Thu 6/9/2011
Prof. Juliani Responds to "Italian World War I Trench Battles" Post
Richard Juliani, Professor of Sociology of Villanova University, a highly regarded Italian American Historian, that has devoted thirty years of research, and is author of among other books:
Richard
Re: Italian World War I Trench Battles Retraced by US Military StaffRide
My father was among the "ragazzi di '00", fortunate enough to be only approaching the Austrian front as a machine gunner with an infantry unit of the Italian army as the Armistice was declared. In four more years he was bound for a new life as another immigrant Italian tailor in the United States.
But I agree with you that the story of the war on this front has never been adequately told. The Italian forces, despite the humiliating defeat at Caporetto, had actually acquitted themselves honorably and heroically. On the eve of Caporetto, a visiting journalist from English told audiences in Philadelphia and elsewhere that the Italians had performed exceptionally well and that nothing more coud be expected from them. In particular, he warned that it would be impossible to hold their lines at Caporetto, because the British, who were responsible for resupplying arms and ammunition to the Italians, were failing to meet this responsibility. He added that the Italians would soon find themselves without proper equipment --- and when the inevitable defeat came it would not be their fault at all.
In addition, the Italians had long been under the command of Cadorna, a very unpopular martinet, who actually introduced a policy of summarily executed one in ten men in order simply to make the lesson that they must obey their orders. The executed men were innocent victims, not guilty of any crime or dereliction of duty, but simply arbitrarily selected to implement a cruelly insane policy. This policy of decimation had been borrowed from the ancient Romans. Needless to say, it only further demoralized the troops.
After Caporetto, however, Cadorna was replaced by General Armando Diaz, a very popular leader who gained even more favor by visiting the men at the "prima linea". It was under Diaz's leadership that the Italians, with reinforcements from other Allied units, swept to victory, including the much celebrated battle of the Vittoria Veneto. When the war ended, the Italians and their allies on this front were the only part of the Allied Forces to be occupying territory of the enemy. On the Western Front, the Allies did not proceed beyond Belgium and France. It is also claimed that the Austrian Front was the longest line of battle anywhere during the war. And of course, there were the mountains which made waging warfare almost impossible. I had an Italian that I met while walking a trail on the Dolomites a few years ago tell me that the real heroes of the war were the mules that moved the equipment. Perhaps that is why in places where you find statues of the Alpini, in celebration of their efforts, you are also likely to see them standing alongside of a mule or two.
The more tragic aspect after the war was the annexation of the South Tyrol, largely a German speaking area, to Italy. The Province of Bolzano, where we will be in just a few more days, is the only part of present day Italy that will not officially observe this year's celebration of Unification. The South Tyrol, along with the Tyrol and the East Tyrol, both of which are in Austria, should be allowed to combine as an independent and sovereign nation. But this is another issue.
For a good book on the subject that
you have raised, I recommend Mark Thompson's The White War: Life and Death
on the Italian Front 1915-1919. It's one of the few in English on
the subject.
[RAA:In my estimation , the shortage
of English Translations of Italian Books on Important Subjects are one
of the CORE problems of Italian Amerivcans NOT having a GOOD Understanding
of their ITALIAN Culture. An Englishman reporting on ITALIAN Culture is
as Helpful as me writing about Pregnancy and Birthing.]
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