In 1914 Austria-Hungary went to war against Serbia, then Russia joined in, so Germany joined to counter Russia, then France decided it wanted some, which panicked Germany into doing something stupid and invading Belgium, but to be fair that was only the fourth dumb thing in this war domino effect. Britain joined the war to support France and Belgium and then provoked the Ottomans, who then joined Austria-Hungary and Germany. So four plus Belgium versus the three central and southern European empires. The advantage with the Entente powers but the Central powers had a potential ally in the Kingdom of Italy. Except, Italy really wanted to fight its ally Austria-Hungary a fourth time, after their three wars in the 19th century.
So the Italians stayed out of the war. They had a good legal argument: their alliance with Austria and Germany was defensive and Austria started the war by declaring against Serbia followed by a German declaration against France, while these were clearly responsive moves and arguably defensive, they were technically the initiators so Italy could keep its men in their barracks.
And there they sat. For ten months. Why didn’t they stay there?
Italy was confused.
Since unification the Italians had struggled to define what kind of country they wanted to be. Yes, they agreed on national unification, but little else. They were governed by the 1848 Statuto Albertino, a document issued by King Charles Albert to appease radical and liberal opinion during the European revolutions that year. But the document underwent a series of important changes by 1913.
On its face, the Statuto Albertino created a constitutional, hereditary monarchy in which the King remained very powerful but agreed to rule through “representative” institutions. The Catholic Church was declared the official and only state religion, with other existing forms of worship merely tolerated under law. The King was described as sacred and inviolable. He held the executive power, commanded the armed forces, declared war and made treaties, appointed all state officials, issued regulations to carry out the laws, and alone sanctioned and promulgated legislation. He convened, prorogued, and could dissolve the Chamber of Deputies, and he played a central role in succession and regency. The document also secured a royal civil list, protected the King’s private property, and preserved noble titles and royal orders. But by 1913 the franchise had been extended to almost all men, the ministers of government answered to Parliament and the extra-constitutional office of prime minister was a political reality. And the Italian government was locked in an ideological struggle with the Pope in self-imposed internal exile in the Vatican, which weakened the association of official Catholicism with the Italian state. The “prisoner-the-Vatican,” the pope, did not accept the conquest of Rome by the Italian king, and therefore leaned on Austria as the last Catholic Great Power who actually appeared to reverence the old legacy of the Holy Roman Empire after France became a secular and anticlerical state.
As the franchise expanded, Italian divisions became clearer and harder to ignore. And then the war broke out and Italy smartly took the chance on neutrality. But the voice, the clamor of the street would not stop. It came from the reactionaries and the radicals. Most Italian probably favored staying out of the war, but the two pro-war sides were determined agitators.
The neo-nationalists wanted to “complete” the unification of Italy by attacking Austria-Hungary and seizing the few remaining Italian-speaking territories ruled by the Habsburgs. They also saw the war as a way to rally the blood of Italy to the king and army, reclaiming their support from the socialist and other radicals. And yet, at the same time, many radicals wanted war because they wished to use Italian arms to smash the Habsburg monarchy which they saw as a regressive Catholic state, loyal to the pope, and holding back the tide of the revolutionary empowerment of the working class, and that defeating Austria would also weaken the German Empire and help bring revolution there as well.
This contradiction should have given Italians pause. If your fierce opponents also want a war of choice for the purpose of undermining you, perhaps you should choose peace.
This goes for nations today like the United States. If your opponents want you to enter a conflict, perhaps you should hesitate, and think of why those who do not mean you well, want you to do something.
The British and the French however were thinking about themselves, not the social divisions within Italy. So they reached out and started offering terms for what Italy would get if it attacked Austria-Hungary, a move which would force Austria to pull troops from the Serbian front, and away from the Russian border. Troops the Habsburgs needed right were they where. It was an almost asymmetric negotiation.
The Italian prime minister, Antonio Salandra, reveled in the courting from both sides, and the options afforded by neutrality. He called this sacro egoismo, sacred egoism, an almost religious duty to look out for number one, effectively a mystically rationalized solipsism. (Italians are great with the designer suits and the designer foreign policies. Even writing sacro egoismo feels like the most Italian thing I could type.)
Everyone knew that what the Italian government wanted was the Italian lands in the Dual-Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, which meant that to win Italy to its side, Austria would have to bribe it by surrendering its sovereign territory on the principle of nationalism. But the whole Habsburg empire was based on the principle of legitimate dynastic cosmopolitanism. Austria itself was a German land, not in Germany. So the imperial government in Vienna could only go so far to placate the Italians. They offered Trentino in the north, and only after Germany leaned on the Austrians to make a concession.
Yeah, that was not going to work for Italy when the British and French - who as we know had no qualms about divvying up land belonging to others - offered the Italians Trentino and also South Tirol, Trieste, Gorizia, Istria, and northern Dalmatia. This was not a hard choice for Salandra because he learned that the Russians were making gains against Austria in the East, and the Anglo-French forces were holding their own in the West, and the British Imperial expedition was preparing for an attack that would become the Gallipoli campaign. From Salandra’s position, it looked like Italy was about to miss the chance to claim rewards by joining the winning side. So he signaled his acceptance of the offer from the Entente powers and the Patto di Londra of 1915 was signed in April.
Britain, France, and Russia offered Italy more than it could have hoped. In exchange for joining the war, the Entente promised Italy that it would take from Austria-Hungary Trentino, South Tyrol, Trieste, the counties of Gorizia and Gradisca, all of Istria as far as the Quarnero, including Volosca and the islands of Cherso and Lussin and nearby islets), plus most of the Dalmatian coast down to a line south of Cape Planka and a chain of Dalmatian islands from Premuda, Selve, Ulbo, Scherda, Maon, Pago in the north to Meleda in the south, including Sant’ Andrea, Busi, Lissa, Lesina, Curzola, Cazza, Lagosta, Pelagosa, and other small rocks and islets. And even beyond this, Italy was promised full sovereignty over Valona (Vlora) and Saseno in Albania with enough hinterland to defend them, the entire Dodecanese Islands, confirmation of its rights in Libya, and a future “just share” of Ottoman Asia around Adalia, plus possible colonial compensation in Eritrea, Somaliland, and Libya if the Allies enlarged their African empires by seizing German colonies. And Albania was to become a de facto protectorate of the Italians; nobody asked the Albanians.
Effectively, this plan would have given Italy control of lands that had formed some of the first provinces of the Roman Republic, a partial restoration of the old Empire, and the potential to dominate the eastern Mediterranean. However, Salandra should have waited. The Russian-Austrian front stabilized, and Mustafa Kemal stopped the British at Gallipoli, saving the Ottoman capital. The war was not almost over; it was only beginning, and now Italy, rather than having a front row seat, was standing on the sands of the arena with the wild beasts. The war would break the old Catholic empire of Austria, but also leave hundreds of thousands of dead Italians and a nation of disappointed ambitions. There were no more Catholic great powers worthy of the name as Italy was sidelined by the newly empowered Americans under Woodrow Wilson. Italy’s ally Russia was undone by the Bolsheviks who now threatened Europe with Red Revolution. Weakened, humiliated, and partially abandoned by their allies, Italians were turning on one another, again. Many elites feared a revolution from the radical left.
Fear and resentment gripped Italy, and strolled it right into 1920s chaos and the rise Mussolini’s fascist government, the new Italian styled and tailored authoritarianism.