ITALY came into the war as the ally of France, the United Kingdom, and Russia by a devious path. In face of Austria she moved from alliance to neutrality and from neutrality to hostilities. Her chief motive was her desire for Austrian territory, the Trentino—the Southern Tirol, largely inhabited by people of Italian stock—and Istria, including the port of Trieste. This was a predatory aim, even if dignified by racial sentiment. Before denouncing the Triple Alliance and declaring war on Austria-Hungary, one of her partners in it, Italy approached that partner and tried to get what she wanted, or as much of it as might be, by implicit threats of war in the event of refusal. The Austro-Hungarian Government, regarding the claims as preposterous, turned them down, despite some German pressure in favour of compromise. Italy then went to the Entente Powers and drove a very hard bargain before she would join them as a belligerent ally. The enthusiasm afterwards professed by the Italian Government for the ideals of the Entente thus makes odd reading today. At the time it did not ring so hollow because the arrangements made were kept secret. To say that this was the whole story—something like blackmail demanded from Austria and then favours offered to the Entente if the tender were high enough—would be false as well as ungracious. Enthusiasm for Britain and France was genuine and widespread in Italy. The two motives were intertwined: popular sympathy for the Entente aided the Government in its policy, while the feature of that policy concerning the return to the motherland of folk of Italian race appealed to patriotic irredentists. The Prime Minister, Antonio Salandra, coined a most appropriate phrase when he described Italy’s policy as ‘sacro egoismo’.
The original treaty of alliance with Germany and Austria, signed in 1882, had been directed against France. It was prolonged and somewhat extended in scope on three occasions before the outbreak of war in 1914. In 1902 the Italian Government got from France the pledge of a free hand in Tripoli, with the consequence that the two countries came to a secret agreement by which each promised to remain neutral in a war in which the other was attacked. So France, the only Power actually named in the original treaty, was removed from its purview.1
The German General Staff was never enthusiastic about the treaty with Italy. The Austrian, by Conrad’s day, was of the same opinion. Italian Governments have sometimes been given to so over-embroidering a Machiavellian policy that their pretences, instead of hiding their real intentions, make them easier to divine. Now the Italians repeatedly brought up the question of sending forces to the upper Rhine should Germany find herself at war with France. The ‘cover plan’ was further built up when they suggested the violation of Swiss territory so that their contingent might be railed direct to its front instead of by the roundabout route through the Brenner. This was overdoing it. The Germans rejected the proposal and remained sceptical about Italian aid.
Still, it might come off, and General von Moltke saw no reason why he should not make preparations for it, since no harm would be done if they turned out to be unproductive. Early in 1914 staff talks took place in Berlin at which timetables were drawn up for the movement of three Italian corps to the Rhine. All the while, however, Moltke and Conrad thought Italy was more likely to join the Entente, but that the most likely case of all was that a victorious German invasion of France would keep Italy neutral. All doubts ended when on 3 August Italy proclaimed her neutrality on the ground that Austria’s action against Serbia, taken without consulting her, was a violation of one of the clauses of the treaty.
The diplomacy by which Italy’s path to war was guided does not belong to military history. On 26 April, 1915, a secret treaty, known as the Pact of London, was signed by Sir Edward Grey and the Ambassadors of Italy, Russia, and France.2 Italy pledged herself to pursue the war with her three new allies against all their enemies—she did not in fact declare war on Germany until 27 August, 1916. She was promised the Trentino, Cisalpine Tirol, Istria with Trieste, Dalmatia, a footing in Albania at Valona, and the Dodecanese, which she had seized from Turkey in a recent war. If Turkey were partitioned, Italy would be reserved a share in the southern part of Asia Minor, and if German colonies were annexed by Britain or France Italy would have a right to territorial compensations.
The situation of Italy was favourable in so far as Austria-Hungary was deeply engaged, but in no other way. She had not begun to replace the war material and stores consumed in the Libyan War with Turkey until after her neutrality had been proclaimed in August 1914, and then she found herself short of funds and factories for a rush job. Strategically she was worse off still. Almost the whole of her long frontier with Austria was covered by dense Alpine and Pre-Alpine chains. Everywhere the Austrians looked down upon their new foes. From Feltre to the head of the Adriatic an almost square salient jutted out northwards for some fifty miles, so that the Italians had to face east and west as well as north. Even the most promising sector for an offensive, in the east, where the Isonzo ran southward just inside the Austrian frontier, was grim and forbidding. Though the land beyond the river sloped only gently westward, it was broken by irregular ridges and valleys and the plateaux of the Bainsizza, the Selva di Ternova, and the Carso formed ‘enormous natural fortresses’, the Carso ‘a howling wilderness of stones sharp as knives’.1
When Italy declared war on 23 May, 1915, she had about 875,000 troops with the colours and thirty-six infantry divisions. On that day she was faced by about 100,000 Austrian troops. However, the offensive of Gorlice-Tarnow had already won such a magnificent success that another three divisions were on their way and some eight more followed early in June. The Italian Chief of the General Staff—King Victor Emmanuel II being the nominal Commander-in-Chief—was General Luigi Cadorna, an artilleryman aged sixty-five. The Austrian Army Group Commander on the Italian front was the Archduke Eugen. To command the Isonzo front, clearly the most important, the competent Slav, Boroević von Bojna, was sent from Galicia.
The fighting of the year 1915 was confined to Italian offensives. Conrad would have been delighted to strike at the enemy, but with the Serbian offensive on his hands in addition to the main campaign against Russia, even this sanguine man realized that that was out of the question. The operations can be described in few words because the four Italian threats were all made in roughly the same place and carried out in a similar way. Where they did differ was in intensity, owing mainly to reinforcement in artillery on both sides. Throughout the immediate objectives were: ‘the howling wilderness’ of the Carso and the town of Gorizia; the more distant objective was Trieste. The offensives were even given by the Italians a single name and distinguished only by numbers: First, Second, Third, and Fourth Battles of the Isonzo. The fighting was grisly owing to the rocky nature of the country; the burst of high-explosive shell sent deadly fragments of stone flying in all directions, so that the proportion killed to wounded was exceptionally high.
The First Battle lasted from 23 June to 7 July. The attack was carried out by the Third and Second Armies commanded respectively by the Duke of Aosta and Lieut.-General Frugoni, with a numerical superiority of about two to one. Cadorna then called a halt, but only for eleven days, while he brought up more heavy artillery but also gave the Austrian command time to reinforce Boroević’s Fifth Army by two divisions. The Second Battle, from 18 July to 3 August, was bloodier but equally unfruitful. This time Cadorna was compelled to stop by shortage of ammunition. His losses amounted to just on sixty thousand against Austrian casualties of nearly forty-five thousand. Only a few outpost positions had been won, and Austrian maps show no change in the main front line.
The Third Battle did not take place until the autumn. During this interval Cadorna filled his depleted ranks, carried out training, and brought up heavy guns from fortresses. By mid-October he had twelve hundred guns on the scene as against 212 in the First Battle of the Isonzo. This time he aimed once more at Gorizia, in the centre, but started with attacks on the wings: on the right against the Carso, on the left against Plava, on the Isonzo and facing the Bainsizza. Twenty-five Italian divisions faced fourteen Austrian.
The Third Battle started on 18 October, 1915, and lasted until 4 November. As in the case of the so-called First and Second, the Third and Fourth were in reality one and the same battle, and would have been so recorded by the British and French. The Fourth lasted from 10 November to 2 December, thirty-three days. The total result was three dents in the Austrian front, two on the right and one at Plava. The Italian infantry often displayed great bravery in the assault, but the artillery support was defective, the organization weak, and the task a cruel one. The losses were frightful, 117,000 in the two battles. The Austrians did not come off lightly with upwards of 72,000.
All that Italy had achieved between late June and early December was to draw a dozen Austrian divisions to the frontier. This had in no way hampered the exploitation by the Central Powers of their brilliant victory at Gorlice-Tarnow. It had not interfered with the Niederschlag of Serbia. For Italy herself it had failed to gain any strategic advantage or even a tactical one. Meanwhile she had lost on all parts of the front a quarter of a million men. Why did Cadorna persist in attacking in this region? The first answer is that the only alternative for an offensive was at the other end of the front in the Trentino and that, despite better communications, he considered this less promising. An advance through the Trentino led nowhere, or only into the tangled mountain masses of the Tirol, and, beyond the Adige and the Drave, lay the mightier chain of the high Alps. From Trieste the Danubian plain might be attainable through the famous ‘Laibach gap’.1
He would certainly have met with a hot reception if he had got there in the latter half of 1915, though if the Russian advance had continued through the Carpathians it would have been nearly all up with Austria. Secondly, Cadorna expected the Austrians to be further reinforced and that German forces would eventually appear. He felt he could not sit still and allow the enemy to mount an offensive at his leisure.
Boroević and his troops had shown skill and determination in holding their strong position. The defence had been carried out behind the Isonzo, except for a wide bridgehead at Gorizia. Austria had borne the burden stoutly. She had been given no appreciable help by Germany. The so-called Alpine Corps, of good Bavarian mountain troops but only a division in strength, had been sent to the Dolomites but with orders not to cross the Italian frontier. Falkenhayn was pleased that Italy had not declared war on Germany, and did not intend that Germany should declare war on her until it suited him. It was perhaps natural that he should not want to get mixed up in the Italian war while he was engaged in the campaign against Serbia. Yet his attitude did not make for cordiality between the allies. The Emperor Francis Joseph, having had himself briefed on the situation by Conrad a month before Italy went to war, remarked in his pithy way: ‘Die ganze Politik Deutschlands ist keine glückliche und loyale.’2
Conrad was determined to strike Italy as soon as he possibly could. Falkenhayn, now that he thought he had crippled the Russians sufficiently, was determined to launch an offensive on the Western Front. In 1916 these two extremely able soldiers, who had co-operated with such outstanding success in 1915, were to turn their backs to each other and go their own ways, not to the profit of their respective states or that of their own military careers.