Italian front of the Great War in autobiographical writings of Karol Berger and Jerzy Alfred Tomasz Kossowski

Abstract

The Great War was the ‘armed conflict that radically altered the face of the 19th century world’. The old order of peace and hope lay in ruins. Of all that had seemed permanent and immutable, nothing had been restored to its former place, because things no longer had ‘their place’. When war broke out, Poland was without statehood, partitioned between Russia, Germany and Austria. Polish men of fighting age could not choose sides independently, but were conscripted on a territorial basis into the armies of the partitioning states, and thus many found themselves on opposite sides of the firing line, killing each other. Nonetheless, the fact that the 1914–1918 war was the first to involve directly all three partitioning states kindled profound hopes among the Polish people of regaining independence. Service in the Austro-Hungarian army did not initially bring discredit upon Poles, thanks to the policies upheld by Vienna, but later attitudes changed dramatically. In their autobiographical eye-witness reports of the fighting on the Italian front, Karol Berger and Jerzy Alfred Kossowski give us a detailed account of all the tragic, harsh realities of war. At the same time, Berger is perceptibly at pains to tone down the ferocity, to present war with as human a face as he is able, to create at least a surrogate of life and shared human existence. Kossowski, on the other hand, was a pilot, the man who prevented the bombing of the heart of Venice, St. Mark’s Square and Basilica, during the First World War. Their writings make clear how both men held the myth of Italy dear, striving not to be crushed by the machinery of evil, and also, whether through small gestures (Berger) or spectacular decisions (Kossowski), how both were able to dominate ‘the indomitable’.