Page 312 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

312 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

One of the results of the Inter-allied Commission is certainly the highly remarkable
amount of production (the absolutely remarkable number of leaflets printed). It is the
proof that some lessons learned by the opponents on the Western front had already been
assimilated in Italy as well. Continuity and variety of propaganda activity (progressively
numbered leaflets), reduced size, alternation of information and deformation, of com-
prehension and admonition, are also to be found in the Italian leaflets of those months.
The fact that the lesson has been fully understood could be read in the orders that, in the
same months, were processed for and by the P officers, id est those military or milita-
rized (many intellectuals and scholars) used by the High Command to propagandize for
its own soldiers. The Commission’s work was also particularly hard because it aimed to
disarticulate a multi-national army. Therefore the propaganda had to be not only written,
but even thought of in several languages, according to different cultures, also appealing
to very different political traditions. This couldbe a winner story.
But there is also a list of failures, or losses. It is particularly remarkable if the propa-
ganda produced in the same months by the Inter-allied Commission is compared to
the one of the armies fighting on the Western front. Italian leaflets were in the average
much longer, more complex, with a lesser number of images than the French, British
or German ones of the same months. The tone was still too often admonitory and not
informative. The multi-lingual leaflets which had characterized the first years of Italian
propaganda were no longer printed. Leaflets were written in different issues, each of
them being in different languages, but their propaganda was made less believable by
numerous mistakes. Generally speaking, their language was much more complex and
old-fashioned than the advertising-like, essential one which was elsewhere used. Curi-
ously, there were no images in those leaflets (which is strange, since Ojetti had been
responsible for the Photographic Section of the Press Office, and was a passionate con-
noisseur of photography, and, more in general, of iconography).
In conclusion, it seems that these leaflets had been designed mainly for Austro-Hun-
garian officers, and not for the masses. From the viewpoint of the communication “qual-
ity” all this could not miss to have a negative influence, in spite of the large amount of
produced and dropped material.
Problems were clearly not lacking.

Moreover, the few scholars who dealt with Italian propaganda for the enemy often
described it as a whole, whereas even in its short span of life, it is rather easy to identify
a succession of phases.
A first phase corresponds to its beginnings. All characters seem to be directed, also
because of the closeness to the Congress of Oppressed nationalities, towards a great and
unanimous eagerness of activity.
But, just after one month, the contrast between military and civilians became mas-
sive. The military demanded to control the Commission as they did with their own of-
fices was strong, also because some suspicions towards this “civil” commission support-
ing a “political” and not military propaganda (based on the exalting of the nationalistic
insubordination of Slavs and not on the glorification of the Italian military power) were