Ricerc@Sapienza

In order to complete the trilogy dedicated by Gioacchino Volpe to the Great War (Il popolo italiano fra la pace e la guerra; Il popolo italiano nella Grande Guerra, Ottobre 1917 dall'Isonzo al Piave) lacked the unpublished manuscript, Il popolo italiano nel primo anno della Grande Guerra, where we find all the features of Gioacchino Volpe, historian of the First World War. In this essay, the analysis even more than on the military and diplomatic aspects of the Great War, is focalized, on the "civil, internal history of the Italian people during the war", considered, sometimes ruthlessly, in its many weaknesses (political, social, economic, ideal). However, in Il popolo italiano nel primo anno della Grande Guerra is flashed also the indomitable vigour and the secular capacity of Italian People to endure terrible and long-lasting trials and, finally, to prevail over them. Volpe analyses the success of industrial mobilization, the not secondary role played in it, by the female gender, the phenomenon of the various military volunteering, the relevant presence of our emigration in the war effort, the capacity of civil society, in all its components (manufacturers, ruling class, proletariat of the fields and factories, middle bourgeoisie, intellectuals) to work alongside the Royal Army who fought «for a Greatest Italy», in the trenches of the Carso and on the Dolomite peaks.