Page 78 - Atti 2014 - La neutralità 1914-1915. la situazione diplomatica socio-politica economica e militare italiana

78 la neutralità 1914 - 1915. la situazione diplomatica socio-politica economica e militare italiana

During the prewar years, the Loebellsche Jahresberichte , the leading, semi-offi-
cial annual report on international defense matters, established a direct link betwe-
en the army’s structural problems and the organizational burden caused by the
war in Africa. The report for 1912 concluded that an Italian army mobilizing for
8
an European war would currently have to cope with “very difficult conditions”.
The report for 1913 acknowledged the military performance in the African theatre
of war and the ongoing efforts to reform the army. At the same time the observer
identified a number of major impediments in case of a mobilization: the system of
national recruiting, insufficient strengths of troops, the unsatisfying quality of the
militia forces, additional usage of the army for domestic security task, the general
state of garrisons and the command structure. Finally, it was expected that the
African engagement would result in a shift of the strategic zones and the mobi-
lization centres from Northern Italy towards the coast lines and Southern Italy. 9
The value of the Italian navy was assessed comparatively higher. Though the
problem here was that, before the war, the focus of the German Admiral Staff was
clearly on the naval battle against the British in the North Sea. Questions that in
hindsight would appear of strategic importance today but were not related to the
blue water navy – i.e. the blockade of the Mediterranean Sea accesses or the im-
pediment of French troop transports from Northern Africa – held little relevance
for the German planners of those years.
For German analysts, critical factors also were the parliamentary conditions in
Italy and the – in their eyes – small options of influence the military leadership had
there. Looking at this reserved assessment the question comes up: Which were the
Italian factors that actually played a role in German operational planning at all?

Italy in German operational planning
First among the Italian factors ranks the hope that any type of military pres-
sure on France would be helpful to the Germans. This included for example the
deployment and offensive action of Italian forces along the Riviera and in the We-
stern Alps. The agreement of neutrality between Italy and France of 1902 certainly
crushed these German hopes. We know today that the French army leadership was

8 Graevenitz, “Italien”, Loebell’s Jahresberichte über das Heer- und Kriegswesen 39 (1912): 120.
9 Graevenitz, “Italien”, Loebell’s Jahresberichte über das Heer- und Kriegswesen 40 (1913): 129.
The author of both articles was Captain (ret.) Dr. Georg von Graevenitz, who also had been re-
sponsible for the regular reports on the war in North Africa. For the German pre-1914 system of
military learning, cf. Markus Pöhlmann, “Between Manchuria and the Marne: the German army
and its perception of the military conflicts of 1911-1914,“ in The Wars before the Great War:
Conflict and International Politics before the Outbreak of the First World War. Ed. by Dominik
Geppert, William Mulligan, and Andreas Rose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014),
204-229, here 207.