On July 1st, 1914, four weeks before the First World War began, Alberto Pollio, Chief of
Staff of the Italian army, died suddenly and unexpectedly.
A new Chief of Staff was appointed, and he was the man who would lead the Italian army
for more than three years, Luigi Cadorna.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to our Great War bio series, “Who did What in World War One?”
today featuring Luigi Cadorna.
Luigi Giovanni Antonio Carlo Giuseppe Cadorna was born September 4th, 1850 in Pallanza,
on the coast of Lake Maggiore.
His father, Raffaele Cadorna, was a soldier and fought in the Crimean War, but later became
a General in the Piedmontese army and led the conquest of Rome, the final act of the
Italian Risorgimento, in 1870.
Luigi had gone to military school and was commissioned at age 18 as a Second Lieutenant
in the artillery.
He actually also participated in taking Rome, joining the forces led by his father.
His father played a big role in Luigi’s life, and indeed in Luigi’s later years
he would write a biography of his father.
In Rome, Luigi met Giovanna Balbi, whom he would marry and with whom he would have three
daughters and a son, of course naming the son Raffaele after his father.
Over the years, Luigi Cadorna rose through the ranks.
As a major he was chief of staff of Verona Divisional Command, in the 1890s he was Colonel
commanding a regiment of Bersaglieri, and in 1898 was promoted to Lieutenant-General.
He then held several senior staff and divisional command positions.
Now, Cadorna never experienced combat as a leader until World War One as he did not take
part in the Italo-Turkish war in 1911 and 1912.
So... it’s the summer of 1914 and soon to be 64 year old Cadorna has a fairly noteworthy
career behind him and is nearing his retirement when he’s suddenly offered the post of Chief
of Staff of the Italian Army.
Cadorna accepts, reluctantly according to his letters, though he accepted only on condition
that, even though the king formally commanded the army, Cadorna will have effective leadership
with no limitations.
Now, Cadorna had a reputation for strict discipline and harsh punishments, and he is confident
in his own ability, and is a real authoritarian.
He’s also Catholic, very devout as is his family; in fact, two of his daughters would
become nuns.
At this point, days before the war began, Italy was still linked with Germany and Austria-Hungary
by the Triple Alliance and when the war began Cadorna began making plans to help the German
attack on the French border.
He was completely in the dark about the government’s foreign policy and that policy of armed neutrality
took him by surprise.
I’m not going to talk about the situation in Italian politics during the year of armed
neutrality before Italy entered the war with the Entente in 1915 because I covered all
of that in our special on Italy.
Cadorna was of course affected by the political upheavals, but he had more to worry about,
most of all the deficiencies of men – especially officers – and materiel – especially artillery
– in the army.
So Italy joined the war and Cadorna established his headquarters in Udine in the Archbishop’s
Palace.
Cadorna was not so much popular, especially among politicians, as he was a cult figure.
Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, described him as, “an old Roman, a man cast in the
big simple mold of antiquity”.
Gabriele D’Annunzio wrote two poems dedicated to Cadorna, saying that he was “cut and
shaped from the hardest granite by a maestro whose vigor was greater than his artistic
ability”.
Cadorna’s reply was, “It’s a nice way to say I’m ugly”.
Luigi Cadorna would rule his army as a dictator, was called the Generalissimo, and would remove
men from command for the slightest pretext.
During his tenure as Chief of Staff, he would fire 217 generals, 255 colonels, and 337 lieutenant-colonels.
He published a bulletin in February 1915 called “Attacco frontale e ammaestramento tattico”
that outlined his military theory.
For Cadorna, the most important thing, the difference between victory and defeat, is
morale.
“Victory is determined by the demoralization of the enemy!”
This is kind of Cadorna’s main limitation as a military theorist – he understood that
modern war is a war shaped by material, but that for him was only a side note.
Cadorna soon realized that the war would not be a short one, and having few alternatives,
he focused his attention on the line of the Isonzo River.
I cover all of the battles there in our regular Thursday episodes, but I’ll highlight a
few points here.
The first main offensive was in June and July 1915.
The gains were minimal and the losses huge for the Italians, and the deficiency of the
Italian artillery really showed.
In fact, in the first six months of the war, Italian casualties numbered 280,000, almost
double those of Austria-Hungary.
The Italian Minister of War, Vittorio Zupelli, very much unsatisfied with Cadorna’s command,
pled his case against Cadorna to the cabinet at the end of January 1916, and a council
of war was suggested, made up of ministers and generals, that would attempt to contend
with Cadorna for control of military operations.
But Cadorna had the King on his side, and that was rejected, and the only resignation
from the whole affair turned out to be that of Zuppelli as Minister of War.
Cadorna wrote to his wife that his principal enemies were no longer the Austrians.
Cadorna opposed sending Italian troops to any other fronts, such as Libya or Albania,
and only sent troops to the Macedonian Front because all the other allies were there and
the absence of Italian troops might mean the loss of future concessions in Asia Minor.
Up to mid 1916, the Austrians had been solely on defense on the Italian front, but that
changed.
Rumors and even newspaper stories warned of an Austrian build up for an offensive, but
Cadorna paid them no heed so when that offensive began he was taken completely by surprise.
This was partly because of a confused and inadequate structure for intelligence reporting,
which was kind of a reflection of the way he ran his headquarters.
Cadorna had learned by this time the importance of war materiel and his army was very much
beefed up in terms of artillery and machine guns, but he still believed “morale preparation”
was the most important thing.
Still, in August 1916, thanks to meticulous preparation and artillery, Italy captured
Gorizia, a major victory.
The failure to follow this up properly did cause over 50,000 Italian casualties, though.
In fact, by 1917, the Italian army was in a state of mutiny and desertion.
That year would be the worst of the war for Italy in terms of war dead.
Cadorna believes the cause to be propaganda, and indeed when the Italian army faced disaster
in the field, he would not blame his own failings or his enemy’s skill, but rather found the
fault within his troops, and his reaction was discipline basically of terror.
Soldiers were subjects who were shaped by punishments, not individuals who deserve to
know hay they fight and die.
The Italians do push the Austrians back 12 kilometers that summer, so the Isonzo itself
can no longer be used as a defensive barrier, but when Austria turned to Germany for help,
the resulting Battle of Caporetto, featuring storm troops tactics, broke the Italian lines.
The Italians were forced back all the way to the Piave River, but Cadorna again blamed
the loss on the morale of his men, and not German technique and skill.
It was an outbreak of willful disobedience and defeatism by insufficiently patriotic
troops.
The Italian line holds at the Piave but Cadorna’s time in command is at an end after Caporetto.
Armando Diaz is named new Chief of Staff in November.
Cadorna is assigned as the Italian representative to the Allied War Council in Versailles, but
would soon resign.
On July 1st, 1918 he retires to Florence where he will work on his father’s biography.
During the rise of fascism, which he at first sees positively, he declared mistakenly that
the Mussolini regime would never last because the Italian people don’t want dictatorships.
In 1926, Luigi Cadorna moved to Trieste and died in 1928 in Bordighera, Liguria.
His reputation, certainly on this channel, is not a good one, for he consistently believed
that a soldier’s morale is more important than his guns, and did not take blame for
his failures in the field, as much as he did take credit for his successes.
In some ways he was very much a man of ancient Rome in the age of Modern War..
Thanks to Andrea Maisano for the research on this episode.
Andrea is actually operating his own Italian blog and twitter about World War 1.
Check out the link to his profiles in the description.