ABSTRACT
The outbreak in August 1914 of what was to become the First World War immediately involved five great powers – Britain, France and Russia (the Entente) on one side, and Germany and Austria-Hungary (the Central Powers) on the other. Serbia, whose confrontation with Austria-Hungary had sparked things off, took the Entente side from the outset, while the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers at the end of October 1914. Several other European countries took longer – weeks, months or even years – over deciding whether or not to intervene. In some, hot debate erupted among both political elites and the wider public – in Spain, for example, which then remained neutral throughout, and in Portugal, which eventually intervened on the side of the Anglo-French-Russian Entente. In two more southern European countries – Greece, where it literally divided the country in what amounted to civil war, and Italy – the debate was particularly bitter and its effects enduring. Italy stood apart as the only supposedly great power, and the only power entangled in the treaty commitments which had developed in Europe since the 1880s, to undergo such an experience.
