With the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo over the Italians now had to plan another assault. The Italians were able to conquer Mount Sabatino from the Austro-Hungarians, but that was the only real gain they had made.Īfter a week of fighting that cost the lives of 4,000 men between both sides, the clashes ceased because of the terrible weather conditions that worsened the trench conditions and because of the Austro-Hungarian "punitive" offensive in the Trentino.Īlong certain parts of the front, especially around Gorizia, skirmishes continued between enemy platoons until March 30 and beyond, in a protracted struggle that produced no clear victor.Ĭadorna had called upon his Russian allies to keep the Austria-Hungarian units at bay on the Eastern front given Cadorna the chance to redeploy his forces at Trentino all the while abandoning the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo. The battles were fought on the Karst plateau, with the objective of taking Gorizia and the Tolmin bridgehead. On October 24, 1917, a combined German and Austro-Hungarian force scores one of the most crushing victories of World War I, decimating the Italian line along the northern stretch of the Isonzo River in the Battle of Caporetto, also known as the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, or the Battle of Karfreit (to the Germans). The attacks ordered by Cadorna for the 2nd and 3rd Italian Armies as "demonstrations" against the enemy, proved to be less bloody than those previously. The attack was a result of the allied Chantilly Conference of December 1915. The subsequent development of an inter-Allied Supreme War Council has often been. However, it was an offensive launched not after detailed strategic planning, but rather as a distraction to shift the Central Powers away from the Eastern Front and from Verdun, where the greatest bloodshed of the war was occurring. The twelfth battle, Caporetto, was one of the most lopsided defeats of the war. This allows the different battles to come into focus rather than as eleven virtually identical Italian attacks and one massive Austro-Hungarian and German success.After four attempts to cross the Soča (Isonzo) river and invade Austro-Hungarian territory, Luigi Cadorna, the Italian commander-in-chief, organized a strong new offensive following the winter lull in fighting which had allowed the Italian High Command to regroup and organize 8 new divisions for the front. The chapters on the twelve individual battles were of particular interest to me, having struggled to find any detailed accounts of these battles in the past. The Battle of Caporetto, or the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, in October 1917 was a spectacularly successful Austro-Hungarian/German offensive against. The National Archives, Kew Public Record(s). The large number of photographs are also very valuable in this respect, and give an impression of an incredibly difficult battlefield. The 12th Battle of the Isonzo, 1917 and the offensive against Italy by the General Staff Austrian Army 1919 Mar. The authors do a good job of explaining why the southern part of the front was so difficult - its plateaus were separated by ravines, lined with cliffs and generally made ideal defensive positions, as did the Isonzo valley.
On some parts of the front the difficulties of the terrain are obvious, but in some of the apparently flatter areas it isn’t so clear from the map. The main Austro-Hungarian commanders come across as competent, fighting well with limited resources. The section on the main commanders is more nuanced than is often the case - Cadorna in particular is shown to be a more complex figure than the arrogance martinet of many accounts, with some ability to learn from his failures (if not all that quickly). Limited advances were made at fearful cost during the first eleven battles, before the pattern was broken by the Austro-Hungarian's great victory at Caporetto.
#Twelfth battle of the isonzo series
The Austro-Hungarians showed themselves to be very able when defending their own territory while the Italians proved to be very determined attackers, making a series of costly assaults on the Austro-Hungarian lines.
The twelve battles of the Isonzo (the last being better known as the battle of Caporetto) made up one of the most costly campaigns of the First World War, fought in very difficult terrain and with great determination by two of the war's less well regarded combatants. Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign, The Italian Front 1915-1918, John Macdonald with Zeljko Cimprié