I read a third of the book instantly and was somewhat gripped by the events being described but after that I found it somewhat repetitive and although the history is well researched I felt the book could have been condensed somewhat without losing its essential quality. I found the descriptions of the Italian leaders somewhat at odds with the imaginary figures I had in mind previously and I've had it reconfirmed (yet again) that there's nothing new in the history of the world - war brings out the most terrifying aspects of mankind.

This is not a book to take on holiday.

This book is far from being just another military history of the Great War. For the vast majority of British and American readers the events of the Italian Front are a closed book. Almost everything I read in Thompson's account was new to me - from the scale of the conflict and the casualties to the actions of the Italian commanders. Although there have been revisionist accounts of the actions of commanders on the Western Front, the common view is largely that portrayed in Oh What a Lovely War. If only Theatre Workshop had known of what happended on the Italian Front in the mountains of Northern Italy they surely would have incorporated scenes into that play.

Undoubtedly the most shocking account is that of the martinet General Luigi Cadorna - a soldier almost totally devoid of any ideas or strategy other than to order his men to charge into a storm of machine gun fire. The killing fields of Flanders were deadly because of mud and lack of cover. The Italian front was quite the opposite - here the Austrians were securely dug into trenches on the high ground, where "high" meant mountains hundreds of metres higher and offering total command over the lower ground occupied by the Italians. Cadorna seemed to have no appreciation of the hopelessness of his troops attempts to dislodge the Austrians - this was truly an unwinnable position that should have been obvious from the start. Good generals often have to contend with opponents who have more favourable ground - but in this case every conceivable advantage was bestowed on the Austrians and none on the Italians. Cadorna's response to his troop's failure to win ground was to adopt the Roman army practice of decimation. Substantial numbers of soldiers were selected at random from "underperforming" regiments and shot.

The scale of the bungling, incompetence and sheer inhumanity of the Italian politicians and generals is quite breathtaking. Thompson looks at the social and political background to the conflict and draws on literature and poetry as well as more conventional material. The seeds that later grew into Mussolini's fascism can be clearly seen - in particular the need for a nation less than 50 years old to prove itself.

Thompson's prose is eminently readable and is likely to be the definitive account (at least for English speaking readers) of this campaign for the foreseeable future. If you thought that British and French troops were badly led in Flanders, Thompson's account shows that the Italian experience was at least an order of magnitude worse. A fascinating and thoroughly informative tale.

It's very easy to criticise the tactics and the generals in World War I but the leaders in the Italian High Command far exceed those on other fronts. All commanders in that war can with some justification be accused of showing no concern for the soliders but Cadorna and others took this to an extreme - victory could be won by the will of soldiers laying down their lives. Sacrifice and glory would lead to victory.

Gabriele D'Annunzio comes across as a particularly odious character.

Highly recommended ( )

Mixes views from the top (generals, strategy) and the bottom (assault troops) with behind the lines politics. Many reviewers found the mix successful. I found each battle reading much like another (Isonzo front, in particular) and after the first couple was put off by the futility and awful waste. Read a bit more than half closely, skimmed the rest. ( )

Mark Thompson’s superbly researched account of this little known appendage to the wider 1914-18 war is a stark reminder of the impact of political ideology and the cost in human life, misery, suffering and deprivation caused by conflict. Starting from the blatant opportunist expansionist ideals of Italy’s minority intellectual and political elite, double dealing and secret negotiations which finally brought Italy into the war on the side of the Allies, through to political ignominy in Paris in 1919, he paints a picture of a dysfunctional political Italy during the decades either side of the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, which laid the roots for fascism. The Italian military was in no better state, with its antiquated command structure cum strategy, an army under resourced in essential equipment and the inhuman treatment and knowing sacrifice of its own men. A side show this may have been, but one which had little support or understanding within the population at large and who paid with casualties comparable to the Allies on the western front for little or nothing to show in territorial or political gain.

Thompson leaves little doubt that the Austro-Hungarians are the aggrieved party in this conflict, with Italy the aggressor. Indeed Italy’s claim to centuries’ old Habsburg territory appears akin to German claims over the Sudetenland in 1938 and the Russian justification of their intervention in South Ossetia in 2008. There is also little doubt that the Habsburg’s held what moral high ground there was in the conduct of the war and it is perhaps fortunate for Italy that she chose to be on the, ultimately, winning side in the larger 1914-18 war, for she was going nowhere on her own. However, with the subsequent rise of fascism under Mussolini it is questionable whether the rest of the world would agree.

Perhaps the lasting legacy of Thompson’s account, however, will be the graphic and harrowing testimony of those participants caught up in a conflict they didn’t understand or want and the wanton destruction and loss of life inflicted. Just one example, from many, illustrates the stark reality of the war, when in 1917, in a diversionary attack on Ortigara,

‘The Italians have taken at least 25,000 casualties over the 19 days of the battle, on a front of three kilometres, for no gains whatsoever’.

Shorn of its basic facts this same attack is put more poignantly by Paolo Monelli, a captain in the Alpini, when the last enemy bombardment stopped,

‘… a vast silence spreads… Then groans from the wounded. Then silence once more. And the mountain is infinitely taciturn, like a dead world, with its snowfields soiled, the shell craters, the burnt pines. But the breath of battle wafts over all – a stench of excrement and dead bodies.’

Thompson’s book is yet another lesson in the futility of war and should be mandatory reading for all political leaders and governments around the globe.