The White War

by Mark Thompson

  There may be a missing link, in the form of Brigadier-General Charles Delmé-Radcliffe, who led the British Military Mission to the Italian army in the field. Contemptuous of politicians and desk-wallahs, arrogant and rude, jealous of his patch and well regarded by Victor Emanuel, Delmé-Radcliffe resembled the generalissimo himself. His quarrel with the British ambassador in Rome could have been modelled on Cadorna’s feuds with any number of politicians. Long on gossip and short on crisp assessment, his communiqués to the highest levels of government perhaps baffled their recipients. What did Lloyd George make of the telegram of 26 December 1916, warning against alleged anti-war elements in Rome, particularly ‘the Caillaux–Giolitti–Tittoni intrigue’? Or his sideswipe at Sonnino’s ‘suspicious and bargaining nature, due perhaps to the Jewish blood in his veins’? Was Lloyd George impressed by expressions like ‘the internal enemy’ and the promotion of maximal Italian war aims? Whatever the answer, he surely approved Delmé-Radcliffe’s perennial optimism about Italy’s performance, putting the best spin on every setback, lobbying the Prince of Wales and Lord Northcliffe to support calls for Allied machine guns and artillery. ‘I have no doubt that the second phase of the battle will produce even better results than the first phase’, he reported to the War Office in late August 1917, just as the Italians were running out of steam in the Eleventh Battle; ‘All the prospects on the Carso are also satisfactory’, he added in the teeth of all evidence; ‘The spirit of all the Italian troops is excellent’ – an astonishing claim. He maintained that most Italians were strongly pro-war, and blamed ‘this damned anti-war propaganda’ for spreading defeatism.

  Although they heartily detested each other, he and Ambassador Rodd saw eye to eye on the need to promote Italy’s cause. Rodd suspected the British of undervaluing Italy’s effort. Asquith, Kitchener and the Prince of Wales had all visited the Supreme Command, but something more was needed to catch the popular interest. As a well-connected mandarin with artistic interests, Rodd persuaded Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling and others to tour the front and pay tribute in articles and instant books. Wells opined that ‘Italy is not merely fighting a first-class war in first-class fashion but she is doing a big, dangerous, generous and far-sighted thing in fighting at all.’ Visiting in June 1916, before the Sixth Battle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes saw ‘Trieste or death!’ scrawled on walls all over northern Italy and had a close call with a shellburst. (‘Had the Ostro-Boches dropped a high explosive upon us they would have had a good mixed bag.’) Barred from the Carso, he went to Carnia instead, where the war was ‘a most picturesque business’. Picturesque is the key word in British impressions, usually as part of a comparison with France and Flanders. Kipling was impressed by the feats of engineering in the mountains, as everyone was, and also by the generals he met: ‘wide browed, bull-necked devils, lean narrow hook-nosed Romans – the whole original gallery with a new spirit behind it’. (Comparisons with ancient Romans came naturally to Englishmen with a classical education. Cadorna struck Conan Doyle as ‘an old Roman, a man cast in the big simple mould of antiquity’.) He wrote five cheerleading essays for the Daily Telegraph and the New York Tribune. A sixth article, which mentioned that the Italians had sometimes oversold their military achievements, did not see print.

  It was hard even for such prestigious writers to engage the British and American public, when all the Allied armies were making huge efforts amid terrible conditions. What might have caught the British imagination was resounding, unambiguous success on the battlefield. Gorizia was hardly enough. Such success was what Cadorna now set about preparing. He had lost 400,000 dead and wounded in 1916. Proportionally this was an improvement over 1915, but – leaving aside its impact on the survivors’ morale – it left yawning gaps. No fewer than 151 new battalions were created, mostly in the infantry, bringing the total to 860. This was achieved by calling up classes back to 1873 and forward to 1898, while relaxing the entrance qualifications. By spring 1917, Italy had 59 divisions under arms; in all, there were nearly two million men at the front – some 200,000 more than in November 1916. In artillery, the army gained 52 new field batteries, 44 mountain batteries, and 166 heavy batteries. The number of medium and heavy guns doubled over the year to May 1917. (Even then, there were four times more Allied guns per kilometre of the Western Front than Italian guns on the Isonzo.) Trench mortars continued to arrive in large numbers. Even now, production of machine guns and shells lagged far behind needs; during the Tenth Battle, the siege artillery fired six rounds per gun per hour, contrasting with 30 rounds for British guns on the Western Front.

  At the front, positions on the Carso and around Gorizia were strengthened. Mount Sabotino was turned into a battery, with dozens of guns hidden in the tunnel complex that the Austrians had excavated below the summit ridge. Sabotino faced Monte Santo across the Isonzo, still held by the Austrians, so the gunners on the two mountains could blast away like men o’ war firing broadsides. The defensive lines in Trentino and the Asiago plateau were strengthened; by spring 1917, there were six lines on the plateau.

  Politically, too, Cadorna shored up his position over the winter. By March, he had the cabinet eating out of his hand. Bissolati, his conversion complete, seemed infatuated by him. Another minister referred to him admiringly as il Duce supremo, the ‘supreme Leader’. The problem of troop morale remained. The gloom that settled over the army towards the end of 1916 thickened like fog along the Isonzo valley, and little was done to identify its causes, let alone address them. As the army prepared for another winter, visitors noticed a sullen weariness at the front. A reduction in rations in December did nothing for the soldiers’ spirits. The new year brought several worrying incidents where new recruits protested at the draft. Infantry shouted abuse at passing staff cars. When a journalist mentioned these omens to Cadorna, he waved them away. ‘It is like that everywhere, and of course the soldiers are tired after two years.’ A few serious cases of insubordination had been handled in the only proper way: by shooting the malefactors, ‘to prevent sparks from becoming fires’. The Supreme Command was in denial, the press supported the Supreme Command, and the government was too distracted by its own weakness to challenge their combined version of events: that Italy was on the right track, making steady progress.

  As before, the Supreme Command and the government worried that public morale would plummet when the soldiers came home for Christmas. In November, the Ministry of the Interior warned Italy’s regional governors that ‘subversive elements’ might stir up discontent, and even incite men to desert or mutiny. In the event, many men’s leave was cancelled due to anxiety over a possible Austrian attack from Trentino. The public mood was darkening, too, as people suffered the effects of Germany’s submarine blockade of Allied shipping. Butter, sugar and petroleum were running low, rationing was introduced, and a crisis over wheat supplies in summer 1917 would lead to violent demonstrations. Civilian mortality rates climbed, as unheard-of numbers succumbed to malaria and tuberculosis. Nevertheless, the soldiers’ and civilians’ dedication to the struggle remained intact and was bolstered in early April, when the United States of America declared war on Germany. President Wilson had been forced off his neutralist fence by ‘the gross misconduct of the Germans’ in killing American citizens travelling on American and Allied ships. Ordinary Europeans could at last imagine that the war might end.

  For the Austrians, the winter began with the death of the old emperor on 21 November. Like their fathers and their fathers’ fathers, this generation of Habsburg soldiers had fought for that slim, impassive figure with his pendulous lip and muttonchop whiskers. Unchanging, utterly dependable, his Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty Franz Josef had personified the empire. ‘Uncle Joe’ was as familiar to the Italians as to the Austrians. All of Italy’s wars of independence had been fought against him. His mystique was irreplaceable, and its loss gradually revealed the empire as being, after all, a state like any other, and sillier than most.

  His
successor, Karl, nephew of the assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, married to an Italian princess, realised that the empire was heading for disaster. Whether Austria-Hungary became a vassal of victorious Germany or disintegrated under the shock of defeat, it was probably doomed. His foreign minister, Count Czernin, warned that the army was on the brink of exhaustion, and popular despair might lead to proletarian revolution and national uprising, for the Habsburg Slavs were much affected by the unrest in Russia, which would soon lead to the first of the revolutions that brought down the Tsar.

  Karl, an instinctive liberal, relaxed the severe controls on civilian life and marginalised the bellicose Conrad. Abroad, he explored whether he could extricate the empire from the war that threatened to destroy it. By chance, in the same month, December 1916, the German chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, tried to forestall American intervention on the Allied side by proposing terms to discuss peace. Having crushed Romania, and as Russia was sucked into crisis, the German Supreme Command was in no mood for compromise. With the Kaiser’s acquiescence, Ludendorff attached such tough conditions to the proposal that it became an ultimatum. The result was a minor coup for Allied propaganda.

  A week later, President Wilson asked all parties to state their war aims. While Germany reiterated Bethmann Hollweg’s hollow offer, the Allies began to talk about liberating the subject nations of the Habsburg empire – something that had never been a war aim. Alarmed, Karl made sure that the Allies were aware of his interest in a separate peace. Having ousted Conrad in March 1917, he let the Allies know that Austria sought peace on the basis of the restoration of Belgian and (on certain conditions) Serbian independence, and the award of Alsace- Lorraine to France.

  French Prime Minister Alexandre Ribot was doubtful, while Lloyd George was intrigued. France and Britain had very few men in the field against Austria-Hungary; even so, they would benefit if Germany were alone on the Eastern Front. A bigger problem with Karl’s initiative was its omission of any reference to Italy, for he opposed any concessions to the ‘traitor’, and argued that the Austrian élite would not accept them in any case. When the Allies said that Rome must be consulted, Karl’s envoy explained that Austria would not give the Italians any territory that they had not conquered. Lloyd George demurred; the Italians should, he said, get the south Tyrol up to Bozen. The envoy wondered if they might not be offered a piece of south-eastern Anatolia instead.

  On 19 April, with this crucial point unresolved, the British and French premiers met Sonnino in a railway carriage in the Alps, and – without showing him the emperor’s letter – sounded him on the notion of a separate peace with Austria. Sonnino rejected requests for flexibility over the terms of the Treaty of London. Stubborn, ‘hot-tempered and not easily soothed’, harbouring ‘vast ambitions for Italy, which he hoped to see realised as a result of the combined effort of all the Allies’, he was not much liked in Paris and London. But he was respected; the Allies recognised that he had done more than anyone to bring Italy into the war on their side, and they knew he was the strongest figure in the government. Predictably, Sonnino now insisted that Italy’s war aims necessitated the full defeat of the Central Powers; anything less would dishonour Italy’s fallen. He did not comment on Lloyd George’s suggestion that, with Austria out of the picture, Italy could concentrate on her aims in Asia Minor. Italy had gone to war for the ‘unredeemed lands’; how could it make peace without liberating Trento and Trieste? He warned that Italy would be swept by revolution if the Allies reneged on their Adriatic pledges. While rejecting a separate peace, he pocketed the promise of territory in Anatolia and the port of Smyrna.

  Karl’s overtures did not recover from that encounter in the railway carriage. Back in London, digesting his second Italian snub since the start of the year, Lloyd George told the cabinet that Italy might be ‘compelled’ to accept an Allied agreement with Austria. He was reluctant to destroy Karl’s illusion, just as he refused to give up the idea of supporting the Italians with guns. For now, however, Sonnino prevailed, at the price of confirming London’s view that Italy’s claims were ‘unjust and unrealistic’.

  When Cadorna learned about these feelers at the end of April 1917, he demanded assurances that nothing would prevent the army’s ‘imminent operations’. Boselli gave his word and urged Cadorna to make the next action ‘decisive, in the sense that it virtually gives us Trieste’. By this time, the Eastern Front too had fallen quiet. Spinning in the vortex of revolution, Russia had lost its tsar in March. The offensive capacity of its army was dwindling fast, and the Central Powers stood back. Germany fuelled the fire with propaganda (telling the Russian soldiers that their government was against peace) and by helping Bolshevik exiles to return to Russia. (Lenin had reached St Petersburg three days before the secret summit in the Alps.) The prospect of Austrian divisions transferring to the Italian front, and the hope of inducing Cadorna to support their offensive in France, spurred the Allies to lend Cadorna 100 heavy guns.

  Domestically, Austria was in dire straits. There had been food riots as early as 1915, and the harsh winter of 1916–17 aggravated shortages. Hunger was widespread; by March 1917, soldiers were volunteering for the front in order to get the better rations that were served in the line. Hungary supplied the army with grain, but not Austrian civilians. Economic conditions worsened; industrial output declined sharply over 1917. So many miners had been drafted that coal was in short supply.

  The military picture was mixed. Romania had been subdued by the end of 1916, and Russia’s internal crisis almost paralysed the Eastern Front. (A final botched offensive in the summer would finish off the Russian army.) On the Italian front, patches of territory around Gorizia were reclaimed in minor actions over the winter. The new defensive line down to Hermada was completed. Turning the Carso’s geology to excellent account, the Austrians concealed billets, munitions and telephone wires deep in the limestone. The Imperial forces had taken 1,700,000 casualties during 1916, however, and there was no way to replace them. In the short term, transfers from Galicia could make up Boroević’s shortfall, but they would not close the widening gap with the Italians.

  On 1 February, General Nivelle visited Cadorna, seeking assurances that Italy would attack when the French and British offensive commenced in April. Cadorna, bristling at the Frenchman’s careless reference to ‘the hills’ on the upper Isonzo, was not to be drawn. He still feared an Austrian attack out of Trentino.

  Launched on 16 April, the Nivelle offensive went badly. Fielding 174 divisions, the Allies took almost 350,000 casualties before the operation was halted in mid-May. On 20 April, the French military attaché in Udine demanded that Cadorna must attack ‘très instamment’. He was told that the offensive could not begin before early May. For the Italians had to transfer artillery from Trentino to the Isonzo, which could not be done until the Supreme Command was confident that the Austrians would not attack. In fact the Supreme Command had already assessed that this risk was acceptable, and detailed planning for the Tenth Battle was in hand. As Cadorna intended the next offensive to be decisive, it would be much more ambitious than the campaigns of autumn 1916. On the Carso, the Third Army would drive once again towards the Trstelj–Hermada line. Further north, three corps would target the heights behind Gorizia. General Capello, who was rehabilitated in March, would lead these corps. Cadorna had decided he could not do without Capello; he might be ‘a rogue’, but his energy and flair made him irreplaceable.

  The Tenth Battle has to be understood in terms of ridges and summits. Mount San Gabriele, east of Gorizia, stands as an isolated summit. Monte Santo, further north, is the southern tip – and highest point – of a ridge that runs south-east for six or seven kilometres from Hill 383, above the Italian bridgehead at Plava. On its three other sides, Monte Santo falls away steeply. Italian shelling had reduced the church and monastery on its summit to ruins.

  The battle would start on the Carso. After several days, the onus would switch to the 12 divisions under Capello’s Gorizia
Zone Command. Five days later, when Boroević had taken forces away from the Carso to strengthen the lines north of Gorizia, Capello would send 200 guns to the Carso, so that the Third Army could attack a depleted enemy. If Boroević did not take the bait, he would risk losing ground north of Gorizia, where the Austrians were vulnerable. The sole exceptions were Hill 383 above Plava and Monte Santo itself, both swathed with wire, riddled with caverns, and defended by batteries in the rear. Elsewhere, the trenches were shallow and discontinuous, and the positions exposed.

  Capello proposed an audacious variation on this plan. He would attack across the river between Plava and Tolmein, creating a new bridgehead 10 kilometres north of Hill 383. The shortest route to Monte Santo lay southwards across arid highlands called the Bainsizza plateau.2 Reasonably, Boroević had assumed that the Italians would not dedicate major resources to breaking onto the Bainsizza, which had played no part in the war. If Capello could get substantial forces onto the Bainsizza, they would have several clear days to drive down behind Monte Santo and Mount San Gabriele, outflanking the Austrians all the way to the Vipacco valley. At the same time, he would attack the ridge between Plava and Monte Santo, east of the Isonzo. Secondary attacks would take place further south, between Gorizia and the Vipava valley.

  As usual, Italian deserters were Boroević’s best source of information. In early May, they swore that a major operation was imminent. Thanks to transfers from the Eastern Front, the Habsburg army on the Isonzo comprised 200,000 men in 215 battalions, with 1,700 machine guns and over 1,300 artillery pieces. Still outnumbered by roughly two to one, they were a ragtag force in some ways, with scrappy uniforms and worn-out weapons. Yet they were still disciplined and resolute, aware that any retreat on the Carso would threaten the empire and open the way to Italian conquest of the Slovene lands and Dalmatia.