The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the Ægean

The following is a record on the state of the Italian front during World War I, as documented by famed war correspondent E. Alexander Powell. Following secret promises made by the Allies in the Treaty of London, Italy entered the war aiming to annex the Austrian Littoral, northern Dalmatia, and the territories of present-day Trentino and South Tyrol. Although Italy had hoped to gain the territories with a surprise offensive, the front soon bogged down into trench warfare, similar to that on the Western Front in France, but at high altitudes and with very cold winters. Fighting along the front displaced much of the local population, and several thousand civilians died from malnutrition and illness in Italian and Austro-Hungarian refugee-camps. The Allied victory at Vittorio Veneto, the disintegration of the Habsburg empire, and the Italian capture of Trento and Trieste eventually ended the military operations.