2025 Theses Bachelor's

A "White Death": The First World War in the Dolomites and the Genesis of Modern Warfare, 1915-1918

Bianco, Giulio

This thesis examines how the First World War unfolded in the Dolomites, a mountain range in the eastern Alps where Italy and Austria-Hungary fought from 1915 to 1918. It argues this front, traditionally marginalized and portrayed as an amusing anomaly of minimal significance, played a critical role in a much broader evolution in European military theory. Drawing on a wealth of official documentation, it traces how the extreme and unprecedented conditions of mountain warfare exposed the obsolescence of a prewar military model grounded in mass, in turn demanding a shift to a new theory of war grounded in qualitative questions of force employment. The thesis shows how the ability to effect this shift determined the course of the war between Italy and Austria-Hungary, as well as the spectacular downfall of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918.