Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Trails and trenches of the Dolomites - FT.com

Max Hastings in the Financial Times last year on the fighting in the Dolomites.

This place was a unique and terrible battlefield. Here, between June 1915 and October 1917, amid scorching summer sun, winter ice and snow, Italians fighting in the allied cause struggled for mastery against Austrians and Germans.

Dolomites map

Few modern Europeans know much of Italy’s part in the first world war. The nation, led by Antonio Salandra, the prime minister, rashly entered the conflict in pursuit of territorial gains at the expense of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Its army was ill-equipped, its generals incompetent even by comparison with their French and British counterparts. At Versailles in 1919, Italy gained most of the lands it coveted, but they were soaked in blood. Some 689,000 of its men were dead, from a population of 35m.

Most of the slaughter took place around the Izonzo river close to the border with modern Slovenia. But Italian generals in their madness also made repeated attempts to push into Hapsburg territory north-west from Cortina, up lofty passes commanded by Austrian guns.

HG Wells, who paid a propaganda visit on behalf of the British government in 1916, described the Dolomites as “grim and wicked, worn old mountains. They tower overhead in enormous vertical cliffs of sallow grey, with square jointings and occasional clefts and gullies, their summits toothed and jagged.”

Trails and trenches of the Dolomites - FT.com

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