The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 [Hardcover]

Mark Thompson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 2009

In May 1915, Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire. Nearly 750,000 Italian troops were killed in savage, hopeless fighting on the stony hills north of Trieste and in the snows of the Dolomites. To maintain discipline, General Luigi Cadorna restored the Roman practice of decimation, executing random members of units that retreated or rebelled.

With elegance and pathos, historian Mark Thompson relates the saga of the Italian front, the nationalist frenzy and political intrigues that preceded the conflict, and the towering personalities of the statesmen, generals, and writers drawn into the heart of the chaos. A work of epic scale, The White War does full justice to the brutal and heart-wrenching war that inspired Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Hundreds of thousands of men are fed into a meat grinder in futile charges against entrenched positions; opposing armies are forging a weird sense of camaraderie as they fraternize during lulls in the slaughter; and rows of rotting corpses are scattered over a bleak, pockmarked landscape. But this isn’t the familiar western front in France. Rather, these stark images are part of a stunning and emotionally wrenching account of war between Austria and Italy over the disputed terrain they both claimed. Although the struggle was recounted in the writings of Ernest Hemingway, the Italian front was regarded as a sideshow by many European journalists as well as Allied war planners. Whatever the strategic value of the campaign, Thompson illustrates that this was a massive, epic struggle that may have cost a million lives. He crafts a narrative rich in detail and which does not shrink from describing the horrors of a war that began, on the Italian side, in a spasm of wild nationalistic fervor but quickly degenerated into resigned cynicism. This is a masterful and moving chronicle. --Jay Freeman

Review

The Weekly Standard
“[A] study as pioneering as it is brilliant.... Drawing on an impressive array of British, Italian, and Austrian sources, including fascinating interviews with survivors, Thompson re-creates the Italo-Austrian conflict in all its facets…. The White War is the work of a bright young historian proving his mettle.”

Dallas Morning News
“Thompson’s book is a comprehensive work following the causes, culture and combat of Italy’s war against Austria-Hungary and Germany…. It’s worthwhile reading and remembering, particularly when trying to comprehend what price victory.”

Robert Fox, Evening Standard
“Brilliant … It is the first general history of the serial incompetence and brutality of the war in north-eastern Italy between 1915 and 1918, which makes it exceptional enough. In its elegant sweep of cultural and political as well as martial themes, it stands alone: it is one of the outstanding history books of the year.”

Christopher Duggan, Times Literary Supplement
“Mark Thompson’s wonderfully rich and poignant study, beautifully written and based on a detailed first-hand knowledge of the terrain in question as well as an impressive array of published Italian sources shows graphically why the events of 1915-18 had such a searing effect on the country’s national psyche.”

Max Hastings, New York Review of Books
“Mark Thompson, a young British writer, can claim a notable achievement with his narrative history of Italy’s World War I experience. With authority, sympathy, and unusual literary skill, he illuminates an aspect of the conflict about which some of us feel embarrassed to have known so little. The battlefield saga is sufficiently fascinating, but eclipsed by the portrait of Italy’s social and cultural experience within which the author sets it…. Thompson’s book gives a fascinating, indeed brilliant, portrait of a society immolated by its own delusions.”

The Economist (Best Books of the Year)
“A startling indictment of the Italian state’s conduct during the first world war, which shows how Italy’s nationalist dream of expansion would turn into the Fascist nightmare.”

John McCourt, Irish Times
“Brilliant… In presenting this conflict with such uncompromising focus and detail, Thompson has successfully accomplished a necessarily uncomfortable act of remembrance…. It should be hailed as the best account yet of what Hemingway described as ‘the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery’ of the Great War and of the experiences of the vast majority of Italian soldiers who, in Giovanni Comisso’s words, had little or no knowledge of ‘what they had done, or why.’”

Peter Popham, Independent
“Thompson’s book is beautifully written, and he skillfully interweaves vivid accounts of military progress with telling vignettes about the more extraordinary figures caught up in the fighting.”

The Washington Times
“[Thompson’s] writing is so vivid, so detailed, so sobering that a reader must take an occasional break from the horrors he describes.”

Newark Star-Ledger
“[A] gripping, superbly written account…”

Michigan War Studies Review
“This is no ordinary work of military history…. Thompson’s narrative strategies make for an engaging, powerful book…. [A] richly textured account of a people and its army at war.”

MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History
“[A] memorable work…. [A] riveting description of World War I’s forgotten front.”

H-Net Reviews
“[I]lluminating…. [B]oth historians and general audiences with interest in the First World War will benefit from Thompson’s study as a contribution toward a more comprehensive, diverse picture of the war than the one to which most western readers are accustomed.”

Military Review
“This narrative of that frostbitten war draws from the work of generations of historians and writers (among them Ernest Hemingway) but gleans vignettes that display the passions of the time and the difficulty of changing a strategy mired in repeated failure.”

Journal of Military History
“Thompson writes well and his narrative flows smoothly and easily. He has the novelist’s ability to capture a character in a phrase, and produces some telling snapshots: Lloyd George’s ‘silver tongue’ and Clemenceau’s ‘salty charisma’ stand out.”

Choice
“[A] stunning account of repeated failure and despair, incompetence and opportunism; a human tragedy all too easily entered upon and pursued. In addition to sustained accounts of military engagements, there are vivid portraits of key figures, notably D’Annunzio and Mussolini.”

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 16 and up
  
• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (March 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465013295
• ISBN-13: 978-0465013296
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #423,912 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a sweeping tragic tale, April 2, 2009

By 

Michael Buck "mike b" (wisconsin, usa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 (Hardcover)

It has been a privilege to read in the past year two sweeping, magisterial accounts of a sadly forgotten front, the Italian front in world war I. Last year i read the wonderfully detailed, blow by blow account by John Schindler, Isonzo the Forgotten Sacrifice and i loved it. I would have given it more then 5 stars if i could have. This year a second monumental work has come out. Mark Thompson's The White War is a triumph of artistic prose. This book goes into detail of the spirit, psyche, and morale of the Italian army and its people, as well as covering the Isonzo, Asiago, Ortigaro, and Dolomite fronts in good detail. This wonderful volume in tandem with Schindler's classic account are the two books to read on this front. Reading here about the savagery of Luigi Cadorna's command style, the duplicity of Antonio Salandra and Sidney Soninno, and the sheer lust for war embodied by the likes of Gabriele D'Annunzio, Benito Mussolini, Scipio Slataper and other paragons of early 20th century Italian history and culture are mind boggling in this day and age to comprehend. Contrasting sadly is the stoicism and heroic but silent sacrifices made by the men of the army, slaughtered for a few meters of blood soaked ground, usually in the rocky desolate Carso plateau, or the taking of an insignificant hill or rocky precipice at the cost of thousands of lives. The cost of all this was 700,000 Italian lives and over a million wounded. Austrian casualties were roughly half this number. The civilian dead was over half a million more. The bloodletting was savage and amazing, the gains trivial by comparison. In the end, Austria was destroyed, the Slavic nation state of Yugoslavia was born, and the Italians felt cheated by their own allies leading to the rise of Mussolini dominated Fascist Italy. This is a tale that should have been told decades ago, thank goodness it is coming to the English speaking world now. This book is destined to be a classic just as Schindler's book is. The difference between the two is Schindler's emphasis on the military aspects of the campaign, whereas Thompson emphasizes the human story although the military story is always present in his work as well. A wonderful story here, it should be read by all World War I buffs as well as those interested in Italian and Austro Hungarian, as well as Slavic history. This is a story that needs telling as both a cautionary and an inspirational tale of a nation coming of it's own for the first time since the days of the Caesars, and of the great war which brought out both the best and the worst of men in both Italy and Austria Hungary. All in a theatre little written about or read in the west, but a front which took more lives then in the American Civil War, and far more American lives then in all of America's 20th century wars combined. On a last personal note, my late grandfather, dead for many years before my birth unfortunately, on my mother's side, fought for the Italians on the great Isonzo front and later on Monte Grappa. He was wounded on Grappa and came to America shortly after the war. I believe he would have been proud of these two great works and proud of the fact that in Thompson's work the human tale of the common soldier is so well told and sympathetically done. I'm sure the war was the great and horrific defining point of his life, and it is high time justice is done to him and the veterans on both sides in this front. Kudos to Thompson for this masterpiece of writing.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gives you a rounded picture of how culture and politics affected the military outcomes, September 7, 2008

By 

John "Notes of a bookdreamer" (Bristol, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White War (Hardcover)

I have just finished reading "The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1918 by Mark Thompson which is a study of a 1st World War front that is often forgotten but where Italy lost 689, 000 solders( Britain lost 662,000 + 140, 000 reported as missing). That we tend to associate the infantry war with the plains of Flanders and Russia reveals the common myth as this part of the struggle was mountain warfare albeit also with trenches.

The conduct of the war exposed the weak hold of liberal structures and politics on the Italian population and the defeat of victory quickly let in 20 years of fascist government. The collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and take over the successor national states by the communists has made it difficult to get a sense of what really went on: Italians and other non Germanic nationals did fight for the Emperor, many of the feature of Fascism (a puppet parliament, a muzzled press, a romantic nationalism, a militarised state) had their roots on the political conduct of the war.

What made the book an interesting read is that Mark Thomas does more then hold to the historical arc of the events from the turmoil in Italy leading to its ripping up of a long standing agreement to be allied with the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary ( It took on a secret 30 pieces of silver territorial deal with the Allies). And ending with the desperate mad dash to occupy land vacated by the collapsing Hapsburg armies-it made the most of the cock-up where as the armistice agreement ended the war one day earlier for Austria-Hungary. What he does is switch the narrative in cinematographic terms from wide/long shots, medium to close-ups as the narrative unfolds. So we take the long view at the ideas affecting Italian practice in politics, art and military such as Romantic Vitalism or the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche. Or the impact of how Italian unification actually unfolded. We then have medium shot accounts of how individual battles unfolded from both of the combatant's perspectives or the power struggles and conduct at military and political levels. And finally the close-up accounts of artists, reporters, and survivors that expose the official accounts or help to explain the mindset of the elites.

It was this rounded and varied explanation that held my attention, as I tended to wander in the step by step of accounts of the battles(my attention span rather then the quality of the writing, although these are necessary to understand the appalling and arrogant way that the soldiers were used. For example, Military discipline justified the ancient Roman practice of randomly killing 1 in 10 solders if the platoon had infringed any rules which could be just turning up late from leave. The fact, with no interest shown in the reason was enough for summary execution. This is because the Italian army leadership took the most extreme view of all the armed forces in the 1st world war that the solders were only cannon fodder to do the will of the supreme commander. An attitude they paid for when Austria-Hungarian forces with direct support of Germany developed a forerunner of Blitzkrieg and took back all the territory fought over in the past three years and swept down to the pre 1866 national boundaries.

The resource imbalance between the foes and the deteriorating political realties for the Central Powers meant that this could not be turned into a knock-out blow. But with Russia out and embroiled in Revolution and no significant Allied victories, the collapse of the Central Powers as Germany struggled to avoid the fate of Austria- Hungary created the German Nazis myth of a stab in the back. It also confirmed the lack of democratic populist support for liberalism.

So why should you read this book? Well it gives you a clear account of one part of the wider First World War front that is only now becoming clear and even possible to study. (Attempts to clear the names of those summarily executed is still politically sensitive in Italy.) But a more important reason is that it offers insights into the conduct of events now. If History has anything to teach, its that we the ordinary people wont get a true picture what our masters have been doing in our name until we are pushing up the daisies.. In knowing what was going on behind closed doors then, we can question what the media, cultural elites, military strategists, politicians are doing now. But of course if you think we have the straight line on the War on Terror, then give it a miss.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A very good history on a neglected subject but with flaws, October 29, 2009

By 

Mark bennett "Mark" (portland, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 (Paperback)

This book is a welcome history on the fighting in Italy during the first world war. Its mostly well written and provides an understandable account of events. The book fills a large gap in terms of good accounts of this fighting. But there are major flaws that can't be ignored:

- Mark Thompson comes across as very pro-Italian and anti-Austrian in the book.

- His sources and his research are incredibly skewed toward works from Italy and in Italian.

- The book falls off at the end in quality. The book really ends at Caporetto. The final phase of the war just doesn't get the treatment the earlier portions of the war got.

- He doesn't visually show the war in terms of maps properly.

Its still a welcome book, especially up to Caporetto. He should have really stopped there and done another book covering the final years.