With the exception of a few people in the Italian High Command no one considered the possibility of Italy joining the side of the Central Empires as a serious eventuality. And that included the Germans and Austrians who had clear understanding of the situation of the Triple Alliance.

The Alliance that Italy had joined in 1882 was defensive in nature. Signed at a time when the Italians had been badly burned by their attempt to turn the economical penetration in North-Africa into something more “concrete” and Italo-French relations were comparatively tense. Renewed in 1887, with endless options for renewal, in the mind of Prime Minister Crispi it was the consolidation of a block of two akin Nations: Italy and Germany, similarly unified, similarly led (in Crispi's hopes), similarly destined to a great future. The inclusion of Austria – Italy's old enemy – had been a hard pill to swallow in order to secure the German friendship.

The relations between Italy and Austria were complicated not only by the recent history of conflict among the two nations (that had fought three wars between 1848 and 1866) but by the unfinished settling of the issue of the “unredeemed lands”: the territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with Italian majority (or at least a significant minority). These included the Tridentine (the historical region of Trent), large port cities like Trieste and Fiume, Istria and parts of the Adriatic coast. Thanks to the good relations between the two nations though, the Italian minorities enjoyed a comparatively good status within the Empire, also thanks to their average good social status.

It did not help that Crispi's model, Otto von Bismarck, did not reciprocate the feelings and that – right when Italy started to look for inspiration to the German strongman – his political system was coming to an end.

By 1914, when the War came rolling in on the European system, Germany was no longer that of Bismark; and Italy was no longer that mad at France. The idea of joining the Central Empires when the Austrians decided to go to war against the Serbians and the Germans proclaimed their unconditional support was never really discussed by the Italians – who instead proclaimed their neutrality.

There was a deeper reason though, that made Italian neutrality potentially rewarding. The 1887 Treaty involved a specific clause (article 7, that is) concerning the Austrian expansion into the Balkans. The article stated – and this view was accepted by the three partners, as it had been included for this very reason and would have been pointless otherwise – that Austria had to compensate Italy for any expansion in the Balkans; any expansion without compensation would have constituted a breach of the Treaty. Implicitly this had already happened when Austria had annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908 and Italy had followed by occupying Libya and the Greek islands of Dodecanese, while also initiating an economical and political penetration in Albania. To make sure, this point had been risen immediately if discreetly by the Italians through the Germans as soon as talks of mobilization begun.

The clause followed an old them of Italian foreign politics: that of “Balkanization” of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In short the idea that the Italian unification, by then the rounding up of borders, could be achieved in agreement with the Austrians by accepting the Austrian expansion in the former Ottoman lands in the Balkans. Here it was the Austrians which looked at a possible expansion (by all means the Austrians did not mean to allow for an independent Serbia after a victorious war): compensation had to be provided, possibly – argued Giolitti and his Foreign Ministry the Marquis of San Giuliano – in the form of those very “unredeemed” lands.

There was a problem though, not lost on the Italian diplomacy, that such a deal required a “cash on the barrel” approach: that the Austrians had to give in to Italy's demands in advance. Otherwise, if they had lost, there would have been nothing to pay for; and if they had won... well, maybe their payment wouldn't have been as forthcoming. This was in fact what the Austrians had in mind, with Minister President Sturgkh suggesting to deal with the Italians as one would with robbers – of course not honoring any deal made to keep them out of the war, but actively punishing them after finished off Serbia.

Looking more in detail, perhaps, the only way Italy could have joined the Central Powers, was if the Austrians had given so much that only a total victory of the Empire would have allowed Italy to retain their prize – thus binding the reluctant ally to the fate of the Empires. Except they could not really give that much. The Italians, themselves a minority among the minorities of the Empire, and who enjoyed a comparatively higher status already among the many (more historical and – loyalist within the Empire would argue – more faithful) nationalities of the Dual Monarchy thanks to the protection of a “friendly” nation, could not be granted what they demanded – independence, that is – without the other nationalities, Czechs, Croats, Romanians, asking for a similar treatment. Why would the Italians be allowed to rejoin their motherland and not the Romanians? Why Italian independence and not Polish or Croat? And what about the Serbians whose desire for autonomy had been a key point in opening the War for the Austrian central government and whose desire for a unified Yugoslav Kingdom would have been strengthened and not defeated by a treatment of favor towards the Italians?

It is clear why the Austrian government – and the Hungarian as well, afraid that the large Romanian minority would attempt to secede – could not grant Italy what Italy wanted. For the same reasons they could not grant Romania the province of Transylvania to prevent them from joining the Entente. But the rigid stance of the Austro-Hungarians over the issue betrayed their concern for the more general progressive deterioration of internal relations within the Empire, that threatened the very existence of the Hapsburg Crown and that the decision to go to war against the Serbians had been a clear reaction to, a way to fix outside the Empire what was largely an internal problem.

That's why the Austrians displayed no inclination to give in on the Italian demands during the first months of War – despite the German pressure to do so; as – the Germans argued – a second French front would have made a successful German offensive much more likely, but even the presence of a neutral Italy (whose abstinence from the intervention could not be certain as the clauses of neutrality would have been secret to the French and British) might have forced the French to divert men to the Italian border. But the Austrians were also not sure that Italy constituted a threat. The Austrian ambassador believed them to be “too backwards” to mount a successful offensive against the Austrians and expected at most some action in Albania to support the Serbs – of course he was wrong and Chief of Staff Conrad expressed his certainty that Austria could not alone fight Serbia, Italy and Russia on three fronts.

The longer the war looked the more the Austrians begun to feel surrounded and the more inclined they became to concession towards the Italians. Meanwhile though, Italian Foreign Ministry Sidney Sonnino – who had continued the diplomatic line of his predecessor San Giuliano – had opened secret talks with the British and French.

Many factors weighted on this choice: a victorious Entente would have been much more inclined to keep their promises to a fighting Italy than a victorious Austria would have been to a neutral Italy; Italy had been looking at expansion towards the Adriatic and the East for a while and the War offered chances of gains not only against the Austrians but also against the Ottomans – which were in the Italian mind just above a German puppet; the Italian public opinion and political class by and large were against the Austrians – the liberals for their identification with the ideals and tradition of the Western democracies, the nationalists for their expansion ambitions, the conservatives to bring to completion the national unity.

One must not overestimate the weight of any of these factors (according to San Giuliano, by 1913 “interventionism” as a political force was dead and buried) but they all played a role in aligning the Italian diplomacy with the Entente. Article 7, given that the Austrians had yet to offer a concrete compensation for their initiative in the Balkans, allowed Italy to consider the Triple Alliance broken by the Austrians and make a new deal – as I said the eventuality had been disclosed and was understood by both the Germans and the Austrians. That's why in March-April 1915 they attempted one last desperate move, sending former Ministry von Bulow in an informal mission to contact former Italian Prime Minister and prominent supporter of the neutrality Giovanni Giolitti, with an offer that included most of what the Italians had demanded first. The catch being that the “informal” move allowed some suspicions that the Central Powers were looking to gain time, waiting for Giolitti to regain hold of the Government, in the hands of the interventionist Salandra, knowing that, if such a move had been successful, the Italians would have had to start over with negotiations. A point of view this, that while not being certain, would have certainly crossed the minds of the diplomatic office.

And catch number two: the Italians had at the time already signed the Treaty of London, that was yet to be disclosed; so that the German mission would only result in casting a long shadow over Giolitti's patriotic support of the war, that would accompany him for the rest of his political career.

 

Sources:

L. Valiani – La dissoluzione dell'Austria-Ungheria

P. Melograni – Storia politica della Grande Guerra