"that tremendous cataclysm which almost ruined Italy"

October 24, 2017 8:23 AM

"It was a Caporetto." On this day 100 years ago, an Italian byword for disaster was born. Advancing through mist, a combined German/Austria-Hungarian attack surprised and shattered the Italian 2nd army, driving deeply into the Veneto Plain. Italian suffered almost 300,000 casualties, retreated nearly one hundred miles, and almost lost Venice.

After being gradually pushed back during eleven (11) bloody battles over the past two years, the Austria-Hungarians were in desperate straits. The Germans offered some troops and planning assistance. They successfully deployed poison gas and new infiltration tactics, sometimes called Hutier tactics or, more ominously, stormtrooper formations. Late in WWI, Caporetto was a serious reversal in the Italian front.

For American readers the battle might be best know due to its portrayal in Ernest Hemingway's 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms, although he wasn't in the rout. Actually in the battle was a young Erwin Rommel.

More:
Italian Chief of Staff Cadorna's controversial statement about the battle.

One map.

One video. A little reenactment. And many more in Italian.

Recollections from British historian and ambulance driver on the ground G. M. Trevelyan.

posted by doctornemo (5 comments total)

Kobarid (as it is now known) is a fascinating place. Definitely check out the Pot Miru (Walk of Peace), which is the outdoor museum of this battle.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:52 AM on October 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

WWI is noted for the pig-headedness of many commanders, but Marshal Cadorna takes the cake. When I see "First Battle of the Isonzo", "Second Battle of the Isonzo", "Third Battle of the Isonzo" all the way up to "Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo" I want to reach back in time and slap the callous sonofabitch.
posted by Quindar Beep at 9:55 AM on October 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

Luigi Cadorna, Douglas Haig, Conrad von Hötzendorf. Anyone who thinks the next war will be over in six weeks (hey, North Korea!) should read about these men.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:08 AM on October 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Quindar Beep: "WWI is noted for the pig-headedness of many commanders, but Marshal Cadorna takes the cake. When I see "First Battle of the Isonzo", "Second Battle of the Isonzo", "Third Battle of the Isonzo" all the way up to "Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo" I want to reach back in time and slap the callous sonofabitch."

This rage you are communicating is clear, relate-able, and an immense coup of delicately arranged fascist propaganda that we still get bombarded with but have somehow lost the context to interrogate. That you are even calling them the Battles of the Isonzo is the product of considerable work by Italian, German, and Austrian fascists to retcon their humiliation and victim-hood narratives into the more complex truths of WWI. There were significant issues with Cadorna's leadership both before and during this campaign that clearly had disastrous impacts, but this idea that Entente commanders in general were somehow uniquely incompetent or cavalier with their men requires an awful lot of forgetting to make coherent.
posted by Blasdelb at 4:43 AM on October 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

The Great War episode on this is out. It is a week by week recounting of the war.
posted by Bee'sWing at 10:00 AM on October 26, 2017