During the Great War, which involved Italy from May 1915 until November 1918, the Italian Army paid an extremely high price in terms of suffering; around 600,000 soldiers died. About 100,000 of these ...deaths were caused by diseases, mainly infectious ones. The casualties accounted for over one million cases. Epidemics of cholera and petechial typhus were recorded as well as an increase in morbidity due to tuberculosis and malaria, which had shown some minor epidemiological reduction in several regions of Italy during the years preceding the Great War. A large number of soldiers acquired respiratory tract and brain infections. Severe limb infections were due to war wounds, but also to a novel disorder called "trench foot", In a context of general hygienic decay, death and stress linked to massive bombing, severe psychiatric disorders were observed. They were called "shell shock" in English (and known in Italy as "the wind of the howitzer"). The patients suffering from the above psychiatric disorders were considered simulators by the great majority of psychiatrists, who largely believed such soldiers wanted to avoid active combat. They were subjected to electric shocks and later sent back to the war front or to a mental hospital in the most severe cases. In some dramatic occurrences, like at the time of the Caporetto defeat, a substantial number of soldiers were dealt rough justice in front of firing squads under the suspicion of desertion. Yet World War I, with its dramatic load of suffering, forced the medical environment to develop extremely innovative techniques and research applied to clinical practice. During the decades to follow, such efforts yielded major results in the field of pharmacology: studies which led to the discovery of the first antibiotics were set in motion.
The “M” armored division was a unit of the fascist militia created in 1943 with the aim of protecting the regime at a time when the power bloc that had sustained Mussolini for two decades was ...breaking up. The unit turned out to be a military failure and was not able to protect the regime at the decisive moment, when a coup d’état took place in 1943. Even so, studying it is important as it represents the moment when the tension between the Italian Army and the Fascist Militia, present since 1922, reached its peak. The article seeks to present the history of the division, its origin, its successes, and failures, against the background of the relationship between the Italian Army and the Fascist Militia and between the Party and the State during the Fascist regime.
Following the Italian defeat in North Africa and the setback suffered in the war against Greece, the Regio Esercito (the Italian Army) had lost ten of its 70 divisions and suffered heavy losses. ...Facing developments following the seizure of the Balkans and Germany’s attack against the Soviet Union, Mussolini ordered a reorganisation of the army which had to be brought up to strength in order to meet his political-strategic goals. Mussolini’s aim was to reinforce the Italian presence on the Eastern Front, guarantee the Army readiness for the occupation of the French territories (southern France, Tunisia, Corsica), and maintain a strategic reserve while reinforcing the North African front and securing the occupied territories in the Balkans. General Ugo Cavallero, the Chief of General Staff, introduced some changes to this plan which was further altered by the Army Staff (Stato Maggiore Regio Esercito), mostly because of the lack of weapons and materiel. By the spring of 1942 the Italian Army not only was short Mussolini’s goal of 80 divisions, but had also allocated more resources to the Balkans than envisaged at first. Problems occurred following Mussolini’s decision to bring the Italian forces on the Eastern Front up to the strength of an entire army, which was made by depleting the other fronts (mostly the troops ready to seize the French territories) and the strategic reserve as well. The defeat suffered in North Africa in November 1942, along with the Allied landing in French North-West Africa, led to the employment of the last remaining operational divisions and to some kind of full commitment due to the seizure and garrisoning of southern France and Corsica. The final blow came with the losses suffered on the Eastern Front in the 1942- 43 Stalingrad offensive and with the creation of the Tunisian bridgehead, which reduced the Italian Army combat effectiveness. By the spring of 1943, Tunisia being lost in May, it was clear that the Army was no longer capable to defend the territories seized and the homeland, having lost most of its operational effectiveness and being no longer capable of creating new units.
Most Anglo-American scholars neglect the contribution of the Italian army to the Axis campaign in North Africa, and depict most Italian combatants and units as weak and ineffective, prone to ...surrender. This paper proposes an analysis of the fighting power of Italian units during the campaign. It assesses how both weapons and training influenced the fighting power of men and units. Additionally, it suggests that two contingencies, the role of surprise and the presence of German troops, came into play. As a result, despite a growing technical stagnation in terms of weapons and equipment, most Italian units adapted, became efficient, and kept fighting mostly because of the emphasis put on training by numerous Italian officers.
La Guerra Civil Española fue la guerra más ideologizada de todas en las que combatieron los italianos durante la década de 1935-1945. Este artículo se centra en la censura militar
de la ...correspondencia de los voluntarios, con el objetivo de arrojar algo de luz a la experiencia
bélica de los militares italianos, con particular interés en los arquetipos y estereotipos que soldados y oficiales usaron para transmitir dicha experiencia a sus familias y en Italia. Las cartas
censuradas pueden sugerir el grado en el que el discurso fascista de legitimación fue interiorizado
por los combatientes, y si entraba en conflicto con las propias vías castrenses de justificar la
intervención, ideológica, en una guerra civil extranjera.
La principal fuente utilizada es el reducido número de cartas transcritas preservadas en un archivo de censura por el Ufficio Storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito del ejército italiano.
Los censores o bien transcribieron las misivas relevantes o elaboraron informes resumidos que
contenían juicios cortos y estereotipados sobre la moral de las tropas y su espíritu combativo.
Esa fuente, por ende, es netamente diferente de otros casos de censura militar durante la Guerra
Civil, así como de la posterior censura organizada durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial por las
autoridades italianas.
El artículo busca profundizar en estos ego-documentos escritos durante la contienda, analizando las cartas que los italianos escribieron durante la “década de la guerra” italiana de 1935-
1945, coordinando así estos dos marcos. En este sentido, se subrayarán las similitudes entre la
mentalidad military y la ideología (paramilitary) fascista, así como sus diferencias irreconciliables. Estas diferencias modelaron el modo en que se esableció el diálogo entre la política italiana
y las instituciones militares, estando recíprocamente influidas por sus respectivas culturas y
agendas, al tiempo que la politización del Ejército Real Italiano fue lllevada a cabo gracias a la
guerra librada en España. Incluso si el ejército italiano no puede considerarse como estrictamente fascista, fue responsable de library las guerras del fascismo, reforzando el propio fascismo
y sus políticas. Por ende, el artículo sostendrá que, como en el caso de otros ejércitos politizados,
las fronteras que separaban la ideología fascista y la mentalidad military fueron progresivamente desapareciendo, siendo en ultimo término eclipsadas por el carimos de Mussolini.
Carlo Salsa's book 'Trenches: A foot-soldier's tales' (Trincee. Confidenze di un fante, 1924) was one of many published in Italy after the end of the First World War. It describes the facts of the ...war as they were lived by officers and soldiers on the Italian front line. The article tries to compare the book with the contemporary war literature in Italy and in Europe, without forgetting the use of the international historiography on the matter. Thus, it is analysed the way an Italian author described to his readers the brutal carnage of the war in years when Fascism was the rising star in Italian policy and the censorship was becoming the more and more a thornily factor for every writer of those days. From this analysis it is possible to note the quality of the volume both from the literary point of view, and its historical value as a reliable testimony of the facts, stepping up our knowledge of what the war literature was for the Italian public opinion after the 1918. As it is possible to note, the book puts under test our notions of the role played by this kind of literature in shaping the Italian political life at the end of the 1910s and at the start of 1920s, when Italy was becoming a country lead by the Fascist regime.
The paper presents the state of railway traffic in the coastal belt of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) and the railway lines that connected that area with Zagreb and ...the rest of the NDH. These lines were the Zagreb–Rijeka (Fiume) line, the Lika line from Zagreb to Split, and the Bosnian narrow gauge line from Brod na Savi via Sarajevo to Mostar and Dubrovnik. In early September 1941, the Italian army took over command of the civilian and military NDH authorities in the coastal zone, and accordingly over the rail lines in that area. Relations between the NDH and Kingdom of Italy were formally those of close alliance and cooperation. In reality, however, the fact that the Italians annexed certain parts of Croatian coastal territory in May 1941 as well as the Italian occupation of the coastal zone caused mutual distrust and disagreements between the Italians and the NDH regime. Such relations were also visible in the railway traffic, where Italians often assumed command and control without consulting the Croatian State Railways.Already during late 1941, the Partisan movement directed its attacks on railway communications. Partisans committed hundreds of attacks on railway and trains, and soon traffic was heavily disrupted and limited on all railway lines connecting the coastal belt with Zagreb and the hinterland. In early 1943, Italian troops withdrew from Lika, and Partisans quickly took control over that region. After that, the Lika railway from Zagreb to Dalmatia was cut, and it did not become operational until after the war. After the Italian armistice with the Allies and the disintegration of Italian troops in the NDH and areas annexed in 1941, the Zagreb–Rijeka line was also cut. Only the Bosnian narrow gauge line remained operational as a link between the coastal parts of the NDH and its hinterland. In fact, because of the attacks on other railway lines, already from late 1941 the NDH authorities were redirecting the traffic to the Zagreb–Rijeka line (or Zagreb–Ljubljana–Rijeka line), and transports that arrived to Rijeka were then shipped by sea to ports in the Croatian Littoral and Dalmatia.
The First World War brought many changes to everyday life and came as a surprise to many contemporaries. The territory of today’s Slovenia mostly belonged to the 3rd Austro-Hungarian Army Corps. More ...than 160,000 soldiers were mobilized in these recruiting districts. The fact that the labor of at least five people was needed to provide for just one soldier on the frontline sums up how the hinterland was connected with the front. The fatalities among the soldiers were extremely high. During the first five offensives, the positions of the front were basically unchanged despite a large number of casualties. The Italian conquest of Gorica/Gorizia in August 1916 was followed by a new wave of refugees and the retreat of the Austro-Hungarian Army from the Doberdob/Doberdo Plateau to the new defense line in the Karst region. The atmosphere in the hinterland was affected by a feeling of scarcity and growing discontent. With the successful breakthrough in 1917 (the battle of Caporetto), which shifted the front to the Piave River, the Isonzo Front drew the attention of military strategists and became known internationally. At the end of October 1918, Austria-Hungary collapsed and new states emerged on its territory, among them the State of the Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs. Thus the stories of the soldiers and the memory of the fallen remained within the family circle and local cemeteries, far from national celebrations, out of the collective memory of the new state. Later, the memory of the Second World War and the postwar revolution also completely obscured the memory of the years 1914–1918. A characteristic feature of Slovenia in the period after the Second World War was that the first museum collections were created by private collectors, who collected material remains of the war on the trackless Soča landscape.
At the beginning of 1942, the ideological conflict in Montenegro sharpened due to revolutionary terror of the Communists. Captain Pavle Djurišić saw the solution for this difficult situation in ...cooperation with the Italian military authorities in Montenegro. Therefore, he started negotiating with them via command of ’Venice’ division, stationed in Berane. Initial meetings in January were marked by the distrust of Italians towards Djurišić, first of all owing to his participation in July uprising, relations with General Dragoljub Mihailović and substantial quantity of weapons he asked for. The attitude of Italian occupier towards the military cooperation with him changed during the second half of January, particularly thanks to the success he achieved in the fight with the Communist forces In February 1942 and confidential information he provided from the field. The military cooperation was established at the end of March by signing the five point contract, followed by providing Djurišić with weapons, ammunition, military material and food he had asked for at the beginning of January. Italian help, not only in weapons, but also in logistics enabled the officers of Yugoslav Homeland Army to strengthen and consolidate their troops and take advantage over the Communists in the conflict.
Why does peacekeeping sometimes fail? How can effective peacekeepers increase the likelihood of success of a mission? The two main flaws in the current evaluations of peace operations are that they ...mainly rely on already concluded missions and that they make use of indicators that do not reveal micro-level dynamics. This article introduces an analytical framework relating the effectiveness of soldiers to their actual impact in their area of operation in a peace operation. The framework is called “unit peace operation effectiveness” (UPOE). Focusing on soldiers in peace operations, this article shows that: different units behave differently; emphasize different aspects of the mandate; and are effective in different ways. Ultimately, this has an actual impact on the end-state of the mission. It relies on and adapts classic security studies works to theoretically enrich the peacekeeping literature. The model is tested in an illustrative case study based on ethnographic work on French and Italian units in Afghanistan between 2008 and 2010.
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