Re: Remembering 100 years of World War I - Turning Point for Civilizat
Why Italy betrayed Germany???
Gonna try to explain the situation since it is vital, i don't know your education level, but what happened in italy is what brought to life Fascism first and followed by the Nazism.
First it wasn't a betray since the pact was for mutual defence, but as you might know it was Austria that declared war to Serbia in consequence we were liberated from all diplomatic obligation in respect of the central powers.
We were the first to push for the defensive pact, because France was hard pushing and just took Tunisia months before we italians did any move, with time passing Germany become the main supporter for the pact to balance French power ( Take in consideration that Austria,Italy and Germany weren't colonial powers)
Now another thing to take in consideration,
60 years before WW1 we started our indepence wars (even if the correct term would be unification)
We fought against the Austrian-Hungaric For the north of Italy
In the south against the Spanish
For the middle we had to fight with the State of the Church that was defended by the French
The main enemy was the Austrians we fought against them 3 times, 4 times if you include the WW1
The first indepence war we tried to liberate the north of italy but we lost,
For the second war we exchange Nice and the Savoy to France in exchange of military aid, we will win this war liberating part of the north of italy (Venice was still under Austrian control). We fought the battle of Solferino, the biggest battle after Leipzig.
Battle of Solferino - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The third war against them was fought over Venice region, we won but still a lot of italian territory is under the Ausburgic Crown. Here a map of Venice possessions, not taking in account the Aegean and other Mediterranean possessions, this was Venetian core land with the people mainly speaking Italian
Here one in the maximun espansion, while we were fighting the Ottomans and the muslim advance in the Mediterranean
Soo lets get back to WW1, it has already started, Italy was in the middle of a Economic boom, we are in full industrialisation process. So two different parties forms.
1-The Interventionist
2-The non interventionist- Neutral (Benito Mussolini at the beginning was an anti-interventionist)
What was put on the table? Austria promised us Trieste, Istria and the Dalmatian coast, in exchange of staying neutral. Same promise was done to us by UK but in exchange of intervention.
Obviously as you can imagine the Austrian propose is the best one, no one dies and we get our old territory, we keep going with the industrialisation while selling to both of the parties. But this proposal isn't well viewed by Austrian high spheres, and it is a mere illusion since if the central powers defeatFrance and UK nothing would have stopped them to get back what the Austrian lost 60 years before. So we had no choice than to enter in the war against Austria.
So we enter in war against the central powers in the norther region of italy, we mobilised 5 million soldiers against the 8 millions from the central power, we won our conflict on our side when the 28 october the Austrian ask for peace(signed on the 1 november) meanwhile French front will capitulate on the 7 november.
We loose 3,49% of our population against
the 2.2% of UK
the 4,39% of France
the 4,29% of Germany
the 4.00% of Austria
Plus we dot fight in the plains as in French front or Russian one, Italians and Austrians fights on the Alps, we don't charge in plain terrain we have to charge in mountains, uphill with the Austrian or italian (depending who is advancing) having the high position, and if the others suffered the cold in the winter imagine this soldiers with ww1 equipment at 2000mts.
What we get from all of this sacrifice? Almost nothing, British decide to create Yugoslavia (amazing choice again, we saw the result in the balkan wars), and give them the territories promised to italy, this create a big resentment in the Army, we call it the mutilated victory that will create the fascism from which Hitler will get inspired (so say thanks to the english)
The Red line is what we were promised and green one is what we got. Yellow is the actual one (plus after ww2 croatians to affirm their territory carry this
Foibe killings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
P.S. And not only we didn't get what we were promised we also have to hear constantly "why italy betrayed Germany" or in some cases it is like austrian and italians haven't fought at all ww1, US intervention has a lot more weight than us, even if their contribution was almost null. Imagine what would have happened if that 8 millions after Russian capitulation would have reinforced the French front.