42/1-2 - Qualestoria. Rivista di storia contemporanea. Anno XLII, N.ro 1-2, giugno-dicembre 2014

Trieste 1914-1915. Wounded and dead soldiers and discovery of the modern war Between July and August 1914 began one of the most tragic wars in contemporary history. The first mass conflict was quickly perceived as an epochal massacre, first of all by the fighting soldiers and the civilians who lived near the front, while in a few months news of bloody battles, wounded and dead soldiers reached different and distant places. This study deals with Trieste, a town that was kept out of war until May 1915 as well as other towns under the Augsburg monarchy, and shows how information on what the war and the life at the front were like were delivered in peripheral towns. The ways through which information (despite the censorship) spread were the letters from the front, the newspapers, the wounded soldiers, sent back home to be restored to health, or the dead ones. These «channels», which made people aware of the human costs of the war, are thoroughly scrutinized in this essay and mainly analysed through new archives’ resources.

The emigration issue and the compulsory military service in Austria on the eve of World War I. The article presents the police measures taken in Austria in March 1914 in order to prevent illegal emigration of conscripts. The measures consisted of a control system, spread along the state boundaries as well as over the main areas of origin of the emigration flows and along their routes heading abroad. The task of the system was the monitoring of the emigration traffic and the checking of the military position of the male travellers to intercept those among them without appropriate permits for leaving the state territory. The surveillance involved besides the police force also customs officers and railway staff. The measures did not change the normatives regulating the rights of persons under military service to emigrate, it only made the check procedures and those of passports issue stricter. Despite this, they came across opposition inside the government and brought about strong political protests because they put under question the freedom of emigration as a constitutional principal and the government’s careless attitude towards the population economic needs. The contribution rests on the dossier concerning the introduction and implementation of the special surveillance over emigration in the archive of the provincial authorities in Trieste.

The expulsion of Trentino’s civilian population during the First World War. Protected by the State or considered disloyal citizens? Since the Southern border area of Trentino became a battlefield in May 1915, about 110.000 Italian- speaking inhabitants of Trentino were displaced, part in Austro-Hungarian internal regions (75.000), part in Italian Kingdom (35.000). This article analyses the historiography on this topic and outlines the predominant scientific approaches of the existing literature. Is possible to argue that the greatest part of these studies is based on local archivist sources and on diaries, letters and memoires, which provide us with a good description of the matter, although often restricted to single aspects of the general topic. Therefore, the article points out some potential research lines, based on other archivist sources and a transnational perspective. One of these research issues regards the evacuation and the displacement policy carried out by the Austrian Army during May- June 1915, whose reasons are only touched on by the existing literature. The article argues that most of the expulsions ordered outside the garrison cities find their ultimate reason in the overrated fear of the «untrustworthy» civilian population speaking the same language of the enemy. It also underlines that this element of supposed disloyalty marks out the whole displacement policy.

Italian POWs in Russia during the First World War: an Outline of Research Perspectives. This article begins with a thorough analysis of the international historiography on the POWs during WWI and, in particular, of the studies dedicated to the Italian soldiers of the Habsburg army, who fell into captivity on the Eastern Front. Since the Czarist empire was trying to exploit the nationality factor to weaken the Austro-Hungarian army, Russian authorities offered the Italian POWs to go fighting against Austria in the Italian army, and these soldiers were faced with the uncanny plight of choosing between two nations. The war radically transformed the perception of national belonging of these men, who, after the October revolution, were also exposed to the propaganda of the Bolshevik regime. The author demonstrates that past historiography has not paid enough attention to the WWI as an event, which forced the soldiers to reflect on their own identity, and argues that a more attentive look at both Russian and Italian documents would allow a better understanding of the dynamics of national and social self-identification during WWI. In particular, the prison camp emerges as place of national education of a small élite, which would

«The first volunteer»: the myth of Guglielmo Oberdan and the Great War. This essay aims to trace Guglielmo Oberdan’s mythopoetic role during the First World War. Specifically, it focuses on the influence this man – a hero of the Italian Risorgimento, charged with plotting to kill the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph and consequently sentenced to death by hanging on December 20, 1882 – had on the young people who fought at the Italian front to conquer the “unredeemed lands”. The reevaluation of this character, who was to be transformed from a Resorgimental hero into the first volunteer of the Italian army that fought against the Austrian enemy, clearly comes out by analyzing the celebrations and pamphlets that were published during the war.

The memory of the Great War in the official speeches at the Redipuglia Shrine. From the postwar reconstruction period to the Italian economic miracle. The Redipuglia shrine is the most important WWI Italian mausoleum, containing more than 100.000 corpses. It is located on the former eastern Italian front, in the multiethnic Julian march region. It was built under fascism in 1938, but the alliance with Nazi Germany and the coming war, led the regime to not perform any commemoration after the opening ceremony. The golden age of the Redipuglia Shrine in Italian national public discourse was after WWII, and continued to grasp public attention until the 1960s. Tensions between Italy and Yugoslavia for the sovereignty of the Julian march and the massive participation of living Great War veterans made Redipuglia a perfect stage for Italian government politicians, such as De Gasperi and Moro. In this impressive memorial, authorities could deliver speeches in which they were able to integrate WWI into Republican national identity, choosing the memories of the Great War that fitted best with their political agenda. Based on historical newspaper and scientific literature, the article describes the relationship among the Italian state, the public memory of WWI and the Redipuglia shrine from the 1940s to the 1960s.

Some thoughts on the repatriation and demobilization of Italian-speaking Austro- Hungarian soldiers after World War I. During World War I, general mobilization and conscription forced thousands of Italian-speaking citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to fight in the Eastern front. Those who were taken prisoners became the object of bilateral treaties between Russia and Italy. The others returned to civilian life in a different country, after Italy’s annexation of Trentino, South Tyrol and Venezia Giulia. This article outlines how the Italian government managed the repatriation of former Austrian prisoners and the way it treated veterans of the enemy army living within its new borders. Furthermore, the article considers the relationship and mutual interactions between the central government and the authorities of the newly acquired territories concerning the problems of demobilization and assistance to ex combatants. Finally, some remarks are dedicated to the Italian military operations in the Far East and the involvement in the Russian civil war.

Psychiatry and people between war and borders, the psychiatric hospital of Pergine Valsugana between 1909 and 1924, the first results of an current research. After the end of the Great War, the psychiatric hospital of Pergine Valsugana received numerous soldiers and prisoners traumatized by war. In addition to these men, many civilians, particularly women, were hospitalized as a result of difficult experiences during the conflict. For decades, traumatic pathologies resulting from the war were considered prerogative of the soldiers, this research aims to shift the focus of this fundamental category to bring it to those people who, despite not having had experience in the trenches, suffer violence and shock such to compromise their mental sanity. The desire to investigate the effects of war on civilians is also the reason behind the decision to study the case of the asylum of Pergine Valsugana. The diaspora of the population of Trentino made this land one of the most tormented of the entire conflict, and the natural place for a research like this. After an introduction about the history of the psychiatric hospital of Pergine Valsugana, the article focuses on the mental health of civilians and the cause that psychiatrists attribute to these conditions.