CHAPTER LXIII
THE DECISION MADE—ITALIAN STRATEGIC PLAN
On the night of May 24, 1915, little groups of the Alpini, Italy's famous mountain troops, moved silently. They passed from San Giorgio, Cividale and Palmanova on the eastern frontier, from Paluzza and San Stefano and Pieve on the north, from Agordo, Feltre and Asiago, from Brentino and Malcesine toward Lake Garda, from Garganano the western shore of the lake and from other positions all along the mountain frontier up to the Stelvio Pass.
Marching silently and in single file, by three o'clock in the morning of May 25, 1915, one detachment reached a deep trench. "Our frontiers," said their officers. "We advance to make new ones." Then began a long, steep climb up narrow mountain paths, through snow lying in patches knee-deep, and through a storm of sleet and rain that broke along the Trentino boundary before dawn. As dawn broke they hurled themselves upon an Austrian shelter trench excavated the autumn before on the plateau. It was empty. The enemy had retired only a few hours before. The camp-fire ashes were still warm. As the sun began to throw the long shadows of the Alpine peaks to the west Austrian guns crashed out their first salute from the rocky fortresses beyond. Italy and Austria-Hungary were at war.
To comprehend the task before the Italian army it is necessary to examine the Italian-Austrian frontier. Austria's problem was one only of defense. Her warning had been ample and when war was declared she was prepared to the last detail. Being the challenged party hers was the choice of weapons, and she had equipped herself with an almost impregnable line of fortifications. The grievance was Italy's, and hers the duty of assault. Every advantage of position lay with Austria.
The strategic plan of the Italian generals was determined by hard geographical facts. The Italo-Austrian frontier is about 480 miles long, divided naturally into three sections. On the west the Austrian province of Trentino indents Italian territory like a wedge; next comes the great wall of the Dolomites and the Carnic and Julian Alps; then, on the east, a boundary line running north and south between the main Alpine chain and the Adriatic Sea. Steep mountain heights dominated by Austrian troops guarded the first two parts of this frontier. Only on the eastern border, from Pontebba to the Adriatic was Italian offensive on a large scale at all feasible; but before offensive operations could be started here it was necessary for the Italians to close the open gates to the north.
Here in the north lay Italy's problem at the opening of the war; and here her armies confronted an almost impossible task. In a word, they had to fight uphill. A salient, such as that formed by the Trentino, may offer dangers for the side that holds it—an example of which is the Russian position in Poland at the opening of the war; but the Trentino situation was quite unlike that in Poland. The sides of the Trentino were buttressed with mountains. The most tempting avenue of invasion was the valley of the Adige River. An enemy advancing by this route would find himself confronted with the strongly fortified town of Trent, which long resisted attacks from Venice in the Middle Ages. Having forced his way past Trent the enemy would be in a wilderness of lateral valleys with the main ridge of the Alpine chain, at the Brenner, still before him.
On the western side of the Trentino is the lofty Stelvio Pass, leading from the Upper Adige to the valley of Adda. This pass is 9,000 feet high and its narrow defiles were easily defended. To the south lies the pass of Tonale over which runs the road from Noce to the Oglio, but this offers similar difficulties. The road pass of Cornelle, close to Lake Garda, is too narrow for any considerable force. On the eastern side of the salient conditions for invasion are still worse. The railway from Venice to Innsbruck crosses the Valsugana at Tezze, but the Brenta valley through which it runs is a difficult road to Trent. Summed up, the salient of the Trentino was an ideal position for those who held it, both offensive and defensive. The few breaches by which invasion could come were a source of strength rather than weakness, because they compelled attack from the Italian plain to be made on divergent lines from different bases.
The second part of the frontier is the ramparts of the Dolomite and Carnic ranges through which an important offensive was possible for neither belligerent. The main pass, at Ampezzo, 5,000 feet high, makes a sharp detour toward the west to circumvent the mass of Cristallo, and here the road is a narrow defile commanded by a hundred points of danger. The adjacent passes of Misurina and the Monte Croce are no better, and the defiles to the east contain little more than bridle paths. The lowest pass, which leads from the valley of the Fella by Pontebba to the upper streams of the Drave and carries the railway from Venice to Vienna is only 2,615 feet high at its greatest elevation. Although this is the easiest of the great routes through the mountain barrier, it is still narrow and difficult. A modern army given the advantages of time and preparation should be able to close and hold it with ease.
Although the maps show few natural difficulties on the third section of the frontier to compare with those farther west, it is not the obvious avenue of attack a hasty survey would seem to suggest. It is only twenty miles wide and behind it is the line of the River Isonzo with hills along its eastern bank. The upper part of this stream, above Salcana, is a ravine; then comes six miles of comparatively level ground in front of Gorizia; then the hills begin again and sweep round to the seacoast by Monfalcone. What this front lacks in natural defenses had been amply supplied before the war opened by Austria with artillery and men. Toward this narrow twenty-mile stretch, and especially toward the plain before Gorizia, tended, in a sense, however, all the operations of the Italian strategists. The engagements fought during the first of the Italo-Austrian struggle all had their bearing upon the great offensive launched later against Gorizia.
But the natural lay of the land was by no means the only consideration with which the rival generals had to deal. In respect to lateral communications Italy had the advantage. Behind her invading armies stretched an elaborate system of railways through her northern provinces. Austria had a railway running through the whole curve of the frontier, but owing to the difficulty of breaking through from the hill valleys this system had few feeders. This lack of branch lines meant that Austria had to concentrate any offensive at certain definite places—Trent, Tarvis, and Gorizia. Italy aimed at these points and one more, Franzensfeste, the junction of the Pusterthal line with the railway from Innsbruck to Trent. If she could take this point she could cut Austria's communications in the whole Trentino salient. But Franzensfeste was the most difficult of any of these local points for Italy to reach, for south and east of it lay the bristling system of the Dolomites.
The successive revelations of Italian strategy during the first months of the war brought few surprises. Austria had her hands full in the Carpathians just then and was unable to take advantage of the opportunities for swift offensive which her frontier positions offered. It was a foregone conclusion that the first advance would come from the Italian side and the direction of that movement was not long in doubt. Its objective was Trieste, the Austrian peninsula, and the hills of Styria which sweep to Vienna. There lay the country where modern armies could maneuver. At the same time the whole northern boundary must be watched to prevent Austrian forces from the Trentino cutting the communications of the invader and attacking him in the rear. Therefore General Cadorna, the Italian commander in chief, resolved to attack at all the salient points. Such a plan led to a series of movements—toward Trent, across the Dolomite passes against the Pusterthal railway, at the Pontebba Pass, and across the Julian Alps to threaten the line between Tarvis and Gorizia. Meanwhile the main Italian army was to strike at the Isonzo and the road to Trieste.
The same conditions which made the Austrian frontier lines easy to defend also would have given the Central Power a big advantage in offensive operations, but for excellent reasons the Austrian staff did not attack. In the first place, Austria lacked men. The Teutonic war councils concluded that Austro-Hungarian troops were of more value in the great drive then in progress against the Russians than they would have been in offensive operations against the cities of the northern Italian plains. Had the Austrians debouched from their mountain strongholds and forced the Italians to concentrate against them in Italian territory, as they undoubtedly could have done, the benefits of such an enterprise from the standpoint of the alliance powers would have been small in proportion to the risks. Only a combined drive by both Austria and Germany, it is believed, could have gained any telling advantage in northern Italy; and Italy, it must be remembered, had not declared war on Germany. Ensconced in their mountain fastnesses, the Austrians believed they could maintain a successful defensive indefinitely. Then, after the Italian armies had exhausted themselves beating against the mountain barrier, an opportunity might arise for Austrian reprisals. At the time few believed that Italy would long be able to maintain her attitude of neutrality regarding Germany—an opinion, by the way, which was not supported by the developments of the first year of the war.
The Austrians had months in which to prepare, and they had made good use of their time. The natural difficulties confronting an Italian assault had been enormously increased by trenches of steel and concrete. The Austrian engineers had connected their elaborate systems of wire entanglements with high-power electric stations, and dug mines at all vulnerable points. Heavy guns had been moved, at great expenditure of labor, to the frontier forts and rails laid on which to move them from place to place. The broken nature of the ground afforded ideal opportunities for the concealment of artillery positions. It is safe to say that nowhere in the whole theatre of the Great War was there a line better adapted by nature and equipped by man for purposes of defensive warfare. The Austrian Archduke Eugene, who was in charge of the Italian operations, revealed his plan of campaign during the first few days after the beginning of hostilities. His aim was to risk nothing until Field Marshal von Mackensen had finished his operations in Galicia, where Austria's best troops were fighting with their German allies. To meet the Italians he had only the Landsturm and a few reserve divisions, but these were considered enough. The archduke resolved to hold the crests of the passes along the Trentino frontier and the line of the Carnic Alps, withdrawing his outposts before the enemy's advance. On the Isonzo he would abandon the country west of the river line and make his stand on a fortified line to the east which touched the Isonzo only at Gorizia, where the Austrians held the bridgehead on the western bank.
It has been pointed out in preceding pages that not a little of Italy's delay in entering the war, and of the tortuous diplomatic negotiations which for several months kept the outside in doubt as to her ultimate intentions, was due to the state of military unpreparedness confronting the country in the summer of 1914. But by May, 1915, the country had had nine months in which to get ready. Moreover, she had been able to profit by the lessons of the war. When Italy started to get ready there was no waste motion, although the task to be accomplished entailed enormous labor and expense.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER LXIV
STRENGTH OF ITALIAN ARMY AND NAVY
At the head of the Italian army and navy was the king, Victor Emmanuel, a monarch whose gallantry and simplicity had made him a popular idol. Popularity with the people meant also popularity with the army. The chief of the General Staff was General Count Luigi Cadorna. At the outbreak of the war General Cadorna was sixty-five years old. As a young man he had seen service under his father, Rafaele Cadorna, who, in September 1870, led an army into papal territory and blew in the Porta Pia. He had been a corps commander at Genoa. In 1914 he had succeeded General Pollio as chief of the General Staff.
Cadorna was the Von Hindenburg of Italy. As the German commander had studied the bogs of East Prussia, so he had devoted a large part of his life to becoming familiar with the broken line of Italy's northern frontier. He was known throughout Europe for his writings on military science.
The beginning of the war found the Italian navy far better equipped than the army. For the task of holding Austria in the Adriatic, which Italy now took over from France, she possessed four dreadnoughts and two more almost ready. She possessed also ten battleships of the predreadnought class and a number of older vessels. Compared with those of Great Britain and Germany, her armored cruisers were slow, none of them being capable of a speed exceeding twenty-two knots; but she had twenty submarines, forty destroyers and a large number of torpedo boats. Compared with the Austro-Hungarian fleet, the Italian navy showed on paper a distinct superiority. Its admiral in chief, the Duke of the Abruzzi, ranked among the most brilliant men of his time, not only as a naval man, but as a scientist, explorer, and man of affairs. He was first cousin of the king.
By May, 1915, General Cadorna virtually had remade the Italian army. Nine months earlier Italy's military forces were anything but prepared. There was a shortage in every kind of munitions, stores, and equipment. This was plainly evidenced when General Porro had refused an offer of the portfolio of Minister of War in the spring of 1914 because he was unable to obtain a pledge for the adoption of a program of re-equipment that demanded a great expenditure of money. The late Government had not made good the expenditure of material caused by the Lybian War, and great quantities of stores had been allowed to deteriorate until they were almost valueless. There was a certain number of guns of medium caliber, but no heavy artillery of the modern type which the Teutonic allies soon showed they possessed in abundance. Of machine guns Italy had a lower proportion than any other of the great powers. All this had been realized, but the money to repair these deficiencies was not forthcoming until the Italian statesmen knew that they were on the brink of war.
Filling the gaps in the army, raising it from a peace to a war footing, was an easier matter. The Italian military law provided automatically for this increase. Every Italian citizen able to bear arms is liable to military service. Recruits are called in the year during which they become twenty years old, although volunteers are accepted as young as eighteen. The last Italian census, in 1911, gave Italy a population of 34,686,683 and the levy lists of that year totaled 487,570. By the close of the year 1914, when the mobilization began, it is reasonable to suppose that the population had grown to something like thirty-six or thirty-seven million, with a corresponding increase in the number available for military service. The peace strength of the army was 14,000 officers and 271,000 men. Mobilization added to each of the twelve corps a division of Mobile Militia bringing its strength up to 37,000 men and 134 guns. The army's war strength was about 700,000 in the first line—from the two classes of the regular army—and 320,000 in the Mobile Militia with a reserve of more than 2,000,000 in the Territorial Militia. The force of trained men that Italy put into the field at the beginning of hostilities, therefore, numbered something over 1,000,000 men. The reservoir of the Territorial Militia contained twice as many more untrained men who for some reason or other were exempt from military service in times of peace, although physically fit to be soldiers. This class was designed primarily for garrison duty, guarding railways and bridges, but in war time was liable to any service. When the mobilization began the men of this class immediately went into training. Each of the twelve army corps consisted of two divisions of line infantry, a regiment of Bersaglieri (light infantry corresponding to the French Chasseurs and the German Jaegers), a regiment of cavalry, a section of Carabinieri (military police), thirty-six field guns and from two to three heavy howitzer batteries. In addition there was the ammunition column, telegraph and engineer parks, ambulance and supply sections, reserve store and supply sections, and a section of field bakery.
The famous Alpine troops ("Alpini") and the mountain artillery were not within the organization of the twelve permanent army corps. These numbered seventy-eight companies, each of 256 officers and men on a war footing. The rest of the Italian infantry units at normal war strength were as follows: Company, 255 officers and men; Battalion, 1,043 officers and men; Regiment, 3,194 officers and men. Five of the cavalry regiments contained six squadrons, the rest five. The war strength of a squadron was 142 officers and men.
The infantry were armed with a magazine rifle of very small caliber, .256-inch. The magazine held six rounds and was loaded with a clip. The length of this piece was 4 feet 2-¾ inches, with bayonet 5 feet 2-½ inches. It weighed without bayonet 8 pounds 6 ounces, and was sighted up to 2,200 yards. The outbreak of the war found a process of rearmament going on in the artillery. Italy at that time had no adequate siege train and her heaviest mobile weapons were 210-millimeter howitzers and 149-millimeter guns. While the details of the final artillery equipment were not made public by the War Department, events showed that the Italians were well supplied with modern guns of both medium and heavy caliber. The mountain artillery, of which there were thirty-nine batteries, was especially efficient, not only in guns, but in men and transport animals. It was said that the Italian artillery mules could drag a gun wherever there was room for its emplacement.
Italy was one of the first countries to use aeroplanes in war, and her aviation corps had had experience in Tripoli. Although handicapped by lack of money, the Italian military aviators were well abreast of their opponents, at least in the theoretical and mechanical development of the science. During the winter of 1914 a considerable increase was made in the personnel of the corps and in the number of machines.
There is reason to believe that at the beginning of the war the Italian soldier was not highly regarded by Austrian and German military authorities. As a whole the army's reputation had been injured by the Adowa disaster and by the slowness of the campaign in Tripoli. But the developments of actual warfare in the spring and summer of 1915 proved that Italian apologists were correct in their claim that in the former war the army was handicapped by political causes. Physically the Italian troops were equal to any in Europe. The Alpini were perhaps the best mountain soldiers in the world. The Italian soldier is not impressive as to stature, but he is tough and enduring. He is cheerful and obedient under discipline and hardship, and the relations between officers and men were such as to produce the best results in a hard campaign.
All these qualities were requisite for the difficult task to which General Cadorna now turned his first line troops, numbering about 700,000 men. To oppose this advance the Austrians mustered on the frontier about half that number. General von Hofer was chief of staff under Archduke Eugene and General Dankl was in command in the Tyrol.
Two reasons have been advanced to explain the succession of small victories with which the Italians opened their campaign. The first, already mentioned, is that it was part of the Austrian plan to yield their outpost positions with slight resistance and protect their numerically inferior forces in the main strongholds of the mountains. The other is that the archduke and his generals made the mistake of underestimating the enemy. For centuries Italy had supplied the Austrian Court with its poets and musicians, until in the Dual Monarchy the Italians were regarded as an effete race, fit only for the politer pursuits of art, literature and song. Italy's successful War of Independence in the latter half of the nineteenth century had not altogether destroyed this impression. This idea, it may be said, was not shared by the Germans, whose military men had made a closer study of world conditions and had learned to respect the virility of the men of modern Italy.[Back to Contents]