World War Two and Artillery

7

Oltre Enrico Rocchi.

Cultura e storiografia dell’architettura militare per il xxi secolo

di Piero Cimbolli SPagneSi

abStraCt. The article examines the beginning of the Western historiography of military architecture, starting from the work of Enrico Rocchi, military engineer, historian and officer of the Corps of Engineers of the Italian Royal Army between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The most recent contributions of Western thought on the subject of military architecture are identified, which from the end of the Cold War onwards was in-tended in a much broader way than in the whole of the twentieth century starting right from the work of Rocchi. The recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have in fact revolutionized the idea of war in an important way, especially on the US and British sides. In cascade, this has led all Western military doctrine to widespread use of the culture of the peoples to be fought as a real adaptive weapon, as Enrico Rocchi did more than a century ago for Italy. Only by retracing the mentality and culture of the military engineers who founded the discipline of the history of Western military architecture and at the same time realized the defenses of a European kingdom of their time, that of Italy, is it possible to explain the two phacts to be the same point of view, also linked to cultural anthropology understood as a fundamental discipline like historiography to develop lessons learned.

keyWordS. military arCHiteCture, FortiFiCationS, HiStoriograPHy, military HiStory, modern HiStory, Cultural antHroPology, Cold War, Cultural Heritage.

Prologo

Ripercorrere a quindici anni di distanza un tema già allora affrontato più di quindici anni prima ha un senso quando esso, a tutti gli effetti, abbia sempre una validità intrinseca come argomento fondativo di un modo peculiare di esaminare una realtà nel suo insieme.

È il caso dell’architettura militare intesa come genere, senz’altro una parte importante del complesso assai più vasto di quanto costruito in ogni tempo e luogo e soprattutto in funzione della guerra.1 Perché non solo quest’ultima, la

1 Questo lavoro aggiorna P. Cimbolli SPagneSi, «Enrico Rocchi, ingegnere militare e storico», Quaderni dell’Istituto di Storia dell’Architettura, n.s., 44-50, 2004-2007 (M.P. Sette, NAM, Anno 3 – n. 12 DOI: 10.36158/97888929558511 Novembre 2022