ABSTRACT
The Great War took a heavy demographic toll on Italy, despite the nation having emerged from the conflict victorious. The mass draft decided in 1915 showed how physically weak the Italian male population was. In 1911, the Italian population was registered at approximately 36 million people, at least one and a half million of which were residents abroad. Observers at the time identified the start of a new era, in which even the healthcare system collapsed, when “our troops hastily evacuated a wide territory”, a euphemism for the army’s defeat at Caporetto against Austro-Hungarian and German forces in October 1917. At first, the pandemic was seen in areas near the front where promiscuity and, therefore, the spread of the epidemic were greater among various individuals: displaced civilians, soldiers behind the front line, prisoners of war.
