Italian front (World War I)
| Italian front | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the European theatre of World War I | |||||||||
Clockwise from top left: Italian soldiers listening to their general's speech; Austro-Hungarian trench on the Isonzo; Italian trench on the Piave; Austro-Hungarian trench in the Alps | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
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Italy United Kingdom France United States |
Austria-Hungary Germany | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
|
Luigi Cadorna Armando Diaz Rudolph Lambart Jean César Graziani |
Conrad von Hötzendorf Arz von Straußenburg Archduke Eugen Svetozar Boroević Otto von Below | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
|
Italy 1915: up to 58 divisions United Kingdom 1917: 3 divisions France 1918: 2 divisions Czechoslovak Legion 1918: 5 regiments Romanian Legion 1918: 3 regiments United States 1918: 1,200 in one regiment |
Austria-Hungary 1915: up to 61 divisions German Empire 1917: 5 divisions | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
|
1,832,639: 246,133 killed 946,640 wounded 70,656 missing 569,210 captured 6,700: 1,057 killed 4,971 wounded 670 missing/captured 2,872: 480 killed (700 died indirectly) 2,302 wounded Unknown captured |
1,400,000 – 2,300,000: 155,350–364,000 killed 560,863–1,086,000 wounded 175,041 missing 477,024–653,000 captured Unknown | ||||||||
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 along the border between the Kingdom of Italy and Austria-Hungary from 1915 to 1918. Following secret promises made by the Entente in the 1915 Treaty of London, the Kingdom of Italy entered the war on the Entente side, aiming to annex the Austrian Littoral, northern Dalmatia and the territories of present-day Trentino and South Tyrol. 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 Kingdom of Italy and Austro-Hungarian refugee camps.
Military operations came to an end in 1918 with Italian victory and the capture of Trento and Trieste by the Royal Italian Army. Austria-Hungary disintegrated due to military defeats and subsequent turmoils caused by pacifists and separatists. All military operations on the front came to an end with the entry into force of the armistice of Villa Giusti on 4 November 1918. 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, 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.