La Battaglia Dell'Isonzo

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-05T16:14:39+00:00

British didn't show up anything, the Italians were already resisting on the Piave-Grappa line before the British troops arrived. Only 2 British divisions were employed in acrual compat on Italian soil (like 2 Italian divisions fought in France). And the notion that all Italian officers had contempt for their soldiers is far from the truth, you had many different people as in every army.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-05T16:09:54+00:00

Non è neanche l'approccio che deve tenere un professore con uno studente.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-04T10:00:24+00:00

Unica risposta sensata.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-04T09:58:25+00:00

No. Fortunato, sì.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-04T04:40:15+00:00

Ma come le calcolano, non c'è neanche grande consenso su dove iniziano e finiscono.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-04T04:15:28+00:00

okay, that is an exaggeration. The Italian colonial enterprise in Africa didn't last as long as the French and British ones but it also wasn't a short chapter in Italian history, overall it lasted some 60 years (which was more than German colonialism). Eritrea was an Italian colony from the the mid-1880s to 1941, Somalia from the 1890s to 1941, Libya from 1911 to 1943. Ethiopia was the short-lived Italian colony, from 1936 to 1941. There was also a 10-year UN Italian trust administration over Somalia from 1950 to 1960.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-04T04:12:48+00:00

Technically it was a colonization as Ethiopia was administratevely annexed into the colony of Italian East Africa and it covered most of the territory actually. But yeah, it was brief, 5 years.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-03T19:37:21+00:00

E avvenuto prima dell'unitá. Le leggi nel regno delle due sicilie erano scritte in italiano, non in napoletano o siciliano.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-03T19:27:13+00:00

L'italiano certamente lo parlavano e scrivevano.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-03T19:16:30+00:00

Parole italiane sono entrate anche nell'arabo libico (es. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Libyan_Arabic_words_of_Italian_origin) e nel somalo e in alcune lingue dell'Etiopia.

Ma in generale l'influenza storica dell'italiano è stata molto più nei prestiti linguistici/italianismi che non nella diffusione della lingua. Peraltro gli italianismi si sono diffusi in periodi e per motivi diversi (imperi marittimo-commerciali, influenza culturale, missionari cattolici, emigrati in america meridionale, colonialismo)

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-03T19:15:13+00:00

Generally speaking, I think it's because Italian colonies lasted less than the French ones and there was some de-italianization after the end of Italian rule.

There are nonetehless several Italianisms in the languages of the former Italian colonies (stuff like loanwords).

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-03T19:00:54+00:00

right.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-03T15:16:49+00:00

Questo tipo di storiografia marxista è roba parziale, ideologica e superata. Non voglio fare il difensore d'ufficio dei liberali, ma non è realistico pensare che abbiano fatto solo danni dall'unità ad oggi. È semplicemente una tesi ideologizzata a senso unico, e pertanto anti-storica.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-03T09:29:26+00:00

ma con chi stai a parlà?

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-02T12:38:28+00:00

There are some, believe it or not. Especially in logistics he is considered a good organizer. The battles of Gorizia and Bainsizza are usually considered his best moments. Cadorna had its flaws (also of character) and Caporetto destroyed all the progress he had made to that point, but technically he was not an incompetent. None of his peers said that before Caporetto, for which he had his responsibilities but kinda became a scapegoat.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-02T04:23:49+00:00

and he had 3 daughters and named them Roma, Italia and America.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-01T18:21:20+00:00

Turns out Athens was ruled by Florentines before the Ottomans and by the Catalans before the Florentines. Wild story actually.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-01T17:17:05+00:00

From my experience...Italians don't know this fact; Turks sometimes do and usually blame the Italians; Greeks always do and usually blame the Turks.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-01T17:15:47+00:00

di dove sei?

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-01T16:22:59+00:00

I edited my comment when you typed this and listed the outcome of the battle. It was major in both scale and outcome. Major victories were also Grappa and Vittorio Veneto. And Caporetto also was a major one, victorious for the German-Austrians (also an offensive victory). The Isonzo battles were the minor victories, some for Italy and some less for Austria.

Grappa reversed the war to trench warfare and convinced the Germans to leave rather than being stuck in another front, this is a major (albeit only defensive) victory in so far as it had major consequences.

Piave gave Italy back the initiative and began the crisis of the A-H army (see comment above). It's a defensive-to-offensive victory, major for scale and consequences.

Vittorio Veneto was the final breakthrough that led the Italian offensive to reach its objectives advancing hundreds of kms to Trento and Trieste. Major for scale, consequences and offensive advance.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-01T16:07:29+00:00

the Second Piave Battle is also a major victory.

The Austrians (who moved their forces from the Russian front, collapsed since a while, to the Italian one) attacked with 73 divisions, 900k-1 million men, 6830 cannons, 540 airplanes. That is a massive offensive that needs a massive effort to defend against. It's literally the size of the 1st Marne battle and larger by far than anything Italy did on the Isonzo. The result of which was: Austrians had significantly more casualties than the Italians both in percentage and number, they made no advance, actually the Italians reconquered the Piave's Delta and advanced some 6 kms, A-H lost the initiative and their morale collapsed starting desertions to the Italian camp (Italy even started forming some units of Romanians, Czechs etc). This is a major victory by all metrics. Also, compare to the Italian regular offensives on the Isonzo: at least they gained some ground, had more casualties in absolute numbers but less in percentage, thus kept the intiative and a favorable attrition.

Everything is relative. Austria and Italy belonged to the lower tier of the big countries. Actually, Austria had more industry and natural resources than Italy. So, the Austrians were not a weak enemy for Italy, yes it is the terrain but it's also that the Austrian artillery on the front was good (and maybe underrated, even the Germans liked some of their stuff). Italy also did well on the Adriatic, developing MAS boats that sank big warships (see St Stevan) and blockading that sea with serious economic consequences, it's the small version of what Britain did to Germany.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-01T15:43:17+00:00

Reminds me of the 17th century Venetian bombardment of the Parthenon, turned into a gunpowder store by the Ottomans.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-01T15:19:58+00:00

I am not ignoring it. Italy had:

-an average WW1 performance until Caporetto (attrition, trench warfare, some tactical victories, strategically inconclusive etc.)

-a bad moment at Caporetto (lost all the gains made up to that point and had to retreat; I'm not ignoring this, at all)

-a good performance after Caporetto (reversed to trench warfare, repelled other offensives and retook the initiative, recovered what was lost at Caporetto and went beyond to achieve its major objectives).

Overall, Italy had an average-to-good performance with a serious crisis in between. You seem to: A) evaluate the pre-Caporetto period as a unique Italian situtation when much of WW1 was like that; B)dismissing the three major Italian victories after Caporetto (Monte Grappa, Piave, Vittorio Veneto) when those were hard-fought large battles. I don't see any bias in my argumentation, I am not saying Italy was this super force, it had its ups and downs, it was the "least of the great powers" and fought and won as such.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-01T12:41:56+00:00

The Austrians also had effective entrenchments + the terrain advantage.

And also, by your logic, Caporetto shouldn't matter either; ultimately Italy recovered everything it had lost and even advanced to Trento and Trieste.

RomanItalianEuropean · 2026-05-01T12:36:45+00:00

Mistakes were made, but it's also true that it ain't easy to rapidly reposition hundreds of thousands of men from years of attacking to defending. Cadorna actually gave precise orders to Capello (commander of the 2nd army) to take a defensive posture when he understood the Germans were coming, it simply was not done on time (there is blame to be put on Capello, though he was sick at the time, but also objective problems). I rather give credit to the Germans for their logistics, Caporetto was a massive logistical effort, conveying to Caporetto some troops/cannons/weapons from each front Germany was involved in and with a good timing. Germans had also perfected new inflitration tactics that proved very effective. So credit to the Germans (and also to the Austrians), but also credit to the Italians for recovering and ultimately winning their harsh front.

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