"In queste montagne altissime della Patria". Le Alpi nelle testimonianze dei combattenti del primo conflitto mondiale.

Letters, diaries and memoirs written by Italian soldiers who experienced the exceptional difficulties of the war on the Alpine front in the years 1915-1918 are sources of primary importance for the study of the perceptions and the emotions generated by the impact with a hostile environment. On closer inspection, for millions of Italians the First World War represented a crucial encounter with the Eastern Alps. Based on an analysis of a sample of 165 personal narratives of war – selected from published books and unpublished documents deposited at the “Archivio Diaristico Nazionale” in Pieve S. Stefano (Tuscany), the “Archivio Ligure di Scrittura Popolare” in Genoa and the “Archivio della Scrittura Popolare” in Trento – this research provides answers to the following questions: how did the combatants signify their relationship to a geographical space altered by the ongoing war? What suggestions were given by the observation of the Alpine landscapes? To what extent the political representation of the mountains under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as terra irredenta (unredeemed land) fueled a sense of national identification with the Alps? How much of the emphasis on the myth of the so-called “White War” (fought at high altitudes, from about 3.000 to 4.000 m a.s.l.) was actually shared by the troops? The study of the “war writings” of soldiers and veterans reveals that the armed conflict accelerated the process of gaining awareness of the Alps. Men from all social classes were forced to familiarize with the rugged soil of the mountains, the vertical dimension, practical activities such as skiing. Peaks and cliffs, made more dangerous by the context of war, were a “school of life”: the combatants had to learn to defend themselves, adapting to climates and lands not suitable to human presence.