcox reassesses Italian policy and performance from the perspective both of the army as an institution and of the ordinary soldiers who found themselves fighting a brutally hard war. Wilcox analyses and contextualises Italy's notoriously hard military discipline along with leadership, training methods and logistics before considering the reactions of the troops and tracing the interactions between institutions and individuals. Restoring historical agency to soldiers often considered passive and indifferent, Wilcox illustrates how and why Italians complied, endured or resisted the army's demands through balancing their civilian and military identities.

The Italian Army and the First World War

The Italian Army and the First World War PDF

Author: John Gooch

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-06-19

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0521193079

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A major new account of the role and performance of the Italian army in the First World War. Setting military events in a broad context, Gooch explores pre-war Italian military culture, and reveals how an army with a reputation for failure fought a challenging war in appalling conditions - and won.

Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign

Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign PDF

Author: John Macdonald

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2011-12-13

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1781599300

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This illustrated WWI history sheds light on a major campaign fought along the significant yet often neglected Italian Front. From 1915 to 1917 the armies of Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were locked in a series of battles along the River Isonzo, a sixty-mile front from the Alps to the Adriatic Sea. The campaigns were fought in unforgiving terrain, with casualty counts that exceeded those of the Great War’s more famous battles. The twelfth and final battle, Caporetto, was a major victory for the Central Powers as they broke through the Italian Front. Historian John Macdonald chronicles the Isonzo battles with vivid descriptions of the battlefields and of the atrocious conditions in which the soldiers fought. The text is supported by a selection of original photographs that record the terrible reality of the conflict. The intervention of British, French and German troops is covered, as are the parts played by famous individuals, including Erwin Rommel, Benito Mussolini, Pietro Badoglio and Luigi Cadorna, the notorious Italian commander in chief. Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign examines an aspect of the First World War that was pivotal in the history of Italy, Austria and the Balkans.

Italy in the Era of the Great War

Italy in the Era of the Great War PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-04-10

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 9004363726

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Vanda Wilcox’s edited volume Italy in the Era of the Great War analyses the political, military, social, economic and cultural history of war in Italy between 1911 and 1922.

Italy in the Era of the Great War

Italy in the Era of the Great War PDF

Author: Vanda Wilcox

Publisher: Brill

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789004288713

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Vanda Wilcox's edited volume Italy in the Era of the Great War analyses the political, military, social, economic and cultural history of war in Italy between 1911 and 1922.

The Italian Empire and the Great War

The Italian Empire and the Great War PDF

Author: Vanda Wilcox

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-06-24

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0192555758

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The Italian Empire and the Great War brings an imperial and colonial perspective to the Italian experience of the First World War. Italy's decision for war in 1915 built directly on Italian imperial ambitions from the late nineteenth century onwards, and its conquest of Libya in 1911–12. The Italian empire was conceived both as a system of overseas colonies under Italian sovereignty, and as an informal global empire of emigrants; both were mobilized to support the war in 1915–18. The war was designed to bring about 'a greater Italy' both literally and metaphorically. In pursuit of global status, Italy fought a global war, sending troops to the Balkans, Russia, and the Middle East, though with limited results. Italy's newest colony, Libya, was also a theatre of the war effort, as the anti-colonial resistance there linked up with the Ottoman Empire, Germany, and Austria to undermine Italian rule. Italian race theories underpinned this expansionism: the book examines how Italian constructions of whiteness and racial superiority informed a colonial approach to military occupation in Europe as well as the conduct of its campaigns in Africa. After the war, Italy's failures at the Peace Conference meant that the 'mutilated victory' was an imperial as well as a national sentiment. Events in Paris are analysed alongside the military occupations in the Balkans and Asia Minor as well as efforts to resolve the conflicts in Libya, to assess the rhetoric and reality of Italian imperialism.

The Beginning of Futility

The Beginning of Futility PDF

Author: Gaetano V. Cavallaro

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2009-10-30

Total Pages: 733

ISBN-13: 9781462827435

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Since Picketts failed charge at Gettysburg, the frontal infantry assault had been known as obsolete. Nevertheless fifty years later, Allied military leaders in the Great War persisted in using it as a military tactic. Italian military leaders were no exception not even accepting the deadly effect of machine guns or quick-firing artillery. The Battles of the Isonzo on the Austro-Italian Front have now been classified with Verdun as to intensity and casualty lists. Mountain warfare on the Isonzo River Valley resulted in almost two million casualties from avalanches, frostbite, malaria, cholera, as well as prisoner-of-war starvation. Using the attacco frontale the blood of the illiterate fanti was used as coin to purchase terrain pushing the enemy back leading to Vienna's request to Berlin for help, leading to Caporetto.

Italian soldier in North Africa 1941–43

Italian soldier in North Africa 1941–43 PDF

Author: Piero Crociani

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2013-11-20

Total Pages: 66

ISBN-13: 1780968566

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Despite the attention paid to the Afrikakorps over the years, it was the numerically far superior forces of the Italian Army that held the line and formed the bulk of the fighting power available to the Axis powers during the War in the Desert from 1941 through to 1943. Their performance has been unfairly criticised over the years – the best units of the Italian Army were equal to those of the British and Germans – but they suffered from a lack of mobility and poor equipment that made it impossible for them to meet mobile British forces on anywhere near equal terms. Despite this, the Italian Army went through many changes through the period, with the introduction of a variety of elite units – armoured, mechanised and parachute divisions that did much to restore the fighting reputation of the Italian soldier in the desert war. Their German allies belatedly acknowledged this with the redesignation of Panzerarmee Afrika as 1st Italian Army in February 1943. This title details recruitment, organisation and experience of the Italian forces in this theatre, casting new light on a force whose fighting power and capabilities have been unfairly ignored and maligned for too long.