The White War Page 3
This was all instigated by Giovanni Giolitti, the greatest reforming politician that Italy has ever produced. He wanted to outflank his nationalist critics with a spectacular invasion, and thought Libya would be a stroll. Instead it became a quicksand. Giolitti lied about the costs of the campaign and conjured up imaginary victories. He drew cautionary lessons about plunging the country into war, ill-prepared, but kept them to himself. The ultimate legacy of his cynical adventure was the Fascist invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.
Libya confirmed that the Italian army was incapable of waging effective colonial campaigns. After a flurry of reforms in the 1870s, including universal conscription and the reorganisation of the general staff, successive initiatives to overhaul the military had suffocated in red tape and party-political wrangling. Unhealthy closeness to the royal court undermined professionalism in the officer corps. Measured against Italy’s geostrategic vulnerability and colonial ambitions, the reforms were half-baked and the army was still much too small. Bismarck’s quip was still true: Italy had ‘a large appetite and very poor teeth’.
The second blow to the irredentists in 1882 was the death of Garibaldi on 2 June. In his last years, the great hero kept exhorting the Italians of Tyrol and Trieste not to lose heart. His passing left many of his compatriots feeling bleakly that their country’s best days were already behind it. The towering figure that had encouraged and sometimes berated them for almost forty years was gone, and nobody could take his place.
The third blow was another death: the execution of a young man in Trieste, one Guglielmo Oberdan (originally Wilhelm Oberdank: like many nationalist fanatics, his own national identity was ambiguous). Along with other draft-age Habsburg Italians, he fled to Italy in 1878 to avoid being sent to the new Austrian garrisons in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 1882 happened to be the 500th anniversary of Trieste’s submission to Habsburg power. The celebrations were scheduled for September, and Franz Josef would be there. Oberdan decided to assassinate the Emperor. Acting either alone or as part of a shadowy network, he re-entered Austria. Arrested near the border with bombs in his baggage, he confessed. The Emperor rejected pleas for clemency, and Oberdan was hanged in a barracks cell on 20 December after refusing religious rites. As he mounted the gallows he cried ‘Long live Italy! Long live free Trieste! Out with the foreigners!’ He became the only full-blown Italian martyr of Austro-Hungarian brutality. While it failed to derail the Triple Alliance, his act put Trieste on the map. Local patriots sang a rapidly composed ‘Hymn to Oberdan’. Within five years, there were 49 ‘Oberdan societies’ in Italy and Austria, defying repression in order to nurse irredentist dreams.
These societies got scant encouragement in the kingdom. Hardest on them was the government of Francesco Crispi, a Sicilian lawyer turned politician with the aura that all Garibaldi’s former comrades possessed. As prime minister from 1887 to 1891, Crispi believed Italy had an imperial destiny much larger than the unredeemed lands. The Triple Alliance should be a platform for these endeavours. But he was a realist, too, who knew there was no international support for seizing the southern Tyrol and Trieste. He spent heavily on the military and talked a lot about ‘Italian rights in the Mediterranean’ while quietly instructing Italian leaders in Trieste to clamp down on their irredentists. As a reformed freedom-fighter, Crispi disliked the new generation of militant idealists and their cause.
Based on the votes of 2 per cent of the population and royal approval, Italian governments were highly unstable. Their make-up was not determined by parties or party loyalties; every cabinet included moderates from Right and Left, dominated by an outsized personality. After Cavour and Crispi, the next such personality was Giovanni Giolitti, prime minister five times between 1892 and 1921. The decade and a half before the Great War is known as the era giolittiana, the era of Giolitti. He won and kept power by winning over moderate leftists and Catholic conservatives and by manipulating elections. Rather than working solely to benefit his own class, the Piedmontese élite, however, he was an enlightened conservative with liberal tendencies, pioneering redistributive taxation, improvement of labour conditions, social change through public spending, and electoral reform.
Amid the colourful monomaniacs and profiteers of the day, Giolitti was prosaic on a grand scale. He was a wily calculator, an artist of the possible, a patrician seeking ‘to reconcile stability with liberty and progress’. To his detractors, he became the emblem of a political order that was practical but petty, humdrum and sometimes corrupt, ‘unworthy’ of Italy’s achievements and ideals. The nationalists detested him. His project, they said witheringly, was Italietta, ‘little Italy’, shorn of splendour, preoccupied with trivial problems – like the balance of trade deficit, agricultural tariffs, tax collecting, the unruly banking sector, the plight of peasant farmers, the tyranny of absentee landlords, rural emigration, and the use of martial law against strikers in Italy’s giddily expanding cities.
Many things improved under Giolitti. Italy ended the tariff war with France, doubled its industrial output over the decade to 1910, and narrowed the trade deficit. Measured by the growth of railways, the navy, education, merchant shipping, electricity consumption and land reclamation, the country was developing at a phenomenal rate. Yet it was still firmly the least of the great powers, and poor by comparison. With 35 million inhabitants, it was Europe’s sixth most populous state. (Russia had nearly 170 million, Germany 68 million, Austria-Hungary nearly 52 million, Britain 46 million, and France, 40 million people.) The middle class was very small: only 5 per cent of the population. Some 40 per cent worked on the land (there were 9 million farm labourers with their dependents, living at subsistence level), and 18 per cent were artisans or industrial workers. Health indicators were at preindustrial levels. The economy was primarily agricultural, with low productivity because farming was unmodernised except in the north. Hence the country was not self-sufficient in staples, importing three times more wheat than it produced. Lacking coal or iron reserves, Italy had little heavy industry; iron and steel, chemicals and engineering were getting under way, but textiles and foodstuffs were still the mainstays of a sector that was also limited by low investment and poor working conditions – though thanks to militant trades unions, industrial salaries had increased steadily since 1890. Even with this recent growth, Italy was not catching up with France, Germany or the United States. Businesses were small or very small: 80 per cent were completely unmechanised and employed two to five people. Most Italians had only the vaguest notion of the state; their lives were local and regional by dialect, custom, labour and experience.
Despite his modernising achievements, the Socialists also often sided with nationalists and democrats against Giolitti, scorning his devotion to ‘empirical politics’. Guilty as charged, said Giolitti, ‘if by empiricism you mean taking account of the facts, the real conditions of the country, and the population … The experimental method, which involves taking account of the facts and proceeding as best one can, without grave danger … is the safest and even the only possible method.’ Antonio Salandra, Giolitti’s successor in 1914, would shred this liberal credo when he took the country to war against its nominal allies, Austria and Germany.
Source Notes
ONE A Mania for Expansion
1 ‘the most threatening salient’: Martel.
2 ‘a policy of expedients’: Mack Smith [1997], 222
3 more spirit than man: Bobbio, 71–2.
4 Dante had ordained it: Inferno, IX, 113.
5 ‘mania for expansion’: Mack Smith [1997], 149.
6 ‘where not even the standard’: Bosworth [1979], 11.
7 the colony of Eritrea: By 1913, Eritrea had only 61 permanent Italian colonists. Bosworth [1983], 52.
8 ‘a large appetite’: Bosworth [2007], 163.
9 by manipulating elections: Salvemini [1973], 52.
10 least of the great powers: Bosworth [1979]. The information in the rest of this paragraph is from Zamagni Bosworth [2006], and [2007]; Salvemini
[1973]; Giuliano Procacci; Forsyth, 27.
11 ‘empirical politics … possible method’: Gentile [2000].
1 The gulf between past and present was measured when Yugoslavia fell apart amid bloodshed and lies in the early 1990s. Faced with the savage, nation-building politics of their grandparents’ day, Europe’s leaders denied the evidence of their eyes, trying to douse the fire with conference minutes and multilateral resolutions.
2 The story of Italy’s third war of independence is told in the Appendix.
3 In fact, Friuli developed on both sides of the border after 1866, as even Italian nationalist historians acknowledged. On the Austrian side, vines and fruit orchards were planted, and groves of mulberry trees fed the silkworms that supplied the textile industry. Gorizia flourished as ‘the Nice of Austria’ and Grado, with its shining lagoons and sandy beaches, became central Europe’s favourite seaside resort. Land reclamation schemes created rich farmland near Monfalcone.
TWO
‘We Two Alone’
It is always the case that the one who is not
your friend will request your neutrality, and
that the one who is your friend will request
your armed support.
MACHIAVELLI, The Prince (1532)
How the Government Plotted against Peace
Italy was pulled into the First World War by two whiskery men in frock coats and an anxious, weak-willed king. They were not alone: interventionist passion surged around the higher echelons of society, making up in noise what they lacked in popular support. Yet, without a conspiracy in the highest places, Italy would have stayed neutral.
Prime Minister Antonio Salandra and Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino were like-minded conservatives and old friends who knew they were backed by an élite of northern industrialists and politicians which supported rearmament and military expansion around the Adriatic Sea. When Salandra finally let parliament debate the international situation, in December 1914, deputies were not allowed to query the government’s foreign policy or the army’s readiness. The cabinet was not informed about the twin-track negotiations with London and Vienna until 21 April 1915. Five days later, without forewarning parliament, the Prime Minister committed Italy to fight. The deputies rubber-stamped his decision after the fact. With the King’s support, he had carried out a coup d’état in all but name.
This process, without parallel in other countries, split the country. Many nationalists believed the war would heal this rift. Instead the fractures widened under the pressure of terrible carnage, undermining morale in the army and on the home front. There would be no equivalent of the French union sacrée. Parliament too was damaged. After granting the government decree powers, the Chamber of Deputies became a cipher. The Socialists, who tried to preserve a watchdog role, could be cowed or sidestepped when the need arose. Historian Mario Isnenghi argues that the interventionist campaign of 1914–15 created a new political force, the ‘war party’, cutting across traditional loyalties, scornful of institutions and elected majorities, convinced that they alone represented the nation’s true identity and interests. This force proved to be durable; parliamentary life had scarcely revived in 1922 when Mussolini’s accession – overwhelmingly supported by the chamber – subverted and then destroyed Italy’s liberal institutions. In short, the events of spring 1915 struck a blow from which the country would not recover for 30 years.
Early in 1914, Prime Minister Giolitti resigned when part of his coalition crumbled away. Still the most powerful leader in parliament, he persuaded the King to replace him with Antonio Salandra, a lawyer from a rich landowning family in Puglia. Giolitti meant Salandra to be a stopgap while he reshuffled the pack of his actual and potential supporters. His legendary skill at manipulating the blocs of deputies into viable majorities gave every reason to expect his swift return to power. Yet the lawyer from Puglia was more resolute and devious than Giolitti realised.
The constitution gave the monarch overarching power. He appointed and dismissed government ministers; summoned and dissolved parliament; retained ultimate authority over foreign policy; and commanded the armed forces. He could issue decrees with the force of law, and declare war without consulting parliament. But Victor Emanuel III was reluctant to wield this power. Very short in stature and ill-favoured, he did not cut a regal or martial figure. One of his cruel nicknames was sciaboletta, or ‘little sabre’; he could not wear a full-length sword, and cartoonists drew the tip of his scabbard resting on a little trolley. When the war started, he wanted to cut the figure of a soldier king, but really preferred coin-collecting and photography. One close observer thought he was ‘too modern’; in ordinary life he would have been a republican or socialist by temperament, for he had little faith in the future of the monarchy. Insecure and naïve, he was easily led by forceful personalities. Making matters worse, he was in a nervous depression in 1914, precipitated by fear of losing his adored wife’s love. Rumour had it that he was considering abdication.
His views on the national question were moderate, like Giolitti’s; he thought Italy should have part of the south Tyrol and Friuli as far as the River Isonzo, but not Bolzano or Gorizia, let alone Trieste. He would probably have accepted a peaceful solution with Austria if Salandra had not panicked him into believing that the alternative to war was revolution. The real revolution was Salandra’s own.
When the Habsburg heir was assassinated in Bosnia at the end of June, Salandra was distracted by the aftermath of workers’ protests, known as ‘red week’, in which strikers paralysed most of Italy’s cities and were attacked by troops and police. His foreign minister, Antonio di San Giuliano, was a Sicilian aristocrat who felt little hostility to Austria. He knew Giolitti had warned the Austrians that Italy would not support an attack on Serbia, something that looked increasingly likely as Vienna blamed Belgrade for the assassination. Neither Austria nor Germany involved their ally in their summits. Italy was not invited to the all-important talks at Potsdam on 5 July, when Kaiser Wilhelm gave Vienna the fatal ‘blank cheque’, promising to back any action against Serbia. When they prepared an ultimatum to Belgrade, setting conditions intended to be unacceptable, they kept the text secret from Italy. This violated the letter of the Triple Alliance.
San Giuliano told Vienna on 10 July that Italy would expect all of Italian-speaking south Tyrol as ‘compensation’ for the slightest Austrian gain in the Balkans. Although they ignored the warning, the Central Powers were confident of getting Italian support. Inside the bubble of their belligerence, the élites in Vienna and Berlin missed a crucial change in Italy during July: the opinion-making classes ceased to accept the idea of fighting alongside Germany and Austria. Several factors encouraged wishful thinking. San Giuliano’s ambassadors in Berlin and Vienna exaggerated their government’s loyalty to the Alliance. The coincidental call-up of three Italian classes during July was probably misinterpreted. The German general staff did not understand that their opposite numbers in Italy were under civilian control, so may have overrated the pledge by Italy’s new chief of the general staff, General Luigi Cadorna, to respect the army’s existing commitments. This mightily reassured the Germans, because Cadorna’s predecessor, General Pollio, had been a zealot for the Alliance. He even wanted the three allied armies to agree on joint operations and planning, and called on the Allies to ‘act as a single state’ – a goal none of them would dream of embracing.
In 1912, the demands of the Libyan campaign led Pollio to rescind Italy’s old commitment to send six corps and three cavalry divisions to Germany if France attacked. A year later he partly restored the pledge, offering two corps. The following April, he stunned the German attaché in Rome by raising the commitment to three corps. This force, he said, would tie down as many French troops as possible while German forces were engaged further north. Then he mused whether Italy should send a separate force to help Vienna, if Serbia attacked Austria when France (perhaps backed by Russia) attacked Germany. While the attaché reeled at the thought
of Italian troops fighting for the Habsburg empire, Pollio added an even more heretical thought. ‘Is it not more logical for the Alliance to discard false humanitarian sentiment, and start a war which will be imposed on us anyway?’ Field Marshal Moltke and General Conrad von Hötzendorf, Pollio’s opposite numbers in Berlin and Vienna, could not have expressed the Central Powers’ catastrophic fatalism more pithily.
‘I almost fell off my seat,’ reported the attaché. ‘How times have changed!’ He wondered if Pollio was too good to be true; maybe he was really angling for Trento and Trieste? But there was no ulterior motive. Giolitti and Salandra might also have fallen off their seats if they had been in the room. Whether Pollio had cleared his proposals with the minister of war – his superior in peacetime – is unclear. The wretched communications between the government and general staff would not improve under his successor.
In addition to the usual veneration of Prussia, Pollio had married an Austrian countess. There was even something Viennese about the man himself: handsome, charming, cultured, the author of well-received military histories. He was no genius; his plan to occupy Libya in 1911 took no account of the Arab population, and assumed the Turkish garrison would head for home rather than retreat to the trackless interior. These were grievous mistakes; the Libyan campaign cost almost 8,000 casualties and soaked up half the gross domestic product that year, and not much less in 1912. Yet he had a penetrating and unorthodox mind. Immune to anti-Habsburg feeling, he believed the Alliance was in Italy’s best interest and wanted it to work. Moltke had assured Conrad, whose suspicion of Italians matched his loathing of Serbs, that Pollio should be trusted. Even so, they chose not to inform him fully about Germany’s plans for a lightning strike against France and Russia.