Little Italy in the Great War: Philadelphia’s Italians in the Battlefield and Home Front

Both Flags Fly at a Wartime Event in Philadelphia's Little Italy

By Richard N. Juliani

Temple University Pres, 2022

Peter L. Belmonte, Reviewer

Somewhere around twenty to twenty-five percent of the United States armed forces during World War I were immigrants to this nation. Immigrants from Italy probably made up the largest national immigrant group represented in the U.S. military. Little Italy in the Great War: Philadelphia’s Italians in the Battlefield and Home Front looks at one specific Italian immigrant group and how they adapted to wartime in America. Author Richard N. Juliani, Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, at Villanova University, has written extensively about the Italian immigrant experience, specializing in Philadelphia’s Italian population. In this book, Juliani “seeks to examine the impact of the war on men who served in the ranks of the military and civilians who defended the nation in industrial and civic roles on the home front” (p. 5). In doing so, Juliani points out the nuanced differences from previous works on immigrants showing their successful assimilation during the war.

Juliani’s survey of the community is vast. He discusses the origins of the war and the call from Italy for her army reservists to return for service in the war in 1915. This occasioned a deep interest in the war in the Italian community. Juliani discusses how the various sources of information and misinformation impacted the community. This, of course, is a microcosm of how the war was “marketed” to the American public in general during those years.

Juliani’s lengthy discussion of Italian immigrants in the U.S. military is thorough and helpful in understanding how these men served and how they viewed their service. The author also discusses various means of “Americanizing” immigrant soldiers of all nationalities, hundreds of thousands of whom enlisted or were drafted into the military. He provides plenty of examples and vignettes of those who served, including those who served stateside and those who served in combat. Final chapters cover the home front and the soldiers’ return to Philadelphia. A concluding chapter discusses the overall effects of the war on the veterans and the community in general.

In the end, Juliani concludes that while Philadelphia’s Italians had demonstrated their loyalty during the war, subsequent (1924) immigration quotas impacted the renewal of their prewar life and language. Reformers’ efforts at assimilation were, according to Juliani, “made unnecessary alongside the inherent and inevitable results of daily life in America” (p. 260). Thus, Juliani sees the war as one step in the slower process of “Americanization” or assimilation that impacted individuals in different ways.

Juliani consulted a wide array of primary sources to bring us this important work that sheds light on a little-studied aspect of the war and American society. Little Italy in the Great War is a thorough analysis of how World War I impacted Philadelphia’s Italian community. It is a fine synthesis of military, social, urban, and immigration history. Our understanding of America's war effort would benefit from similar analyses of other immigrant communities. This book is highly recommended to anyone interested in Italian American history, as well as those interested in how American immigrants adapted to wartime in their new home country.

Peter L. Belmonte