On November 3, 1918, Austro-Hungarian and Italian delegates signed an armistice at Villa Giusti, outside Padua, ending the fighting on the Italian front of the First World War. It came after the Italian victory at Vittorio Veneto and as the Habsburg empire was already breaking into national states. The truce took effect the next afternoon, but confusion over the timing let Italian forces take hundreds of thousands of prisoners from troops who believed the war was already over.
By the autumn of 1918 the Austro-Hungarian army was dissolving. Its offensive on the Piave in June had failed, and when the Italians attacked at Vittorio Veneto late in October, whole units refused to fight while Czech, Slovak, Polish and South Slav politicians declared new states at home. Vienna asked for terms, and an Austrian delegation led by General Viktor Weber von Webenau crossed the lines to meet the Italians at Villa Giusti, a country house near Padua.
The agreement, signed on November 3, required the Habsburg forces to withdraw from occupied territory and allowed the Allies to move through Austrian lands. It was to take effect at 3 p.m. on November 4, twenty-four hours after signing. Austrian commanders had already ordered their troops to stop fighting, however, and in the gap the Italian army swept forward and took an enormous number of prisoners.
The armistice ended one of the war's most brutal fronts, fought for three years across Alpine peaks and along the Isonzo river. A week later Germany signed its own armistice at Compiègne, and by then the empire that had started the war in 1914 no longer existed.
Key people: Pietro Badoglio, Viktor Weber von Webenau