The centenary of the beginning of World War I triggered, in addition to many commemorative ceremonies, increased research activity in the field of historiography, resulting in many publications that expand our knowledge of this first milestone of the “short twentieth century.” The newly published studies take the form of both extensive syntheses, among which the new edition of The Cambridge History of the First World War (Cambridge, 2014) at least needs to be mentioned, and (micro-)studies with a local or thematic focus. The collection of essays, Katastrophenjahre: Der Erste Weltkrieg und Tirol, which discusses how the Great War was experienced in Tyrol, therefore fits into the larger picture of the general increased interest in this period, and provides a fresh overview of this, in many ways very distinct, Habsburg crownland at that pivotal time.

The compendium has been prepared and published jointly by the University of Innsbruck and the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, and edited by local experts on the modern history of Tyrol, Hermann Kuprian and Oswald Überegger. Twenty-four Austrian and Italian historians have contributed to this work, attempting to encompass how World War I was experienced in Tyrol in all of its aspects, with a special focus on the social and cultural history of the “gefürstete Grafschaft Tirol mit dem Lande Vorarlberg.” As the editors have noted in the preface, the main aims of the work are to put some enduring historical myths to rest and to provide a modern view of the war as a fringe social event which had a devastating effect on social cohesion and challenged numerous widely accepted social conventions.

The essays encompass a wide spectrum of events. The contributions, which also include numerous illustrations, discuss the effects of the war on different social groups (women, workers, children and youth, refugees); much attention is given to the state of the economy and the related phenomena of famine and the drastic increase in illness and mortality rates. For Tyrol, which had not produced enough food to sustain itself even before the war, the effects of the war were even more traumatic than in some other crownlands of Cisleithania. Food shortages, forced mass migrations, workforce shortages—these were all challenges the state authorities, not prepared for the war, could not face successfully; therefore, the key role in alleviating the difficult conditions was played by charity organizations, whose indispensable activities form a connecting thread that runs throughout otherwise differently themed papers dealing with the conditions on the so-called home front. The increasing shortages of materials and growing losses soon led to a collective disillusionment regarding the war, which had still felt meaningful to at least part of the population in the first few months. The authorities tried to maintain enthusiasm for the war with a large-scale engagement of censorship and propaganda, being able to appeal to the long-standing tradition of Tyrolean patriotism and loyalty to the dynasty, and, following Italy's entry into the war, resistance against foreign invaders and anti-Italian prejudice. Despite the propaganda machine's activities, the legitimacy of the state declined increasingly toward the end of the war; social radicalization was on the rise, especially the national conflict between Germans and Italians, but also between the urban and rural population, as well as the army and civilian society. Influenced by the horrors of war, the final years of the war also saw a decline in the authority of the traditionally highly influential Catholic Church. To borrow from the British politician David Lloyd George, who, in a speech to trade-unionists in Glasgow, compared the war to a deluge that brings hitherto unimagined radical changes into the social and economic fabric of society, it can be concluded that in the final year of the war, this “natural disaster” washed away the last remaining fortifications of loyalty to the state and to the Habsburg dynasty in Tyrol as well.

The authors have not neglected military issues in the narrow sense either, as the reader is given a relatively detailed account of the most important military operations and the specifics of mountain warfare at the Tyrolean front. In this context, the interesting contribution by Marco Mondini, which discusses the role of mountain warfare in the Italian society's collective view of the experience of World War I, deserves to be highlighted. In complete contrast with the actual state of mountain warfare (the deciding battles between the Italians and the Austro-Hungarian units took place in the low mountains near the Soča River) and the specifics of fighting in high mountains (which was just as industry-dependent, relying on adequate supplies of modern matériel), the wartime journalistic propaganda and postwar memoirs and war literature established the image of mountain battles as a heroic and honorable war, kind of a glorious athletic adventure. As such, this cultural construct mostly served the establishment of a social consensus for continuing the war, and, after the war, the interests of the fascist ideology. Regardless, the conception of the so-called white war gained a distinct place in the historical memories of numerous European countries as the general characteristic of warfare between the units of the Habsburg and Savoy monarchies. It appears, for example, in the title of the recent work by Mark Thompson, The White War (New York, 2010).

The collection of essays as a whole, therefore, presents a detailed image of the multifaceted experience of World War I in Tyrol. The extensiveness and comprehensiveness of the discussion varies, though; some chapters’ content and form come close to a popular scientific level, while others are more demanding and will interest specialized researchers. Unfortunately, the contributions are not grouped according to their content, which would be of additional help to the reader's orientation. Also, surprisingly, the collection does not include any synthetic presentation of the activities of the Tyrolean political parties and their (changing) attitudes toward war and state. Regardless, the collection is a welcome addition to historiography; it serves as a methodologically modern and well-founded overview of Tyrolean history during World War I on the one hand, and as a generally valuable study of the interaction between civil society and the first total war on the other.