Trieste 1914-1915. Wounded and dead soldiers and discovery of the modern war

Trieste 1914-1915. Wounded and dead soldiers and discovery of the modern war Between July and August 1914 began one of the most tragic wars in contemporary history. The first mass conflict was quickly perceived as an epochal massacre, first of all by the fighting soldiers and the civilians who lived near the front, while in a few months news of bloody battles, wounded and dead soldiers reached different and distant places. This study deals with Trieste, a town that was kept out of war until May 1915 as well as other towns under the Augsburg monarchy, and shows how information on what the war and the life at the front were like were delivered in peripheral towns. The ways through which information (despite the censorship) spread were the letters from the front, the newspapers, the wounded soldiers, sent back home to be restored to health, or the dead ones. These «channels», which made people aware of the human costs of the war, are thoroughly scrutinized in this essay and mainly analysed through new archives’ resources