An essay arguing that the disappointment felt by many Italians at the end of the First World War was partly, but not principally, due to the ‘mutilated victory’.
To what extent was the disappointment felt by many Italians at the end of the First
World War due to the ‘mutilated victory’?
After lengthy debates concerning whether intervention in World War One was the
best choice for Italy in the build up to 1915, Giolitti’s Liberal government decided to
join the war on the side of the Allies. By the end of the war in 1918, many Italians felt
a great sense of disappointment, which in this essay can be defined as
dissatisfaction and disillusionment with the government’s handling of Italian affairs,
as a result of perceived ‘mutilated victory’ and, most importantly, economic hardship
and social frictions.
Mutilated Victory was certainly a key factor contributing to the disappointment felt by
many Italians at the end of WW1 as many pro-war, nationalist Italians had been
inspired by the idea of ‘irredentism’. Irredentism represented the belief that Italy was
a nation that had not yet been fully realised, with parts of the Italian speaking world
under foreign control that needed to be reunited with the mother country. Italians with
passionate irredentist ideals went to war fueled by hopes of regaining territories that
would help to unite, strengthen and glorify Italy. This, therefore, meant that when
territories regarded as unredeemed Italian land, ‘Italia Irredenta’, such as Fiume and
areas in Dalmatia and the Balkans which had been promised to Italy in the April
1915 Treaty of London, were not given to Italy upon the conclusion of the First World
War, a legacy of bitterness was created. Mutilated Victory can be seen as a large
factor causing disappointment in post-WW1 Italy as the significance of the
dissatisfaction with the Liberal Government’s failure to demand these territories was
clearly significant, leading to D’Annunzio’s occupation of Fiume and fueling the rise
of Fascism as a whole.
However, there is also room for the argument that the economic situation in Italy
following WW1 contributed to the disappointment felt by Italians at the time to a
similar or even to a greater extent than mutilated victory. This can be seen in the
magnitude of the consequences of the ‘production at all costs’ economic strategy
adopted by the government during the war for the Italian people. By June 1919
Italian national debt had reached 84.9 billion lire with a budget deficit of 23.3 billion,
which the government attempted to tackle by printing more money. This economic
approach caused prices to rise at a time when real wages were falling and
contributed massively to a feeling of disappointment with the Liberal government as
the middle class’ savings were wiped out entirely by inflation. Moreover, Italian
industry struggled to revert back to the peacetime economy; with demand for
armaments and consequently profits declining at the same time as large numbers of
men were being demobilised, Italy faced a considerable problem in the form of
unemployment, which reached 2 million in 1919. Here we can see how the economic
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