![]() However he also believed that the Italian army could strike further north and bypass the mountains on either side of the river so as to come at the Austro-Hungarian forces from the rear.Ĭadorna had not expected operations in the Isonzo sector to be easy. Italian Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna judged that Italian gains (from Gorizia to Trieste) were most feasible at the coastal plain east of the lower end of the Soča (Isonzo). The Austro-Hungarians had fortified the mountains ahead of the Italians' entry into the war on. With the rest of the mountainous 400-mile (640 km) length of the Front being almost everywhere dominated by Austro-Hungarian forces, the Soča (Isonzo) was the only practical area for Italian military operations during the war. Italian soldiers during the Second Battle of the Isonzo, 1915 Īs a result, the Austro-Hungarians were forced to move some of their forces from the Eastern Front and a war in the mountains around the Isonzo River began. ![]() The area between the northernmost part of the Adriatic Sea and the sources of the Isonzo River thus became the scene of twelve successive battles. Italian commander Luigi Cadorna, a staunch proponent of the frontal assault who claimed the Western Front proved the ineffectiveness of machine guns, initially planned breaking onto the Slovenian plateau, taking Ljubljana and threatening Vienna. In April 1915, in the secret Treaty of London, Italy was promised by the Allies some of the territories of Austro-Hungarian Empire which were mainly inhabited by ethnic Slovenes and Austrian Germans. The Battles of the Isonzo (known as the Isonzo Front by historians, Slovene: soška fronta) were a series of 12 battles between the Austro-Hungarian and Italian armies in World War I mostly on the territory of present-day Slovenia, and the remainder in Italy along the Isonzo River on the eastern sector of the Italian Front between June 1915 and November 1917. Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign gives a fascinating insight into a conflict that was a pivotal moment in the history of Italy, Austria and the Balkans.The plain at the confluence of the Soča and Vipava rivers around Gorizia is the main passage from Northern Italy to Central Europe. But it is the front-line experience of the common soldiers on both sides that is most powerfully portrayed. The impact of the intervention of British, French and German troops is covered, as are the parts played by famous individuals - among them Rommel, Mussolini, Badoglio and Cadorna, the notorious Italian commander in chief. His description of the Isonzo battles, of the battlefields and of the atrocious conditions in which the soldiers lived and fought is supported by a graphic selection of original photographs that record the terrible reality of the conflict. ![]() John Macdonald, in this accessible and highly illustrated account, aims to set the record straight. Yet this massive struggle is too often neglected in histories of the war which focus on the fighting on the Western and Eastern Fronts. The twelfth and final battle, Caporetto, resulted in a devastating defeat for Italy and led to one of the greatest breakthroughs achieved during the entire conflict. ![]() ![]() The campaign was fought in the most appalling terrain for combat, with horrendous casualties on both sides, often exceeding those of the more famous battles of the Great War. From May 1915 to October 1917 the armies of Italy and the Austro-Hungarian empire were locked into a series of twelve battles along the River Isonzo, a sixty-mile front from the Alps to the Adriatic. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |