When you typically ask people where they want to travel, one of the most common answers is Italy. It’s well-known that Italy is one of the most beautiful countries in Europe-vast reserves of natural splendor, incredible food and drink, and countless historical sites make it a true traveller’s paradise.
But there’s a side to Italy that few ever get to see. Take a trip to the far north, up into the picturesque scenery of the mountains, and you will come across wooden crosses, mass ossuaries, hillside cemeteries, vast trenches and tunnel networks-monuments to a conflict both heroic and tragic that consumed so many Italian lives: The Italian front of the First World War.
Often when we think about the war, most of the attention goes to the battles of the Western front (The Somme, Verdun, etc) or sometimes a little to the Eastern front (such as the Battle of Tannenberg). These battles capture popular imagination, and usually stir up images of trench warfare, barbed wire and no-man’s land when someone brings up the topic of the First World War. However, there is an important front that is often left neglected: The Italian front. Perhaps it was thought that this conflict was a “sideshow”, not very important to the overall outcome of the war. While that may have been true to the generals planning the war, the battles taking place across the Italian front were of great consequence to the Italian soldiers fighting on to defend their homeland.
Taking place across a 600 km stretch of territory in northern Italy that encompassed the Dolomite mountains, this front saw some of the most furious and bloody fighting in the entire war take place in arguably the most dangerous environment you could possibly fight in between the forces of the Kingdom of Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (with aid from Germany). Their troops were fighting their way up, down and through the mountains, with the cold, rocks and heights all taking their toll on the armies as they battled for supremacy, leaving millions dead in their wake. It was a battle the likes of which the world had never seen before and hasn’t seen since.
The Italian front was also the scene of one of the most decisive battles by any belligerent nation in the entire First World War: Caporetto. The battle is most famous for being the first use of what would eventually be termed “blitzkrieg” tactics and the role played by a young Erwin Rommel. Today, in the wider context of the war, “Caporetto” has become a synonym for disaster; the battle was a massive defeat for the Italians that had ramifications both militarily and politically, bringing the entire country to the verge of collapse.
Leadup To War
When war initially broke out in the summer of 1914, Italy and Austria-Hungary were in very different places. Austria-Hungary was automatically at war, looking to punish Serbia decisively for the assassination of the heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand. Italy, on the other hand, stayed out of the conflict at the beginning. At the time, Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance, a secret pact signed in May 1882 between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Germany and Austria-Hungary were already close allies, with Italy joining in search of support against France, which had just taken North African territory from the Italians.
Much like other European powers of the age, Italy sought the seizure of overseas colonies and the creation of an empire. France had supported the process of Italian unification throughout the mid- to late 1800s, but the two formerly friendly countries quickly became rivals due to competing colonial ambitions in Africa. Things came to a head in 1881 with what is termed the “Schiaffo di Tunisi” (Slap of Tunis), in which Tunisia, an area of Africa viewed as a potential colony, was taken by the French.
The pact of the Triple Alliance stated that each member promised mutual military support to the others in the event that they were attacked by a great power; Germany and Austria-Hungary were to assist Italy if it was attacked by France without provocation. In turn, Italy would assist Germany if attacked by France. If war broke out between Austria-Hungary and Russia, Italy promised to remain neutral. In the eyes of the Italians, this pact was an insurance policy for support in the event of foreign aggression, but it also meant that Italy found itself allying with its historical rival Austria-Hungary, which had been vehemently opposed to Italian unification. Austria-Hungary also controlled the Italian-populated districts of Trentino and Istria, which many Italians felt belonged with Italy. There was strong sentiment that the “liberation” of these territories from under the control of the Austro-Hungarian empire should become a major goal for the country’s future.
These territorial desires, which were a major reason for Italy joining the pact, would eventually become a leading cause for joining the Triple Entente during the First World War. In the years before the war, Italy began to align itself more with Britain and France with the hope of one day being able to reclaim its “lost territory”. At the start of the war, Italy was called upon by Germany and Austria-Hungary to honor the pact of the Triple Alliance and assist them militarily; however, Italy quickly declared its neutrality. Explaining that the alliance was strictly defensive in nature, and since Austria-Hungary and Germany had launched the attacks that began the war (clearly not a defensive measure), Italy stated that it had no obligation to honour the original pact.
While the circumstance surrounding the war’s outbreak was a major factor in Italy’s declaration of neutrality, it was not the only one. Having only been unified in 1871, Italy as we know it now was a relatively new country on the international scene, and was much poorer, agrarian and less industrialized than other countries involved in the combat. At the outbreak of war, the Italian army was also in a abd state, suffering from a lack of training and important resources such as winter clothing, artillery pieces, grenades and machine guns.
At this point, the government was now convinced that supporting the Triple Alliance was not going to get Italy the territories they wanted and decided to try to extract the greatest possible benefits from joining the war, deciding to support whichever side would award them more for fighting for them. The public announcement of neutrality on August 3, 1914 was received well by the population, who’s greatest concern in joining the war was the potential loss of manpower that would result from the fighting, which was needed to tend fields and harvest crops. Eventually, negotiations with London and Paris brought Italy to the side of the Entente through the signing of the secret Pact of London on April 26, 1915, which promised to award Italy sections of territory from both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires after the war’s conclusion. Having secured the promise of what the country wanted, Italy resigned from the Triple Alliance on May 3 and issued a declaration of war against Austria-Hungary on May 23.
War Planning
At the beginning of Italian participation in the war, geographic and political factors left Italy with few options for successful military action. The army leadership favored a quick offensive against Austria-Hungary; the population was not very enthusiastic about the war already, so the army wanted to get it over with quickly, and also did not want to be dragged into a long conflict because it was already under-equipped as is and thus unfit for a drawn-out fight. In keeping with the reason for entering the war in the first place, Italy wanted to retake several northern territories belonging to the Austro-Hungarian empire; unfortunately, the rough geography of these very territories would make capturing them quite difficult, ironically leading to the long conflict that the army dreaded.
Instead of looking north, Italian command decided that the best prospect for an offensive lay in the east, along the river Isonzo, since the terrain between the mountains was much flatter. Luigi Cadorna, Chief of the General Staff, created a plan for a proposed attack along this line with the goal of pushing the Austro-Hungarian forces back, as well as pushing eastward to capture the Slovenian city of Ljubljana and the region of Trieste before marching on Vienna, the Austro-Hungarian capital. The scope of these plans was incredibly ambitious, but Cadorna was committed to the doctrine of the offensive, a tactic which would come to hurt his army severely for the remainder of the war.
Unfortunately for Cadorna, his counterpart on the Austro-Hungarian side, Conrad Von Hötzendorf, recognized that Italy’s options for an attack were limited and was able to successfully surmise that a potential offensive would be likely to come from the Isonzo valley. The Austro-Hungarian forces quickly assembled defensive fortifications in the mountains above the valley that included mine fields, barbed wire and entrenched positions, all of which were measures that would prove to come in handy fighting in the rough mountainous terrain since the Austro-Hungarian army possessed low numbers of soldiers in the area. This meant they would be forced to rely on having the high ground and dug-in defensive positions against a numerically-superior Italian army.
War on the Isonzo: 1915-1917
The first offensive undertaken by the Italians would be just one of many in the Isonzo region that took place between 1915 and 1917. It is still up for debate as to just how many total battles took place throughout the war-the most common belief is up to twelve, with the last in October of 1917 being the Battle of Caporetto itself. Generally, the battles all followed a similar pattern; an all-out offensive by the Italians against entrenched Austro-Hungarian positions that resulted in high casualties on both sides and not much change on a strategic level. It didn’t take long for this front to degenerate into a stalemate much like the one present in the trenches of the Western front due to the difficulties of waging war in hostile mountain terrain.
The river itself flooded several times due to record high rainfalls between 1914 and 1918, turning the ground into thick mud that made advancing nearly impossible. In addition, the Italian army faced a catch-22 dilemma in trying to reach Austro-Hungarian positions in the mountains. These forces were looking down on them and made their lives very difficult trying to cross the river to take them out; but in order to eliminate this nuisance, they needed to get across the river first- an obstacle which would prove to be continually insurmountable with heavy fire raining down on them.
Despite repeated failures, Cadorna continued to advocate for more and more offensives. The breaks between the battles gave the Italians the chance to restock munitions and soldiers, but the army was not ready for the all-out offensive strategy that Cadorna was continually pushing, which led to enormous casualties. By the war’s end, half of the entire Italian war casualty total – approximately 300,000 of 600,000 – were suffered on the Isonzo front. Austro-Hungarian losses were also high at around 200,000 (of an overall total of around 1.2 million casualties for the war).
By the opening months of 1917, there were approximately nine unsuccessful attempts to break the Austro-Hungarian lines and Cadorna had agreed to coordinate attacks with his allies as part of a general Entente offensive in the hope of forcing a breakthrough in the German lines somewhere. On the Western front, the spring would see a decisive breakthrough by the French under General Robert Nivelle, and Italy was also supposed to stage its own “decisive breakthrough” on the Isonzo front, which was still the only reasonable area of attack available.
1917 & The Leadup to Caporetto
When spring of 1917 arrived, the position of the Italian Army was improved from the previous year. It had gained control of the territory on both sides of the Isonzo river from the Plezzo basin to the Adriatic Sea, with the only remaining area still left in Austro-Hungarian hands being a 7-kilometer bridgehead across a bend in the Isonzo River near the town of Tolmino. The Italians were pushing forward, and the Austo-Hungarians were finding it difficult to hold onto their positions as the Italian army grew progressively stronger. By this point, it had doubled its number of forces to two million men, as well as increased its stocks of artillery and heavy machine guns, equipment which Italy had been sorely lacking since its entry into the war.
The 10th Battle of the Isonzo, which was launched on May 12, brought the Italians within 2.2 km of Mt. Hermada, an important Austro-Hungarian defensive position because it was situated approximately 323 meters above sea level, allowing the soldiers to oversee the entire surrounding area below. For the Austro-Hungarians, losing this important position would inevitably lead to the loss of Trieste, and could potentially pave the way for an Italian assault on Lubljana, located further into Austro-Hungarian territory, meaning that defending and holding this position was a critical objective. In order to do this, the Austro-Hungarian army realized they needed to gain some breathing room around this position, since the last Italian attack had left the Austro-Hungarians with their backs against the wall and almost no room to maneuver. As a result, they were forced to reluctantly ask their German allies for help (the Germans were forced to continually bail out their allies over the entire course of the war) in relieving the pressure, but the Italians launched the 11th Battle of the Isonzo before help could arrive.
This battle demonstrated the peak of Italian military capabilities-they managed to field 1,246,000 men organized into 51 divisions supported by 3,747 artillery pieces and 1,882 mortars. In comparison, the Austro-Hungarian forces numbered only 560,000 and had only 1,526 artillery pieces. During the battle, which lasted from August 17 to September 6, the Italians managed to break through enemy lines in the middle of the Isonzo front and push into the Bainsizza Plateau, but were unable to go much further due to a lack of supplies.
Despite this, the battle was a resounding success, giving the Italians an excellent position from which they could launch further assaults on the Austro-Hungarian positions and continue to drive them back. The Austro-Hungarian army took heavy casualties from this battle (roughly 85,000) and lost 705 irreplaceable artillery pieces that the fragile wartime economy could not replace; these losses left the army dangerously close to collapse. By this point, reserves were insufficient and the army realized it could not withstand another big Italian offensive and would probably be finished within the next few months.
It was this ravaged state of the Austro-Hungarian army that led to a call for help that was reluctantly answered by the Germans in an attempt to save their floundering ally. Despite Austria-Hungary’s poor combat record throughout the war and its constant need to be bailed out by German assistance, Germany absolutely could not afford to lose its largest ally in the war. By late 1917, Russia’s similarly poor condition as it floundered towards civil war and collapse provided the Germans with a golden opportunity to move several divisions from the Eastern front to the Isonzo.
This resulted in the creation of the mixed XIV German-Austrian army commanded by German General Von Below and consisting of seven German and eight Austro-Hungarian divisions, which was loaned to the front with an agreement to be returned in time to participate in the 1918 spring offensives that were being planned in France. Von Below decided on a plan of a large-scale offensive with the objective of pushing the Italians back out of their current positions and behind the Tagliamento river.
Von Below’s plan of attack was to create a pincer movement around Italian forces in the region. One arm was to attack from the direction of the Plezzo basin down the Isonzo River valley towards the town of Caporetto. The other pincer arm was to attack from the Tolmino bridgehead up the Isonzo River valley and over Mt. Nero to Caporetto. The town of Caporetto itself, which was a strategic point for the battle and also its namesake, was located just behind the Italian third and last line of defense. Once they had taken Caporetto, the Austro-German force would be able to advance toward the upper Tagliamento River, outflanking the Italians and forcing them to withdraw along the whole front to avoid an encirclement.
At last, with their reinforcements brought up and a plan in mind to avenge previous defeats, the Austro-Hungarian army was ready-but so were the Italians.
The stage was set for disaster.
The Battle of Caporetto
The battle itself began at 2:00 AM on October 24 with an artillery bombardment of the Italian trenches that was equal parts brief and intense, and included gas, smoke and high explosive shells. It was a dark and rainy night, and the Austrian and German forces were able to make use of the misty swirling around the battlefield during their assault on the Italian positions. Erwin Rommel, the famous tank commander of the Second World War, was involved in this battle, leading his men through the mountainous territory and trying to avoid the withering fire of Italian strongholds.
During the first phase of the battle, the combined Austro-German XIV Army experienced immediate success, tearing through the Italian positions and pushing them back fifteen miles within a day, past the defences of Bainsizza, Gorizia and the Carso plateau; the Italians were quickly beginning to falling apart. Survivors of the initial artillery bombardment were quickly surrounded and overrun by enemy forces; the fog had effectively hid their advance until they were right on top of the Italian trenches, and by then it was too late for the defenders. The Italian troops tried to enact an effective retreat, but this only led to chaos among the troops, who were unable to be rallied by their commanders. Huge numbers of troops were captured or deserted their positions under the furious assault, often abandoning their rifles, ammunition and officers to the enemy.
The speed and extent of the offensive caught the Italians completely off-guard, but its success was equally surprising to the attackers, and they struggled to capitalize on their rapid advances. The Austro-German forces had difficulty reinforcing their units and moving their artillery pieces forward to keep pace with their advancing troops due to ruined bridges, crowds of fleeing civilians, and shattered roads, factors which had also slowed down the Italian retreat; on the other hand, it was a fortunate boon for the Italians as it gave them an opportunity to regroup at the Tagliamento line.
The second phase began on November 3, with the Italians finally starting to regroup and regain their fighting tenacity as the shattered troops who had initially broke and retreated were replaced by hardened reserves from the Northern alpine front, allowing for the completion of a controlled and disciplined retreat, stabilizing the line en route to a new defensive position on the Piave River. This position was much better for the Italians since the new line was much shorter, requiring less manpower to maintain and the terrain was much more hospitable than the previous mountainous areas, which made for easier communication.
The third and last phase of the battle began on November 12 and lasted for six days. The Austro-German forces tried to renew their previous offensive push in an attempt to finally break Italian lines and make their way towards Venice. This push failed; the Italians received reinforcements from the British and French, who reinforced the line on November 21 and held the Austro-Germans back. The long Battle of Caporetto finally ended on 26 November as the new front was stabilised into a front line which would remain unchanged until the final weeks of the war in late 1918.
Consequences
The Battle of Caporetto is widely viewed as a disaster for the Italians. By the end of the battle, the Austro-German forces had seized more than 5000 miles of Italian territory and left 40,000 casualties. At Caporetto, the entire command structure failed and numerous Italian army corps folded under pressure, leading to crushing defeat. The Italian defense was extremely disorganized and inconsistent, strong in some areas but weak in others. Many of the frontline troops were quickly overrun by the sheer speed of the Austro-German attack before they could even reach their trenches to put up a defence. Two major factors that contributed to the defeat at Caporetto were the army’s poor leadership and low morale, although these were not the only reasons.
The battle had lasting ramifications both militarily and politically, with much of the blame for the defeat falling on the shoulders of Luigi Cadorna and his staff, who failed to both prepare effective defenses and employ an effective defensive strategy; Cadorna had issued orders for a defensive organization of his troops to contain an enemy offensive on both September 18 and October 10 but he failed to make sure his orders were followed effectively. He was already very unpopular for his dedication to spending thousands of lives in repeated failed offensives prior to Caporetto, leading to high casualties and low morale amongst the troops, who lost faith in their commanders.
Prime Minister Paolo Boselli was replaced by Vittorio Orlando, who refused to work with Cadorna on bringing the war to an end. This led to Cadorna being forced out (he was also unpopular among the Allies by this point) and replaced by General Armando Diaz, who then took his place on a newly-created Supreme War Council at a meeting in Rapallo in October 1917. Where Cadorna led with a much more heavy-handed approach- stifling initiative and sacking commanders at will-Diaz rejuvenated the army through reforms that targeted the army’s training practices, tactics, command structures, morale and more.
Cadorna’s futile tactics can be seen as one of the major causes of defeat, since they crippled the army’s ability to innovate tactically on the battlefield. However, beyond Cadorna, the blame falls on the entire The Italian Officer Corps, who lacked either the ability or desire to develop different tactics than all-out offensives. They failed to observe new tactics that were being used against them and respond appropriately to counter them. Instead, they spent most of their effort into building up material such as guns and artillery, completely neglecting the element of the troops in the trenches who were responsible for carrying out orders at the ground level. The Italians were simply out-fought by an enemy that employed tactics they were unprepared for and were forced to defend a line that was poorly organized, lacking an effective command structure and vital artillery support required to maintain a staunch defence. However, this was not a purely Italian problem; the same mistakes can be seen in the British army during the 1918 Spring Offensives.
The Italian army’s poor morale during the Battle of Caporetto that resulted from this poor leadership is often cited as a rationale for its defeat. While it is true that incredibly low morale among the soldiers did contribute to the loss, with hundreds of soldiers breaking the lines by fleeing and allowing an easier advance by the enemy, it was only a single factor responsible for the defeat and its effects are often overstated. Poor morale was a common problem across many armies in the First World War, and the Italian army is particularly often maligned as being cowardly; this is completely incorrect. Unlike the French army, who suffered mass revolts during 1917, the Italian soldiers never rebelled against their commanders. Caporetto is also an isolated example of poor Italian performance, and the army had performed quite well in both the 10th and the 11th Battles of the Isonzo and at the Battle of Monte Grappa which took place a few weeks after Caporetto.
The reason the Italians lost was not because of soldiers who refused to fight, but because of the inadequacy of their leadership and the complete collapse of the army’s command structure, who failed to enact effective preparations for battle and then further failed to take control of the army at a critical moment. The Italian army was not trained or organized effectively enough to properly respond to the tactics used by the Austro-German forces in their offensive; being attacked in a situation it was not trained to encounter, finding itself surrounded by the enemy and cut off from contact with headquarters, many Italian soldiers felt that they had been let down by their leaders.
After Caporetto
The Italians spent the early months of 1918 reorganizing and retraining the army according to Diaz’s new ideas, and he ordered preparations for an in-depth defence, and flooded the surrounding plains in case of emergency. Soon after, the Germans demanded that their Austrian allies, now under the command of General Arthur Arz von Straussenberg, launch one final attack to finish off the Italians. They complied, launching this offensive on June 15 1918 with a two-pronged assault against the Italian forces who were supported by three British and two French divisions. Despite heavy artillery and a concentrated thrust, the Austrians failed to break through once again, facing vicious Italian counter-attacks which destroyed Austrian morale.
For a short period following the battle, all was calm. Diaz decided to take advantage of the Austrians’ low morale and prepared a final offensive of his own. At this point in the war, the Germans were beginning to collapse across the Western Front, leaving the Austrians even further distraught since all their hopes for victory lay with the Germans; without them they were helpless.
Diaz launched his final blow with the Battle of Vittorio Veneto on October 24 with a massive attack all along the front. The Austrians tried to resist, but they soon began to crumble as the Italians and British broke through and crossed the Piave river. From their positions on the other side of the river, the Italians began to push toward Vittorio Veneto, separating the Austrian armies and cutting communications between them. This led to a final collapse by the Austrian armies along the entire front as they withdrew, with the results mirroring the Italian disaster the year before-Caporetto had been avenged.
Conclusion
A formal armistice was signed on November 3, 1918 bringing the Italian campaign to an end. Over the course of three years, the Italians had played a vital role in bringing the Austro-Hungarian empire to its knees following its weakening at the hands of the Russians on the Eastern Front, distracting a major hunk of the Austro-Hungarian army and preventing it from reinforcing its other fronts. The campaign was a terrible one, with brutal combat in treacherous mountain environments. The circumstances in which the troops were forced to fight were completely ignored by both sides as they continued to order offensives in which they could not possibly succeed.
The Italian victory brought the country what it had been seeking all along: Austria-Hungary was forced to cede all the territory considered “Italia irredenta” under their control. In the end, the Italian gamble to enter the war paid off, but at the enormous cost of approximately 651,000 soldiers killed in three years of war. With Italy’s position at the victory table secured, the country would begin down a path to a further catastrophe that would end in the darkness of the Second World War.
