here - Paul O'Brien, MA, PhD

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Modern Italy

123

Downloaded By: [O'Brien, Paul] At: 23:16 12 February 2010

Glynn, R. 2006. Displaced confessions: Moro as metaphor in female perpetrator narrative. Paper presented at the conference ‘Remembering Moro’, Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, London, 10 November. Glynn, R. 2009. Through the lens of trauma: The figure of the female terrorist. In Il prigioniero and Buongiorno, notte. Imagining terrorism: The rhetoric and representation of political violence in Italy, 1969–2009, ed. P. Antonello and A. O’Leary, 63–76. Oxford: Legenda. Glynn, R. 2010, forthcoming. Terrorism, a female malady? In Terrorism Italian style: The representation of terrorism and political violence in contemporary Italian cinema, ed. R. Glynn, G. Lombardi and A. O’Leary. London: IGRS Books. Spataro, A. 2008. Niente commissioni: non ci sono misteri irrisolti. Corriere della sera, May 10, 2008, 5. Tardi, R. 2005. Representations of Italian left political violence in film, literature and theatre (1973–2005). Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of London, University College. Tardi, R. 2009. Self-narratives of the anni di piombo: Testimonies of the political exiles in France. In Imagining terrorism: The rhetoric and representation of political violence in Italy, 1969–2009, ed. P. Antonello and A. O’Leary, 200–20. Oxford: Legenda.

Alan O’Leary University of Leeds Email: [email protected] ! 2010, Alan O’Leary

The white war: Life and death on the Italian front 1915–1919, by Mark Thompson, London, Faber & Faber, 2008, 480 pp., £9.99 (paperback), ISBN 97-805-71223-343 Mark Thompson’s volume is a narrative history of Italy in the First World War that takes in social, political and cultural issues all underpinned chronologically by the military events. The book’s length (in excess of 160,000 words) is matched by its thoroughness: the first six chapters are devoted to the expansionist wheelings and dealings of the Italian government leading up to the notorious Pact of London in April 1915, with discussions of key personalities such as Gabriele D’Annunzio, Benito Mussolini and, most importantly, general Luigi Cadorna. The volume’s organising concept is in fact an unrelenting indictment of the generalissimo’s approach to fighting a war, not just in terms of his draconian attitude to military justice but also his chronic ineptitude. Thus in October 1917 we see the commander having his breakfast while writing letters to his family expressing his certainty that the enemy would not attack in the imminent future, oblivious to the fact that German and Austro-Hungarian forces were actually overrunning the Italian front with relative ease at Caporetto. A conundrum facing any author of accounts of Great War battles in Italy, as elsewhere, is how to inform the reader of the facts without arousing a sense of de´ja` vu as year after year, and offensive after offensive, men are seen going over the top only to meet up with barbed wire still intact and be mown down by the cross-fire of enemy machine guns. Thompson deals with this in fine style by inserting thematic chapters between one battle and another, thus allowing the reader time out from the repetitive slaughter. Subjects discussed include Trento and Trieste in their role as ‘the symbols of injustice and


124

Book Reviews

a national mission unfulfilled’ (and the reason for which many misled lower middle-class NCOs believed they were fighting the war); the writings of Trieste-born volunteer Scipio Slataper; the treatment of civilians in territories occupied by the Italian army; the war poems of Giuseppe Ungaretti; the ideology of ‘vitalism’ (the presumed superiority of action over knowledge) as espoused by Futurists and the ‘Mystical Sadism’ behind Cadorna’s approach to military discipline. Thompson’s book has been widely reviewed in the trade press, invariably in glowing terms. Piers Brendon in the Guardian described the book as ‘original, masterly and definitive’, an assessment that now appears on the book’s front cover. Similar comments, reproduced in three promotional pages inside, point to the volume’s prose style, with ‘beautifully written’ appearing more than once. And there is much to be said for these latter observations: Thompson conveys a great deal of information and does so in a freeflowing and bedtime-reading format. Yet while good or, in this case, excellent writing is certainly a plus, it cannot form the foundation on which the volume ultimately stands, or falls, from a scholarly point of view. We can begin by noting that The white war’s very assiduousness is sometimes excessive, as reflected in a number of excursions into areas of limited relevance. Chapter 17 on the war in the northern Alps, for example, could arguably have been dispensed with, as could Chapter 24 on a utopian and hashed scheme that never actually came to pass. But the most extreme case in point is a wholly unexplained Appendix (which in turn follows yet another chapter that is neither here nor there) devoted to the Third Italian War of Independence of 1866. At the same time, however, there are at least three important omissions. Firstly, notwithstanding the book’s welcome penchant for Italian war literature, there is no discussion of the ideological issues arising out of Mario Isnenghi’s groundbreaking, well-known and extremely influential multi-edition study of precisely this topic. Second, there is no analysis of the political evolution of Mussolini in and through the Great War. The Duce in waiting makes an appearance in an early chapter, but we are left wondering what happened to him thereafter, and this despite the back cover’s rather intrepid claim that the Italian campaign ‘eventually produced fascism’. Granted, this topic has been dealt with elsewhere (O’Brien 2005), but then, so has every other theme discussed in Thompson’s volume, as we shall see. Finally, no mention is made of Italy’s declaration of war on Germany in August 1916 following the successful sixth battle of the Isonzo. Yet this event was crucial, since it meant that Germany could now engage directly with Italy at a military level. Thompson makes much of the appearance of the German army, and of the young Erwin Rommel in particular, on the Italian front in the offensive at Caporetto in 1917 (Thompson in fact exaggerates the significance of Rommel’s presence, no doubt on the basis of the latter’s future notoriety). However, without the Italian declaration of war, this turn of events is left unexplained. Setting aside these issues, we can ask whether The white war is, in Piers Brendon’s words, ‘original, masterly and definitive’. As regards originality, Thompson concedes that the facts, figures and even interpretations contained in the book derive almost exclusively from secondary sources. To that extent, then, the volume is unoriginal by definition. The groundbreaking English-language work on the Italian experience in the First World War was John Schindler’s Isonzo, which appeared in 2001 and which – unlike Thompson’s book – boasts a vast archival base and some original findings. ‘Definitive’ the volume is not and cannot be, if only because it has already been overtaken by new research. So, to give just one example, quoting Giovanna Procacci, Thompson states (pp. 351–2) that


Modern Italy

125

100,000 of the 600,000 Italian men taken prisoner died needlessly of starvation and exposure, as a result of the Italian government’s callous refusal to allow food parcels and clothing to be sent to them (anyone taken prisoner was presumed to be a traitor and deserter). But Procacci’s politically overzealous thesis was not the full story: Alan Kramer’s archive research suggests that the treatment of Italian prisoners by the Austrian authorities also goes a long way to explaining these avoidable deaths (Kramer 2006). Whether scholars can call Thompson’s book ‘masterly’ for anything other than its achievement in summarising information and presenting it in readable form is likewise highly debatable. It should be noted, in this regard, that Thompson’s use of his sources also raises concerns. For example, a discussion of the treatment of Italian and Austrian civilians in territories occupied by the Italian army shows how many of these people were literally cattle-trucked to destinations all over Italy, where they were forced to live under police surveillance. Thompson notes that ‘few internees were given any reason for their treatment’ and that ‘many files contain no allegations at all’ (p. 137). While this clearly reflects the groundwork of professional historians researching in archives, no allusion to any such labour is made in the notes to this section (p. 410). Admittedly, Thompson states that, while his references suggest the scale of his debt to the works of others, ‘they do not – could not – wholly contain it’. But this is something of a cop-out, and, putting it bluntly, is not the way things are done. Indeed, by virtue of this method Thompson may even be selling himself a bit short, since at least some of the works cited in the book would appear to be primary published sources, including poetry, diaries and memoirs, as well as documents from the General Secretariat of the Italian Chamber of Deputies. But we are left to guess how and where any of these sources were examined, and why the latter in particular were chosen for consultation rather than, say, state archive or Italian army archive documents. All of this could have been dealt with in the appropriate manner at the beginning of the book rather than being slotted in rather oddly, and unsatisfactorily, at the rear of the volume between the bibliography and the index. In conclusion, although Mark Thompson’s book deserves much of the praise it has received, the warmth of its reception – and its commercial success far beyond academe – is arguably due to its style and readability. The content of the book, on the other hand, is drawn primarily from earlier academic works and the manner in which this has been done, and the results obtained, are, therefore, open to scholarly critique regardless of the intended public. It is hoped that further appraisals from this angle will contribute, in however small a way, to furthering the success of the volume in what will undoubtedly be subsequent and equally well-received editions.

References Isnenghi, M. 1970. Il mito della grande guerra da Marinetti a Malaparte. Bari: Laterza (and subsequent editions). Kramer, A. 2006. Italienische Kriegsgefangene im Ersten Weltkrieg. In Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum. Erfahrung, Deutung, Erinnerung. La Grande Guerre nell’arco alpino. Esperienze e memoria, ed. Hermann J.W. Kuprian and Oswald U¨beregger, Innsbruck: Universita¨tsverlag Wagner/Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano. O’Brien, P. 2005. Mussolini in the First World War. Oxford: Berg. Procacci, G. 2000. Soldati e prigionieri italiani nella grande guerra. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri.

126

Book Reviews

Schindler, S. 2001. Isonzo: The forgotten sacrifice of the Great War. Santa Barbara: Praeger.

Paul O’Brien Codongo, Italy Email: [email protected] ! 2010, Paul O’Brien


The Italian general election of 2006, edited by J.L. Newell, Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, 2008, 256 pp., £55.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-7190-75025 In April 2008, when this book on the 2006 election was published, Italians were on the verge of voting again. While the last election marked a dramatic simplification of the party system with the merging of the main left and right parties, it is still useful to focus on the previous election to understand the factors which made such simplification unavoidable. This book will be also helpful for all those interested in the study of the never-ending transition from the ‘first’ to the ‘second’ Italian republic, describing the context and the campaign that preceded the last election to be contested by the parties which emerged at the beginning of the transition. The volume, which represents the sequel to a similar book on the 2001 election, analyses the 2006 Italian general election focusing on three aspects: the strategy of the parties, the voting behaviour of Italians and the consequences for the wider political system. However, one of the main challenges that is faced by most contributors is to explain why the centre left won by a very narrow margin despite all the polls published throughout the campaign which indicated a comfortable majority of about 5%. The chapters are divided into four sections: the first is devoted to assessing the economic and political context in which the general election took place, the second describes the composition of centre left and centre right coalitions, the third analyses the campaign, and the fourth and final chapter looks at the outcomes of the campaign both in terms of electoral results and in terms of the characteristics of the new parliament. The introduction and the conclusion are written by the editor, who offers his personal account of the 2006 general election, drawing on the work of the contributors and on the most relevant literature. Contributors look at the general election from different perspectives, drawing different, and sometimes opposing, conclusions. Thus, the reader is left with the task of choosing the interpretation he or she finds most convincing. In other words, the aim of this volume is to take a snapshot of the different opinions given by experts in the aftermath of the election and not to build a common assessment of that event. The major division is between those who think that the narrow victory is kind of failure for the centre left and those who, alternatively, compare it to the comfortable victory of the centre right in the 2001 election and consider it a defeat for Berlusconi’s coalition. The first three chapters focus on the context of the election. Pasquino reflects on the disappointing conditions of Italian politics, especially the never-ending institutional transition and the absence of generational turnover: in fact, despite their negative record, the 2006 election was contested by Berlusconi (70) and Prodi (67), the same leaders who