Morale and the Italian Army during the First World War

Vanda Wilcox completed a DPhil at the University of Oxford in 2006 before moving to Rome, where she now teaches at John Cabot University. She has published on Italian military leadership, training and battlefield performance as well as the popular experience and memory of the First World War in Italy. A member of the International Society for First World War Studies since 2003, she is now working on the imperial and colonial aspects of Italy's war experience.

''Italians welcomed the Fascist salute because they were tired of putting up both hands.' Such dismissals of Italy's military morale in World War I remain the subtext of much work on the subject. Wilcox makes a correspondingly major contribution by concentrating on compliance as central to sustaining fighting power in a war where motivation was otherwise limited. Italy's soldiers, still subjects as much as citizens, came from a culture of obligation tempered by reciprocity and negotiation. Wilcox demonstrates how that balance, often unstable, nevertheless sustained a war effort often brave and ultimately victorious.' Dennis Showalter, Professor Emeritus of History, Colorado College

• 1. Introduction; Part I. Army Policies and Morale: 2. Leadership, command culture and organisation; 3. Incentivising high morale; 4. Discipline; 5. Combat readiness; Part II. Italians under Arms: 6. Endurance: experience and the negotiation of identity; 7. Consent and compliance; 8. Refusal: indiscipline, protest and nervous collapse; 9. Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.