| Italian front | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the European theatre of World War I | |||||||||
&sq=Envato&lang=en&file=File:WW1_ITALIAN_FRONT_1915-18.png) Clockwise from top left: Italian soldiers listening to their general's speech; Austro-Hungarian trench on the Isonzo; Italian trench on the Piave Austro-Hungarian trench in the Alps; | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
 United Kingdom France United States |
 Austria-Hungary German Empire | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
 Luigi Cadorna Armando Diaz Rudolph Lambart Jean César Graziani |
Archduke Friedrich Conrad von Hötzendorf Arz von Straußenburg Otto von Below | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
|
Italy 1915: up to 58 divisions United Kingdom1917: 3 divisions France1918: 2 divisions  Czechoslovak Legion1918: 5 regiments  Romanian Legion1918: 3 regiments United States1918: 1,200 in one regiment |
Austria-Hungary 1915: up to 61 divisions German Empire1917: 5 divisions | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
|
1,832,639:[1][2] 246,133 killed 946,640 wounded 70,656 missing[nb 1] 569,210 captured[nb 2] 6,700:[3]1,057 killed 4,971 wounded 670 missing/captured 2,872:480 killed (700 died indirectly) 2,302 wounded Unknown captured |
1,386,327:[4][5][nb 3] 155,350 killed[nb 4] 560,863 wounded 175,041 missing[nb 5] 477,024 captured[6][nb 6] Unknown | ||||||||
The Italian front (Italian: Fronte italiano; German: Südwestfront) was one of the main theatres of war of World War I. It involved a series of military engagements along the border between the Kingdom of Italy and Austria-Hungary from 1915 to 1918. Following secret promises made by the Allies in the 1915 Treaty of London, the Kingdom of Italy entered the war on the Allied side, aiming to annex the Austrian Littoral, northern Dalmatia and the territories of present-day Trentino and South Tyrol. The front soon bogged down into trench warfare, similar to that on the Western Front, but at high altitudes and with extremely cold winters. Fighting along the front displaced much of the local population, and several thousand civilians died from malnutrition and illness in Italian and Austro-Hungarian refugee camps.[7]
Military operations came to an end in 1918 with Italian victory and the capture of Trento and Trieste by Italy's forces. Austria-Hungary disintegrated due to military defeats and subsequent turmoils caused by pacifists and separatists. All military operations on the front came to an end with the entry into force of the armistice of Villa Giusti on 4 November 1918. Italy entered into World War I also with the aim of completing national unity with the annexation of Trentino-Alto Adige and Julian March: for this reason, the Italian intervention in the World War I is also considered the Fourth Italian War of Independence,[8] in a historiographical perspective that identifies in the latter the conclusion of the unification of Italy, whose military actions began during the revolutions of 1848 with the First Italian War of Independence.[9][10]
- ^ Mortara 1925, pp. 28–29 link text
- ^ "War Losses (Italy) | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1)".
- ^ Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire During the Great War 1914–1920, The War Office, p. 744.
- ^ Glaise von Horstenau 1932, pp. BeiL. IV. V. VII. link text
- ^ "War Losses (Austria-Hungary)". International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1).
- ^ Tortato, Alessandro: La Prigionia di Guerra in Italia, 1914–1919, Milan 2004, pp. 49–50. Does not include 18,049 who died. Includes 89,760 recruited into various units and sent back to fight the AH army, and 12,238 who were freed.
- ^ Petra Svoljšak (1991). Slovene refugees in Italy during the First World War (Slovenski begunci v Italiji med prvo svetovno vojno), Ljubljana. Diego Leoni – Camillo Zadra (1995), La città di legno: profughi trentini in Austria 1915–1918, Trento-Rovereto 1995.
- ^ "Il 1861 e le quattro Guerre per l'Indipendenza (1848-1918)" (in Italian). 6 March 2015. Archived from the original on 19 March 2022. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
- ^ "La Grande Guerra nei manifesti italiani dell'epoca" (in Italian). Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
- ^ Genovesi, Piergiovanni (11 June 2009). Il Manuale di Storia in Italia, di Piergiovanni Genovesi (in Italian). FrancoAngeli. ISBN 9788856818680. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
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