- See also Battle of
Piave River
The
Battle of the Piave River, known in Italy as
Battaglia del Solstizio (Battle of the Solstice),
Battaglia di Mezzo Giugno (Battle of Middle June),
or Seconda Battaglia del Piave (Second Battle of
the Piave River, as the last part of the Battle of
Caporetto
is considered to be the first), was a decisive
victory for the Italian
Army during World War I.
Background
With the
exit of Russia
from the war
in 1917, Austria-Hungary was now able to devote significant forces
to the Italian Front
and to receive reinforcements from their German allies.
At the
Battle of
Caporetto and Battle of Longarone
the Germans and Austrians had defeated the Italians
who fell back to the Piave
River
.
Italian Forces
Italy's defeat at Caporetto led to General
Luigi Cadorna's dismissal and General
Armando Diaz replaced him as
Chief of Staff of the Italian
Army. Diaz set up a strong defense line along Piave River.
Up until
this point in the war, the Italian army had been fighting alone
against the Central Powers; with the
defeat at Caporetto, France
and Britain
sent reinforcements on the Italian front.
These, apart for accounting for less than a tenth of the Italian
forces in theater, had however to be redirected for the major part
to the
Western Front as
soon as the German
Spring Offensive
began on March 1918.
Austro-Hungarian Forces
The Austro-Hungarian Army had also recently undergone a change in
command, and the new Austrian Chief of Staff,
Arthur Arz von Straussenburg,
wished to finish off the Italians.
Straussenberg's army
group commanders, Franz Graf Conrad von
Hötzendorf (the former Austrian Chief of Staff) and Svetozar Boroević von Bojna, both
wished to make a decisive assault, counter the Italians, but not
agree about the location of the attack, as Conrad wanted an attack
on the Asiago
Plateaux
between the Astico and the Brenta rivers, directed to Vicenza
, while
Boroević preferred an attack along the Piave River, and
Straussenburg himself was in favour of an attack on the western
part of the front (the "Giudicarie" sector) leading to Brescia
.
Conrad and Boroević had a dislike for each other, and
Straussenburg, unable to decide between these two strong
personalities, divided the army equally between them, reserving
only a small part of the forces for a diversive action on the
Giudicarie sector.
The preparation of the offensive began on
February 1918, after a meeting in Bolzano
between
Austrians and Germans high commands and was strongly recommended by
the Germans, as Ludendorff hoped that it could force the increasing
American forces in France to be diverted on the Italian front, so
Straussenberg modeled the attack after Erich Ludendorff's offensive on the
Western
Front.
The tactics
The
Austrians, differently from their previous success at Caporetto and
from the subsequent attempts to breakthrough on Mount Grappa
, didn't prepare the attack as a pinpoint one, but
as an all-out frontal attack, employing the entire residual
strength of their army all along the front. The
Austro-Hungarian formations were trained to employ the tactics
developed by the Germans on the
Western Front for the
Operation Michael as Austrian officials,
returning from the
Eastern
Front, were extensively trained alongside their German
counterparts. There were also innovations on the Italian side.
Analyzing the defeat of Caporetto, the staff of Armando Diaz
concluded that the main tactical causes of it were the lack of
mobility of Italian units, caught in a too rigid defensive scheme,
the too centralized command and control system, and the lack of
depth of Italian defences, where too many soldiers were simply
stuck on the frontline. The new schemes prepared for the battle led
to the abolition of the
continuous
entrenchment and in the development of a highly mobile defence
system, in which even the smaller units were allowed to freely move
between previously recognized strongpoints, independently decide to
retreat or counterattack, or directly call the support of the
artillery. Moreover, 13 divisions, equipped with 6000 trucks, were
organized in a central reserve, ready to be sent where it was
needed.
The battle
General Diaz learned the exact timing of the Austrian attack:
3:00am on 15 June, so, at 2:30am, the Italian artillery opened fire
all along their front, on the crowded enemy trenches, inflicting
heavy casualties. In some sector the artillery barrage had the
effect to delay or stop the attack, as Austrian soldiers began to
revert to the defensive positions, believing to have to face an
unexpected Italian attack, but on the great part of the frontline
the Austrians still attacked.
Boroević launched the first assault, moving
South along the Adriatic
Coast
and in the middle course of the Piave River.
The Austrians were able to cross the Piave and gained ground
against the Italians in the face of heavy resistance, before
Boroević was finally stopped and forced to order a retreat. On the
subsequent days Boroević renewed the assaults, but the artillery
barrage destroyed many of the river's bridges and the Austrian
formations that crossed the river were unable to receive
reinforcement and supplies. To make matters worse, the swollen
Piave isolated a great number of units on the west bank of the
river, which made of them an easy target for the Italian fire. An
estimated of 20,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers drowned while trying
to reach the east bank. On 19 June Diaz counterattacked and hit
Boroević in the flank inflicting heavy casualties. By 23 June the
Italians recaptured all territory on the southern bank of the Piave
and the battle was over.
In the meantime Conrad attacked along the
Italian lines west of Boroević, on the Asiago Plateaux, on the
15th, with the objective of capturing Vicenza.
Little came of Conrad's assaults except a further 40,000 casualties
to the Austrian total. In the aftermath, Boroević was particularly
critical about the behaviour of Conrad that, after the complete
failure of the first attack, preferred to continue the assaults in
the subsequent days, but with much minor strength, rather than to
send reinforcements on the Piave sector.
Results
After the Austrian retreat Diaz was pressed by the allies,
particularly by General
Ferdinand
Foch, to not stop the action, and to try an assault to break
the Austrian defences and gain a decisive victory over the Empire,
but the Italian General recognized that the same tactic, that
proved so effective on defence, prevented an immediate offence, as
the Italian formations, at that time, were too scattered and mixed
up to be effectively coordinated in a decisive assault. Moreover,
once crossed the river, they'd have to face the same logistic
problems of the Austrians. For these reasons, in the subsequent
days, only limited actions were done, to gain better start
positions for the future decisive assault.On the other side, the
Battle of the Piave River was the last great military offensive of
Austria-Hungary.
The battle signalled both the end of its
army as an effective fighting force, and the beginning of the
collapse of the Empire itself, which was finished off at the
Battle of
Vittorio Veneto
, four months later.
In Popular Culture
Still today, to the Italian public two mottos recall the battle:
those written upon broken walls of destroyed rural houses: "
E'
meglio vivere un giorno da leone che cent'anni da pecora"
("[It] is Better to live one single day as a lion than a hundred
years as a sheep") and "
Tutti eroi! O il Piave o tutti
accoppati" ("Everyone a hero! Either (we reach) the Piave, or
let all of us get killed").
The two pieces of wall are preserved in the
military shrine of Fagaré
della Battaglia, a frazione of San Biagio
di Callalta
.
See also
Notes
- Halsey, Francis Whiting: The
Literary Digest History of the World War: Compiled from Original
and Contemporary Sources. Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1919,
V.9, page 143
- "The comprehensive failure of the offensive served merely to
hasten the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian army, which
effectively ceased to exist as a single cohesive force. Its
dismantling was finalised by the Italians at the Battle of Vittorio
Veneto in the autumn." The Battle of the Piave River, 1918
- Simonds, Frank Herbert: History of the World War, Volume
5. Doubleday, 1920, page 359
Sources
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