Italian–Czechoslovak convention

On 21 April 1918 in Rome Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and the Minister of War, General Vittorio Italico Zupelli, signed a convention between the Italian government and the Czechoslovak National Council, represented by its vice-chairman, Colonel Milan Rastislav Štefánik. Italy agreed to the formation from prisoners of war of an autonomous Czechoslovak army and recognised it as the armed force of a nation that did not yet have a state of its own. The Council gained authority over the Czechoslovak volunteers, and the army was to fight as part of the Italian forces, under the command of an Italian general. The British chronology of the war wrongly places this agreement under 30 June 1918.

Until then the government in Rome had regarded Czechoslovak plans with distrust. Thousands of Czechs and Slovaks from the Austro-Hungarian army who had been taken prisoner by the Italians were held in prisoner-of-war camps. As early as 1916–1917 a Czechoslovak Volunteer Corps was formed in the camp at Santa Maria Capua Vetere near Naples, led by the Sokol activist Jan Čapek. The centre of the movement became the camp in the charterhouse of Certosa di Padula near Salerno, through which more than 10,000 Czech and Slovak prisoners passed. The volunteers wanted to fight, but for a long time the Italian authorities only allowed them to work. The Italian attitude began to change after the defeat at Caporetto in the autumn of 1917. In January 1918 the command of the Italian Sixth Army agreed to the formation from Czechoslovak and Yugoslav volunteers of small reconnaissance units, the so-called esploratori. They carried out reconnaissance and propaganda, urging their compatriots on the other side of the front to come over to the Italians.

A dozen or so days before the convention was signed, a congress of the nationalities oppressed by Austria-Hungary met in Rome, attended by Štefánik and Edvard Beneš. Orlando received the leaders of the delegations at the time and associated himself with their resolutions. The convention was the first practical step of this policy. According to an account quoted in the literature, Štefánik told the prime minister during the talks: “I ask nothing of you except that you allow our men to die for their ideals.”

Infantry regiments were quickly formed from the prisoners’ labour battalions, according to Italian figures some 13,600 soldiers and nearly 500 officers in all. They made up the 6th Czechoslovak Division, whose command was taken by General Andrea Graziani. On 24 May, the anniversary of Italy’s entry into the war, Orlando presented Štefánik with the legion’s colour at a ceremony at the Victor Emmanuel II Monument in Rome. In June Czechoslovak scouts were already fighting on the Piave.