PARIS 1919: ITALY POSITION PAPER

War Experience

The conflict was a tremendous strain for a society already divided between a prosperous, industrializing north and an agrarian, tradition-bound, and less affluent south. The great promise of genuine unification of the 1860s remained elusive. Italy’s economy had grown only slowly, and Italy’s brief forays into foreign affairs had been quite embarrassing, and in the case of its defeat by the Ethiopians at Aduwa in 1896, downright humiliating.

When the First War broke out, Italy was allied to its traditional enemy Austria-Hungary as well as to Germany. Under the terms of the Triple Alliance, however, Italy was only obliged to defend its allies if they were attacked first. The Italians used the fact that Austria-Hungary had declared on Serbia as a reason to remain neutral. In any event, at that early stage, little enthusiasm was present among Italians for entering a conflict that many believed had little to do with their nation’s interest. As the war dragged on, however, an increasing number of liberals, republicans, socialists and nationalists, certainly not mutually exclusive, began arguing for intervention on the Allied side. By 1915, when negotiations with the Allies commenced in this regard, the latter appeared to be doing quite well. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, the Allies were prepared to offer Italy a better deal than the Central Powers. First and foremost, Italy coveted Austro-Hungarian territory. The Allies, for their part, were anxious to break the deadlock of the Western Front by attacking the enemy elsewhere. In addition, Italy’s entry would shift the naval balance in the Mediterranean decisively in their favor, and an attack by the Italian military against Austria-Hungary promised to inflict severe damage on the weaker partner among the Central Powers. The subsequent Treaty of London, signed in April of that year, provided for the Italian seizure of territory in order to secure its northeastern border, which Austria-Hungary had menaced since the country’s birth: Trieste, southern Tyrol, and northern Dalmatia, for example. The British, French, and Russians, however, promised even more: the port of Vlore in Albania as well as a protectorate over central Albania, the Dodecanese islands along the coast of Asia Minor, and even shares of the Ottoman Empire if it disappeared. With the seizure of the latter land, Italy would therefore achieve the same rights as Britain and France in the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea. In return for these territorial gains, Italy promised to enter the war within a month’s time, which it subsequently did in May, 1915, even though the majority of Italians probably still favored neutrality at that point.

As the war ended, Italy already took steps to not only secure the lands to which it felt entitled according to the Treaty of London, but any areas it saw necessary for its own future security as well. Italian armies, therefore, moved to occupy all territory that their nation had been promised around the Adriatic. Fearing the Croats and Slovenes as enemies who had fought loyally for Austria-Hungary, and who would probably do so again given the chance, Italian forces moved to occupy Croatia and Slovenia. Approved in December 1918, the Italian military had actually drawn up plans to destroy Yugoslavia and cement Italian control over the eastern side of the Adriatic by stirring up conflict

1 among the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and by exacerbating class tensions between peasants and their landlords. The Italian navy pointed out that the territorial gains were necessary, for the western side of the Adriatic had few harbors and no natural defense, while an advanced barrier of reefs and islands protected the other side. The navy indicated that, on the east, the sea was clear and deep, while in the west, mines could be used only with difficulty, and the waters were muddy and shallow, conditions making the Italian coastline particularly vulnerable to submarine weapons.

Ultimately, Italy paid dearly for its participation in the conflict. The poorest of the Great Powers, Italy spent money it did not have to a greater degree than the other belligerents. Wartime inflation was higher than in any country except Russia. By 1919, it owed the equivalent of $700 million. The costs of the war, however, were not just material. On the Austro-Hungarian front, Italian soldiers, badly led and ill equipped, had essentially been slaughtered as they fought uphill into the Alps. Indeed, the army collapsed at Caporetto in 1917. By 1918, over half a million men had died and as many more were seriously wounded. Many Italians, angered at what they considered an inept military leadership and political system, wondered whether such sacrifices had been simply in vain.

Paris Conference Expectations

Considering Italian expectations as well as losses, Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando badly needed a triumph, or at least the appearance of one, in Paris. First off, the Italians wanted what they had been promised by the Allies during the war. Nationalists, however, harnessed arguments for securing territory elsewhere. They argued, for example, that Italy could not simply leave scattered communities of Italians to the mercies of the Slavs. In addition, they eagerly sought Fiume, the so-called “jewel of the Adriatic.” Although Slavs slightly outnumbered Italians in this small port at the head of the Adriatic, the latter claimed that they needed to control it in order maintain the commerce of Trieste. Italian colonialists wished to erase the “year of shame” of 1896 with conquest, believing that their nation required exclusive influence over Ethiopia. In order to solidify Italy’s control over the routes from the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean and Ethiopia, Britain could add its share of Somalia to the piece already in Italian hands and hand over the northeast part of Kenya. France should relinquish its tiny piece of Somalia as well as the railway form the port of Djibouti into Addis Ababa. Colonialists also yearned for an enlarged Libya taken from British-run Egypt and French possessions. They hoped to perhaps acquire Angola, a Portuguese colony, as well.

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