Andrea Ungari, La guerra del Re. Monarchia, Sistema politico e Forze armate nella Grande Guerra, Milano, Luni, 272 pp., € 22

[Autom. eng. transl.] In the wide overview of titles dedicated to the First World War and urged by the past centenary, this is a very interesting work for the perspective through which the years of the conflict are analyzed. The crucial theme underlying the reflections of the. it is, in fact, the unresolved node of the relations between the king and the old liberal political class as regards the conduct of foreign policy, inheritance of article 5 of the Statute, and the complexity of the decision triangulation between government, supreme command and monarch in the definition of military strategy. The image that emerges from the study is that of a monarchy which is at the same time "ubi consistam [and] main adversary [of the ruling class] in the process of achieving a parliamentary regime", a monarchy, therefore, simultaneously the cause and effect of the immaturity of the Italian political system, with the harmful consequences that will derive from this situation in the 1920s. The volume consists of six chapters that deal with the subject in question following a predominantly chronological sequence: after a brief review of the previous key moments in the liberal age, with a more detailed attention to the Libyan events (chapter I); we move on to the thorny months of neutrality (chapter II); to then deal with the heart of the problem - relations with the government and with foreign states (chapter III) and the clash between the executive and the Supreme Command between 1915 and 1917 (chapter IV) - in the two central chapters, concluding with a detailed analysis of the 1917 inter-allied conferences preceding Caporetto (chapter V) and, finally, with an examination of the final events of the conflict - from Peschiera to Fiume, passing through Versailles (chapter VI). The strong point of Ungari's analysis is undoubtedly the solid archival documentation - ranging from the essential archive of the Army General Staff Historical Office to various British archives, from Italian and French diplomatic documents to the interesting personal fund of Antonio Salandra - which contributes to supporting historiographically the thesis of the; to this is added an extensive bibliography, with ample space for memorials (Cadorna, Farini, Guiccioli, Martini, Riccio). The work, the result of a long journey of research by A., is placed in a surprisingly arid historiographical panorama: in fact, the flood of studies on the Great War is offset by a surprising absence of works on the third king of Italy and on the exercise of its prerogatives between 1914 and 1918, particularly in the topical moments of the overturning of the alliances, the military intervention and the defeat of Caporetto. Ungari, perhaps even where he occasionally resorts to some value judgments on the person of the king, moves away from the stereotyped and almost speckled descriptions of an opaque sovereign, confined to the background - between alleged conjugal crises and manic photographic passions - to give us back, instead, the image of a monarch who is keen and involved in Italian destinies, a monarch ready to exercise his margins of action whenever he deems it necessary.