Battle of Caporetto
An Austro-German attack broke the Italian front at Caporetto on 24 October 1917 and drove it back a hundred kilometres in three weeks. Italy had spent two and a half years fighting eleven battles on the Isonzo river in mountain country, gaining a few kilometres each time at a cost of several hundred thousand casualties, under a commander, Cadorna, who answered failure by sacking generals and shooting his own men — the Italian army carried out more field executions than any other on the western or southern fronts. Germany sent seven divisions to prop up an Austro-Hungarian army near collapse, and with them a method: short, intense bombardment with gas and smoke rather than days of shelling, then infiltration by small assault groups bypassing strongpoints to attack the rear. Rommel, then a young lieutenant, took the Matajur massif and thousands of prisoners in fifty hours. The Italian Second Army disintegrated. Some 265,000 men were taken prisoner, most surrendering rather than dying, and around 350,000 more left the front as stragglers; perhaps 400,000 civilians fled with them. The line was finally held on the Piave, forty kilometres from Venice, in November, with British and French divisions arriving to help. Cadorna's despatch blaming the soldiers for cowardice was so damaging that the government suppressed it and removed him. The defeat produced the mobilisation it was supposed to prevent: a new commander, better rations and leave, propaganda aimed at the troops, and a war that became genuinely national. Italy won at Vittorio Veneto a year later.
- Year: 1917 CE
- Category: Military
