Italy key to German victory in ww1?
- Thread starter Mountain
- Start date
Italy certainly *wanted* Tunis as spoils, but it is harder to see it as a cause of war in itself...
The Italians probably need something a little more immediate and provocative to get them into the war (or at least, out of the company of the Entente - say, an ugly naval incident, where a French naval exercise ends up shooting up some Italian destroyers at night, and French diplomacy mishandles it, or a French spy ring in Rome is messily uncovered...
Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
IIRC when the Austrians were looking at their later super-dreadnought plans, someone recorded that the guns to be supplied by Skoda (Pilsen?) could not be delivered by rail to Trieste or Fiume as they would not fit through tunnels or were overweight for the bridges.
This was the navy that had the famous travelling brothel with whores in seven languages, so at least they were super efficient in some areas.
This was the navy that had the famous travelling brothel with whores in seven languages, so at least they were super efficient in some areas.
Doesn't seem to have been a serious issue, those ships received the go ahead to start construction before being stopped by the war, and iirc some of the guns were actually build and used as artillety during the war, so transportation couldn't have been that impossible.
Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
I'm not referring to the Monarch class but planned Projekt V - 37,000 tons, 215m length and 8 x 42cm guns (16.1" in old money) supposedly pulling 24 knots. The Skoda rifles - yes it was Pilsen (Plzen) - were also selected by the Germans for their L20 battleship design, and weighed in at 135 tons & 17m in length. There was a note in the designs from one of the engineers on the project pointing out the rail transport problems.
There was no "go-ahead" to start construction as by the time the design had started the Austrians had given up on building any actual battleships that might see action - the Monarch class (10 x 35cm) never getting much further off the drawing board.
https://www.deviantart.com/tzoli/art/Austro-Hungarian-Project-V-Battleship-Design-723925779
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Thanks for sharing those, i've never heard of them before. I assume they're obscure paper projects found burried in some archive?
Riain
Banned
Something I've been thinking out is why Italy joined the Entente not the CP. It's not just what each side promised, but more importantly the ability for either side to win the war and therefore deliver on their promises.
I think that by early 1915 Italy had seen that France and Britain hadn't been knocked out of the war in the initial offensive and were now bringing more and more material and financial resources to bear and while Russia struggled against Germany she had struck grevious blows against AH. As a result Italy was more inclined to think the Entente could deliver their promises while the CP could promise the world but not deliver.
So I wonder if a change in the fortunes of war significant enough to make Italy think the CP would deliver on their promises be significant enough for the CP to win the war without Italy anyway? Something like winning the Race to the Sea, or the HSF getting a big early win against the RN or a bigger success against Russia.
I think that by early 1915 Italy had seen that France and Britain hadn't been knocked out of the war in the initial offensive and were now bringing more and more material and financial resources to bear and while Russia struggled against Germany she had struck grevious blows against AH. As a result Italy was more inclined to think the Entente could deliver their promises while the CP could promise the world but not deliver.
So I wonder if a change in the fortunes of war significant enough to make Italy think the CP would deliver on their promises be significant enough for the CP to win the war without Italy anyway? Something like winning the Race to the Sea, or the HSF getting a big early win against the RN or a bigger success against Russia.
Yes but any sequel to the 1882 dispute either takes place before the alliance system us in place, in which case Italy likely gets its ***** kicked, or after the alliances come into play in which case will Italy's alloes come to her aid if she is seen as the aggressor?.
Aphrodite
Banned
The Italians never offered to go to war against the Entente The most they offered the Austrians was neutrality. They began negotiating with the Entente to enter the war in September 1914.
The king made his reasoning clear: With Russia and Britain on his side, he figured he could not lose. He understood the long term strength of the Entente. He admitted to a miscalculation in regards to Russia but that's with a lot of hindsight
To get the Italians to join the war, the Germans are going to have to basically win it without them or at least get British neutrality
San guliano said that the best outcome would be for France and Austria to both lose but that wasn't an option
In World War II the Russians are neutral and Germany had destroyed the French army before the Italians join
The fortunes of war - well, the perceptions of the fortunes of war - certainly factor in to a decision like Italy's. Obviously, all but the most belligerent (at least, of a secondary power like Italy) would blanche at jumping onside with an alliance which is blatantly on the ropes. If any of the developments you muse on take place, you're right to suspect that Italy's government is going to sit it out.
And I don't think that the Entente looked like war winners in winter/spring 1915. They just had kept fighting on to the point where they no longer necessarily looked like war losers. The war was a stalemate at that point, basically...
Italy's decision to enter the Great War is a strange one, and not just because it plainly worked out to be a bad decision for her; it was also the least pre-determined decision for war of any major combatant power. Mostly, it really seems to have been the work of Baron Sonnino, operating in a momentary power vacuum of sorts. It's so easy to generate a P.O.D. where Italy ends up staying neutral. And even for Sonnino, it was possibly mainly because there was a momentary shift in political heft to the liberal nationalists (who preferred to work up their irredentist jones against the Austrians rather than the French) and a renewed political instability which Sonnino hoped to solve by winning a territorially advantageous war.
Which gets us back to the O.P., doesn't it?
By 1914, an Italy honoring the Triple Alliance and going to war was definitely less likely than joining the Entente, because over the previous decade, developments had occurred that made the Alliance make less sense for the Italians. 1) Italian seizure of Libya and the Dodecanese from the Turks put them at crossgrains with efforts by Berlin and Vienna to court the Ottomans; 2) Italy felt aggrieved by not being consulted over the Austrian annexation of Bosnia, and the extension of its power deeper into Balkan territory she herself coveted; 3) Italy had worked out its trade disputes with France largely to its satisfaction. And, finally, Britain since 1905 had drifted increasingly into the Entente orbit, and British belligerency was a potent naval threat to Italy: a threat which made Italian entry into the war against the Entente something to think hard about; not a decision to be made lightly.
But then there are the fundamentals of Italian irrendentism, too, and these had always made Austria-Hungary a more attractive target. The ambitions of Italian nationalists against France were limited chiefly to Tunisia, Nice, Savoy and Corsica, and really only the first two, since these were the only territories to contain any significant number of Italian speakers. Whereas Austrian territories of interest - Trentino, South Tyrol, Istria, Dalmatia - contained nearly a million Italian speakers, and had a deeper cultural connection for Italians. The bulk of these territories had been under Venetian rule for centuries.
Berlin and Vienna were aware of most of this, and this is why they were content to lobby Rome for just neutrality, which on the whole would have suited the Central Powers' purposes best anyway. Had things worked out a bit differently - had Sonnino choked to death on a chicken bone in the spring of '14, say - I think that they likely would got their wish, and maybe without any formal deal.
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Riain
Banned
Some of the things I suggest are pretty marginal, the biggest would be Germany winning Race to the Sea and putting Britain on the back foot, so are more likely to keep Italy neutral through 1915 than bring her into the war on the CP side.
Aphrodite
Banned
Italy's enemy was Austria and not Germany. In the spring of 1915 Austria was in bad shape. The Italians thought entering the war would deal the knockout blow. They were wrong because Germany still had enough to push back Russia
It was Austria and not Italy that broke the alliance. When the crises broke the Austrians went and got German support. They never even consulted Italy or Romania. They rejected Serbia's response and Declared war without a word to Rome even though the Triple Alliance required prior agreement with italy before occupying Balkan territory
Even the Kaiser's stop in Belgrade broke the alliance. Under these circumstances there's no reason to expect Italian support
Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
IIRC the guy who runs Avalanche Press games went over to the Austrian archives some years ago and actually found the note in with the designs..