Children and Adolescents

“War has a young face,” wrote Gabriele D’annunzio in 1915, when Italy entered the war. Indeed, the First World War, and in all belligerent societies, there developed a “youth phenomenon.” Yet there is little historical research devoted to the interface between war and youth. The specifically youth aspect of the First World War has seldom been examined; when it has, it has been in connection with problems of conscription rather than from the viewpoint of battle. Yet a joint …