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Political Troops

The U.S. Army in the Adriatic, 1918–1919

 

Cmdr. Alexander Buschor, U.S. Navy

 

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Though Great War hostilities ended in November 1918, and most U.S. service members were returning home by September 1919, the U.S. military still found itself gainfully employed on the continent, specifically in the littorals of the Adriatic Sea where it had previously seen little-to-no action. What was the purpose of American military presence in this corner of Europe in the waning days of the war? Taking shifting ideological tendencies, massive geopolitical restructuring, and the desires and machinations of various Adriatic peoples into consideration, was the U.S. military successful in executing its mission in this region? This little-known subchapter of the Great War presents a unique case study in international diplomacy and the utilization of American force projection during cultural and political epoch shifts.

Although the United States has had a long road from staunch isolationism to the seemingly forever role of world police, frequently swaying back and forth with comfortability in this part, our present military footprint on a global scale undeniably illustrates our postwar commitment to extensive international affiliation.¹ However, prewar case studies highlight the age-old complications of foreign entanglement and the precarious nature of committing troops overseas. Though few would argue against the justification of doing so in the Great War, particularly on moral grounds, our extended stay in the Adriatic offers a more controversial glimpse into this type of foreign policy that serves as an eerie prelude to various quagmires of currently American-involved conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere throughout the globe.

Before analysis of the U.S. Army’s Adriatic role can be undertaken, the above-mentioned isolation/intervention dichotomy needs to be situated within the context of exactly what type of war was being waged. World War I was indisputably a total war like no other. The advent of submarine warfare, aerial combat, tanks, rapid-firing artillery, and machine guns brought a level of destruction on battlefields and in civilian centers unseen in centuries. In addition to technological innovations, Western governments had long been trending toward more total forms of war as rule steadily transitioned from dynastic forms of state toward nationalistic governance.² However, just as American military involvement in European affairs prompted a resurgence in domestic isolationist desires, so too did it cause a brief reversion away from total war back toward more limited forms of conflict. In Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy, Robert Osgood defines limited war:

A limited war is one in which the belligerents restrict the purpose for which they fight to concrete, well-defined objectives that do not demand the utmost military effort of which the belligerents are capable and that can be accommodated in a negotiated settlement … The battle is confined to a local geographical area and directed against selected targets - primarily those of direct military importance … It permits their economic, social, and political patterns of existence to continue without serious disruption.³

Most of the Great War’s primary belligerents were heavily involved in additional postconflict hostilities; the Russian Civil War, endless British colonial police actions, or any other flavor of fighting in the wake of monarchical dissolution all continued across the European continent and elsewhere. As mentioned above, ideological shifts taking place during this period acted as an accelerant to postconflict hostilities and geopolitical tension. The rise of fascism is the easy example most frequently referenced, particularly through the lens of postwar historiography. In his seminal work The Appeal of Fascism: A Study of Intellectuals and Fascism, 1919–1945, Alastair Hamilton states, “The Fascism of the intellectuals above all, had its origins in sheer rebelliousness, in an anarchistic revolt directed against the established order.”⁴ What’s interesting to consider, through this point of view, is that as the old regimes of Europe before the Great War dissolved, its victor’s imposition of a newly established order chafed with what individual people groups saw as their destiny. As we will see, Wilsonianism—watered down with the complications of overlapping international diplomacy—was just one version of this contested new order and put U.S. troops in a precarious postconflict situation.

While the ideological shifts were occurring, few mainstream histories account for neoisolationist America following similar traits of staying embroiled in limited conflicts throughout the interwar period. Some of these were on Washington’s initiative, many of which stemmed from America’s earliest foray into overseas affairs with the Spanish-American War. U.S. Marines were fighting in Haiti through 1920, there was a military occupation of the Dominican Republic until 1922, and U.S. forces occupied parts of Nicaragua in 1927—all under the umbrella of what is now referred to as the Banana Wars. Though these conflicts had the fingerprints of American corporations on them, later publicized by men like Smedley Butler in War Is a Racket, they lacked foreign government motives. In addition, there was the Polar Bear Expedition, a five thousand-soldier-strong American Expeditionary Force sent to Northern Russia in an interallied force to aid the White Russians in their civil war against Bolshevik revolutionaries.

It is this last example that leads to the impact of international diplomacy dictating American military involvement abroad. This is precisely what brought the U.S. Army and Navy to the Dalmatian Coast and the Adriatic Sea, where it was tasked with keeping Italian aggression at bay and protecting the newly emerged state of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.⁵

Well before U.S. involvement in the Great War was thinkable to the average American, European powers were bitterly embroiled in a conflict that quickly outpaced their expectations. As early as Christmas 1914, hoped-for quick victories mutated into brutal lines of trench warfare stagnation. Policymakers hatched new ideas as stalemate loomed and military leaders continued to throw men and material at the problem. The Entente began looking to open new fronts to take pressure off their main lines against the Central Powers. It culminated in, among much else, the Treaty of London in 1915, a secret pact among the Entente to entice Italy into the war against the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Just as the British, French, and Russians had bitten off more than they could chew, so too did the Italians. Article 2 of the Treaty of London essentially committed Italy to a total war: “On her part, Italy undertakes to use her entire resources [author’s emphasis] for the purpose of waging war jointly with France, Great Britain and Russia against all their enemies.”⁶ Additional articles of the treaty stipulated long-coveted irredentist lands and imperial ambitions, many then in the hands of Austria-Hungary or the Ottoman Empire, to Italy.⁷

The Italian government had something to gain for siding with the Entente over the Central Powers and obviously pursued their ambitions with haste. Anglo-centric history on the subject, including President Woodrow Wilson’s own views on Italian war aims by the time Washington threw its hat in the ring, hints at an attitude of superiority at what was considered naked Italian territorial ambition.⁸ However, what is lost in these somewhat dated and biased histories is the basic fact that Italy—a late-in-the-game nation-state with imperial ambitions—was merely attempting a go at the colonial overlord playbook so ardently practiced by the British, French, and to a lesser extent, Russians and Americans in the preceding centuries; newly attained Eastern Adriatic seaports were to be their Gibraltar, Dalmatian islands their Philippine archipelago, and Anatolian territories their Asian steppe lands. What is most vexing is that none of the lands mentioned in Articles 4, 5, 6, and 8 were the British, French, or Russians to give in the first place; moreover, they were again carving a map of different peoples of faraway lands, creating the pretexts for future inevitable conflict.

As the war dragged on and the price of total war became increasingly untenable, both in the loss of life and monetarily, Entente Powers reopened avenues of courtship for external help. This came in several forms, including American monetary assistance to Italy. By 1917, Washington/Wall Street had become one of the primary sponsors of the Italian government’s war bill.⁹ This financial backing mirrored Wilson’s transformation from apparently steadfast isolationism (supported by vast swaths of the common American populace) to intervention (substantially less supported by the layman American/advocated by moneyed progressives, Atlanticists, ethnic interest groups, and those in the Preparedness Movement).¹⁰ On 6 April 1917, America, too, was committed to its version of total war, declaring war and vowing to do so with no less than one million men massed on European soil, with almost all of its physical military might eventually concentrated on the western front.¹¹

Though American money had been flowing into Italy’s war campaign for some time, since the Italian military’s disastrous defeat at the Battle of Caporetto, Rome had requested more than just U.S. dollars. Fresh troops and materials were needed to reroute the Austro-Hungarians. U.S. brass and policymakers were reluctant to do so, but the 332nd Infantry Regiment was eventually committed to the Italian front. It’s worth noting that this is one of the first times an American fighting force was sent to a theater of war (a) outside the scope of primary U.S. military engagement (in this case, the Western Front), (b) fought under foreign leadership (the 332nd took orders from Italian generals), and (c) were committed by diplomatic means between two separate governments as opposed to being a purely Washington-made decision.¹² In Gen. John J. Pershing’s diary, he describes a lunch with the ambassador to Italy, Nelson Page, highlighting the political vice military nature of committing American troops to Italy: “The Ambassador seemed disappointed to find me strongly opposed to the use of our troops anywhere except on the Western Front and as components of our own army.”¹³

Northern Italy already had its fair share of Americans aiding the conflict. Red Cross volunteers and ambulance drivers, so well-known from Ernest Hemingway’s dramatization in A Farewell to Arms, had been there for years. The arrival of combat troops, however, was another affair. After departing their home station of Camp Sherman in Chillicothe, Ohio, in late 1917, the 332nd crossed the Atlantic aboard the RMS Aquitania, landed in England, and eventually trained across western Europe until it finally reached Italian soil in 1918. Upon arriving in Milan, the troops were greeted by throngs: “The crowd, now uncontrollable, almost bore the men from their feet in a mad frenzy to honor these first combatant American troops in Italy. The exultant cries continued, ‘Viva l’America! Viva l’America!’”¹⁴ A somewhat humorous note on ethnic and cultural differences is added to this passage in the unit’s enlisted personnel’s Company Log: “The stiff wall of reserve of the Anglo-Saxon could no longer resist the mighty flood of human emotion that surged against it and in that sublime moment, seizing the inspiration of the hour, the men in khaki spoke for America, and cried back, ‘Viva l’Italia! Viva l’Italia!’”¹⁵

It’s important to emphasize that the 332nd was largely detailed to this corner of the war as a publicity stunt, something both Washington and Rome sought to publicize. In lieu of fighting, the American soldiers spent a substantial amount of time in rear billeting, marching around areas of the Italian peninsula not in a combat zone, performing quasi-humanitarian duties, and training. The enlisted man’s log states, throughout the summer of 1918, “The regiment continued intensive training through the late summer; each man, already overtrained, began hoping that the impending day would soon arrive when the big drive in Italy would begin. At the close of the day’s heavy, and by this time, monotonous drill, the men spent their evenings on the streets and in the small shops of Valeggio or bathed in the clear, swift waters of the Mincio. The camp life, too, was diversified by Sunday trips to Lago di Garda and Verona.”¹⁶

However, as the Central Powers began to crumble and the Italian army again gained the initiative, the 332nd found itself on the move, seeing action at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto and the Tagliamento River. Even as Austria-Hungary was penning the armistice, Italian forces with their American helpers took the initiative and attacked wherever they could, mostly against surrendering Austro-Hungarian army units, to take what they saw as rightfully theirs and had been attempting to do so since 1915. As the war ended, word often reached the front lines piecemeal, and depending on what side a soldier was on may determine what level of fighting would occur. At the Tagliamento River, the 332nd found itself in a precarious situation, a prelude to the geopolitical debacle it would later find itself in:

The American forces were now in a perilous position. They lay deployed on the barren river within easy range of the enemy who held a wholly unobstructed view of the entire manoeuver, and who might easily have killed or captured every man in the three platoons by a concentrated fire from the well-fortified parapet now only a few hundred yards away. Events took a strange turn.

 

Waving a white flag, an Austrian major leaped from the enemy dike and quickly advanced toward the American lines. He was followed by more officers. Coming forward under a flag of truce, they offered to converse with the Americans and Capt. Maroni.

 

In the parley that followed the Austrians told that on the preceding night they had received orders declaring that an armistice would take effect at midnight—the 2nd—that they should maintain their present position at all hazards and hold the right bank of the Tagliamento while the Allied soldiers would not advance beyond the left—the west. They presented a telegram as evidence that these orders were actually issued, adding at the same time that they—the Austrians—would use force if the Americans advanced further. To strengthen their claims they asserted they would not have destroyed the bridge if the telegram concerning the armistice had come one hour earlier.¹⁷

 

By 1918, the armistice was signed, and the Paris Peace Conference was underway. With American entrance so late in the war, Wilson brought with him an entirely separate agenda that had essentially no bearing on Entente goals at the outbreak of war in 1914 nor individual ambitions, such as those of the Italian government, when they signed the Treaty of London in 1915. In a letter between the American ambassador to Italy and the acting secretary of state, an American scholar living in Rome at the time is quoted, referring to documents pertaining to 1915 Italian claims: “No one who is intimately acquainted with the course of events in 1914 and 1915, and who understands the character of the men who are governing Italy would question the sincerity or the accuracy of the general statements which it contains.”¹⁸ Furthermore, four years of brutal conflict acted as a sort of gas on the fire for long-percolating ideological shifts in European sociocultural life: Bolshevism, ultranationalism, and antimonarchical sentiments were all kicked into overdrive by the war’s end. Unfortunately for the hopeful statesman, Wilsonian democratic ideals would be just that, another ideal; this, juxtaposed against the direction for Italy advocated by popular domestic figures such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, founder of the Italian Futurist movement, highlighted the incompatibility of what was to follow. In his manifesto, Marinetti stated, “We must carry our war to total victory, that is, to the partitioning of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the security of our natural borders on land and sea, without which we cannot have our hands free to clear, clean, renovate, and enlarge Italy.”¹⁹

In volume 1 of Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, “Policies and Proposals of the United States and the Allies” documents 353–372 detail American foreign relations with Italy, and “Territorial Questions and Relations with New States” documents 202–404 deal with the new state of Yugoslavia, known at the time as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.²⁰ The above-mentioned trove of international diplomacy effectively divided former Austro-Hungarian territories among Austria, Hungary, Italy, and the new South Slavic Kingdom.

However, enforcement of these new boundaries and the web of overlapping military jurisdiction was another matter entirely. The Supreme Naval Council meeting in Paris on 5 November and subsequent Committee of Admirals meeting in Rome on 23 November split the Adriatic Sea into four zones, based on Articles 3 and 4 of the armistice with Austria-Hungary.²¹ The northernmost zone, centered on Rijeka (Fiume), was to be administered by Great Britain; the next zone south, centered around Sibenik, was controlled by Italy; continuing down the coast was the Americans around Split; and the southernmost sector, based off Kotor, was run by the French.²² Though these plans were primarily naval in design, the 332nd Infantry Regiment was still attached to Italian command and being utilized off the peninsula, now along the eastern shores of the Adriatic.

Unsurprisingly, there were immediate problems. First and foremost was that much of Italy’s territorial ambitions were being administered by other countries’ militaries, and that the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes—of which many citizens had only very recently removed their Austro-Hungarian army uniforms—was in control of coveted areas and had the backing of the United States; the fact that the neophyte kingdom owed its newfound independence in large part to four years of Italian bloodshed against the dual monarchy was an extra matter of ire for many Italian veterans and statesmen alike.²³

Though a thorough examination of Wilsonian ideals is too cumbersome to initiate for the purposes of assessing American military effectiveness in the region, they undoubtedly had an impact on the American mission of policing their sector of the Adriatic. Wilson’s idea of national self-determination for individual people groups spelled disaster for the region of Southeastern Europe in the wake of the collapse of the Hapsburg monarchy. Yes, many additional peoples (Serbs, Slovenes, Croats, Albanians, Montenegrins, Bosnians, etc.) were under the rule of Austrians and Hungarians, but lumping them into another polyglot kingdom didn’t necessarily address the problem of self-determination; moreover, it was merely a way to throw off the Austro-Hungarian yolk.²⁴ The proof is in succeeding history—only another series of dictatorial strongmen held various pan-South Slavic unity together until they could finally achieve what they always wanted, a series of independent ethnostates.

In addition, self-determination was not applied evenly. The citizens of the city of Fiume overwhelmingly favored annexation by Italy but were denied this by international diplomacy.²⁵ Rather than being allowed a plebiscite, as other city-states and regions were eventually granted, the city was declared an autonomous region, only to eventually be annexed by Italy in 1924 with the rise of Benito Mussolini.²⁶ Wilson had been drafting plans for such a divide of southeastern Europe as early as 1917; in New York City, he assembled a team of experts, known as “the Inquiry,” to begin balkanizing Austro-Hungarian lands. Here, 4,200 miles away, is where the future of a city’s populace was decided.²⁷ Part of the uneven treatment stemmed from geopolitical maneuvering with other war allies and came down to who could contest American ambitions and who couldn’t. On this issue, Dominique Reill states, “In short, Wilson ignored most of his Fourteen Points values in negotiations with the United Kingdom and France, but with Italy he reclaimed his moral ground … Wilson let the Fiume question become an ‘issue to wreck world peace’ because he did not believe in the Italian government’s capacity to oppose American will.”²⁸

The U.S. military attempted to insert itself into this powder keg as delicately as possible. Though a strong naval presence has been essential to international diplomacy and power projection ever since ships have set sail, boots on the ground are almost always the determining factor; the presence of the 332nd was the first issue to address. In the American Battlefield Monuments Commission, there exists a very brief postconflict history of the 332nd’s role abroad:

After this Armistice the American troops formed part of the Allied forces stationed in Austria and along the Dalmatian coast. The 1st and 3d Battalions were at Carmons near Gorizia, Austria. Later in November the lst Battalion was ordered to go to Treviso and the 3d Battalion to Fiume, Austria. The 2d Battalion was stationed at Cattaro, Dalmatia, and a detachment from it was sent to Cetinje, Montenegro. In March 1919 the regiment was assembled in Genoa and on April 3 its last elements embarked from that seaport for the United States.²⁹

This official history is fascinating, for it provides no detail as to why a single American regiment was dispersed along a coastline stretching from Venice to Montenegro or why they were operating in several sectors outside of the American occupation zone delineated by the armistice and the Committee of Admirals. The unit’s enlisted personnel’s Company Log does no better of the unit’s entire foray into the Eastern Adriatic; only two sentences are provided: “The second battalion, which had gone to Cattaro, Dalmatia, on November 12, entered the harbor after a trip around Southern Italy. The battalion is justly credited with having endured more hardships than any other in the 332nd.”³⁰ As early as 25 November 1918, the U.S. Army’s Gen. Tasker H. Bliss was concerned about American soldiers operating outside the scope of American interests, stating, “Because this was not provided in the Armistice, the Army does not have proper instructions and serves Italians.”³¹

Ironically, the U.S. Army was unwittingly serving the interest of Italian political and territorial machinations but was loved by Italy’s newfound foe, the Yugoslavians. Balkan and Eastern Adriatic natives somewhat correctly identified the presence of American Army troops with the arrival of a new order, the national self-determination so ardently advocated by President Wilson. However, the 332nd’s exclusive command by Italian military leaders, obviously in direct conflict with South Slavic ambitions, made this a precarious situation for every party involved.

A field report of the 332nd’s operations under Italian command perfectly illustrates the above-mentioned issue. In a memo titled “The Chargé in Serbia” between American diplomat H. Percival Dodge and the acting secretary of state, Dodge highlights the following overlapping web of American, Italian, and Yugoslavian interests:

At the time Italy was making efforts to occupy Cettigne as she had already occupied the Montenegrin ports of Antivari and Dulcigno but through the efforts of the Allies was dissuaded from this step. Our officers told me however that two companies of Italian troops actually had started for Cettigne, with two companies of American troops (332nd. Infantry) when before reaching the frontier the American commander, Major Scanlon, thought it best to return. The Italians continued and were received at the frontier with gun-shots from the Montenegrins at which they also returned to Cattaro. The Montenegrins are stated to have declared that they would willingly have allowed the Americans to go to Cettigne but absolutely refused to allow the Italians to pass. Serbian troops were occupying Cettigne at the time as well as the principal points of Montenegro.³²

On this incident, a second memo states, “The facts are exceedingly obscure, and it is doubtful if they are known to any living persons.”³³ It is even more vexing to consider that these were American troops, under Italian command, operating in the French sector of the Eastern Adriatic.

The Italian army would again employ American troops in another nation’s zone, Great Britain, when they marched them into Fiume on 19 November. It’s worth noting that, within a few weeks of this, the British would abandon their sector of Fiume, leaving it open for Italian army occupation. In The American Naval Mission in the Adriatic, 1918-1921, Dr. A. C. Davidonis states, “Italy employed American troops at Fiume to advance her own political interests,” and that the presence of them gave their objective the veneer of “a legitimate interallied occupation.”³⁴ In Joseph Lettau’s In Italy with the 332nd Infantry, he states, “It is said that when the Italians attempted to enter Fiume after the armistice was signed, they saw so many Jugo-Slav guns pointed their way that the expedition was called off until Americans could be found to land first. All felt sure that the Slavs would not fire upon Americans,” alluding to Davidonis’s point of using Americans as dressing for an interallied occupation force.³⁵

As already mentioned, though Yugoslav troops generally loved the presence of Americans and detested Italian occupation, South Slav unity was by no means monolithic, and divergent factions equally chafed with one another. In “‘Viva L’ America!’: The 332nd Infantry on the Italian Front,” U.S. Army historian Matthew J. Seelinger describes the 332nd precarious role in inserting itself into this geopolitical situation:

[D]ifferent native armed factions vied for control. On January 1919, fighting broke out between revolutionary forces, who wanted Montenegro to become an independent republic, and government forces, who wanted Montengro to join the newly formed Yugoslav union. As their Army counterparts would do nearly eighty years later in the Balkans, the 2nd Battalion was deployed in an effort to maintain peace between the rival factions. Placing themselves in harm’s way, the battalion was able to keep bloodshed to a minimum with no casualties suffered by their own men, despite several incidents in which American forces were inadvertently fired upon. In addition to their peacekeeping efforts, the 2nd Battalion distributed food and other relief supplies to the starving Montenegrins.³⁶

Lettau referred to the Montenegrin incident as “the Americans had a delicate task to perform in attempting to stop a revolution without hurting anyone’s feelings.”³⁷

As early as 28 November, misuse of the American troops had reached negotiations in Paris, and Secretary of War Newton Baker ordered Pershing to recall the 332nd.³⁸ However, American diplomat Col. Edward M. House (an honorary title), a longtime sympathizer of the Italian nation and postconflict cause, intervened; he convinced Wilson to keep the American troops in the Adriatic to avoid creating an “unfortunate impression.”³⁹

Though U.S. soldiers narrowly avoided indirect gunfire during the Italian march to Cettigne, life for the soldiers billeted in Fiume was much more easygoing. American officers were barracked in luxurious quarters aboard a commandeered Austrian steamer, and the troops were scattered throughout the city.⁴⁰ This was done intentionally to keep American supervision of their own troops to a minimum and to maximize their use for Italian motives. Furthermore, Italian officers were always placed in charge; Lettau describes the practice in the following terms: “This detestable practice of placing a higher Italian officer over the highest ranking American officer present was a favorite play of the Italians.”⁴¹

By March 1919, however, the writing was on the wall, and the political misuse of U.S. soldiers was too obvious to Wilson and American policymakers. Bliss stated, “It is my unanimous opinion of the American Peace Mission that … the American troops are being used to further a policy of occupation and penetration” and that “the regiment is being employed not for legitimate military purposes but to further political aims.”⁴² The 332nd was finally consolidated, assembled in Genoa, Italy, and returned to the United States in April 1919.

From this point on, except for U.S. Navy shore party excursions in the Adriatic littorals, the mission shifted to an entirely at-sea task. Though removing ground troops greatly reduced the potential for fratricide, the U.S. Navy found itself holding the bag of an interallied agreement that was not being lived up to by all parties equally.

When we again look to the British—who enticed Italy to join the Entente, nudged the United States into war, encouraged the sending of U.S. troops to the Italian front, established the zone system in the Adriatic only to renege on their role, and ultimately left Fiume open to annexation to counterbalance Franco-American goals in the region—it’s almost bizarre to consider American interallied cooperation in the first place and a lack of any historiographical interpretations of British malfeasance in the ensuing regional geopolitical collapse.⁴³ For example, Davidonis refers to Italian writer and war hero Gabriele D’Annunzio as an “irresponsible chauvinist” but nowhere describes any Machiavellian British scheming in such terms, only describing their potentially planned abandonment of Fiume as “a strangely docile lien indeed.”⁴⁴

With Wilson firmly siding with the ambitions of Yugoslavia over that of Italy, the U.S. Navy’s de facto role in the region became the containment of their pseudo-ally’s territorial expansion. Though they initially stuck to their designated zone of Dalmatia, pulling into ports when applicable, showing the flag, sending shore parties to the beach, and patrolling the littorals, this mission became increasingly more difficult to execute.

The failure of the interallied mission in the region became apparent on 12 September 1919, when D’Annunzio led a filibuster force of two thousand plus irregular Italian soldiers into the city of Fiume, where the 332nd had only recently departed, with the intention of annexing it for the Kingdom of Italy. Though Rome did not support D’Annunzio’s cause, they also didn’t do much to stop it; until a diplomatic solution could be reached, D’Annunzio declared himself Duce and the city was now the Italian Regency of Carnaro.

The template to capture Fiume was replicated in Trau, a town situated in the American sector of Dalmatia. American warships sent landing parties ashore to dissuade the Italian filibusters from annexing the town from the Yugoslav government. Here, U.S. military might prevailed; the American officer-in-charge of the shore party “presented the Italians with a two-hour ultimatum, and they withdrew. So great was the moral influence of the Americans that a show of force sufficed to end the illegal occupation.”⁴⁵

Though the above example illustrates the potential for American military success in the Adriatic, the capture of Fiume by irregular forces, its subsequent formation as a free city in accordance with the Treaty of Rapallo, and its ultimate annexation by Mussolini in 1924 illustrate the failure of late-in-the-war American diplomatic ambitions of peacekeeping in the region and the implementation of Wilsonian ideas of national self-determination via military presence.⁴⁶ Furthermore, the political misuse of the 332nd Infantry Regiment demonstrates a textbook example of lost-from-the-start goals intended for American military presence in the region.

A summarization of the overlapping motives of the Americans, Italians, British, and Yugoslavians shows the almost absurd level of complexity that the 332nd Infantry Regiment found itself in. The unit was sent by its government (at the request of the Italian and British governments) to aid its wartime ally, Italy, fighting against their mutual enemy, Austria-Hungary. After the armistice, the 332nd stayed under Italian military command and served as a quasi-political force for postconflict Italian political and territorial aims (promised by the British, French, and Russians), all the while an interallied military force (composed largely of British, French, and American naval assets) began the process of quelling Italian ambitions. The British quickly abandoned this role while the French and Americans openly advocated for Yugoslavian autonomy and independence in accordance with Wilsonian ideas of self-determination.

Sadly, a plethora of postwar and post-9/11 comparisons can be made to the commitment of American troops abroad without a clearly defined role and who exactly they are supporting, and the U.S. Army’s brief foray into the Adriatic presents an eerie prelude to this issue. A combination of ideological shifts (trends toward nationalism/fascism), competing third-party incentives (British territorial promises, Russian Bolshevism, American national self-determination, etc.), and disparate regional goals (Italian irredentism/expansionism, pan-South Slav movements, Fiume citizen annexation goals, etc.) put the U.S. military in a no-win situation to achieve their objectives of effectively policing the Adriatic to achieve long-term peace.

 

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Notes

1. “Pre/postwar” is used here in its broadest, twentieth-century meaning, referring to World War II. Since this article focuses on the Great War, any reference to before or after the war will be pre/postconflict/hostilities/etc.
2. Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Oxford University Press, 1986), 91.
3. Robert Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy (University of Chicago Press, 1957), 1.
4. Alastair Hamilton, The Appeal of Fascism: A Study of Intellectuals and Fascism, 1919–1945 (Macmillan, 1971), xx.
5. A. C. Davidonis, The American Naval Mission in the Adriatic, 1918–1921 (Office of Records Administration, Navy Department, September 1943), 1.
6. WWI Document Archive, “Treaty of London (1915),” last modified 30 June 2009, https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Treaty_of_London_(1915).
7. Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig, Decisions for War: 1914–1917 (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 187–88.
8. Wilson would later declare Italian control of the Eastern Adriatic as a “threat to world peace.” A. L. Marescotti, Guerra Diplomatica. Ricordi e Framenti di Diario, 1914–1919 (Mandadori, 1938), 221.
9. Dragoljub Živojinović, America, Italy, and the Birth of Yugoslavia, 1917–1919 (Columbia University Press, 1972), 100, 102–3.
10. Joseph A. McCartin, Labor’s Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912–1921 (University of Carolina Press, 1998), 34; William L. Genders, “Woodrow Wilson and the ‘Preparedness Tour’ of the Midwest, January–February, 1916,” Australasian Journal of American Studies 9, no. 1 (1990): 75–81, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41054170.
11. Erick Trickey, “‘I Hope It Is Not Too Late’: How the U.S. Decided to Send Millions of Troops Into World War I,” Smithsonian Magazine, 12 June 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/i-hope-it-not-too-late-180963640/.
12. Davidonis, The American Naval Mission in the Adriatic, 35; Živojinović, America, Italy, and the Birth of Yugoslavia, 101.
13. “Selection of the 332nd Infantry Regiment for Duty on the Italian Front (In the Words of General John J. Pershing & Colonel William Wallace),” United States World War One Centennial Commission, accessed 4 March 2025, https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/332nd-in-ww1-articles/332nd-infantry-in-wwi/4164-the-332nd-infantry-regiment-article-1.html.
14. Walter Hart, The Company Log from September 7th, 1917 to May 2nd, 1919 (Britton Printing, 1920), 21.
15. Hart, The Company Log, 21.
16. Hart, The Company Log, 25.
17. Hart, The Company Log, 37–39.
18. “The Ambassador in Italy (Page) to the Secretary of State, Rome, November 12, 1918,” in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, ed. Tyler Dennett and Joseph V. Fuller, vol. 1 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942), 417–18, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv01/d354.
19. F. T. Marinetti, Democrazia Futurista, Dinamiso Politico (Facchi, 1919), 18.
20. “Policies and Proposals of the United States and the Allies,” in Dennett and Fuller, The Paris Peace Conference, vol. 1, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv01/ch24; “Territorial Questions and Relations with New States,” in Dennett and Fuller, The Paris Peace Conference, vol. 1, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv02/ch8.
21. Armistice Convention with Austria-Hungary. Protocol of the Conditions of Armistice Between the Allied and Associated Powers and Austria-Hungary (Signed at Villa Giusti, November 3, 1918) (Hungarian Institute, 1918), http://www.forost.ungarisches-institut.de/pdf/19181103-1.pdf.
22. Živojinović, America, Italy, and the Birth of Yugoslavia, 203.
23. Dominique Reill, The Fiume Crisis: Life in the Wake of the Habsburg Empire (Belknap Press, 2020), 69.
24. “Jugoslavia was but a name; none of the great powers seriously entertained repeated requests for early recognition.” Davidonis, The American Naval Mission in the Adriatic, 35.
25. Reill, The Fiume Crisis, 18.
26. Reill, The Fiume Crisis, 9.
27. Reill, The Fiume Crisis, 25.
28. Reill, The Fiume Crisis, 40.
29. American Battle Monuments Commission, American Armies and Battlefields in Europe: A History, Guide and Reference Book (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1938), 430–31, https://history.army.mil/Publications/Publications-Catalog-Sub/Publications-By-Title/American-Armies-And-Battlefields-In-Europe/.
30. Hart, The Company Log, 53.
31. Tasker H. Bliss to William S. Benson, Paris, 25 November 1918, General Tasker H. Bliss Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
32. “The Chargé in Serbia (Dodge) to the Acting Secretary of State,” in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, ed. Tyler Dennett and Joseph V. Fuller, vol. 2 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942), https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv02/d280.
33. Tyler Dennett and Joseph V. Fuller, eds., Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, vol. 4 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942).
34. Davidonis, The American Naval Mission in the Adriatic, 43–44.
35. Joseph Lettau, In Italy with the 332nd Infantry (Evangelical Press, 1921), 62.
36. Matthew Seelinger, “‘Viva L’ America!’: The 332nd Infantry on the Italian Front,” Army Historical Foundation, accessed 4 March 2025, https://armyhistory.org/viva-lamerica-the-332d-infantry-on-the-italian-front/.
37. Lettau, In Italy with the 332nd Infantry, 65.
38. Davidonis, The American Naval Mission in the Adriatic, 47.
39. Davidonis, The American Naval Mission in the Adriatic, 48.
40. Davidonis, The American Naval Mission in the Adriatic, 54.
41. Lettau, In Italy with the 332nd Infantry, 58.
42. “General Tasker H. Bliss to the President Wilson, Paris, December 23, 1918,” in Dennett and Fuller, The Paris Peace Conference, 2:337–38, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv02/d256.
43. Marcuzzi, “London, Treaty of (1915).” Amongst many other examples, in the spring of 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour made all secret treaties penned and signed by Great Britain available to Washington to further entice American entry into the war on behalf of the allies. Živojinović, America, Italy, and the Birth of Yugoslavia, 54. “The British were, for political reasons, more benevolent towards the Italians and had shown an interest in placing American troops in Italy, suggesting possible joint action with the British forces there” (Živojinović, 101). “The Allies and Americans had succeeded in checking the Italian thrust into zones not assigned to them (with the exception of Great Britain)” (Živojinović, 204). The primary source for this assumption can be found in Admiral Benson to Admiral Sims, Paris to London, December 1, 1918. Naval Records, File U-UB. In the memo, Benson states, “I am aware … that the Italians were perfectly willing to accept any proposal of the British for a solution of the naval questions in the North Sea, so long as the British continued their policy of complete accord with the Italian views and methods in the Adriatic.” Živojinović adds to this point when he states, “Considering the closer relations between the British and the Italians in the Adriatic, the British refusal, and their meek retreat from the Zone and Rijeka, in the face of Italian aggressiveness, one could assume that it all point to an Italian-British effort to counterbalance the French and American influence in that area” (Živojinović, 205).
44. Davidonis, The American Naval Mission in the Adriatic, 26, 89.
45. Davidonis, The American Naval Mission in the Adriatic, 90.
46. Treaty Between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes Sight at Rapallo, November 12, 1920 (Hungarian Institute, 1920), http://www.forost.ungarisches-institut.de/pdf/19201112-1.pdf.

 

 

 

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