672. The First World War: Italy’s Doomed Campaign (Part 2)

20:00Dominic Sandbrook:That they believe they have a kind of divinely appointed mission to complete the unification of the nation. And if that involves taking large parts of other people's countries and stabbing them in the back, so much the better. Yeah. So there's now a long, complicated diplomatic dance. In January 1915, Salandra sends a message to Vienna, and he says, I'd like you to give us Trento, the Trentino, this sort of area in the north, and South Tyrol. We'd like a bit of Slovenia, please, and we'd like Trieste to be neutral and autonomous. The Austrians really like Trieste because it's their one big port.

20:37Dominic Sandbrook:They don't want to give that away. And the Austrians say, I'm not going to give you all that. what? You were an ally only recently. We're not going to give you large pits of our empire. Now, Solandra expects that to happen. And in fact, he doesn't mind because he's already eyeing up the Adriatic coast.

20:54Tom Holland:Are the Austrians kind of alerted by this, to the possibility that they might jump ship?

20:59Dominic Sandbrook:Yes, they definitely are. They can sort of feel it coming, but they're not going to buy off the Italians by giving them big chunks of their empire. I'm just wondering if they're starting to beef up their defences. Yeah, they are. But of course, don't forget, in this period of time, this is the point that we talked about in our very first First World War series. But the Russians are coming, aren't they? The Russians are coming. And Tom, you will recall there's the tremendous battle for the city of Pujimush.

21:26Tom Holland:Of course. How could I forget?

21:28Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah. Where? Where was it? The fortress city of Pujimush. Great to have that back on the show. So late February 1915, Solandra's envoys present a secret deal to the Allies in London. They say, we'll enter the war on the Allied side, and in return, here is our shopping list. We'd like the South Tyrol, we'd like Trentino, we'd like Trieste and Gorizia. We'd like Istria, now Croatia. We'd like Dalmatia, so that's the coast of Croatia, and the islands. We'd like a little bit of Albania. We'd ideally like the Dodecanese islands of Rhodes, Kos, Patmos, and so on. And we'd like 50 million pounds to pay for the war.

22:06Dominic Sandbrook:Now, the Germans have got wind of this. they persuade the austrians to make a generous counteroffer at this point the austrians are actually saying to them okay we'll give you south tyrol we'll give you a bit of western slovenia we will make trieste autonomous we can even let you have a little bit of albania at this point the italians are feeling very greedy and they don't want to accept the austrian offer and they say to the allies we'd really like to get into bed with you please if you give us all this

22:31Tom Holland:we'll enter the war and this whole kind of getting into bed with people for money how does this go down with people in London and Paris?

22:40Dominic Sandbrook:Well, I'm sorry to say, Tom, that it reinforces existing stereotypes of Italian behaviour among the policy makers of London and Paris. So when they look at the map, they say, what, you want Dalmatia? There are 18 ,000 Italian speakers in Dalmatia, but half a million Slavs. It seems unreasonable for you to ask for this. How can this be justified? Winston Churchill said that Italy was the harlot of Europe. So Herbert Henry Asquith, the British Prime Minister, of course, a man of the most impeccable moral sexual behaviour. Yeah, very much a friend of the show. He described Italy as voracious, slippery and perfidious.

23:25Dominic Sandbrook:He wrote the excellent line. It is so important to bring Italy in at once, as greedy and slippery as she is, that we ought not to be too precise in haggling over this or that. Now, of course, this will create great problems in the future when the Italians feel they've been cheated. Because at this point, basically, the Allies say, fine, you can have everything you want. Yeah, we'll give you everything. You can have loads of Croatia. You can have loads of Slovenia. You can actually rule a million Germans and Slavs, if you like, if you really want to that badly. And actually, do you know what? If the Ottoman Empire falls apart, you can have that as well.

23:58Dominic Sandbrook:You can have a bit of Turkey as well. Go for it. I think it's fair to say they don't really mean it. They're just promising anything. And so Italy formally repudiates the Triple Alliance. So now we're in May. And the stage ought to be set for war, but there is a problem. First of all, Victor Emmanuel III, with his coins and his very short stature and whatnot, he does not really want the war. He doesn't like the idea of war at all. More importantly, the Italian people don't really want a war. So Salandra asks his regional governors, what do ordinary people think? And the governors come back and they say, actually most people say they don't want to fight.

24:36Dominic Sandbrook:They've had a look at the First World War and they think it's possibly not brilliant. It's probably best to sit this one out. All that gas and rats and mud and stuff. Right. And in the south, in the poorer part of the country, people are really against it. So the governor of Naples says 90 % of people in the city, including all the social classes, hate the thought of war. and basically across the board the people who want war are intellectuals poets bad people tom if they're nothing they don't know how on earth is the italian government going to rouse the nation for war and the answer is by enlisting the most celebrated and colorful and controversial italian of his generation and this is this bloke we began with gabriele d 'annunzio so d 'annunzio we did a whole episode on him back in 2022 called The First Fascist with his biographer Lucy Hughes Hallett.

25:28Dominic Sandbrook:Oh yeah, The Pike. Brilliant book. Yes. Now, Danunzio, for those people who haven't heard that episode, was the most famous Italian in the world at this point. He's a playwright and a poet. He's a dandy. He's a decadent. He's always in the gossip columns. He's a proper celebrity.

25:47Tom Holland:I mean, we've been talking about moustaches. yeah he has a brilliant moustache but it's not a kind of military moustache is it it's a kind of the excitement of the new faintly fascist flamboyant let's fly on a plane kind of a

26:01Dominic Sandbrook:moustache exactly the weird thing about him is everyone says he's this sort of tremendous um he's always in and out of aristocratic women's bedrooms and stuff he's a very short man he's got no hair at all he's extremely ugly people always comment on how terrible his teeth are and he's so narcissistic and egotistical that he's practically sociopathic. Gives us all hope. His life is strewn with wreckage. So basically bad debts, broken homes, abandoned children. He's just a terrible, terrible person. But because he writes, I mean, the stuff when you actually read it, it's dated really badly. It's so lush and ornate and stuff.

26:39Tom Holland:But he's very highly rated, isn't he? I mean, Joyce thinks he's great. Proust thinks he's great. I mean, they love him.

26:45Dominic Sandbrook:People think he's a genius. People think he's one of the authentic literary geniuses of the early 20th century. He's gone off to Paris to escape his creditors, but people adore him, and women in particular can't get enough of him. Now, D 'Annunzio is an ultra-nationalist. D 'Annunzio has been writing about glory, national and personal, since he was a little boy. Ever since the 1880s, he's been pouring out newspaper articles, wittering on about the army and the navy and the air force, isn't it?

27:13Tom Holland:Because he's very, very keen on planes. He never learns to fly, but he's obsessed by air power.

27:19Dominic Sandbrook:He is. He's very much of that kind of futurist mentality where everything is about new technology and the excitement of war and all of this.

27:26Tom Holland:Although he is quite keen on kind of ancient dreams of empire as well, isn't he?

27:29Dominic Sandbrook:He is. It's the sort of fusion of the two. Yeah.

27:31Tom Holland:So that's how he's the proto-fascist.

27:33Dominic Sandbrook:Quite fascistic. He was very keen on conquering Libya in 1911. He's been talking for ages. Let's have an empire in the Balkans. He was very keen on joining the First World War. and he actually said, I won't come home until we join the war, but I fear that the Italian political class are too weak and we never will. And then in March 1915, he opens a letter in Paris that has been lying around for weeks and is laying unopened. And it's an invitation to come and speak at an event in May just outside Genoa. This is the place from which Garibaldi and his volunteers had sailed to Sicily in 1860 and they're going to inaugurate a monument and they want Donizio to come and give a talk and he thinks well this is it this is a brilliant opportunity to come and preach my warlike message to the Italian people so he gets on a train in Paris on the 3rd of May 1915 he crosses the Italian border for the first time in five years he is met by colossal crowds he's he's a sort of Lucy Hughes Hallett in a book calls him a nationalist messiah it's like the prophet returning to his people massive crowds of sort of poets and intellectuals cheering excitedly your vibe it's like when we arrive in a to do a rest of history tour surely that's the um he gets to genoa massive crowds and he gives the first there'll be a lot of blood-curdling speeches he was the first of the series of mad speeches we shall not let italy be dishonored we shall not let the fatherland perish we shall have a greater italy not by acquisition but by conquest not measured in shame but as the price of blood and glory i mean nobody ever talks more enthusiastically about blood and glory than this bloke next day he goes to the monument to do the unveiling to give the speech and the speech is meant to be all about garibaldi and actually it's just all about war and how brilliant war is he ends with this peroration that even though i've you know read it many times and written about it in my kid's book about the first world war i still actually find shocking every time I look at it because it's a parody of the Sermon on the Mount in favor of fighting and killing.

29:41Dominic Sandbrook:Blessed are the 20-year-olds, pure of mind, well-tempered in body with courageous mothers. Blessed are the young who hunger and thirst for glory, for they should be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall wipe away a splendid flow of blood and bind up their shining wounds. Blessed are they who return with victories, for they shall see the new face of Rome and all this.

30:04Tom Holland:And people complain, don't they? And he kind of basically says, you know, if it's wrong to incite people to violence, then so be it. I plead guilty. Brilliant. Let's have more of it.

30:17Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. He does. And one of the men in his audience that day is a young journalist with a very dark future. And this is a young man, 33 years old, called Benito Mussolini. And Mussolini had been an editor of the socialist newspaper Avanti. He is absolutely typical of this intellectual class. He's read Marx and Engels, Mussolini. He's a big fan of Italian futurist poetry. Like D 'Annunzio, he's obsessed with Nietzsche, the sort of Darwinian idea of struggle and... Will to power. The will to power. Hates George Eliot. Does Mussolini hate George Eliot?

30:51Tom Holland:Yeah, despises her.

30:53Dominic Sandbrook:Wow, why? Doesn't like Middlemarch.

30:55Tom Holland:He thinks that she's very ostentatiously given up Christianity, but she's still completely Christian and she's an idiot because she hasn't realized that's a problem

31:04Dominic Sandbrook:he's always going on about it crikey well Mussolini um had always been a non-interventionist he'd been opposed to Italy's adventures in Africa he said he didn't want to join the first world war but then in October 1914 he sort of sensed the way the wind was blowing and he decided to completely change his mind I mean I guess that's that's the mark of a good journalist right I suppose yes I suppose that's one way of looking at it but i didn't think we'd be into rehabilitating mussolini well i'm not

31:31Tom Holland:his journalistic acumen i mean newspapers have been known to kind of jump on bandwagons before

31:36Dominic Sandbrook:they have indeed so he founds a new newspaper and he sets up his own political movement mussolini arguing for war with some french and british allied funding by the way and he calls it the leagues of revolutionary action the fasci d 'accioni revolutionaria fasci meaning kind of bands or leagues. And it's from that, of course, that we get the word fascism. Anyway, at this point, Mussolini is just in the crowd. The star is Denunzio. And Denunzio gives these impassioned speeches to vast crowds. He gets a train to Rome. He arrives in Rome, 100 ,000 people are waiting, massive crush, massive crowds, gives these speeches again.

32:15Dominic Sandbrook:Now, he's starting to denounce what he sees as the traitors, the odour of treachery that is beginning to stifle us. And by the traitors, he means the politicians who might actually block the attempt to get into war. Because right now, politics in Rome is very delicately poised. Because the same day he arrives, the 12th of May, the Italian parliament opens for a new session. And the stakes are very high. Salandra has done this deal with the Allies, but he doesn't have a majority. And Rome is awash with rumours that he will fall from power and he will be replaced by the liberal leader, who is a man called Giovanni Giulitti.

32:51Dominic Sandbrook:Gialitti has been prime minister four times already, and he does not want to enter the war. So he's not a Denunzio fan. He's not a Denunzio fan. I think it would have been a lot better if Gialitti had become prime minister and Italy hadn't entered the war. Anyway, the next day, the 13th, Solandra pulls off a great political coup, a great bit of political theatre. He unexpectedly resigns along with his whole cabinet. And he's basically daring the king to appoint Gialitti as prime minister and Gialitti to accept the job. and he's betting that they will be put off by the mood on the streets these huge crowds are pouring through the streets of rome shouting death to geolity up with the war all this thing and tonuncio is going around the city giving these bonkers speeches the treachery is blatant we don't only breathe in its horrid stench we feel its appalling weight i tell you there is treason here in rome we're being sold like a herd of diseased cattle and tonuncio again a prefiguring of fascism he says to the crowds form squads lie in wait seize them by which he means giolity and the anti-war politicians capture them and all this didn't um mussolini call him the john the baptist of fascism yes he did yeah well he absolutely is the john the baptist of fascism if denuncio had been left to his own devices he would have been the john the baptist and the jesus

34:07Tom Holland:of fascism but he is outsmarted by mussolini he goes on to set up um his uh kind of mad regime in Fiume, doesn't he, after the war?

34:17Dominic Sandbrook:He does, which is a massive prefiguring of Mussolini, actually, where he calls himself the Duce. So anyway, he's giving these crazy speeches. Blood will flow, but blood will be blessed, all this kind of thing. And the crowd's getting more and more impassioned. Gio Litti, the anti-war politician, goes to see the king, and he says, I can't take office against this backdrop. There'll be a nationalist rebellion. There could be civil war. I don't want to do it. and so on the 16th the king reinstates salandra as prime minister and the king says to parliament i think you're just going to have to vote for the war and i'll abdicate if you don't because the king has lost his nerve himself as another nationalist journalist puts it in his newspaper either parliament will prostitute the sacred trembling body of the nation to the foreigner i mean that rhetoric is so kind of 1910s or the nation will overthrow parliament overturning the benches of the money lenders purifying the dens of the pimps and pandas with iron and fire i mean

35:17Tom Holland:it is amazing the kind of the twisting of language from the new testament to promote war yeah i know

35:25Dominic Sandbrook:i know it's extraordinary isn't it i mean of all these deranged speeches probably i mean i think this is one of the worst this is denuncio he goes to the capitoline hill where as you said they've been building that giant sort of wedding cake this sort of symbol of italian nationalism and he whips his crowd in this giant crowd into a frenzy he says the old order must be totally destroyed must cast aside the politicians like rotten meat sweep away all the filth into the sewer with all that is vile he says italy will be reborn in fire he he says again and again he calls it the holocaust is one of denuncio's favorite words he says let's drive out the anti-war politicians yeah they're not just wrong they are sick they're diseased we should drive them out of politics forever make lists prescribe them be pitiless like sulla or the second triumvirate right then at the end i mean this is also it feels very roman he takes out a sword that had belonged to an agaribald his lieutenants and he says Italy will be born again in blood I take the sword and draw it I press my lips to the naked blade I abandon my soul to delirium now that is what you call a far-right speech that is a far-right speech exactly the crowd goes berserk they kind of rampage through the streets of Rome hundreds of people are arrested but obviously the politicians are never going to stand up to this kind of pressure.

36:52Dominic Sandbrook:And on the 20th of May, Italy's parliament votes for war.

36:57Tom Holland:So the cliche of 1914 is that the crowds in London and Berlin and whatever are terribly enthusiastic and baying for blood, which as we saw when we covered this, was a myth. It's ironic that Rome seems to be the one capital where there is incredible enthusiasm. and this is the one capital that actually had the chance of staying out of the war.

37:22Dominic Sandbrook:It is ironic. I suppose it's a little bit misleading. The people in the streets in Rome that day, I don't know if there's research being done how you would even do it on their social background or whatever. I would guess a lot of these people are young students. They're excited. It's a day out. I think everything we know of Italians who went to the front is that they didn't know what they were fighting for. They were completely baffled and they didn't like it, But they were kind of grudgingly went along because they thought they were fighting defense of their native country. The classic thing.

37:53Tom Holland:Right. I'm not I'm not disputing that. I mean, that's clearly the case that the vast majority of people in Italy don't want it. But it is amazing that the kind of the the stereotype of how the First World War breaks out, which is not true. Capitals full of bang is true in Rome.

38:08Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, it is. I mean, I wouldn't have fancied being one of them. I mean, it would be extraordinary to see it, I suppose. this sort of impassioned feverish delirious atmosphere uh really really extraordinary and as you say there isn't really anything quite like it and in any of the other european capitals when the war breaks out so as i said on the 20th of may it's this parliament votes for war and that evening denuncio gives yet another insane speech the honor of the fatherland he says is saved our troops will march on the river isonzo which is in slovenia and we will turn it red with barbarian blood and two days later at the railway station in rome the triumphant prime minister salandra publicly embraces his supreme military commander general codorna before codorna gets on his train to the cheers of the crowds to head north to the war it's a beautiful day the people are crying they're so excited they're crying with joy and there'll be plenty more crying to come and just as denunzio had predicted the river isonzo will indeed run red with blood but whose blood dominic but whose blood exactly because if salandra and denunzio think this is going to be a triumphant story of italian glory and italian victory they are in for a heck of a shock well

39:29Tom Holland:we will find out just how big a shock after a break

39:36Tom Holland:this episode is brought to you by the times and by the sunday times now if there is one thing that history and indeed bob dylan teaches us it is that the times they are always a changing and dominic i guess we're living in changing times now what with america attacking iran and oil crises so do you think that the lessons of that for keir starmer are rosy so looking at the career of edward heath for instance who was prime minister in the previous

40:04Dominic Sandbrook:oil crisis it didn't work out brilliantly for ted heath to be honest actually he and kia starmer i think are quite similar they're from relatively humble backgrounds and there's a slight sense of floundering which they have in common but their bigger point is you never really know what's around the corner do you because when you look at history the future is always pretty uncertain

40:20Tom Holland:but you know the facts they shouldn't be uncertain and that of course is where the times and the Sunday Times, come in.

40:28Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, and I would say that understanding the news is absolutely vital when you're navigating an increasingly uncertain and unpredictable world. So to subscribe to The Times and The Sunday Times, visit thetimes.com.

40:49Tom Holland:Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Rest is History. It is the 23rd of May, 1915 and in Vienna Italy's ambassador has turned up to tell the Austrian government that from midnight a state of war will exist between their two countries the ambassador does this with no enthusiasm whatsoever in fact he's absolutely appalled isn't he he privately thinks that the Italians have been and I quote swinish and faithless but he's an ambassador so he has to do his master's bidding. And meanwhile, you mentioned General Cardona, General Luigi Cardona. He's headed off from Rome and he has arrived at what are going to be his headquarters in the palace of the Archbishop in Udine in northern Italy.

41:40Tom Holland:He's not going to be a ringing success, is he, in the forthcoming campaign? It's a spoiler. I mean, again, we've been talking about these stereotypes that we have of the First World war and how how kind of terrible the generals on both sides are on the western front and we were talking in the previous episode that's not entirely fair kadorna i mean he kind of is the stereotype of a hopeless general who just keeps hurling his troops forwards and forwards and forwards

42:06Dominic Sandbrook:no matter how often they get gunned down a dead right you're dead right he's he ticks every box he's got an absolutely colossal mustache oh do you think i looked at him i thought it was

42:17Tom Holland:not quite as big as it could be. Really?

42:20Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, I was disappointed. I think it's because you've been brutalized and desensitized. By the Russians' moustaches. Yeah, of like Paul von, what's it, General von Renkamp's moustache or whatever. These colossal moustaches. And I think actually if you were to see Cadorna's moustache in the wild, as it were. Yeah, probably. If a gold hanger producer turned out with that moustache. Oh, for sure.

42:41Tom Holland:You'd raise an eyebrow. For sure. I mean, by the standards of Dom Johnson's Oswald Mosley moustache. yes it's much larger than that yeah but it's not as big as a russian general on the eastern front

42:53Dominic Sandbrook:in 1914 that's all i'm saying no one will know what any of this means but that's fine let's just explain who kadorna is and where he comes from he's from turin he was born in 1850 he's a very driven and prickly man um mark thompson his brilliant book the white war says he's touchy unforgiving and unsociable with a reputation for ferocious discipline and inflexibility These are not things that massively endear him to us. Disastrously for his men, Cadorna is obsessed by this idea of what he calls irresistible forward movement in battle. He's written only one thing in his life. And this is a pamphlet entitled Frontal Attack and Tactical Training, which he published in 1898.

43:38Dominic Sandbrook:And basically, because he's published this, he will never back down from the ideas within it.

43:44Tom Holland:So he has not absorbed the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War.

43:49Dominic Sandbrook:Of any recent war. Or indeed of the events on the Western Front. Not at all. So his plan is incredibly reckless. He says the left flank of our army will go through the Alps and it'll capture the Alpine passes leading to Austria. The right flank of the army will capture Trieste and then Ljubljana and then Zagreb. now what he's not taking into account is italy's army is is fairly useless to be completely frank it's half the size of the armies of france and germany most of the ordinary italian soldiers can't read and write they can barely understand each other's dialects and they don't have enough guns they don't have enough artillery however codorna is saying to his political bosses with With a fair wind, we will reach, quote, the heart of the Habsburg monarchy, which is to say Vienna, by the autumn.

44:41Dominic Sandbrook:We'll be there. We will genuinely be there and done and dusted by Christmas. I mean, an absolutely ridiculous thing for him to say. The campaign starts badly, as you might expect, and it gets worse, because the Italian railways aren't really up to it. The full mobilisation that was meant to take three weeks goes on for more than six weeks. We said that the Austrians are distracted by fighting Russia in the east. So this was Italy's moment. Italy actually outnumbered the Austrians four to one on their kind of common frontier. But because they're so slow and disorganized, they don't exploit their advantage at all.

45:15Tom Holland:I mean, let's cheer the Austrians up who've been completely useless so far in the war, haven't they? To find that they've got an enemy who are even worse than them.

45:22Dominic Sandbrook:We're going to see the Austrians in a very different light in today's episode. The Austrians will appear to be the souls of sort of military competence. Martial competence. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So Codona's initial target, he says, well, the first thing we'll do is we will cross the river Soča or Isonzo. So Soča in Slovenian, Isonzo in Italian, which goes through the valleys of western Slovenia, quite close to the border. I was actually there last summer, this part of the world. It's very beautiful, isn't it, Slovenia? Incredibly beautiful.

45:55Tom Holland:Yeah.

45:55Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, a brilliant place. I should be doing an advert for the Slovenian Tourist Board.

45:59Tom Holland:Well, if the Slovenian tourist board are listening, I would love to go. I've always wanted to go. I keep kind of mapping out, you know, fortnights when I could go and I never do.

46:07Dominic Sandbrook:It's gorgeous. And they've turned the whole thing basically into a First World War sort of tourist attraction. So there are military cemeteries. There's amazing like trench networks and forts. You can roam around to your heart's content. It's a lot better than the Western Front because it's much more beautiful. It's brilliant, actually. I really recommend it. And everything is really lovely.

46:28Tom Holland:nice weather nice people great but a very different scene back in 1915 right yes not if

46:36Dominic Sandbrook:you're italian in 1915 so basically the italians were meant to cross this river straight away the austrians blew up the bridges took the italians ages to get across by the time they get across the austrians are dug in on the mountains above and this will be the focus of the campaign for the next two years. So the valley of this river, the Socho or the Isonzo, and above it, the jagged kind of limestone highlands of what is called the Karst or the Karso. I mean, that's what you want to see when you are launching a full frontal attack. A jagged limestone highland. Yeah. Oh, God. Last episode, we did the Western Front and you probably thought that sounded bad with all the mud and the lice and stuff.

47:16Dominic Sandbrook:But at least it's flat. Yeah. This is much worse, much worse. So So basically, in the summer, it is ridiculously hot. It's like the sun blazing down as you stagger up these kind of limestone hills. In the winter, it's ridiculously cold, the wind whipping in off the Adriatic or whatever. Because it's limestone, you can't really dig proper trenches. So you can dig a sort of little gully and lie down in this gully. and when bullets and shells hit the ground they send up showers of fragments yeah limestone shards in your eye that's not what you want well these shards would kill people half a mile away oh god yeah if you're standing with your back to what's going on half a mile away this shard will hit you

48:01Tom Holland:in the back of the head and that's the end of you do you remember in the previous series i asked why the um why the people didn't try and outflank the bottom of the western front by invading switzerland yes and i guess that this is the explanation yeah don't go through mountains no

48:14Dominic Sandbrook:so for the first few weeks the italians go extremely slowly they capture only a few villages and a few small towns they lose 20 000 men in the first few weeks they show absolutely no sign of having any conception of how they're going to take on machine guns and barbed wire and all this kind of thing and codona general codona with his nice mustache and whatnot he looks at this and he says well i'm obviously not going to rethink my tactics because my tactics are excellent what i should do is just start sacking generals so in two years he launches what mark thompson calls a rolling purge of his officers in two years he sacks 217 generals 255 colonels and 355 battalion commanders seems a lot to me especially with this already disorganized army i mean 217 generals that's a A lot of generals.

49:07Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, I feel the Italians probably have too many generals.

49:10Tom Holland:Yeah, it's like the Royal Navy now with about 700 admirals and three ships.

49:14Dominic Sandbrook:It's kind of on brand, though, for the Italians to have loads of generals, though, isn't it? Yeah. There's a lot of gold braid, a lot of nice hats and feathers and stuff, I imagine. Yeah. Now, while the Italians are sacking their generals and basically trudging very slowly up these hills, the Austrians have been moving reinforcements to the front. Now, as we said, people will recall, the Austrians have had an absolutely shocking start to the war. they made an absolute spectacle of themselves against serbia and basically ends up losing to serbia which is insane given that was the point of the whole war then they had a nightmare against russia on the eastern front you will recall a very very fine mustache belonging to france conrad von hutzendorf the austrian supreme commander is he the guy who who is besotted with

49:59Tom Holland:what's her name gina gina that's why he started the war and she he basically starts the first

50:04Dominic Sandbrook:world war just to impress her yes he started the first world was impressed gina von reininghouse who is ironically italian oh i didn't know that yeah remember conrad von herzendorf had wanted to invade everybody had demanded about 6 000 times to attack austria's neighbors before the war finally started by 1915 he's lost his youngest son on the eastern front and he's managed to mislay 800 000 men who've been killed basically the entire pre-war austro-hungarian army but this is the one thing that he gets right the italian campaign is gina impressed must be very

50:40Tom Holland:impressed even though he's fighting the italians her own people i think by this point she's gone native a bit but it's still tragic that the one thing he gets right is against gina's countrymen

50:50Dominic Sandbrook:yeah maybe maybe it's a tragedy there um so what he does is conrad from her stuff he's finally learned the lessons and he says we're not going to attack we're just going to be on the defensive what we have we hold and he sends to defend the river isonzo the most senior south slav officer in the imperial army and dominic whom is he and how do you pronounce his name he is a name to conjure with tom he's general sveta zar boroevic so general boroevic is one of the outstanding generals of the first world war and he is the kind embodiment of austro-hungarian multi-ethnic unity because he was born in Croatia to a Serbian Orthodox family.

51:32Dominic Sandbrook:He joined the army when he was 10, went to cadet school. He was first decorated in the capture of Sarajevo in 1878 in Bosnia. And because he's a South Slav, because he's basically the embodiment of what would become Yugoslavia, he's really invested in this campaign because he's defending Slavic territory. He doesn't want to see the Italians. No. He kind of sees all this. And most of his men, or at least a lot of his men, are Slovenes, Croats, and Bosnians. So they're also fighting for land that feels like theirs. So they're really invested in this. General Paul von Hindenburg, German walrus, he said of the Austro-Hungarians, they fought the Russians with their head, but fought the Italians with their whole soul.

52:16Tom Holland:And I guess that's because they're not actually really Austro-Hungarians, as you said. they are Slavs defending a Slav homeland.

52:26Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. But also Borowievic is a smart guy. Like he's one of the generals who's learned the lessons of the war. He says, okay, what we'll do is we'll get as high as we can. We'll have five lines of barbed wire. Let the Italians come. When they come, wait until they're a hundred yards away. Only start firing then. If they ever break through, don't panic. Keep your positions. I'll move up the reserves. I'll plug the gaps. We'll just stay calm. we'll let them come to us and we'll kill them all. And basically, this is what they do. So the first battle of the Isonzo, as it's called, is launched by the Italians on the 23rd of June, 1915.

53:04Dominic Sandbrook:And think of this river. It's running just inside the border of Slovenia, so to the east of Italy. And the Italians throw in more than 200 ,000 men, which is more than twice as many as the Austrians have got. And the Italians think, well, this will go, this will be great. And actually, what happens? they charge uphill and the austrians open fire with their machine guns and loads and loads of italians are killed straight away so i'll give you an example an account by an italian officer called renato di stolfo and he's describing an attack on a mountain called monte san michele di stolfo is meant to be leading his men into battle with a pistol they've run out of pistols so he only has his sword it starts raining as soon as they set off so they're all completely sodden and waterlogged.

53:50Dominic Sandbrook:They draw their swords, there's a band, they're shouting Savoy, which is their kind of war cry, the house of Savoy. They start to go off uphill. They're all carrying backpacks that are 35 kilograms in weight. What are they taking? Pots, I don't know.

54:09Tom Holland:Pasta. Are they eating pasta by this point? Or isn't that invented by Americans in 1958?

54:15Dominic Sandbrook:1964 yeah invented inst louis missouri but isn't that the way with all italian dishes i gather so that's what i vaguely remember um no but 35 kilograms you know when you check into a

54:28Tom Holland:plane yeah i know and that the maximum is 23 or something i wouldn't want to be charging austrian machine gun placements you know with limestone shards going everywhere you've got the weight

54:39Dominic Sandbrook:of two suitcases, two full suitcases on your back, staggering up this lime. It's raining. Soon the sun's going to come out and then you'll be steaming or whatever. What the hell are they taking? Anyway, they stagger up this hill. Then the Austrians start shooting at them. Most of the officers were killed straight away. The men are all scrambling around on their hands and knees to take cover. And de Stolfo said, in a whirl of death and glory, within a few moments, the epic Garibaldian style of warfare is crushed and consigned to the shadows of history. And basically, there's then another rainstorm which stops the battle, and the Italian survivors sort of stagger back down the hill with their backpacks, and they're back to where they started.

55:21Dominic Sandbrook:And this is the story of the entire first battle of the Isonzo. It takes two weeks. The Italians make about two yards, and they take 15 ,000 casualties. That's the first battle of the Isonzo. And how many are there going to be over the course of the war? There's going to be 11 more of them. You would think if you were General Cadorna, you would say, well, that didn't work. I probably won't try that again. He tries it 11 more times in the next two years or so. Well, he's written his book. He has written his book. But also, while this was happening, he was at a conference with the Allied generals, the British and the French.

56:00Dominic Sandbrook:And they said to him, we want you to, you know, now you've entered the war. We've given you this money and these promises. You need to, you know, produce results. So he feels under pressure. And so less than two weeks later, he launches the second battle of the Isonzo, again in the Socha Valley. Same story, up the hill they go, cut down by Austrian machine guns. And they haven't advanced at all? I mean, barely. I mean, you know, if you get really into the weeds of this, you'll find they've actually captured... A village or something. A village, a hill here, a hill there. But in the grand scheme of things, they've made no progress whatsoever.

56:31Dominic Sandbrook:The sun has come out. It's now the height of summer. There are these amazing accounts from officers in Mark Thompson's book. There's no escaping the heat. Tongues swell, coated with thick saliva. Fingers swell and dangle clumsily from sticky hands. Eyes inflamed, skin like parchment. And he also quotes an Italian officer called Virgilio Bonamore, who kept a diary in the first month of the war. Bonamore says, you know, he describes being in one of these limestone trenches. We talked about the trenches on the Western Front last time. The Italian trenches are awful. They are far worse than anything on the Western Front.

57:05Dominic Sandbrook:Because they can't dig down deep enough, really, for them to be effective. They can't dig down. You can't bury the bodies. Yeah, of course. So the bodies are just hanging around. The stench was unbearable, says Bonamore. We're squatting among our own and enemy corpses. Basically, you can't get very deep. So when the Austrians fire at you, lots of you end up dying. Blokes are being ripped open by shells and whatnot. And he gives us a description of a single day on the Opasota River on the 14th of August. gives you a sense of what it's like so the italians started with an artillery bombardment at three o 'clock in the morning and they set off uphill before they even really started uphill most of them are absolutely exhausted and some of them while they're walking fell asleep while they were walking which seems a bit much the sun finally comes up and they discover that they're on this hillside they're totally exposed no cover they're exposed to the austrian guns the austrians fire at them and kind of rake them with shrapnel but that goes on till midday and then midday their officer says okay charge now they start charging the people who've got the wire cutters are all shot down before they even get to the barbed wire so the rest of the men then are underneath the barbed wire and the austrian machine guns are just firing at them bonamore the dead are in piles on top of each other nearly all the senior officers have fallen and basically they end up huddling for hours together kind of underneath the austrian barbed wire they can't get through it they can't go back they're kind of stuck they all run out of ammo and their captain says i think we should just make a break for it we should try to sneak away and so they start to sneak away the first four men who try to sneak away are all shot straight away actually let's not sneak away this is a really bad idea so they basically just stay there under the austrian wire until darkness comes and then when darkness comes and the Austrians have kind of gone to bed or whatever they managed to stumble down the hill and Bonamore says in his diary what a massacre how many young lives wasted it's raining non-stop and we lie in the bottom of a ravine to spend the night amid the water and the cold and the amazing detail about all this about this these battles that always sticks in my mind it's very unusual in the story of the first world war there are loads of stories about the austrians saying to the italians go back we won't shoot at you you know don't kill yourselves for nothing so here's an example an austrian captain shouting to his machine gunners he says to them what you want to do do you want to kill them all let them be and then he says to the italians stop go back we won't shoot anymore do you want everyone to die loads of accounts of austrians saying italians go back we don't want to massacre you your brave men don't get yourselves killed like this and there's even a story from later in the year the austrians actually stopped firing during a battle and they said to the italians go on yeah enough get your dead and go back down and as the italians were collecting all their dead the austrians came out from behind their machine guns to help them to bring them stretchers and cigarettes and the italians gave them some of their feathers from their plumed hats as nice souvenirs god they're still wearing plumed hats after all they're still wearing their plumed hats i mean what are they thinking So that was the second battle.

1:00:18Dominic Sandbrook:The second battle was a massive bloodbath. The Italians lost 42 ,000 men. The Austrians actually lost more, 50 ,000.

1:00:24Tom Holland:So here is the question. It's been agitating Callum, our producer. Yeah. How come the Austrians actually lost more?

1:00:31Dominic Sandbrook:Because they're outnumbered. And because the Italians, when they finally do get their act together, they're able to overrun some Austrian positions. But they aren't able to do enough of that to swing the tide of the battle. but i mean let's not pretend that the austrians aren't going the austrians are being killed too in large numbers you know the austrians they're not exactly one of europe's great military machines we saw how badly they performed against the russians they are struggling but somehow they're clinging on is the answer right so they are they are they are the massive underdogs here even though

1:01:05Tom Holland:they're at the top of the hill but this slightly recalibrates um the strategy then because it does suggest that that albeit bloodly it is working and if the Austrians are as outnumbered as they seem to be one day it will work one day it would work I mean you can kind of see Cadorna's

1:01:23Dominic Sandbrook:mentality yeah general Cadorna's spin doctor joins us now on the rest of history yeah but it doesn't work though I mean that I would say it doesn't work well we'll

1:01:32Tom Holland:see we'll see I think the fact that the Italians despite all this are losing fewer men than the Austrians does put a slightly different perspective on it but they're always losing fewer men so back in rome salandra the prime minister

1:01:47Dominic Sandbrook:is becoming very frustrated he needs a victory to show the italian public but he also needs a victory to appease the allies so in october general codona agrees to launch a third battle of the isonzo and it starts with a huge bombardment in october the 18th not enough as always to break the Austrian defences or destroyed their barbed wire. The Italians advanced to driving rain. Two weeks. It's really muddy. They don't really get anywhere. And that's that. And at the end of that third battle, the Italians lost maybe 67 ,000 men killed and wounded. But in this case, only 40 ,000 Austrians. So the tide of war is turning.

1:02:28Dominic Sandbrook:Well, now you would think at this point Cadorna would surely change tactics. But no, he looks at the calendar he says well it's probably time for a fourth battle before the end of the year and he's convinced the austrians must be running out of men now and he's not entirely wrong because in some places the italians outnumber the austrians three to one so he launches a fourth battle at this point it's now very cold lots of the italians have got frostbite their feet are so swollen with frostbite they can't put their boots on their hands are all purple and misshapen with the cold lots of italians by now started to shoot themselves to get out of the war so given the choice you

1:03:09Tom Holland:would rather be fighting at the battle of luce than in this battle yeah i think so i think so

1:03:16Dominic Sandbrook:um because here's the test when allied observers went to the italian lines they said oh my god i didn't think anything could be worse than what we're experiencing but this is absolutely awful so in that fourth battle by the way the italians lost 49 000 men the austrians 30 000 so again the italians lost more and the conditions in the italian trenches over the winter were absolutely appalling they have these shallow trenches their uniforms are in rags a lot of them don't even have guns their boots fall apart they've all got typhoid and cholera and actually the thing that i was about to say amuses me it both appalls and amuses me british visitors who went to the italian cap so they couldn't get over the toilet conditions that they they had no respect for italian hygiene one british visitor said the italian camp was literally a field of filth i had never seen such a disgusting sight and i wondered what kind of epidemic was being bred

1:04:14Tom Holland:amidst the excreta and soiled paper i mean it sounds like a kind of baedeker discussing italian toilet arrangements it so does 1897 or something they're always very sniffy about that

1:04:26Dominic Sandbrook:Or a columnist in the Daily Telegraph whose children have just been to Glastonbury. Yes. And is appalled by that. Yeah. When he went to see how they were getting on. Anyway, so the year ends with the war in total deadlock at an absolutely horrendous cost. So the Italians have now lost, killed and wounded 400 ,000 men. And this is a war that they chose, right? They could have stayed out, but they've thrown away the lives of all these people. And Mark Thompson gives the example of a single brigade who were called, unimprovably, the Polenta Brigade because they wore yellow colours. And the Polenta Brigade began the war with 130 officers and 6 ,000 soldiers.

1:05:11Dominic Sandbrook:And by the end of 1915, having been reinforced several times, they have lost 154 officers and 4 ,276 men killed, wounded and missing. So almost the entire, you know, the entire pre-war contingent.

1:05:29Tom Holland:And so by the end of the year, the Italians have actually lost more than the Austrians, do you think?

1:05:34Dominic Sandbrook:Yes, they have. And just to look ahead, in the next two years, they fight another eight battles on the Isonzo. And basically the 12th of them, the Italians just crack completely and the Austrians end up winning it. and this is at a place called Cobberid very uh pretty town actually Caporetto Hemingway was there uh towards the end of the war this is what he's when he writes about the Italian front he's writing about Caporetto and the Italian second army was completely destroyed and the Austrians and the Germans who have now piled in to help the Austrians they pushed them back and they struck a hundred miles into Italy and then the Austrians themselves then fell apart the Italians rallied at the river Piave and then they beat the Austrians at Vittorio Veneto in November 1918 and this was the point at which the Austro-Hungarian Empire was falling apart and then the war ends and at that point the Italians have lost 689 ,000 people killed in battle as well as probably about 600 ,000 civilians and another million Italians seriously wounded.

1:06:42Dominic Sandbrook:So it goes well. Yeah it didn't exactly develop to their advantage and it's this tremendous national trauma and the thing is for what because at the peace conferences they are given trieste they're given istria they're given the trentino and south tyrol but they're not given a lot of the other stuff they wanted they don't get a bit of turkey they don't get loads of greek islands they don't get dalmatia they don't get an empire in the adriatic and even though on paper they are among the winners of the first war. Lots of Italians feel we've actually, you know, we did all that for nothing. You know, we didn't get what we wanted.

1:07:20Tom Holland:And so this will feed into feelings of resentment that will help to incubate fascism?

1:07:25Dominic Sandbrook:Completely. So one of the people who feels cheated is one of the worst men in history, Gabriele D 'Annunzio. And he has all the through the war, he's been reveling in the war. I mean, he was nicknamed the poet of slaughter, and he loved that nickname. And when the war ends, because they don't get the Istrian port of Rieca, or Fiume as the Italians called it. He seizes it himself with a paramedic group and he names himself the Duce. And that, of course, is an inspiration for another man we've mentioned, the man who really does tap the bitterness after Italy's war, a man who had fought on the Isonzo, who rose to become a corporal, who was badly wounded, but survived to tell the tale.

1:08:03Tom Holland:and that man was benito masolini okay dominic well next week we will be leaving the killing fields of the isonzo and heading out onto the high seas for the story of the lusitania in a way a sequel not just to this series but to the series we did on titanic because it involves more death on the high seas and then after that we will be going to brussels for a spy story or was edith cavell a spy we will be exploring that rest is history club members of course can hear both those episodes and the remaining two episodes which will be on gallipoli so to join them and get the full range of benefits the only way to do that is to go to the rest is history.com and sign up there so thank you dominic thank you everyone for listening we will be back soon bye bye

1:09:03Dominic Sandbrook:ciao arrivederci

1:09:14Dominic Sandbrook:hi everybody we are back with another absolutely colossal update about the rest is history

1:09:19Tom Holland:festival well it's massive so on the 4th and 5th of july we will be at hampton court palace that we have a weekend of brilliant talks live music exclusive access to historic royal palaces collections and yes dominic most exciting of all this is the thing i have been pushing for and i'm so looking forward to it we have medieval combat a terrifying brutal yet completely thrilling sport it is going to be an unforgettable two days it is indeed and um at the core of the festival

1:09:51Dominic Sandbrook:of these talks and we've got some more talks to add to the lineup so i will be talking to the brilliant tudor historian tracy borman about the secrets of the six wives of henry the eighth i'll be talking to friend of the show and irish national treasure paul rouse about whether there is an alternative universe in which irelands could have remained part of the united kingdom we'll be talking to katia hoyer about weimar germany and in particular the town of weimar through history and Professor Adam Smith will be telling the story of America through three presidents. And on top of all that, I'll be doing a special event with Ian Hislop about the history of satire.

1:10:34Tom Holland:And I will be on stage with Mary Beard and we will be talking about just how strange, just how alien, just how different to us Rome was, or maybe it wasn't. I will be talking to Helen Castor about Elizabeth I and we'll be discussing whether she truly was England's greatest ruler or maybe whether that title should still be claimed by Athelstan. I will be talking to Ali Ansari about all things Persian with Dan Jackson about the pit of death. And I will be talking to a friend of the show, Willy Dalrymple, about the links between ancient India and Greece and Rome.

1:11:11Dominic Sandbrook:Absolutely incredible scenes. And of course, on both days, Tom and I will be on stage doing a show together as well. So on the first day, we'll be answering all our club members' questions. And then to close the festival, we will do a definitive ranking of the all-time top friends of the show.

1:11:29Tom Holland:So lots to look forward to. And beyond that, there is so much else that will be happening across the weekend. So think of it as the ultimate summer history hangout. And your tickets will give you full access to explore the great Tudor Palace of Hampton Court. and indeed the royal tennis court so that'll be very exciting there'll be food and drink fit for

1:11:51Dominic Sandbrook:a king which sounds very enticing i picture the very glamorous people that are our club members and their summer garb they're on the lawn at hampton court palace they're chatting about history and delightful surroundings sipping on a refreshing gin and tonic and it's probably the most civilized festival there's ever been i mean that's what i imagine anyway just a reminder the

1:12:15Tom Holland:tickets are exclusive to club members and if you are not a member now is the perfect time to join so head over to the rest is history.com to sign up and grab your tickets and of course have access to a whole range of supplementary benefits once you have signed up to the rest is history.com all you do then is log into the members area and you select festival and it's all very obvious

1:12:42Dominic Sandbrook:But you know what? There is a twist. If you do this, you will be entered into a genuinely unbelievable prize draw. And that prize draw, if you win, you and three other people, it's like the golden ticket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, because you will be given the chance to be upgraded to the premium experience. and the premium experience will give you, among other things, unlimited food and drink for free all day. Do not miss it. Can't wait to see you there.