The P Service () was an organization set up for propaganda, surveillance and troop welfare within the Royal Italian Army. It was commissioned at the beginning of 1918 by the Italian High Command. Under the leadership of Luigi Cadorna it was not thought important to deploy propaganda to motivate or educate the soldiers. After the defeat at Caporetto, The new commander Armando Diaz appreciated the need to motivate his soldiers.
The impact of Caporetto
As well as being a serious military defeat, Caporetto was interpreted as a failure of Italian society as a whole and above all of the political direction of the army; the soldiers were largely unaware of the aims of the war in which they were fighting. After Caporetto, for the first time, large sums were allocated to propaganda for the army, and the new P Service as set up to deliver it. This service had the task of watching over the morale, wellbeing and mental condition of the soldiers, assisting them in communicating with their families and motivating them to fight. For this task several hundred special men designated "P" officers were drafted into the army. The P Service proved to be of great importance during the final decisive months of the war, bringing significant improvements in the moral and material conditions of the soldiers who had previously been subjected to a punitive regime of absolute obedience. After Caporetto, P officers established trench newspapers, developed the network of Soldiers' Houses and organised classes to combat illiteracy.
Organization In March 1918 the first propaganda services began to be set up within Italy's armies. The officers in charge were variously called "liaison officers with the front lines", then "consultant" officers, "IP" officers (Information and Propaganda) and finally more simply "P" officers. It was Badoglio who took on the task of rebuilding army morale, building on many of the ideas of the former commander Capello. Badoglio went beyond Capello's initiatives however, recommending a "spiritual bond" between officers and soldiers. From March 1918, a surveillance and propaganda system was in operation at the information offices of the different armies, and in May the High Command issued a circular which unified these structures, and adopted the name "Servizio P" across the board, following the example of the 1st Army. Two offices were established in the High Command to which the P services of the individual armies reported. One was the information office, which had a "P section" responsible for monitoring the morale of the troops. The other was the press and propaganda office, which had a "P section" responsible for preparing printed material to be dropped on the enemy and for providing assistance and propaganda to the Italian military. The officers who signed most of the circulars on the P Service were Badoglio, the head of the information service, Colonel Odoardo Marchetti, and the head of the press and propaganda office, Lieutenant Colonel :it:Eugenio Barbarich. Under these two offices, a P section operated in each separate army, with a degree of autonomy. These P Sections issued directives for the service, as well as coordinating and supervising the work of subsections. In addition to providing advice to P officers they also printed factsheets, commentaries, “talking points” and “meeting ideas” for them. In addition, every fifteen days the P section of the army sent a report to High Command on the work done and on the morale of the soldiers. Within each army there were P officers assigned at every level. In each division, regiment, group, battalion, or other unit, an officer was in charge of carrying out the directives issued by the higher bodies. These officers therefore created a trust network among the troops for surveillance purposes and a core of collaborators for propaganda work. These officers sent periodic reports to their own P subsections, copied to the command to which they were seconded. As well as transmitting messages from headquarters, they monitored information from the postal censorship offices, military lawyers and health directors, passing up indicators of the troops’ mood and wellbeing. They also received and redistributed goodwill parcels donated by the public and by charities or other entities. This allowed them to maintain close contact with the troops. It is estimated that by the autumn of 1918 there were around one thousand P officers operating throughout Italy's armies. This number increased after the armistice as the officers were assigned to carry out propaganda investigations among the population of the occupied territories.
P-Services in each army Before the High Command issued the order for a single organizational structure, propaganda services were left to the initiative of each individual army. The 3rd Army under Emanuele Filiberto, 2nd Duke of Aosta and the 4th Army under Mario Nicolis di Robilant were pioneers in this regard.
1st Army The 1st Army of Guglielmo Pecori Giraldi set up its surveillance and propaganda service on 31 March, which it called the "P service". This later became the official term used for all the various offices in the different armies. As well as the name, the 1st Army came closest to the concept that was later used by the High Command. "Liaison officers with the front lines" were created, and numbered about thirty for each of the three army corps by May 1918, or a total of one hundred officers. The 1st Army issued directives to ensure that the P officers were able to capture the morale and mood of the men before, during and after action, in order to be able to promptly warn of any potential crisis. Propaganda to boost morale was left to the judgment of the officers themselves. Assistance for the troops was limited to control of food distribution, care of the wounded and the writing of letters of comfort to the families of the fallen and those hospitalized with serious conditions.
2nd Army After Caporetto the remains of the old 2nd Army commanded by Capello were reconstituted with new recruits into the new 5th Army. The new 2nd Army was built beyond the Piave with new corps under General :it:Giuseppe Pennella. On March 22, 1918, he set up a propaganda service called the "consulting service", while the department in the information office was called the "consulting section", with "consultant officers". Little is known of the workings of these services and from 1 June Enrico Caviglia assumed command, bringing in Giuseppe Lombardo Radice from the 1st Army to lead the service. In October Caviglia issued regulations requiring the P officer of each subsection to send daily reports and emphasising the critical importance of vigilance. To reinforce this point, the Royal Carabinieri were brought in to supervise the personnel of the P offices.
3rd Army In April 1918 the intelligence service of the 3rd Army approved lectures by civilian and non-military speakers to strengthen the morale of the men, and began a widespread distribution of patriotic material.
4th Army In January 1918 the 4th Army set up a "propaganda office" at the army command to assist the officers of lower commands chosen to talk to the soldiers. They gave lectures to encourage the soldiers to talk to their comrades, spreading conversational themes and trying to make propaganda more acceptable. The initiatives of the 3rd and 4th armies, combined with Capello's 2nd Army, were limited to propaganda and did not involve troop support or surveillance.
5th Army The 5th Army was created from the remains of the old 2nd Army. After an initial period under Giulio Cesare Tassoni, command was assumed by Mario Nicolis di Robilant, who set up divisional propaganda centers called "specialized executive bodies". These had propaganda tasks, but we’re not responsible for vigilance over the soldiers. In May 1918, after Paolo Morrone had taken over from Nicolis di Robilant, the 5th Army was renamed the 9th Army. A circular on 7 June provided for a continuation of the surveillance and propaganda service of the old 5th Army, called the "VP service", a section of the information office called the "VP department" and a section at the large units and the Army Intendency called the "Propaganda Center". The officers attached to these offices were known as "VP service officers". It was this circular, read by Barbarich, that persuaded the High Command to establish general provisions to make the P services across the armies standard.
6th-12th Armies When the 6th Army of Luca Montuori was formed on 1 March with four corps, three of them came from the 1st Army, and they maintained the same P service structure as that army. The 7th Army of :it:Giulio Tassoni waited until 10 August before setting up a surveillance and propaganda service. There is no known documentation about any possible propaganda services in the 10th Army under the Earl of Cavan or the 12th under Jean César Graziani, but it is conceivable that the XI and I corps, when they were moved to these armies, brought with them the P service organisations they had established when they were part of the 3rd and 4th Armies.
Trench newspapers On 1 February 1918 the High Command issued circular 1117 / P concerning patriotic propaganda and this document is widely considered as the starting point of the P Service. On 29 March Colonel Odoardo Marchetti issued a second circular N. 2293 / SI Section U, which approved the dissemination of political newspapers and the circulation of trench newspapers.
{| class="wikitable" style="margin:auto;clear:both;text-align:left;" | colspan=6 bgcolor="#E0E0B0" align="center" | First World War trench newspapers in Italy''' |- ! Title ! Distribution ! Authors and illustrators ! Notes |- | Il 13 || XIII Army Corps || || First issue 12 May 1918, last issue 15 October (16 editions) |- | L'Astico (name of a river in Veneto; also means ‘shrimp’) || 9th Division || Piero JahierEmilio Cecchi:it:Giuseppe Lombardo Radice || The newspaper's founder-editor used to sign his articles barba Piero (uncle Piero in Genoese dialect). At the end of the war the paper changed its name to Il Nuovo Contadino but ran out of money after eleven editions). |- | La Baionetta (“The Bayonet”) || Emilia Brigade || Cellini || First edition 14 February 1918 |- | Bianco Rosso Verde (“White Red Green”)|| || || Fortnightly |- | Il Fifaus (“The Bomb Shelter”)|| XIII Army Corps || || |- | Il Ghibli (“The Scirocco”)|| For units stationed in Libya|| || |- | Il Montello (“The Hillock”)|| Infantry on the middle Piave front|| Mario SironiMassimo Bontempelli || Fortnightly, first edition 20 September 1918 |- | La Ghirba (“The Waterskin”)|| 5th Army || Ardengo Soffici (editor)Giorgio de ChiricoCarlo Carrà || Later intended for soldiers of the 9th Army |- | Il Razzo (“The Rocket”)|| 7th Army || || |- | Resistere (“Resisting”)|| Volturno Brigade|| || |- | Il Respiratore (“The Breather”)|| 94th Regiment of Infantry|| || |- | San Marco || VIII Army Corps|| || Quarterly |- | Sempre Avanti (“Always Forward”)|| II Army Corps || Giuseppe UngarettiCurzio Malaparte || Circulated in France in 1918 |- | La Tradotta (“The Troop Train”) ||3rd Army || Renato Simoni, founder-editor):it:Arnaldo FraccaroliAntonio Rubino:it:Enrico Sacchetti || 25 editions published, 42,000 copies |- | La Trincea (“The Trench”) || 4th Army || |- | La Voiussa (name of river in Albania)|| Units in Albania || || |- | La Volontà (“The Will”)|| || || Published fortnightly from 15 September 1918 |- | La Giberna (“The Cartridge Case”)|| || ||43 issues published weekly from March 3, 1918, to January 5, 1919, for 43 issues. Following the success of the readers' column, on June 16, 1918, a new newspaper La Giberna dei lettori came out with writings and drawings by soldiers. |- | colspan=6 bgcolor="#E0E0B0" align="center" |