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The Armistice of Villa Giusti or Padua Armistice was an armistice convention with Austria-Hungary which de facto ended warfare between Allies and Associated Powers and Austria-Hungary during World War I. Italy represented the Allies and Associated Powers. The armistice protocol, together with a supplementary protocol, was signed on 3 November 1918 in the Villa Giusti, outside Padua in the Veneto, Northern Italy, and took effect 24 hours later. [1] This armistice applied only to Austria because Hungary later signed the separate Belgrade armistice.
By the end of October 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Army was so fatigued that its commanders sought a ceasefire. By 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was tearing itself apart under ethnic lines, and if the Dual Monarchy were to survive, it needed to withdraw from the war.
In the final stage of the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, a stalemate was reached, and the troops of Austria-Hungary started a chaotic withdrawal. On 28 October, Austria-Hungary asked Italy for an armistice [2] They hesitated to sign the text of the armistice. Italy demanded Austria to accept it until 3 November at 00:00 o'clock, and they did so. It entered into force the next day. In the meantime, the Italians reached Trento and Udine, landed in Trieste, and aimed at making as many POWs as possible. They got about 380.000 k.u.k. POWs. 30.000 of them died during their war captivity. [2]
The ceasefire was to start at 15:00 on 4 November, but the Austro-Hungarian High Command unilaterally ordered its forces to stop fighting on 3 November.
The armistice required Austria-Hungary's forces to evacuate not only all territory occupied since August 1914 but also South Tirol, Tarvisio, the Isonzo Valley, Gorizia, Trieste, Istria, western Carniola, and part of Dalmatia. All German forces would be expelled from Austria-Hungary within 15 days or interned, and the Allies were to have the unrestricted use of Austria-Hungary's internal communications. Austria-Hungary was also to allow the transit of the Triple Entente armies to reach Germany from the South. [3] In November 1918, the Italian Army, with 20,000 to 22,000 soldiers, began to occupy Innsbruck and all North Tyrol. [4]
After the war, Italy annexed Southern Tyrol (now Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol), according to the secret Treaty of London, as well as Trieste, Austrian Littoral and part of Dalmatia (Zadar, Lastovo, Palagruža). [5]
The history of Tyrol, a historical region in the middle alpine area of Central Europe, dates back to early human settlements at the end of the last glacier period, around 12,000 BC. Sedentary settlements of farmers and herders can be traced back to 5000 BC. Many of the main and side valleys were settled during the early Bronze Age, from 1800 to 1300 BC. From these settlements, two prominent cultures emerged: the Laugen-Melaun culture in the Bronze Age, and the Fritzens-Sanzeno culture in the Iron Age.
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol is an autonomous region of Italy, located in the northern part of the country. The region has a population of 1.1 million, of whom 62% speak Italian as their mother tongue, 30% speak South Tyrolean German and several foreign languages are spoken by immigrant communities. Since the 1970s, most legislative and administrative powers have been transferred to the two self-governing provinces that make up the region: the province of Trento, commonly known as Trentino, and the province of Bolzano, commonly known as South Tyrol. In South Tyrol, German remains the sizeable majority language.
The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye was signed on 10 September 1919 by the victorious Allies of World War I on the one hand and by the Republic of German-Austria on the other. Like the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary and the Treaty of Versailles with the Weimar Republic, it contained the Covenant of the League of Nations and as a result was not ratified by the United States but was followed by the US–Austrian Peace Treaty of 1921.
The Treaty of London or the Pact of London was a secret agreement concluded on 26 April 1915 by the United Kingdom, France, and Russia on the one part, and Italy on the other, in order to entice the latter to enter World War I on the side of the Triple Entente. The agreement involved promises of Italian territorial expansion against Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and in Africa where it was promised enlargement of its colonies. The Entente countries hoped to force the Central Powers – particularly Germany and Austria-Hungary – to divert some of their forces away from existing battlefields. The Entente also hoped that Romania and Bulgaria would be encouraged to join them after Italy did the same.
Brixen is a town and commune in South Tyrol, northern Italy, located about 40 kilometres (25 mi) north of Bolzano.
East Tyrol, occasionally East Tirol, is an exclave of the Austrian federal state of Tyrol, separated from North Tyrol by parts of Salzburg State and parts of Italian South Tyrol. It is coterminous with the administrative district (Bezirk) of Lienz.
The Julian March, also called Julian Venetia, is an area of southern Central Europe which is currently divided among Croatia, Italy, and Slovenia. The term was coined in 1863 by the Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, a native of the area, to demonstrate that the Austrian Littoral, Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino shared a common Italian linguistic identity. Ascoli emphasized the Augustan partition of Roman Italy at the beginning of the Empire, when Venetia et Histria was Regio X.
The 1st Army was a Royal Italian Army field army, in World War I, facing Austro-Hungarian and German forces, and in World War II, fighting on the North African front.
The Italian front was one of the main theatres of war of World War I. It involved a series of military engagements along the border between the Kingdom of Italy and Austria-Hungary from 1915 to 1918. Following secret promises made by the Allies in the 1915 Treaty of London, the Kingdom of Italy entered the war on the Allied side, aiming to annex the Austrian Littoral, northern Dalmatia and the territories of present-day Trentino and South Tyrol. The front soon bogged down into trench warfare, similar to that on the Western Front, but at high altitudes and with extremely 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.
Modern-day South Tyrol, an autonomous Italian province created in 1948, was part of the Austro-Hungarian County of Tyrol until 1918. It was annexed by Italy following the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I. It has been part of a cross-border joint entity, the Euroregion Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino, since 2001.
The Battle of Vittorio Veneto was fought from 24 October to 3 November 1918 near Vittorio Veneto on the Italian Front during World War I. After having thoroughly defeated Austro-Hungarian troops during the defensive Battle of the Piave River, the Italian army launched a great counter-offensive: the Italian victory marked the end of the war on the Italian Front, secured the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and contributed to the end of the First World War just one week later. The battle led to the capture of over 5,000 artillery pieces and over 350,000 Austro-Hungarian troops, including 120,000 Germans, 83,000 Czechs and Slovaks, 60,000 South Slavs, 40,000 Poles, several tens of thousands of Romanians and Ukrainians, and 7,000 Austro-Hungarian loyalist Italians and Friulians.
The Republic of German-Austria and German-Austria was an unrecognised state that was created following World War I as an initial rump state for areas with a predominantly German-speaking and ethnic German population within what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with plans for eventual unification with Germany. The territories covered an area of 118,311 km2 (45,680 sq mi), with 10.4 million inhabitants.
Ettore Tolomei was an Italian nationalist and fascist. He was designated a Member of the Italian Senate in 1923, and ennobled as Conte della Vetta in 1937.
The Third Italian War of Independence was a war between the Kingdom of Italy and the Austrian Empire fought between June and August 1866. The conflict paralleled the Austro-Prussian War and resulted in Austria conceding the region of Venetia to France, which was later annexed by Italy after a plebiscite. Italy's acquisition of this wealthy and populous territory represented a major step in the Unification of Italy.
The 1866 Treaty of Vienna was an agreement signed on 3 October 1866 and ratified on 12 October by the Kingdom of Italy and the Austrian Empire that concluded the hostilities of the Third War of Italian Independence, a theatre of the concurrent Austro-Prussian War.
Although a member of the Triple Alliance, Italy did not join the Central Powers – Germany and Austria-Hungary – when the war started with Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia on 28 July 1914. In fact, the two Central Powers had taken the offensive while the Triple Alliance was supposed to be a defensive alliance. Moreover the Triple Alliance recognized that both Italy and Austria-Hungary were interested in the Balkans and required both to consult each other before changing the status quo and to provide compensation for whatever advantage in that area: Austria-Hungary did consult Germany but not Italy before issuing the ultimatum to Serbia, and refused any compensation before the end of the war.
Bolzano/Bozen railway station is the main station of Bolzano, capital of the autonomous province of South Tyrol, in northeastern Italy.
Brenner railway station is the border station of Italy and Austria. It serves the town and comune of Brenner in the autonomous province of South Tyrol, northeastern Italy.
Events from the year 1918 in Italy.
The South Tyrolean Army Group was an army group of the Austro-Hungarian Army, which operated in South Tyrol against Italy, between 1 March 1917 and the end of World War I. It was also called Army Group Conrad and Army Group/Army Front Archduke Joseph after its commanders.