There are been 11 Battles of the Isonzo River, all launched offensively by the Italians,
but that changes this week.
This week a 12th battle begins, launched by the Central Powers, and this week the Italian
front breaks.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the Germans continued Operation Albion, a combined air - land - sea offensive
in the Gulf of Riga, while in the west casualties for the two and a half months of the ongoing
Battle of Passchendaele were finally being tallied, and they were enormous.
Plans were made to continue that battle when the weather improved, and plans were also
made for a tank attack that would be the first of its kind.
Action now began again on the Western Front this week, and it was begun by the French.
In fact, they scored a big victory at the Battle of La Malmaison, which ran from the
23rd to the 26th.
The French captured the village and the fort of La Malmaison and took control of the Chemin
des Dames ridge.
This was a well - prepared limited scale attack, much like the second battle of Verdun six
weeks ago, and it was partly designed to boost French morale after the disastrous spring
offensive and general mutiny of the summer.
German artillery was outnumbered 3 - 1 and the French guns silenced the German ones.
Also, the French saturated the Ailette Valley with gas, so the Germans could not bring forward
supplies or evacuate the wounded.
The preliminary bombardment had been six days long and French aerial recon had identified
the German infantry shelters, which were systematically destroyed.
When the French infantry went over the top, still in darkness on the morning of the 23rd,
there were 63 Schneider CA-1 and Saint Chamond tanks with them.
27 of these got bogged down behind French lines in the mud.
15 more were stopped in no man's land or at the German front lines, but the other 21 reached
the German second lines according to plan.
In four days, the French advanced nearly 10 km, and the success here and recently at Verdun,
as well as the Allied September successes at Passchendaele, showed that with proper
planning and artillery preparation, the German defenses were vulnerable, as they had not
been earlier in the year.
Casualty estimates vary, sometimes widely, but William Philpott estimated a few years
ago 38,000 German casualties and 12,000 prisoners against just 14,000 French casualties.
Even after the spring offensives and the general mutiny, there is no way you could count out
the French army.
Elsewhere on that front, though, the Germans were holding their ground.
On the last day of the week, the 26th, the Passchendaele Offensive against them began again.
The Canadians under Sir Arthur Currie were chosen to lead the attack, but Currie had
serious reservations.
Still, he made his plans.
It would be a three - phased attack, and the codenamed objectives were, in order, the Red,
Blue, and Green Lines.
The 3rd and 4th Divisions of Canadian Corps would take the first two, and the 1st and
2nd would take the last and doing any mopping up.
The attacks would take place the 26th and 30th of October, and November 6th.
This caused issues with General Hugh Gough, who planned an attack with his 5th Army the
22nd, and wanted Currie to attack the same day.
Currie refused to be rushed.
Still, his attack the 26th caused equally heavy casualties on both sides.
Currie’s men were brought to a halt before they could reach Passchendaele Ridge or what
rubble remained of the village.
They did not completely take even the Red Line, the nearest objective, but they did
secure jumping off positions for next week’s attack.
But if the Germans were holding their ground there, they were advancing in the east.
Operation Albion continued, and on the 20th, Dagö and Schilden Islands were captured.
The next day, the Germans land on the Russian mainland at Verder.
In nine days have taken 20,000 prisoners and 100 guns.
But that operation was just a sidenote to the big advance this week in Italy.
Now, the 10th and 11th battles of the Isonzo River this summer had cost the Italians nearly
300,000 casualties and the Austrians a couple hundred thousand, and both sides were begging
their allies for help.
Italian Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna thought the impending collapse of Russia was going
to free up Austria-Hungary to send all its armies against Italy, but the British and
French only helped him with artillery.
He also kind of ruled by fear at this point, and he was so certain his strategies were
right that he didn’t even listen to alternative opinions from his own intelligence services.
By this time, he had fired 217 generals and 255 colonels (Caporetto), mostly for “lack
of offensive spirit”, so standards were pretty low in the officer corps by this time
Austrian Emperor Karl, who was told by his general staff that the army couldn’t handle
another Italian assault, asked German Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff for German aid.
Ludendorff said no, but Karl went right to the Kaiser, who intervened.
A German general sent to the Italian front reported that the Austrian army was at the
end of its rope, so Ludendorff created the German 14th Army with bits and pieces taken
from the Baltic, Romania, and Alsace-Lorraine.
He sent it to the Italian front under General Otto von Below with orders just to stabilize
the Austrians with the most limited campaign he could manage.
He wanted his divisions back by December to prepare for the 1918 campaign against France.
The operation was codenamed Waffentreue - Loyalty to Arms.
This army included some of the best Alpine divisions the Germans and Austrians had, and
would also be featuring new infiltration tactics, or “Hutier” tactics, named after General
Oskar von Hutier.
They would proceed in four phases:
1) short artillery barrage of high explosive and poison gas shells.
No preliminary sighting shots would be fired since the guns would be aimed mathematically
with help from aerial recon.
This barrage was not to destroy the enemy front lines, but to neutralize them.
2) Under a creeping barrage, shock troops would move forward and infiltrate identified
weak spots in the defenses, avoiding all combat if possible, and continuing until they reached
enemy artillery or command posts, which they would then destroy or capture.
3) then, machine gun and mortar units would launch heavy attacks on narrow fronts against
enemy strongpoints that had been avoided by the shock troops.
Artillery was now brought forward.
4) the regular infantry was sent in to mop up any resistance that remained..
On October 24th, 33 German and Austrian divisions attacked 41 Italian ones.
This was the Battle of Caporetto, named after one of the villages where the fighting took
place that is known as Kobarid to the Slovenians there- it was the 12th Battle of the Isonzo,
but it was the first that was planned and executed by the Central Powers.
It began with 4 hours of artillery, two hours of which was gas shells.
The main attack then began as a pincer movement.
The northern arm attacked from the Bovec basin along the river to the southwest toward Caporetto,
on the slopes and ridges.
The southern arm attacked from Tolmen and the bridgehead there to the west.
Once Caporetto fell, Austrian General Svetozar Borojevic von Bojna would attack to hold the
forces on the Bainsizza Plateau and the Carso while the 14th army moved south from the newly
conquered ridges.
That day the attack in thick fog on a 32km front broke through at Tolmen and Caporetto,
taking 10,000 prisoners and the Italians fell back as far as 20km just that day.
By the 26th, the Central Powers claimed 60,000 prisoners and 500 guns, and the Italians were
in full flight along the whole front.
Now, Von Below wanted the mountains cleared of Italian soldiers and artillery, to provide
safe access to the Venetian Plain.
He sent in his elite Alpine troops, which included the , which featured one Lieutenant
Erwin Rommel.
Rommel was given three mountain companies and one machine gun company, “the Rommel Detachment”.
On the 25th, they took two mountain peaks and 3,600 prisoners.
The next day he then took Monte Matajur.
In 52 hours of fighting his men had captured 150 officers and 9,000 men and had only had
six of their own killed and 30 wounded.
Even decades later as a famous general in another large conflict, Rommel called this
the high point of his career.
By the end of the week, all of the battlefields Italy had dominated for the past two years
at the cost of so many lives were falling behind or would soon do so - Gorizia, Monte
San Michele, Monte Sabotino, Podgora.
The defeat even caused the fall of Paolo Boselli’s government in Rome.
It had become a complete and total rout.
Von Below’s commanders wanted to head south, win total victory over the Italians, and knock
them out of the war, but Von Below had no intention of being an occupying army.
He still intended to get his forces to the Western Front by December.
And the week ends, with German making huge advances in Italy, a smaller advance in the
northeast, holding their ground in Belgium, but losing it in France.
And a final note - on the 26th Brazil declares war on Germany.
Think how it would feel in the Italian army this week.
You’d sacrificed men in the hundreds of thousands to slowly take enemy territory over
two and a half years, you bleed out a whole generation of your young men, and suddenly
you lose it all in a week.
A few days.
What was the sacrifice for then?
What do you tell the people at home?
The families of the dead?
I don’t know.
If you want to know more about Erwin Rommel and his exploits in World War 1, you can click
right here for our episode about him.
Our Patreon supporter of the week is Alaska Mike - what a “cool” name.
Thank you for your ongoing support on Patreon which made it possible to film special episodes
in Kobarid itself.
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