Morale and the Italian Army during the First World War

A study of how the Italian army managed morale and troops responded to its policies during the First World War.

Vanda Wilcox (Author)

9781316610152, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 December 2018

238 pages, 2 tables
23 x 15.3 x 1.3 cm, 0.4 kg

''Italians welcomed the Fascist salute because they were tired of putting up both hands.' Such dismissals of Italy's military morale in World War I remain the subtext of much work on the subject. Wilcox makes a correspondingly major contribution by concentrating on compliance as central to sustaining fighting power in a war where motivation was otherwise limited. Italy's soldiers, still subjects as much as citizens, came from a culture of obligation tempered by reciprocity and negotiation. Wilcox demonstrates how that balance, often unstable, nevertheless sustained a war effort often brave and ultimately victorious.' Dennis Showalter, Professor Emeritus of History, Colorado College

Italian performance in the First World War has been generally disparaged or ignored compared to that of the armies on the Western Front, and troop morale in particular has been seen as a major weakness of the Italian army. In this first book-length study of Italian morale in any language, Vanda Wilcox reassesses Italian policy and performance from the perspective both of the army as an institution and of the ordinary soldiers who found themselves fighting a brutally hard war. Wilcox analyses and contextualises Italy's notoriously hard military discipline along with leadership, training methods and logistics before considering the reactions of the troops and tracing the interactions between institutions and individuals. Restoring historical agency to soldiers often considered passive and indifferent, Wilcox illustrates how and why Italians complied, endured or resisted the army's demands through balancing their civilian and military identities.

1. Introduction
Part I. Army Policies and Morale: 2. Leadership, command culture and organisation
3. Incentivising high morale
4. Discipline
5. Combat readiness
Part II. Italians under Arms: 6. Endurance: experience and the negotiation of identity
7. Consent and compliance
8. Refusal: indiscipline, protest and nervous collapse
9. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Second World War [HBWQ], Military history [HBW]