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- [00:00]
Tom Holland
This episode is brought to you by Lloyds, which has been backing British ambition for over 250 years now, when you think about it, every dynasty in history has boiled down to two important elements, aspiration and action. And a classic example of this from British history, the rise of the House of Wessex, the family of Alfred the Great and his heirs, who between them established the United Kingdom of England.
- [00:34]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, it's a great story, isn't it, Tom? A great lesson in leadership, I think, for anybody. So Alfred and his heirs, they marry idealism and pragmatism. They're brilliant at alliances, they're brilliant at managing power. They're brilliant, of course, at managing their money, which is a key part of political leadership. And, of course, we are all reaping the rewards of their wisdom and foresight. When it's time to make your next move, you can bank on Lloyds to be ready when you are. Because from new businesses to new homes and new life chapters, backed by generations of hope and ambition, you can see, Tom, why 14 million people trust Lloyds to help make their dreams a reality.
- [01:16]
Tom Holland
Based on Lloyds internal customer data from March 2020. Our vigil is ended. Our exhortation begins. The border has been crossed. The cannon roars, the earth smokes. The Adriatic is as grey at this hour as the torpedo boat that cuts across it. Companions, can it be true? We are fighting with arms, we are waging our war. The blood is spurting from the veins of Italy. We are the last to join the struggle and already the first are meeting with glory. The slaughter begins, the destruction begins. One of our people has died at sea, another on land. All these people who yesterday thronged in the streets and squares loudly demanding war, are full of veins, full of blood,
- [02:35]
Dominic Sandbrook
and their blood begins to flow.
- [02:40]
Tom Holland
We have no other value but that of our blood to be shed. So that was the poet Gabriele d' Annunzio with a frankly lunatic peroration. And he's addressing at Mahrez at dawn on the 26th of May 1915. And he's absolutely ecstatic at the news that Italy's soldiers have just fired their first shots and taken their first casualties after joining the First World War. And you would think that by May 1915, he would have worked out that joining the First World War maybe isn't a brilliant idea, but not a bit of it. He is all over it. And to quote Mark Thompson in his brilliant book the White, on Italy's role in the First World War, has any artist played a more baleful part in decisions that led to violence and suffering on the larger scale. So, Dominic, are you a fan of d'? Annunzio?
- [03:39]
Dominic Sandbrook
I absolutely despise d', Annunzio, to be honest with you. I think he's one of the worst people we've ever done on. The rest is history. And his lunatic rhetoric, as you correctly described it, will have terrible consequences for hundreds of thousands of young Italians.
- [03:55]
Tom Holland
But I'll tell you someone who likes it.
- [03:57]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, go on.
- [03:58]
Tom Holland
Is Benito Mussolini a Italian journalist who may go on to. To better things in due course?
- [04:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
Higher things. Exactly. Yes. And actually, we will be talking about d' Annunzio and Benito Mussolini, who learns a lot from d' Annunzio later in this episode. But let's just explain what today's episode is all about. So we're in the middle of this great series, epic series, about the year 1915. And this is the story of one of the bloodiest, the cruelest, the most savage of all the campaigns of the First World War. And this is the attempt by the Italians to invade the Austro Hungarian Empire and to carve out a little empire for themselves on the Adriatic. And it was fought in conditions that were unlike anywhere else in the war. So it's these sort of jagged limestone peaks and these sort of deep river valleys in what is now now Slovenia, which was then part of the Austro Hungarian Empire. And it's also, I think, the most obviously acquisitive of the First World War's campaigns.
- [04:59]
Tom Holland
Yeah, I mean, it's completely cynical, isn't it?
- [05:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
You know, most people in the First World War believe, as we've talked about many times when we've talked about this war on the show, most people believe they're fighting in defense of their native land. They think the principle is on their side, that their native land is encircled by enemies. I mean, this could be the French, could be the Germans, could be the Austrians, whoever, and that they are fighting in defense of hearth and home. The Italians are absolutely open about the fact they're not defending themselves at all. They're trying to attack other people. And they're fighting for conquest and for glory and for a greater Italy. And the ironic result, the blackly ironic result is one of the greatest disasters in Italian history. So it ends with a million Italians dead, a million wounded, and a national sense, even though they do get some territory, there's this national sense of betrayal and resentment that plays an enormous part in the rise of fascism in the 1920s. So it's an extraordinary story. It's probably not as well known in the English Speaking world as some other aspects of the First World War. But you mentioned Mark Thompson's book, the White War.
- [06:05]
Tom Holland
Yeah, it's an amazing book, isn't it?
- [06:07]
Dominic Sandbrook
It's a wonderful book.
- [06:07]
Tom Holland
I mean, I've got to be honest, it's the only book on the topic I've read, but I felt having read it, I didn't need to read anymore.
- [06:12]
Dominic Sandbrook
I think that's fair because there's not that many books on this in English. So let's start with Italy. I mean, as you said, Italy was not in the First World War at the beginning. It could have stayed out, and it chose not to. So why on earth has it made this decision?
- [06:25]
Tom Holland
Yeah, there's a meat grinder. Let's jump into it.
- [06:28]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly. Italy in 1915 is the sixth most populous state in Europe. It's got 35 million people. So if you think of the big guns, Russia, Austria, Hungary, Britain, France, Germany and so on, Italy is the sixth. What Italy has in common with Germany is that it's a new country. And you might say, if you were being very cynical, and our Italian listeners, if any exist, will at this point, turn the podcast off, you might say, italy is an invented country. People have made it up.
- [06:57]
Tom Holland
Well, I think that is harsh.
- [06:59]
Dominic Sandbrook
Do you think that's harsh?
- [07:00]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [07:00]
Dominic Sandbrook
There are some historians who genuinely would argue that.
- [07:03]
Tom Holland
I know, but I mean, the notion of Italy goes back to the Roman period.
- [07:07]
Dominic Sandbrook
Of course it does.
- [07:08]
Tom Holland
And so that is something that obviously is lurking in the minds of lots of enthusiasts for a greater Italy, I think so.
- [07:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
Italy didn't exist until the 1850s, 1860s. There's a process of unification called the Risorgimento, which is led by the Kingdom of Piedmont, which was based in Turin and ruled by the royal House of Savoy. And basically by force, by diplomacy, by sort of popular nationalist feeling, the House of Savoy managed to weld together a series of territories that by this point, are quite distinct. They're sort of economically distinct. They speak very different dialects, and they weld them together to create a new kingdom of Italy. So that what you have in the late 19th century is a process of basically inventing what it is to be an Italian. What do we have in common? What's Italian culture going to be? What dialect are we going to speak, and so on and so forth.
- [08:03]
Tom Holland
What national dishes are we going to invent?
- [08:05]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right. We did a whole episode on this with friend of the show, John Dickey, about the creation of Italian identity through food. Now, one very good way of welding together a new national identity is to have A common enemy, and to have a sense of unfinished business, a sense of kind of victimhood or whatever. And in Italy's case, this comes down to its northern frontier. And when nationalists look at the map of the newly unified Italy, they say it's in the wrong place. So one nationalist says, the frontier is a metal wire planted haphazardly where nothing ends or begins. An arbitrary division, an amputation alien into nature, law and logic.
- [08:43]
Tom Holland
And, Dominic, what sharpens that sense is the fact that on the other side of that border is Austria. Yeah, the Austro Hungarian Empire, and that is the former Imperial mistress of Venice and other regions of Italy.
- [08:58]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly. The ancestral enemy, the Austrians. And what also sharpens it is that on the other side of that border, there are some people who speak Italian. So people look at the border and they say, well, what we'd like is I'd like to get the South Tyrol. I mean, there are a lot of German speakers in the South Tyrol as well. They say, well, that's. Never mind, we can have them in Italy. We'd like the cities of Trieste and Gorizia. Ideally, I think I'd like. We'd like to have Slovenia, and I think a lot of modern Croatia really should be part of Italy. So they want maybe Gaul, maybe Britannia. Let's say we'd like the peninsula of Istria and we would like the coast of Dalmatia. So there are Italian speakers in all of these areas that belong to the Austro Hungarian Empire. And the nationalist slogan is unredeemed Italy, Italia irredenta. And it's from that expression that we get irredentism. So this idea that there's unfinished national business that we need to complete the nation. And this is an idea that's politically very effective in the late 19th century. It allows politicians to appeal across this newly united country to different classes, to workers in the cities, to farmers, to urban intellectuals, all of this kind of thing.
- [10:13]
Tom Holland
And as you said, there is a parallel in Germany.
- [10:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly. Now, rather like the Germans, the Italians feel they've. They've united a little bit too late. They've been shut out of the scramble for foreign colonies, for example, in Africa. And if they want to be a great power, they need colonies. So they look to North Africa initially. Obviously, this is Tom Holland. Bingo. The example of the Roman Empire is. Is hanging over them the whole time. They want to basically rebuild the Roman Empire as much as possible. They look to North Africa. But to their horror, a much bigger power has already got stuck in. In North Africa, and that's France and Actually, the French make it pretty obvious they don't want the Italians getting involved. And there's a bit of rivalry between the French and the Italians in North Africa. And as a result of that, the Italians sign a very implausible alliance in 1882, first of all, with, well, with Germany, that's not so implausible.
- [11:07]
Tom Holland
But Austria, but with Austria as well, that's mad.
- [11:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
And this is basically to give them a bit more of a free hand in Africa so that the French won't attack them. And it's called the Triple Alliance. A lot of nationalists are very uneasy about it. What are we getting into bed with the Austrians for? They're our enemies. However, the upside, this allows Italy to pursue some colonial adventures. So in Eritrea, in Somaliland, in Abyssinia, Ethiopia, and most obviously in Libya. And these go generally very badly. I mean, the Italians do make inroads, but their army consistently performs very badly. So in Abyssinia, 6,000 Italian soldiers were massacred in a single day at the Battle of Adwa in 1896. And there's still a sense when you get into the 20th century that nationalist ambitions have not been sated, that Italy still needs to prove its virility on the world stage.
- [12:03]
Tom Holland
Yeah, because in, in Rome at this point, they're building an enormous monument on the Capitol, which is the great sacred hill of Rome. And this is a monument to Victor Emmanuel ii, who'd been the king when Italy had been united. And there's a sense, I mean, anyone who's been to Rome will immediately be able to picture it. It looks like something out of a Cecil B. DeMille film about ancient Rome. It's kind of symbolically illustrating the fusion between the unity of Italy and this kind of glorious Roman past, which it is assumed a united Italy will be able to resurrect.
- [12:39]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly.
- [12:39]
Tom Holland
And that's not completed, I think, until 1911. So just before, before the outbreak of the war.
- [12:45]
Dominic Sandbrook
It's a monstrosity actually, isn't it? It's a wedding cake. Yeah, I think. Yes, I think absolutely right, that the sense of becoming a great power and building a united nation, that those two things are interfused and there's this sort of sense of unfinished business, this sense of pressure and of slight disappointment almost hanging over the Italian project as you enter the 20th century. Now at this point, Italy is changing a lot. It's industrializing, it's building railways and schools. It is, however, a long way behind the other so called great powers. It's only got a very small urban middle class, the vast Majority of Italians work on the land as peasants. Literacy rates are very low. Infant mortality is very high. The state, most people have only have a very vague sense of what the state is. Their horizons abounded by the locality, by the village, by the farm, all of this, and only a tiny fraction of the population gets to vote. So in 1913, 8 million people out of 35 million people. Politics is a sort of endless, as always in Italy, an endless sort of dance of coalition building, politicians who are constantly kind of ditching their principles to meet the demands of the moment. And at the top is the king, Victor Emmanuel iii.
- [14:00]
Tom Holland
So he's the grandson of the monument guy.
- [14:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
He is. And he is a very short man. He's very short, he's very insecure. He's a coin collector, so he's like you. Tom collects coins, he fancies himself as an amateur photographer. That's his. His passion. He has loads of power under the Italian constitution, so he can call parliament, dismiss parliament, he can appoint the ministers, he directs foreign policy, he commands the army, he declares war. But he doesn't like using his power. In fact, he wants politicians to do it for him. And this, in the long run, will get him into trouble because he'll basically turn himself Benito Mussolini's puppet in the 1920s and 1930s. But at this point, let's go to 1914, when the First World War begins. At this point, his prime minister is a man called Antonio Salandra. And Salandra is a conservative lawyer from a rich family, landowning family in Puglia in the south of Italy. But he's backed by the big business elites in the industrial north, because he's a conservative. He's a sort of balding man with this absolutely gigantic moustache. Exactly as you would. As you would want.
- [15:11]
Tom Holland
Oh, thank God. It's so good to have an enormous moustache back on the rest of history.
- [15:15]
Dominic Sandbrook
It is, of course.
- [15:16]
Tom Holland
Haven't had one for a while.
- [15:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
He's a very ruthless and devious man, and he is the man who is basically going to act as the head of the conspiracy to drag Italy into the war against the wishes of its people. Now, when Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in the summer of 1914, Italy was going through all kinds of internal ructions, massive strikes, unrest, talk of socialist and anarchist revolution and whatnot. So Salandra was distracted, but his foreign minister, who was the Marquess of San Giuliano, who was a Sicilian aristocrat, said to the Austrians, I know we're in this alliance with you, but if you attack Serbia, we will not Support you. And the reason we don't want to support you? Well, basically, the Italians don't want to see Austria expand in the Balkans, become more powerful.
- [16:05]
Tom Holland
I mean, that would be mad.
- [16:06]
Dominic Sandbrook
No, they don't. And they say, we might accept you attacking Serbia if you gave us the South Tyrol. And the Austrians, the Germans actually said to the Austrians, would you think about it? And the Austrians said, hold on, we're about to enter a war to defend our empire. We're not going to start giving bits away, you know, to our random neighbors. So the First World War starts and Italy declares itself neutral now under the Triple Alliance. They didn't actually have to join the war because the Triple alliance was meant to be a defensive pact, not an offensive one.
- [16:40]
Tom Holland
But I guess it's kind of against the spirit, if not the letter.
- [16:43]
Dominic Sandbrook
It is a bit. I think the Austrians and the Germans are disappointed. They say, well, this is really poor from the Italians. On the other hand, it's the Italians, so, you know, you kind of know what you're getting into when you sign an alliance with them. And the Italians said, well, you took us for granted. You didn't consult us. You've got stuck in. There's also good reasons for Italy to stay out. Public opinion. People don't like the Austrians. Also, Italy imports a lot of raw materials, including. This is a terrible indictment of Italian agriculture, including food from Britain and France. So if they entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, the British and French would probably blockade their ports and people would starve and that would be a right mess. And they don't fancy that. So they say, we're going to sit this one out fine. Just a week later, the Marquis of San Giuliano sends Sandra a note and he says, I've been thinking, I think if the Allies look like they're going to win, we should actually switch sides and pile in on their side against Austria. And the Marquis has the excellent line, this may not be heroic, but it is wise and patriotic. And the same day. So the 9th of August, the Marcus of San Giuliano starts to send out informal messages to London. If we were to change sides, would you? Yeah, just. Just wondering. Meanwhile, they say to the chief military commander, General Cadorna, who we'll talk about in the second half, your plans for war against France, just shift them. Yeah, just update them a little bit. So it's war now against Austria anyway. A month passes. The Germans, of course, have launched their great attack on France and they've been turned back at the River Marne. The Battle of the Marne. And Solandra says to his cronies, we should use this historic cataclysm to, and I quote, complete and enlarge the fatherland. And, you know, he acknowledges people will say that we've been very sneaky and perfidious, but he says Italy's destiny should be guided by. And he uses the phrase sacro egoismo, sacred egoism. And this becomes one of the most famous phrases in modern Italian history. And that idea of sacred egoism expresses the, dare I say, the sacral quality of Italian nationalism.
- [19:01]
Tom Holland
Sacral. Sacral. Poor behavior.
- [19:03]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, it is that they. 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, Sellandra 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. They don't want to give that away. And the Austrians say, we're not going to give you all that. What you meant, you were an ally only recently. We're not going to give you large pits of our empire. Now, Silantra expects that to happen and in fact, he doesn't mind because he's already eyeing up, you know, the Adriatic coast.
- [19:57]
Tom Holland
Are the Austrians kind of alerted by this to the possibility that they might jump ship?
- [20:02]
Dominic 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, you know, big chunks of their empire.
- [20:11]
Tom Holland
I'm just wondering if they're starting to beef up their defences.
- [20:14]
Dominic Sandbrook
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.
- [20:21]
Tom Holland
But the Russians are coming, aren't they?
- [20:22]
Dominic Sandbrook
The Russians are coming. And, Tom, you will recall, there's the tremendous battle for the city of Pozemash.
- [20:30]
Tom Holland
How could I forget?
- [20:31]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, Where. Where was the fortress city of Bougilos? 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 Sao Tyrell would 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 to like. We'd ideally like the Dodecanese islands of Rhodes, Coss, Patmos and so on. And we'd like £50 million to pay for the war. 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, we'll enter the war and this
- [21:36]
Tom Holland
whole kind of getting into bed with people for money. How does this go down with people in London and Paris?
- [21:43]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, I'm sorry to say, Tom, that it reinforces existing stereotypes of Italian behavior among the policymakers of London and Paris. So when they look at the map, they say, what? You want Dalmatia? There are. 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 behavior. Yeah, very much a friend of the show. He described Italy as voracious, slippery and perfidious. 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
- [23:00]
Tom Holland
have that as well.
- [23:01]
Dominic Sandbrook
You can have a bit of Turkey as well.
- [23:03]
Tom Holland
Go for it.
- [23:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
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 Solandra 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. They. They've had a look at the First
- [23:41]
Tom Holland
World War, and they think it's possibly not brilliant.
- [23:44]
Dominic Sandbrook
It's probably best to sit this one
- [23:45]
Tom Holland
out like gas and rats and mud and stuff, Right?
- [23:48]
Dominic Sandbrook
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, is there 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.
- [24:31]
Tom Holland
Oh, yeah, the Pike. Brilliant book.
- [24:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes. Now, d', Annunzio, 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. He's a proper celebrity.
- [24:50]
Tom Holland
I mean, we've been talking about mustaches. Yeah, he has a brilliant mustache, but it's not a kind of military mustache, is it? It's a kind of the excitement of the new, faintly fascist, flamboyant, let's fly on a plane kind of a moustache.
- [25:05]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly. The weird thing about him is everyone says he's this sort of tremendous. 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.
- [25:42]
Tom 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.
- [25:48]
Dominic 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, whittering on about the army and the navy and the air force.
- [26:16]
Tom Holland
Isn't it because he's very, very keen on planes. He never learns to fly, but he's obsessed by air power.
- [26:22]
Dominic 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.
- [26:29]
Tom Holland
Although he is quite keen on kind of ancient dreams of empire as well, isn't he?
- [26:32]
Dominic Sandbrook
He is. It's the sort of fusion of the two.
- [26:34]
Tom Holland
Yeah. So that's how he's the proto fascist, quite fascistic.
- [26:37]
Dominic Sandbrook
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 since Lane, kind of 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 Daruncio 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 3 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.
- [27:47]
Tom Holland
Your vibe.
- [27:48]
Dominic Sandbrook
It's like when we arrive in there to do a restoration tour, surely. He gets to Genoa, massive crowds and he gives the first, there'll be a lot of blood curdling speeches. He gives 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 kids 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. 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.
- [29:07]
Tom Holland
And people complain, don't they? And he kind of basically says, you know, if it's, if it's wrong to incite people to violence, then so be it. Yeah, I plead guilty. Brilliant. Let's have more of it.
- [29:20]
Dominic 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
- [29:48]
Tom Holland
struggle and will to power.
- [29:50]
Dominic Sandbrook
The will to power.
- [29:51]
Tom Holland
Hates Sir George Eliot.
- [29:53]
Dominic Sandbrook
Does. Must only hate George Eliot. Yeah.
- [29:55]
Tom Holland
Despises her.
- [29:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
Wow. Why doesn't like Middlemarch?
- [29:59]
Tom 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. He's always going on about it.
- [30:09]
Dominic Sandbrook
Crikey. Well, Mussolini had always been a non interventionist. He'd been opposed to Italy's adventures in Africa. He'd 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.
- [30:24]
Tom Holland
I mean, I guess that's. That's the mark of a good journalist, right?
- [30:27]
Dominic Sandbrook
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 his journalistic acumen.
- [30:36]
Tom Holland
I mean, newspapers have been known to kind of jump on bandwagons before.
- [30:39]
Dominic 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' azioni Revoluzionaria 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 d'. Annunzio. D' Annunzio 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. Now he's starting to denounce what he sees as the truth. Traitors. The odor 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, 12 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. Giulitti has been Prime Minister four times already and he does not want to enter the war.
- [31:59]
Tom Holland
So he's not a d' Annunciate fan,
- [32:00]
Dominic Sandbrook
he's not a d' Annunzier fan. I think it would have been a lot better if Giulieti had become Prime Minister and Italy hadn't entered the war. Anyway, the next day, the 13th, Salandra 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 Giolitti as Prime Minister and Giolitti to accept the job. And he's betting that they will be put off by the moon on the streets. These huge crowds are pouring through the streets of Rome shouting, death to Gialliti, up with the war, all this thing. And d' Annunzio 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 d', Annunzio, again, a pre figuring of Fascism, he says to the crowds, form squads, lie in wait, seize them. By which he means Giulity and the anti war politicians capture them and all this.
- [32:59]
Tom Holland
Didn't Mussolini call him the John the Baptist of Fascism?
- [33:03]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, he did. Yeah, well, he absolutely is the John the Baptist of Fascism. If d' Annunzio had been left to his own devices, he would have been the John the Baptist and the Jesus of Fascism. But he is outsmarted by Mussolini.
- [33:14]
Tom Holland
He goes on to set up his kind of mad regime in Fiume, doesn't he?
- [33:18]
Dominic Sandbrook
After the. After the war he does, which is a massive pre figuring of Mussolini, actually, but 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. Giuliti, 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. And 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 moneylenders, purifying the dens of the pimps and pandas with iron and fire.
- [34:20]
Tom Holland
I mean, it is amazing, the kind of the twisting of language from the New Testament to promote war.
- [34:28]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, I know, 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 Danuncio. 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. It's one of d' Annunzio's favorite words. He says, let's drive out the anti war politicians. Yeah, they're not just wrong, they are sick, they are diseased. We should drive them out of politics forever. Make lists, prescribe them, be pitiless like
- [35:21]
Tom Holland
Sulla or the Second Triumvirate.
- [35:23]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right then at the end, I mean, this is also feels very Roman. He takes out a sword that had belonged to one of Garibaldi's 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.
- [35:40]
Tom Holland
Now that is what you call a far right speech.
- [35:43]
Dominic Sandbrook
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. And on the 20th of May, Italy's parliament votes for war.
- [36:01]
Tom Holland
So the cliche of 1914 is that the crowds in London and Berlin and whatever are terribly enthusiastic and baying for blood.
- [36:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [36:11]
Tom Holland
Which as we saw in the, you know, 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.
- [36:25]
Dominic 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 as young are students, they're excited. It's a day out. I think everything we know of Italians who went to the front is 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, right.
- [36:56]
Tom Holland
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 bay, is true in Rome.
- [37:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, it is. I mean, I wouldn't have fancied being one of the in. I mean, it would be extraordinary to see it, I suppose, this sort of impassioned, feverish, delirious atmosphere. Really, really extraordinary. And as you say, there isn't really anything quite like it in any of the other European capitals when the war breaks out. So, as I said, on the 20th of May, it. Italy's parliament votes for war. And that evening, D' Annuncio 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 Sandra publicly embraces his supreme military commander, General Cadorna, before Cadorna gets on his train to the town. Cheers of the crowds to head north to the war. And 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 d' Annunzio had predicted, the River Isonzo will indeed run red with blood.
- [38:19]
Tom Holland
But whose blood, Dominic?
- [38:21]
Dominic Sandbrook
But whose blood? Exactly. Because if Sandra and d' Annuncio think this is going to be a triumphant story of Italian glory and Italian victory, they are in for a heck of a shock.
- [38:32]
Tom Holland
Well, we will find out just how big a shock after a break. 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 are 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
- [39:06]
Dominic Sandbrook
in the previous oil crisis, it didn't work out brilliantly for Ted Heath, to be honest. And actually, he and Keir 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.
- [39:24]
Tom 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.
- [39:31]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. And I would say that understanding the news is absolutely vital when you're navigating increasingly uncertain and unpredictable world. So to subscribe to the Times and the Sunday Times, visit thetimes.com.
- [39:52]
Tom 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. His master's bidding.
- [40:28]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [40:28]
Tom Holland
And meanwhile, you mentioned General Cadorna, General Luigi Cadorna. 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. He's not going to be a ringing success, is he, in the forthcoming campaign? It's a spoiler. I mean, he. 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. Cadorna. I mean, he kind of is the stereotype of a hopeless general who just keeps hurling his troops forwards and forwards and forwards, no matter how often they get gunned down.
- [41:13]
Dominic Sandbrook
Dead right. You're dead right. He ticks every box. He's got an absolutely colossal moustache.
- [41:18]
Tom Holland
Oh, do you think? I looked at it, I thought it was not quite as big as it could be.
- [41:22]
Dominic Sandbrook
Really? Yeah.
- [41:24]
Tom Holland
I was disappointed.
- [41:25]
Dominic Sandbrook
I think it's because you've been brutalized and desensitized by the Russians.
- [41:29]
Tom Holland
Mustaches.
- [41:30]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. Of like Paul von. What's it. General Von Rennekampf's moustache or whatever. These colossal mustaches. And I think actually, if you were to see Cadorna's moustache in the wild, as it were.
- [41:40]
Tom Holland
Yeah. Probably.
- [41:41]
Dominic Sandbrook
If a goal hanger producer turned up with that moustache. Oh, for sure you'd raise an eyebrow. For sure.
- [41:46]
Tom Holland
I mean, by the standards of Dom Johnson's Oswald Mosley moustache. Yes. It's much larger than that.
- [41:52]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [41:52]
Tom Holland
But it's not as big as a Russian general on the Eastern Front in 1914. That's all I'm saying.
- [41:58]
Dominic Sandbrook
No one will know what any of this means. But that's fine. Let's just explain who Cadorna is and where he comes from. He's from Turin. He was born in 1850. He's a very driven and prickly man. 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. And basically, because he's published this, he will never back down from the ideas within it.
- [42:47]
Tom Holland
So he has not absorbed the lessons of the Russo Japanese War?
- [42:52]
Dominic Sandbrook
Oh, indeed, of. Yeah. Of any recent war or indeed of
- [42:55]
Tom Holland
the events on the Western Front?
- [42:58]
Dominic Sandbrook
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 Alps, 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 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, Cadorna is saying to his political bosses, with a fair wind, we will reach the heart of the Habsburg monarchy, which is to save Vienna by the autumn. 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 mobilization 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 4 to 1 on their kind of common frontier, but because they're so slow and disorganized, they don't exploit their advantage at all.
- [44:18]
Tom Holland
I mean, this must 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.
- [44:25]
Dominic 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.
- [44:32]
Tom Holland
Martial competence.
- [44:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, exactly. So Cadorna's initial target, he says, well, first, the first thing we'll do is we will cross the river Socia or Isonzo. So soccer 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. This part of the world.
- [44:55]
Tom Holland
It's very beautiful, isn't it, Slovenia?
- [44:57]
Dominic Sandbrook
Incredibly beautiful, yeah. I mean, a brilliant place. If I should be doing an advert for the Slovenian Tourist Board.
- [45:02]
Tom Holland
Well, if the Slovenian Tourist Board 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.
- [45:10]
Dominic Sandbrook
It's gorgeous. And it's. They've turned the whole thing basically into a First World War sort of tourists attraction. So there are military cemeteries. There's amazing, like, trench networks and forts. You can roam around to your heart's content. In the most, it's a lot better than the Western Front because it's much more beautiful. It's. It's brilliant, actually. I really recommend it. And everything is really lovely. Nice weather, nice people. Great.
- [45:34]
Tom Holland
But a very different scene back in 1915, right?
- [45:38]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly. Yes. Not if 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 had 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 Socia, or the Isonzo, and above it, the jagged kind of limestone highlands of what is called the Karst or the Caso.
- [46:06]
Tom Holland
I mean, that's what you want to see when you are launching a full frontal attack.
- [46:10]
Dominic Sandbrook
A jagged limestone highland. Yeah.
- [46:13]
Tom Holland
Oh, God.
- [46:14]
Dominic Sandbrook
Last episode, we did the Western Front, and you probably thought that sounded bad with all the mud and the lice and stuff, but at least it's flat. Yeah, this is much worse. Much worse. 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.
- [46:54]
Tom Holland
Limestone shards in your eye. That's not what you want.
- [46:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, these shards would kill people half a mile away.
- [46:59]
Tom Holland
Oh, God.
- [47:00]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. If you're standing with your back to what's going on half a mile away, this shard will hit you in the back of the head, and that's the end of you.
- [47:05]
Tom Holland
Do you remember in the previous series, I asked why the. Why the people didn't try and outflank the bottom of the Western Front by invading Switzerland?
- [47:13]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes.
- [47:14]
Tom Holland
And I guess that this is the explanation, isn't it?
- [47:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. Don't go through mountains. No. 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 Cadorna, General Cadorna, with his nice moustache 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, which seems a lot to me, especially with this already disorganized Army.
- [48:07]
Tom Holland
I mean, 217 generals, that's a lot of generals.
- [48:10]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. I feel the Italians probably have too many generals.
- [48:13]
Tom Holland
Yeah. It's like the Royal Navy now with about 700 admirals and three ships.
- [48:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
It's kind of on brand, though, for 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.
- [48:25]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [48:26]
Dominic Sandbrook
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.
- [48:38]
Tom Holland
The.
- [48:38]
Dominic Sandbrook
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 Franz Conrad von Herzendorf, the Austrian supreme commander.
- [48:59]
Tom Holland
Is he the guy who is besotted with what's her name? Gina.
- [49:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
Gina. That's why he started the war and she.
- [49:06]
Tom Holland
He basically starts the First World War just to impress her.
- [49:09]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, he started the First World War to impress Gina von Reininghaus, who is ironically Italian.
- [49:15]
Tom Holland
Oh, I didn't know that.
- [49:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
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.
- [49:40]
Tom Holland
Is Gina impressed?
- [49:42]
Dominic Sandbrook
Must be very impressed.
- [49:43]
Tom Holland
Even though he's fighting the Italians, her
- [49:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
own people, I think by this point she's gone native a bit.
- [49:48]
Tom Holland
But it's still tragic that the one thing he gets right is against Gina's countrymen.
- [49:53]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, maybe.
- [49:54]
Tom Holland
Maybe it's a tragedy there.
- [49:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
So what he does is Conrad von Herzendorff, 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.
- [50:12]
Tom Holland
And Dominic, who is he and how do you pronounce his name?
- [50:15]
Dominic Sandbrook
He is a named conjure with Tom. He's General Svetozar Borojevic. So General Borojevic is one of the outstanding generals of the First World War. And he is the embodiment of Austro Hungarian multi ethnic unity. Because he was born in Croatia to a Serbian Orthodox family, 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, you know, because he's basically the Bodmins 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 kind of seize 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.
- [51:19]
Tom Holland
And I guess that's because they're not actually really Austro Hungarians, as you said, they are Slavs defending a Slav homeland.
- [51:28]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly. But also Borovic 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 100 yards away and 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. 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 are on a mountain called Monte Sammichele. 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. 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 kg in weight.
- [53:07]
Tom Holland
What are they taking, Pots?
- [53:09]
Dominic Sandbrook
I don't know, pasta.
- [53:13]
Tom Holland
Are they eating pasta by this point? Or isn't that invented by Americans in 1958, 1964.
- [53:18]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, yeah. Invented in St. Louis, Missouri. Isn't that the way with all Italian dishes?
- [53:26]
Tom Holland
I gotta say, that's what I vaguely remember.
- [53:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
No, but 35 kilograms, you know, when you check into a plane. Yeah, I know. And the maximum is 23 or something.
- [53:36]
Tom Holland
I wouldn't want to be cheap, charging Austrian machine gun placements, you know, with limestone shards going everywhere.
- [53:41]
Dominic Sandbrook
You've got the weight of two suitcases, two full suitcases on your back, staggering up this lime. You know, 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 Gestolfo said, in a whirl of death and glory, we. 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. And this is the story of the entire First Battle of the Isonzo. It takes two weeks. The Italians make about 2 yards, and they take 15,000 casualties. That's the first battle of the Ason zone.
- [54:37]
Tom Holland
And how many are there going to be over the course of the war?
- [54:40]
Dominic Sandbrook
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.
- [54:55]
Tom Holland
Well, he's written his book.
- [54:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
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. And they said to him, we want you to, you know, if you. 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 Socia Valley. Same story. Up they. Up the hill they go, cut down by Austrian machine guns.
- [55:21]
Tom Holland
And they haven't advanced at all.
- [55:23]
Dominic Sandbrook
I mean, barely. I mean, you know, if you go 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. 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 diary in the first month of the war. Bon Amori says, you know, he describes being in one of these limestone trenches. We talked about the trenches of the Western Front last time. The Italian trenches are awful. They are far Worse than anything on
- [56:07]
Tom Holland
the Western Front because they can't dig down deep enough really, for them to be effective.
- [56:12]
Dominic Sandbrook
They can't dig down. You can't bury the bodies.
- [56:15]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [56:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
So the bodies are just hanging around. The stench was unbearable, says Bon Amore. We're squatting among our own and enemy corpses, basically. This 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 opposite river on 14 August, gives you a sense of what it's like. So the Italians started with an artillery bombardment at 3 o' clock in the morning, and they set off uphill before they even really started uphill. Most of them were 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 at 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. Bon amour. 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 breakthrough, 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 Bonimorius 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 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 do 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, you know, 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.
- [59:15]
Tom Holland
God, they're still wearing plumed hats after all this.
- [59:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
They're still wearing their plumed hats. I mean, what are they thinking? So that was the second battle. The second battle was a massive bloodbath. The Italians lost 42,000 men. The Austrians actually lost more, 50,000.
- [59:28]
Tom Holland
So here is the question it's been agitating Callum, our producer. Yeah, how come the Austrians actually lost more?
- [59:35]
Dominic Sandbrook
Because they're outnumbered and because the Italians, when they finally do get their act together, they're able to overrun some Austrian people 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 they're the top of the hill.
- [60:09]
Tom Holland
But this slightly recalibrates the strategy then, because it does suggest 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.
- [60:24]
Dominic Sandbrook
I mean, you can kind of see Cadorna's mentality. General Cadorna's spin doctor joins us now on the Rest Is History. Yeah, but it doesn't work, though. I mean, I would say it doesn't work. Well, we'll see. We'll see.
- [60:36]
Tom Holland
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 not
- [60:44]
Dominic Sandbrook
always losing fewer men. So, back in Rome, Salandra, the Prime Minister, 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 Cadorna agrees to launch a third battle of the Isonzo. And it starts with the huge bombardment in October 18. Not enough, as always, to break the Austrian defences or destroy their barbed wire. The Italians advance through driving rain. Two weeks, it's really wet, 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.
- [61:29]
Tom Holland
So the tide of war is turning.
- [61:31]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, now, you would think at this point, Cadorna would surely change tactics, but no, he's got. He looks at the calendar, he says 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 3 to 1. 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 just to get out of the war.
- [62:10]
Tom Holland
So given the choice, you would rather be fighting at the Battle of Loos than in this battle?
- [62:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, I think so. I think so, 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 camps, 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 amidst the excreta and soiled paper.
- [63:20]
Tom Holland
I mean, it sounds like a kind of Baedeker discussing Italian toilet arrangements. So does 1897 or something. They're always very sniffy about that.
- [63:30]
Dominic Sandbrook
Or a columnist in the Daily Telegraph whose children have just been to Glastonbury.
- [63:33]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [63:34]
Dominic Sandbrook
And it's appalled by the.
- [63:35]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [63:36]
Dominic Sandbrook
When he. When he went to see, 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 Palenta Brigade because they wore yellow colors. And the Palenta Brigade began the war with 130 officers and 6,000 soldiers. 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.
- [64:32]
Tom Holland
And so by the end of the year, the Italians have actually lost more than the Austrians, do you think?
- [64:37]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, they have. And so 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 Kobarid, very pretty town. Actually, Caporetto Hemingway was there towards the end of the war. This is what he's. When he writes about the town in 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 100 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.
- [65:45]
Tom Holland
So it goes well.
- [65:47]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, 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 World 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.
- [66:23]
Tom Holland
And so this will feed into feelings of resentment that will help to incubate fascism completely.
- [66:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
So one of the people who feels cheated is one of the worst men in history, Gabrielo 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 Rijeka, or Fiume, as the Italians called it, he seizes it himself with the paramilitary 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. And that man was Benito Mussolini.
- [67:10]
Tom Holland
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 restishistory.com and sign up there. So thank you, Dominic. Thank you, everyone, for listening. We will be back soon. Bye. Bye.
- [68:06]
Dominic Sandbrook
Ciao, river dcci. Hi, everybody. We are back with another absolutely colossal update about the Rest Is History Festival.
- [68:23]
Tom Holland
Well, it's massive. So on the 4th and 5th of July, we will be at Hampton Court Palace. We have a weekend of brilliant talks, live 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.
- [68:52]
Dominic Sandbrook
It is indeed. And at the core of the festival of these talks, we've got some more talks to add to to the lineup. So I will be talking to the brilliant Tudor historian Tracy Borman about the secrets of the six wives of Henry viii. I'll be talking to friend of the show and Irish national treasure Paul Rouse about whether there is an alternative universe in which islands could have remained part of the United Kingdom. We'll be talking to Katya Hoya 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.
- [69:37]
Tom 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 friend of the show, Willi Dalrymple about the links between ancient India and Greece and Rome.
- [70:15]
Dominic 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. So lots to look forward to.
- [70:34]
Tom Holland
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.
- [70:53]
Dominic Sandbrook
There'll be food and drink fit for a king, which sounds very enticing. I picture the very glamorous people that are our club members in 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.
- [71:17]
Tom Holland
Anyway, just a reminder, the tickets are exclusive to club members and if you are not a member, now is the perfect time to join. So head over to thereestishistory.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 therestishistory.com all you do then is log into the members area and you select Festival. And it's all very obvious.
- [71:45]
Dominic 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 tickets 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.
- [72:17]
Tom Holland
Do not miss it.
- [72:18]
Dominic Sandbrook
Can't wait to see that.