Italian front (World War I)

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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 along the border between the Kingdom of Italy and Austria-Hungary from 1915 to 1918. The Kingdom of Italy entered the war on the Entente side, although they had previously been allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary in the Triple Alliance. They claimed that this alliance was void due to the treaty being defensive and the Germans attacking first. When they joined the war, they were aiming to annex the Italian-speaking provinces of Trento and Trieste (the main objectives of Italian irredentism) and also German-speaking South Tyrol and the largely Slavic regions (where Italian minorities lived) of Istria and northern Dalmatia from their previous ally Austria-Hungary. Those territories were secretly promised to the Italians in the 1915 Treaty of London by Britain, France and Russia. The front soon bogged down into trench warfare...

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