THE DECISION MADE—ITALIAN STRATEGIC PLAN

On the night of May 24, 1915, little groups of the Alpini, Italy's famous mountain troops, moved silently. They passed from San Giorgio, Cividale and Palmanova on the eastern frontier, from Paluzza and San Stefano and Pieve on the north, from Agordo, Feltre and Asiago, from Brentino and Malcesine toward Lake Garda, from Garganano the western shore of the lake and from other positions all along the mountain frontier up to the Stelvio Pass.

Marching silently and in single file, by three o'clock in the morning of May 25, 1915, one detachment reached a deep trench. "Our frontiers," said their officers. "We advance to make new ones." Then began a long, steep climb up narrow mountain paths, through snow lying in patches knee-deep, and through a storm of sleet and rain that broke along the Trentino boundary before dawn. As dawn broke they hurled themselves upon an Austrian shelter trench excavated the autumn before on the plateau. It was empty. The enemy had retired only a few hours before. The camp-fire ashes were still warm. As the sun began to throw the long shadows of the Alpine peaks to the west Austrian guns crashed out their first salute from the rocky fortresses beyond. Italy and Austria-Hungary were at war.

To comprehend the task before the Italian army it is necessary to examine the Italian-Austrian frontier. Austria's problem was one only of defense. Her warning had been ample and when war was declared she was prepared to the last detail. Being the challenged party hers was the choice of weapons, and she had equipped herself with an almost impregnable line of fortifications. The grievance was Italy's, and hers the duty of assault. Every advantage of position lay with Austria.

The strategic plan of the Italian generals was determined by hard geographical facts. The Italo-Austrian frontier is about 480 miles long, divided naturally into three sections. On the west the Austrian province of Trentino indents Italian territory like a wedge; next comes the great wall of the Dolomites and the Carnic and Julian Alps; then, on the east, a boundary line running north and south between the main Alpine chain and the Adriatic Sea. Steep mountain heights dominated by Austrian troops guarded the first two parts of this frontier. Only on the eastern border, from Pontebba to the Adriatic was Italian offensive on a large scale at all feasible; but before offensive operations could be started here it was necessary for the Italians to close the open gates to the north.

Here in the north lay Italy's problem at the opening of the war; and here her armies confronted an almost impossible task. In a word, they had to fight uphill. A salient, such as that formed by the Trentino, may offer dangers for the side that holds it—an example of which is the Russian position in Poland at the opening of the war; but the Trentino situation was quite unlike that in Poland. The sides of the Trentino were buttressed with mountains. The most tempting avenue of invasion was the valley of the Adige River. An enemy advancing by this route would find himself confronted with the strongly fortified town of Trent, which long resisted attacks from Venice in the Middle Ages. Having forced his way past Trent the enemy would be in a wilderness of lateral valleys with the main ridge of the Alpine chain, at the Brenner, still before him. On the western side of the Trentino is the lofty Stelvio Pass, leading from the Upper Adige to the valley of Adda. This pass is 9,000 feet high and its narrow defiles were easily defended. To the south lies the pass of Tonale over which runs the road from Noce to the Oglio, but this offers similar difficulties. The road pass of Cornelle, close to Lake Garda, is too narrow for any considerable force. On the eastern side of the salient conditions for invasion are still worse. The railway from Venice to Innsbruck crosses the Valsugana at Tezze, but the Brenta valley through which it runs is a difficult road to Trent. Summed up, the salient of the Trentino was an ideal position for those who held it, both offensive and defensive. The few breaches by which invasion could come were a source of strength rather than weakness, because they compelled attack from the Italian plain to be made on divergent lines from different bases.

The second part of the frontier is the ramparts of the Dolomite and Carnic ranges through which an important offensive was possible for neither belligerent. The main pass, at Ampezzo, 5,000 feet high, makes a sharp detour toward the west to circumvent the mass of Cristallo, and here the road is a narrow defile commanded by a hundred points of danger. The adjacent passes of Misurina and the Monte Croce are no better, and the defiles to the east contain little more than bridle paths. The lowest pass, which leads from the valley of the Fella by Pontebba to the upper streams of the Drave and carries the railway from Venice to Vienna is only 2,615 feet high at its greatest elevation. Although this is the easiest of the great routes through the mountain barrier, it is still narrow and difficult. A modern army given the advantages of time and preparation should be able to close and hold it with ease.

Although the maps show few natural difficulties on the third section of the frontier to compare with those farther west, it is not the obvious avenue of attack a hasty survey would seem to suggest. It is only twenty miles wide and behind it is the line of the River Isonzo with hills along its eastern bank. The upper part of this stream, above Salcana, is a ravine; then comes six miles of comparatively level ground in front of Gorizia; then the hills begin again and sweep round to the seacoast by Monfalcone. What this front lacks in natural defenses had been amply supplied before the war opened by Austria with artillery and men. Toward this narrow twenty-mile stretch, and especially toward the plain before Gorizia, tended, in a sense, however, all the operations of the Italian strategists. The engagements fought during the first of the Italo-Austrian struggle all had their bearing upon the great offensive launched later against Gorizia.

But the natural lay of the land was by no means the only consideration with which the rival generals had to deal. In respect to lateral communications Italy had the advantage. Behind her invading armies stretched an elaborate system of railways through her northern provinces. Austria had a railway running through the whole curve of the frontier, but owing to the difficulty of breaking through from the hill valleys this system had few feeders. This lack of branch lines meant that Austria had to concentrate any offensive at certain definite places—Trent, Tarvis, and Gorizia. Italy aimed at these points and one more, Franzensfeste, the junction of the Pusterthal line with the railway from Innsbruck to Trent. If she could take this point she could cut Austria's communications in the whole Trentino salient. But Franzensfeste was the most difficult of any of these local points for Italy to reach, for south and east of it lay the bristling system of the Dolomites.

The successive revelations of Italian strategy during the first months of the war brought few surprises. Austria had her hands full in the Carpathians just then and was unable to take advantage of the opportunities for swift offensive which her frontier positions offered. It was a foregone conclusion that the first advance would come from the Italian side and the direction of that movement was not long in doubt. Its objective was Trieste, the Austrian peninsula, and the hills of Styria which sweep to Vienna. There lay the country where modern armies could maneuver. At the same time the whole northern boundary must be watched to prevent Austrian forces from the Trentino cutting the communications of the invader and attacking him in the rear. Therefore General Cadorna, the Italian commander in chief, resolved to attack at all the salient points. Such a plan led to a series of movements—toward Trent, across the Dolomite passes against the Pusterthal railway, at the Pontebba Pass, and across the Julian Alps to threaten the line between Tarvis and Gorizia. Meanwhile the main Italian army was to strike at the Isonzo and the road to Trieste.

The same conditions which made the Austrian frontier lines easy to defend also would have given the Central Power a big advantage in offensive operations, but for excellent reasons the Austrian staff did not attack. In the first place, Austria lacked men. The Teutonic war councils concluded that Austro-Hungarian troops were of more value in the great drive then in progress against the Russians than they would have been in offensive operations against the cities of the northern Italian plains. Had the Austrians debouched from their mountain strongholds and forced the Italians to concentrate against them in Italian territory, as they undoubtedly could have done, the benefits of such an enterprise from the standpoint of the alliance powers would have been small in proportion to the risks. Only a combined drive by both Austria and Germany, it is believed, could have gained any telling advantage in northern Italy; and Italy, it must be remembered, had not declared war on Germany. Ensconced in their mountain fastnesses, the Austrians believed they could maintain a successful defensive indefinitely. Then, after the Italian armies had exhausted themselves beating against the mountain barrier, an opportunity might arise for Austrian reprisals. At the time few believed that Italy would long be able to maintain her attitude of neutrality regarding Germany—an opinion, by the way, which was not supported by the developments of the first year of the war.

The Austrians had months in which to prepare, and they had made good use of their time. The natural difficulties confronting an Italian assault had been enormously increased by trenches of steel and concrete. The Austrian engineers had connected their elaborate systems of wire entanglements with high-power electric stations, and dug mines at all vulnerable points. Heavy guns had been moved, at great expenditure of labor, to the frontier forts and rails laid on which to move them from place to place. The broken nature of the ground afforded ideal opportunities for the concealment of artillery positions. It is safe to say that nowhere in the whole theatre of the Great War was there a line better adapted by nature and equipped by man for purposes of defensive warfare. The Austrian Archduke Eugene, who was in charge of the Italian operations, revealed his plan of campaign during the first few days after the beginning of hostilities. His aim was to risk nothing until Field Marshal von Mackensen had finished his operations in Galicia, where Austria's best troops were fighting with their German allies. To meet the Italians he had only the Landsturm and a few reserve divisions, but these were considered enough. The archduke resolved to hold the crests of the passes along the Trentino frontier and the line of the Carnic Alps, withdrawing his outposts before the enemy's advance. On the Isonzo he would abandon the country west of the river line and make his stand on a fortified line to the east which touched the Isonzo only at Gorizia, where the Austrians held the bridgehead on the western bank.

It has been pointed out in preceding pages that not a little of Italy's delay in entering the war, and of the tortuous diplomatic negotiations which for several months kept the outside in doubt as to her ultimate intentions, was due to the state of military unpreparedness confronting the country in the summer of 1914. But by May, 1915, the country had had nine months in which to get ready. Moreover, she had been able to profit by the lessons of the war. When Italy started to get ready there was no waste motion, although the task to be accomplished entailed enormous labor and expense.[Back to Contents]