Italian front (World War I)

Italian front
Part of the European theatre of World War I
Clockwise: Italian soldiers listening to their general's speech; Austro-Hungarian trench on the Isonzo; Austro-Hungarian trench in the Alps; Italian trench on the Piave
Date 23 May 1915 – 6 November 1918 (3 years, 5 months and 2 weeks) Location Eastern Alps and Venetian Plain Result Italian victory Armistice of Villa Giusti Dissolution of Austria-Hungary Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye Treaty of Trianon
Belligerents
Allied Powers: Italy Czechoslovak Legion Romanian Legion  United Kingdom  France  United States	Central Powers:  Austria-Hungary  German Empire
Commanders and leaders
Luigi Cadorna Armando Diaz Duke of Aosta Rudolph Lambart Jean César Graziani	Conrad von Hötzendorf Arz von Straußenburg Archduke Eugen Svetozar Boroević Otto von Below
Strength
Italy 1915: up to 58 divisions  United Kingdom 1917: 3 divisions  France 1918: 2 divisions Czechoslovak Legion 1918: 5 regiments Romanian Legion 1918: 3 regiments  United States 1918: 1 regiment	Austria-Hungary 1915: up to 61 divisions  German Empire 1917: 5 divisions
Casualties and losses
1,832,639:[1][2] 246,133 killed 946,640 wounded 70,656 missing[nb 1] 569,210 captured[nb 2] 6,700:[3] 1,057 killed 4,971 wounded 670 missing/captured 2,872: 480 killed (700 died indirectly) 2,302 wounded Unknown captured	1,386,327:[4][5][nb 3] 155,350 killed[nb 4] 560,863 wounded 175,041 missing[nb 5] 477,024 captured[6][nb 6] N/A

The Italian front (Italian: Fronte italiano; German: Südwestfront) was one of the main theatres of war of World War I. It involved a series of military engagements in Northern Italy between the Central Powers and the Entente powers from 1915 to 1918. Following secret promises made by the Allies in the 1915 Treaty of London, the Kingdom of Italy entered the war on the Allied side, aiming to annex the Austrian Littoral, northern Dalmatia and the territories of present-day Trentino and South Tyrol.

Although Italy had hoped to gain the territories with a surprise offensive, the front soon bogged down into trench warfare, similar to that on the Western Front, but at high altitudes and with extremely cold winters. Fighting along the front displaced much of the local population, and several thousand civilians died from malnutrition and illness in Italian and Austro-Hungarian refugee camps.^[7]

Before the Allied victory, the Austro-Hungarian state started to disintegrate on the last week of October. The Allied victory at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, the disintegration of Austria-Hungary and the Italian capture of Trento and Trieste ended all military operations on the front by November 1918. On the 1st of November, the pacifist and pro-Allies Mihály Károlyi's new Hungarian government decided to recall all of the troops, who were conscripted from the territory of Kingdom of Hungary, which was a major blow for the Habsburg's armies.^[8] The armistice of Villa Giusti entered into force on 4 November 1918, when Austria-Hungary no longer existed as a unified entity. Some Italians subsequently referred to the conflict as the Fourth Italian War of Independence, as it completed the final stage of the unification of Italy.^[9]

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