Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating history of a forgotten front, 10 Oct 2008
For those of you who have read Hemingway's Farewell to Arms, you would be aware that the a war was fought on the Italian Front during the Great War. However, because so much is written about the Western Front, Gallipoli and even the Eastern Front, it is easy to forget this part of the war. Thompson, however, has brought together a book which seeks to redress this balance - and in my opinion it does so beautifully.
Unlike many dry history books, Thompson paints a picture of suffering, confusion and unbelievable bravery from a front which claimed millions of lives over the course of the War. Many of us know how the advent of technology brought about countless deaths on the Western Front, but countless more were lost on the Italian front due to the adherence to out of date tactics and ideas, and a futile attempt to gain land towards which many of the soliders fighting felt very little.
The book doesn't just provide names and dates. It also explores the politics, poetry and society which emerged out of the fray. It is easy to read, well researched and engaging without alienating the reader in any way. For a comprehensive understanding of an under represented period of history, you couldn't do much better.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Great War and Italy, 12 Nov 2008
I fully agree with what the other reviewers have said about this book, which is a marvellous overview of the Italian front during 1915-18. Not only a military history - though it is that, of course, but also a political and cultural history. And not only of the Italian experience, even though that is the main focus, but also of "the other side", the multi-national Habsburg empire. The outnumbered Austrian army (with bosnians and croats strongly represented here) fought well on the Italian front, in contrast with other theatres.
The author gives a balanced, beautifully written, exciting and very moving account of this not-so-known part of the Great War: how Italy tumbled into it 1915, the desperate and futile fighting along the Isonzo, the debacle of Caporetto, the recovery and the peace settlement eventually leading to the establishment of fascism. The author is very much inside his material, and the book has a very strong sense both of time and of place. At times it reminded me of Alistair Horne or John Keegan. Strongly recommended, and not only to military history buffs!
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40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Learn about what you were not told, 15 Sep 2008
In the UK, were are taught about the First World War. We are taught about the trenches, the slaughter and the waste. Mostly, were are taught about the British and Commonwealth soldier's experience on the Western Front. 'The White War' teaches the English reader about what they are not taught - the Italian/Austrian front.
After declaring war on Austria-Hungary for dubious territorial reasons, Italy sent hundreds of thousands of men to their deaths on the rocks of Carso near Trieste. Men, indeed, who were most likely to be peasants from places such as Calabria in the south, who barely had the vaguest idea of 'Italy' or what they were ordered to fight for. Thomson details the grim experience and grimmer treatment of these men from their superiors. The Commander-in-Chief of the Italian Army, Luigi Cadorna, even practiced the Roman-era punishment of decimation for retreating or mutineering troops. Nor was Cadorna a particularly successful commander, often conceding vast losses for pointless gains soon lost. He was replaced, eventually, but too late to save the Italian effort.
Thompson shows that this war, though being triggered by that infamous shooting in Sarajevo, was propagandised as a continuation of the Risorgimento (the 19th Century unification of Italy), even though Italy had only a partial claim to Trieste, and very little to the majority-Germanophone South Tyrol.
The writer does all this well, and even the digressions into Italian war literature (no doubt inserted as a counterpoint to Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, 'Dulce et Decorum est' school) are fairly tolerable - though the well-aimed kicking given to D'Annunzio is amusing. Faint praise is not what this book deserves, however. It deserves to be read, and read especially by those whose sole exposure to WW1 history is the Western Front. They will learn something, even if it may be different to the lessons of Ypres and the Somme.
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