with Ernesto Galli della Loggia
We will surely be surrounded by all kinds of commemorations in this coming centenary of the First World War. Therefore, as a tribute to the vogue of "history from below", we will be told everything about how they lived - and mostly died - in the trenches, how they organized brothels for the troops, what the soldiers wrote home about or what they ate; and naturally it will be helpful and opportune to know and remember all of this.
However, there is a risk that, paradoxically, the real crucial aspect of the event remains neglected and unknown in the end: that is, the war itself.
How and why did the largest organized slaughter of all time begin? What were the aims of the countries that triggered it? Could it have been avoided? Why did it last so long? And why for the first time didn’t armies face each other in a pitched battle, instead of burying themselves in the ground for four years, not able to get out of it? Then again: why in the end was the victory favorable to one array and not the other? And what does that war tells us about the societies that fought it? What were the long-term geo-political consequences for Italy, for Europe and for the world?
Here are some questions the Festival of Spoleto will try to answer this year, while waiting to give life to a more artistically challenging event next year on the theme of the Great War. It will do so in the most traditional of ways: with a lesson and a professor, Ernesto Galli della Loggia, duly equipped with maps and school rod. In this case, he will not be asking the questions, but Massimo Bernardini, a journalist of prestige that many television viewers have long since learned to know and appreciate.
