Italy climbed Alpine ridges to win Trento and Trieste
The Italian front of World War I ran along the Italy–Austria-Hungary border from 1915 to 1918 after Rome joined the Entente despite prior Triple Alliance ties. Victory and the capture of Trento and Trieste accompanied Habsburg collapse; an armistice ended operations in 1918.
Italy had been allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary, but argued that the Triple Alliance was purely defensive and lapsed once Germany struck first. Grievances ran back years. After the 1908 Bosnian Crisis, Rome expected compensation in Austrian-ruled Italian lands under Article 7 of the treaty and got none. In July 1914 Vienna's foreign minister Berchtold kept Italy and Romania in the dark about moves against Serbia, knowing consent would carry a price, and on 2 August Antonio Salandra declared Italian neutrality.
Bargaining followed on both sides. In January 1915 Berchtold suggested giving Italy the Trentino, but Emperor Franz Joseph and the Hungarian premier István Tisza refused and Berchtold lost his job. Salandra and Sidney Sonnino, backed by King Victor Emmanuel III, turned to the Entente, and the secret Treaty of London was signed on 26 April 1915; it stayed hidden until Lenin published the tsar's treaties in December 1917. After a brief cabinet crisis in May, parliament granted war powers by large majorities, mobilisation began on 22 May and Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary the next day.
The battlefield was brutal terrain. Measured in straight lines the front ran about 600 kilometres from the Stelvio Pass to the Isonzo, around 450 of them in high Alpine country, and following every ridge and saddle it stretched to several thousand kilometres. In the western sections ridges averaged 2,700 to 3,200 metres, and ground above 2,500 metres carried glaciers.
Fighting ended with the armistice of Villa Giusti on 4 November 1918, as Austria-Hungary fell apart. The peace treaties of 1919 and 1920 gave Italy Trento, Trieste, South Tyrol and Istria, while most of northern Dalmatia, except Zara, went to Yugoslavia.
Source: Italian front (World War I)
