i'm indy neidell and once again this is
the great war on the road now today I'm
in Italy and I'm at the Museum of
Vittorio Veneto which is dedicated to
the Battle of Vittorio Veneto and here
is the outside of the museum now I'm
going to go inside and look at some
stuff but first what I want to look at
is what's on the first floor of the
museum you see after the Battle of
Caporetto when the front stabilized at
the Piave River the Central Powers
occupied all of that Italian territory
north of the Piave for a year until the
Battle of Vittorio Veneto freed that
part of Italy now we're gonna go in and
first look at what happens during an
occupation
[Music]
now once you your army has occupied a
territory there's certain certain basic
steps you're going to have to take to
get anything going first of all you're
going to have to make an official
proclamation of the occupation
what's prohibited what's allowed to say
that you are the new sheriff in town you
do of course have to communicate with
the people whose land you're occupying
now if you see behind me see all these
newspapers and Gazette's they are in
Italian which of course was not the
official language of austria-hungary but
they had to communicate with the local
people and if you see some of these here
you can see that a lot of it was really
brightly colored vivid imagery and this
was because a large part of the region
was still illiterate or or or read
poorly if they did read so you had to do
all these pictures and you can see that
these pictures are very much the glory
of the Central Powers victories in order
to tell people this is we're winning so
be cool this is us you see this plane
here nobody ever saw this plane here
right but it is shooting down a bunch of
British planes and these are all
obviously September 1918 September 1918
now a lot of the people that were here
are during the occupation war women
children old men and priests because
many of the young men fled south across
the Piave to escape the occupying army
of young men that had invaded them so
you got a bit of a refugee crisis
further south in Italy now this refugee
crisis was further exacerbated because
you have to feed all those people coming
down there but feeding the people in the
north well that was actually the
occupiers job but they had a bigger
priority their priority was feeding
their own nations now we saw we did a
whole special about the turn of winter
and we know that by the winter of 1916
in 1960 17 much of Germany and much of
austria-hungary was hungry and starving
so now you have this occupying force
taken over a big chunk of northern Italy
with a big chunk of farms it wasn't just
food supplies that were being
requisitioned though everything was
being requisitioned they took they took
the bells down from the churches to take
the metal to use the metal to make
weapons and ammunition so this was not
an especially happy time for the people
under occupation who had had a fair
amount of food beforehand but now found
them
hungry because the food was being taken
away from them so if you're upset with
your occupiers what do you do you create
a resistance you creates firings you
create here's some here's some tindora
and there's another book over there
these were people who were actually
spies and these are they're they're the
works they left behind and this basket
here they would use carrier pigeons to
communicate their intelligence back to
whoever their handler further south and
Italy was now we saw one spy ring
actually which we talked about in our
regular episodes the Neely's firing in
the Ottoman Empire in Palestine broken
up because a carrier pigeon flew wrong
and was intercepted by the Ottoman
Empire and it led to the destruction of
that ring as far as I'm aware that
didn't happen here but you can see what
a dangerous game it is to play you're
behind enemy lines
you are spy you have to send your
information to the unoccupied part of
your country another means of
communication was they would use but
hang blankets in their windows and by
moving the blanket would signal to
planes that were flying by there was
signal information I don't know exactly
what sort of signal system they use but
I think that's pretty ingenious because
you wouldn't you wouldn't guess that
let's move into here and stuff because I
mentioned the languages and stuff you
see all of this I mean nobody nobody had
more languages than austria-hungary
fifteen different versions of the
national anthem troops of all nations of
all sub nations in the same regiments
and battalions sometimes with leaders
who spoke languages that they didn't
understand especially well now Italian
was one of those but this was a many of
the invaders didn't speak any Italian
and couldn't see even communicate with
some of their own comrades so you had a
whole new set of problems for this
specific invading army now we're gonna
go upstairs where they actually have the
the part of the museum that's dedicated
to the Battle of Vittorio Veneto now
well of course cover that in our regular
episodes but there's some really
interesting stuff up there we want to go
over anyhow just to show you come on ok
now after the Battle of Caporetto
the front stabilized here at the Piave
River right Caporetto is up there so
that's where the Central Powers were
moving in from the Italians read the
defenses were reorganised by Diaz south
of the Piave River now this is vittorio
veneto and this is what the bottle is of
vittorio veneto was named after thing is
now Vaughn below the the commander of
the German 14th army that spearheaded
that led the invasion he was told by by
Ludendorff when he was given the men and
the army to put together the invasion to
do the limited the most limited
offensive he could and get so he could
get his men back by December so they'd
be ready for German offensives on the
Western Front in the spring of 1918 so
fun fellow took this very seriously and
he did not want to be an occupying army
even though his generals and Colonels
below him wanted to do achieve total
victory over the Italians be that as it
may
defences organized the Piave River so
here they stood now for a year this area
was occupied all of this part of
northern Italy was occupied by the
Central Powers until the Battle of
Vittorio Veneto which we'll cover in our
regular episodes freed the occupying
force now during that battle there was
no actual fighting at Vittorio Veneto
the fighting was all here and up towards
Montegrappa and then there's the
Trentino further up there the reason the
battle was named after Victoria Veneto
is very interesting because Vittorio
Veneto was a combined from two villages
in the 1860s and it was named the
Victorio it was named after the king of
course but also Vittorio is victory and
you have your victorious final
breakthrough and the final armistice
with austria-hungary as their country
and their army disintegrates and you
take hundreds of thousands of prisoners
it is a serious victory and what are you
going to name it after you're gonna name
it after Victoria Victoria Veneto
so that's why the bag was called that I
think this map is fantastic actually and
you can see how the way the Piave works
how it just winds around like that and
the reason that this was the center of
the this was the headquarters of the
Central Powers even though it was quite
far away from the actual front was
because these passes and valleys here
could give you a direct line to send
information to Berlin and to Vienna
so very strategically important oh I
want to show you something while I'm
standing here this is probably the most
important
you will ever see on this channel the
Great War right they're talking about
the first phase of the battle what does
it say
the first phase did not go as planned
that sums up the entire Great War
everything we've talked about for the
last few years because the first phase
of nothing went as planned and in fact
the second phase third phase fourth
phase nothing ever went this point the
closest I can think went as planned was
maybe operation Albion but even that you
know this is the Great War this is
modern war nothing goes as planned so
that made me very happy to read that
because it summed up the entire war in
one single sentence alright now this
room is possibly the coolest room in the
whole thing abut I did like that map
this is a room full of photographs
writings documents from all the major
players of this whole period like we
have here our old pal Cavalia who we've
talked about endlessly interesting that
he's here you know cuz these are these
are the heroes but competely of course
part of the blame for Caporetto can
actually be laid at his feet because he
was ordered to maintain a defensive
stance and he didn't he said his men up
for further offensives because he did
not believe that Central Powers were
going to attack so his guys were set up
for offense not defense when the
crushing blow came hello chameleon nice
to see you
who else others okay Vanessa Gabrielle
we talked about him in the Italy special
and he will be notorious after the war
but that's after the war so you can
definitely look him up yourself and see
all kinds of stuff that he did in the
early 20s here is Lord Kelvin he was in
charge of the British troops at Vittorio
Veneto which is interesting because it
wasn't just an Italian operation this
was a combined operation in contrast to
most of the battles on the Italian front
there were 51 Italian divisions fighting
there were British divisions French
divisions and American division there
was the Czech legions were fighting the
Romanian legion was fighting a real
combined military operation and I want
to take you guys into this room because
I want you to see something here ok this
is my new colleague Angelo Angelo say
hello hi Hindi
but okay and now angela is going to
translate this proclamation for me
because uh it's cool and I want you guys
to hear this okay just okay we now know
that Italian soldiers on the Piazza have
heard on in the night women screaming on
the other side of a river they well know
what's happening on the other side they
heard from prisoners stories horrific
stories citizens laughter's cows and
horses taken away everything taken away
the furnitures are used to make fires
and everywhere the Bosniak troops wear
only traces of atrocities now stand
that's Austria that's Germany and that
your satellites Bulgari and turk and
that is propaganda at its best because
this is november 1917 just a couple of
weeks after Caporetto so now the
italians themself we're talking about
the horrible horrible things that these
evil central powers people were doing
thank you very much for that Angelus
nice to have you here now you guys
should definitely visit this museum if
you're ever in the neighborhood because
we've only seen a little bit of it and
especially like the room with the photos
and stuff it's amazing it's and the
exhibition's are really cool there's an
entire arsenal so you can see weapons
from not just the Italians from the
austro-hungarians it's all the weapons
that the guy that founded the museum
actually collected now I'm going to end
with something that I think some of you
are going to like okay
now we did a special a bio special on
Luigi Cadorna the chief of staff of the
Italian Army until after Caporetto when
he lost his job and if you want to see
that you can click right here but don't
do it just yet because if you walk back
it's a very nice picture of ladies and
gentlemen our old pal Generalissimo
Luigi Cadorna see you next time