The 12 Battles of the Isonzo
Italy and Austria lost a generation in the Alps in 12 pointless battles
During the First World War the Isonzo valley lay on the Alpine Front between Italy and Austria-Hungary and was the scene of a succession of twelve battles
On may 23rd 1915, lured into World War one by the Allies in the secret treaty of London that promised Austrian territory upon victory, Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary. Italy was short of war material and capital for its 36-divison 875,000 man army led by General Luigi Cardorna. This seemed like an adequate force when compared to the Austrian Army arrayed against it. Fighting for its life at the time against the Serbs in the Balkans and the Russians in Galicia, the Hapsburg army could only place 100,000 men in the field to defend against this new threat. This at first appears to be an open and shut campaign with an easy to foretell conclusion.
There was nothing easy about this campaign in actuality. The "S" shaped winding Austro-Italian frontier is some 400 miles long with most of it completely impassible due to the Julian Alps mountain range. The sixty mile long valley of the Isonzo [Soca] River presented the only practical area for offensive operations. It was decided by General Cardorna that this would be the avenue of attack by his armies into Austria. The heights above this valley were controlled by Austria Tyrolean Mountain troops drawn from men recruited from those areas and trained to be crack marksmen. These men could easily hold the crags and move effectively to block invasion from specially prepared fortifications. Much like the ancient battle of Thermopylae, this facet negated the Italian's superior numbers.
Attacking along the broad Isonzo in 1915 four times the Italians were repulsed in monotonously ineffective wasted assaults against the Austrian line. Commanded by an officer of Slavic background General Borojevic Bojna, the Austrian army held the line and inflicted more losses than they themselves sustained even though they were outnumbered in every engagement by at least two to one. In the Fifth battle of Isonzo the Italians came close to forcing the issue but again were repulsed with no significant gains in the end against the Austrian forces that had been reinforced by drafts from the empires Slavic regions, redeployments from Galicia, and the use of poison gas as a weapon.
The campaign continued in a bloody repeat along lines that basically remained unchanged on both sides. So bad was the fighting for Monte Nero on June 2, 1915, that when the troops ran out of ammunition they began hurling rocks at each other. During the war at least 60,000 soldiers on both sides were killed in avalanches along this front. New divisions fought and were ground to nothing for the same unreachable objectives. The river itself was susceptible to flooding and the war years featured record rainfalls and snow melts that contributed to the general misery of that front. The sixth, seventh, eight, and ninth battles of the Isonzo were all fought in 1916 with the same results as those of the previous years.
The year 1917 brought the further Tenth and Eleventh battles along this bloody river's shores. The stalemate finally broken by the Twelfth Battle in October. Known also as the Battle of Caporetto, this saw the Austrians reinforced by German mountain troops (among them a young Erwin Rommel) break the back of the Italians and nearly knock Italy out of the War.
First Battle of the Isonzo - 23 June-7 July 1915
Second Battle of the Isonzo - 18 July-3 August 1915
Third Battle of the Isonzo - 18 October-3 November 1915
Fourth Battle of the Isonzo - 10 November-2 December 1915
Fifth Battle of the Isonzo - 9-17 March 1916
Sixth Battle of the Isonzo - 6-17 August 1916
Seventh Battle of the Isonzo - 14-17 September 1916
Eighth Battle of the Isonzo - 10-12 October 1916
Ninth Battle of the Isonzo - 1-4 November 1916
Tenth Battle of the Isonzo - 12 May-8 June 1917
Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo - 19 August-12 September 1917
Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo - 24 October-7 November 1917 also known as the Battle of Caporetto
Italy suffered more than 300,000 dead along this front (more than half of their battle losses in the entire war) against 200,000 Austrian casualties. This was truly the best example of the useless meat grinder form of warfare that was typical of the War to End All Wars.
