Video: 'When Italy entered the Great War'

(Sunday, August 27, 1916, 8:00 p.m. Western European Time (WET); during World War I) — Italy has officially declared a state of war against Germany, bringing to an end more than fifteen months of uneasy neutrality between the former Triple Alliance partners.

The diplomatic decree, issued tonight in Rome, will formally take effect tomorrow, August 28.

U.S. Ambassador Thomas Nelson Page confirmed the declaration in an urgent dispatch cabled to the State Department in Washington at 3:00 p.m. EST. The historic step fully aligns Italy with the Allied Powers and expands the nation’s military engagement far beyond its current front against Austria-Hungary.

Coming just hours after Romania announced its own entry into the conflict on the Allied side, Italy’s declaration marks a dramatic widening of the European war. The move paves the way for direct military and economic operations against German forces and cements full tactical coordination with Great Britain, France, and Russia.