1. The Italian front
Peter Sharpe

2. Summary of Italy in the Great war
The Italian front was a series of battles alongside the border of Italy and Austria- Hungary
Italian made secret promises with the Allies at the Treaty of London
Italy’s main aim in the Great War was to conquer and take over the Austria-Hungary Littoral and Northern Dalmatia (now referred to as Croatia)
The war went from 23 May 1915 – 6 November 1918
Italy’s leader during the war was Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, their representative in the famous Treaty of Versailles
The outcome of the war for Italy was disastrous and was known to be below their expectations
They were sidelined by the ‘Big Four’ which later inspired them to becoming a fascist country

3. The lead up to the war for italy
Britain, Belgium, USA, France, Romania, France, Russia, Italy, Serbia Japan
The lead up to the war for italy
When the World War broke out in 1914, Italy declared themselves neutral despite being a member of the Triple Alliance.
The Alliance was a war pact between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy established back in 1882 and then renewed in 1915.
If one country was attacked, the others would assist them supplying the other country with arsenal.
WHY DID ITALY SWITCH SIDES IN 1915?
Italy felt isolated and saw the Alliance as a fraud making Italy the ‘odd man out’
Italy in the first place joined the alliance out of fear of France
But, when the war began they did not fear France but instead feared Austria-Hungary
When the Allies offered them Tyrol, Trieste and some of the Adriatic Sea in the Treaty of London in April 1915, they jumped for the bait and quickly switched sides

4. The Triple Alliance- Italy the ‘odd man out’

5. https://youtu.be/X_ODWQHpkWE
Video

6. conscription in italy
The Italian government conscripted over 300,000 soldiers in 1914 in the lead up to war, although they called themselves neutral
Every boy over the age of 18 took a medical examination lasting 3 days
If all was okay, he would receive a green envelope stating when and what unit he is representing
Conscription was badly needed in Italy to also make a sense of nationhood as it mixed Northerns and Southerns who didn’t even speak the same language
In the end, roughly 900,000 Italian soldiers died which was more than the people who were conscripted before the war

7. A picture of a cannon resting on a pile of coins while it’s aiming towards the Austrian mountains
‘Italian bank discount’

8. PROGANDA FOR MONEY IN ITALY

9. The ITALIAN ARMY
Years before World War in 1912, the Italo-Turkish War was fought having 14,000 casualties
This war saw technological changes with Italy introducing the airplane and even dropping the first aerial bomb on November 1 flown by Captain Carlo Piazza.
This resulted in Italy having a lack of weapons and arsenal in the Great War
Moving on to 1915, while the parliament didn’t want to declare war, most the people did such as the Nationalist
This made Antonio Salandra resign and for Victor Emmanuel 3rd to take over
Finally, in May 1915 the first shots were fired from Italy in a town 11 miles from the Adriatic Sea
In retaliation, the Austro-Hungarians bombarded Italian railway stations on the same day.
The first Italian casualty recorded was Riccardo Di Giusto
Italian fleet travelling to the town Cervignano del Friuli

10. The ‘Arditi’ – The Royal Italian Army elite special force
‘Italy have a large appetite and rotten teeth’
Italians shooting with the Fiat Revelli standard machine
Italian aviators in the fighter plane

11. Italian Aerial Warfare- The MODERN WARFARE
Italy entered with a few dozen planes and roughly the same number of pilots
This quick development of aerial warfare made Italy build thousands of planes and made thousands of infantry soldiers to leave the trenches and become aviators
The most notorious Italian plane was the ‘Hunter’
The Italian Corpo Aeronautico Militare was established in January 1915 organising the airplanes and aviators for the war
The France regularly supplied them with planes as they lacked airships
Giulio Douhet was the most famous theorist and worked on his ideas since 1910
The first air duel was against Austria-Hungary back in 1915 which they lost as Austria had a machine gun while Italy only had a rifle

12. Francesco Baracca- Italy’s best air fighter in WW1
The Hunter

13. The Italian weapons ‘Poor Mans Lugar’ Fiet Revelli 1914 ‘Carcano’
The Great War was the introduction of the machine-gun.
Villar Perosa M15 was the first machine- gun and was regarded as strange, it shot roughly 1000 rounds per minute
Italy had a famous pistol called the ‘Poor Mans Lugar’ because of its bad appearance, matieral and average performance
The Fiet Revelli 1914 was their standard machine gun of their war
The ‘Carcano’ was the most frequently used rifle and was manufactured in Italy and was also used in over 10 wars as many countries imported them from Italy
The Arditi carried a dagger for hand-to- hand combat
Fiet Revelli 1914
‘Poor Mans Lugar’
‘Carcano’
Italian dagger

14. THE ITALIAN TANK WARFARE
As Italy fought most of their war on mountains, tanks were sometimes impracticable
But for patrols they were used and Fiat manufactured the first Italian tank as they heard the other Allies success with tank warfare
The Fiat was built based on France’s Renault tank
Fiat was the biggest industry in Northern Italy and was Italys only industry to build the 100% national tank
The Fiat 2000 was controlled by a crew of ten and was thinner and more agile than other tanks letting it travel longer distances unlike the French’s Renault FT tanks
Also, the Lancia 1Z was an armoured car built by Ansaldo in It consisted of two mounted machine-guns. It was never really used in mountain terrains but was regularly used in the North at the end of the war

15. The Fiat 2000- Italys National Tank
The Lancia 1Z armoured car
Italy’s one man tank

16. The Arditi (Italian Special Force) wore a cyclist coat with every different section in the army having different colour flames printed on to the coat (eg. Arditi had black flames/Infrantry soldiers at the Alps wore green flames)
They also wore a dark coloured sweater underneath
They also wore a black fez (hat) on their head
The Arditi also wore a badge on their chest of a skull with a dagger clenched between their teeth
The Italian Uniform

17. ‘We either win, or all die’
The Arditi men lived by their motto
‘We either win, or all die’
Arditi badge- Skull clenching a dagger with its teeth

18. The battle of Vittorio Veneto
The battle of Vittorio Veneto was fought on the Italian Front commanded by Armando Diaz
The Italian victory marked the end of the war on their front and contributed to the end of the Great War only one week later
On the 24th October 1917 at 03.00am the Italian barraged (method of delivering artillery fire from a long distance away)
At 05.00am, the following infantry joined and made such a foothold that the Italians might of made too much distance leaving them vulnerable to a counter attack
The British captured over 3,000 soldiers and 54 guns
Captain Von Bojna, the commander of Austria-Hungary ordered a counter attack but soldiers did not obey his orders- the last chance had failed
Czechslovakia and the South Slavs declared independence from Austria-Hungary
The Empire found itself in such a state that all its leaders demanded them to cease fire
The Armistice of Villa Giusti marked the end of warfare between Italy and the Austria-Hungary
The battle of Vittorio Veneto

19. BiblioGraphy http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk