Borders. Italians on the side of the enemy

Treacherous or loyalists? Austrians or patriots? What was the destiny of hundreds of thousands of citizens of the Hapsburg Empire who were, and considered themselves Italian for language and culture? On one hand they were torn by the irredentist propaganda, and on the other they were influenced by the traditional culture of obedience to the rules, and in the summer of 1914 most of them responded to the call for mobilization. Swallowed by the vortex of the first defeats of the Austro-Hungarian empire, their national identity was later put to the test.