Italian front | |||||||||
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Part of the European theatre of World War I | |||||||||
![]() Clockwise: Italian soldiers listening to their general's speech; Austro-Hungarian trench on the Isonzo; Austro-Hungarian trench in the Alps; Italian trench on the Piave | |||||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||||
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Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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Strength | |||||||||
![]() 1915: up to 58 divisions ![]() 1917: 3 divisions ![]() 1918: 2 divisions ![]() 1918: 5 regiments ![]() 1918: 3 regiments ![]() 1918: 1,200 in one regiment |
![]() 1915: up to 61 divisions ![]() 1917: 5 divisions | ||||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||||
![]() 246,133 killed 946,640 wounded 70,656 missing[nb 1] 569,210 captured[nb 2] ![]() 1,057 killed 4,971 wounded 670 missing/captured ![]() 480 killed (700 died indirectly) 2,302 wounded Unknown captured |
![]() 155,350 killed[nb 4] 560,863 wounded 175,041 missing[nb 5] 477,024 captured[6][nb 6] ![]() |
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 in Northern Italy between the Central Powers and the Entente powers 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.
Although Italy had hoped to gain the territories with a surprise offensive, 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]
Before the Allied victory, the Austro-Hungarian state started to disintegrate on the last week of October. On the 1st of November, the pacifist and pro-Allies Mihály Károlyi's new Hungarian government decided to recall all of the troops, who were conscripted from the territory of Kingdom of Hungary, which was a major blow for the Habsburg's armies.[8]
The Allied victory at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, the ongoing disintegration of Austria-Hungary and the Italian capture of Trento and Trieste ended all military operations on the front by November 1918.
The armistice of Villa Giusti entered into force on 4 November 1918, when Austria-Hungary no longer existed as a unified entity. 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,[9] 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.[10][11]
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