Why go
Read this for the historical setting behind western Slovenia’s wartime associations. Fighting along the Soča followed Italy’s attack on Austria-Hungary in 1915, while Slovene soldiers served in the Habsburg army. Refugees, damaged settlements and political repression make the story broader than a sequence of military battles.
The full story
Before the war, emigration had already linked Slovene communities with industrial America. People moved to places including Cleveland, Chicago and the coal and steel districts of Pennsylvania and Ohio. The outbreak of war brought a different kind of upheaval at home. Austrian authorities suspended civil liberties and imprisoned Slovene activists suspected of pro-Serbian or pan-Slavic sympathies. Slovene conscripts served in the Austro-Hungarian army, with many killed during the conflict. When Italy attacked Austria-Hungary in 1915, the Soča river and Kras plateau became major fronts in Slovene-inhabited territory. Fighting devastated parts of the Littoral and drove civilians into refugee camps in Italy and Austria. Illness, hunger and treatment as enemy civilians compounded the suffering of displaced people. This history gives the western landscape both a military and a civilian meaning, beyond the natural character of its river valley and plateau.