Austro-Hungarian Emperor Karl’s promise of a two-pronged
offensive flew in the face of warnings that Field Marshal Boroević (his new
rank) had sent to the high command since the end of March. Karl and his chief
of staff hoped to make Rome negotiate, and enlarge their spoils when Germany
won the war. Boroević did not believe the Central Powers could win. Instead of
wasting its strength on needless offensives, Austria should conserve it to deal
with the turmoil that peace would unleash in the empire.
But Karl and the high command were adamant: there must be an
offensive. Boroević prepared a plan to attack across the River Piave, towards
Venice and Padua. Yet again, Conrad argued for an attack from the Asiago
plateau: if successful, this would make the Piave line indefensible and force
another Italian retreat. He urged the Emperor to attack on both sectors, and
Karl gave way. Preparations began on 1 April with a view to attacking on 11
June.
Boroević had seen Cadorna make this very mistake time and
again, attacking on too broad a front. He spoke up again: if they had to attack
on both sectors, the high command should send reinforcements. In mid-May, he repeated
his warning that it was irresponsible to attack without enough shells and with
troops ill-equipped and famished. By way of reply, the high command told
Boroević to confirm that he would be ready by 11 June. Not before the 25th, he
replied. The date was set for 15 June.
On paper, the Austrian army looked strong enough. With
Russia out of the war, most of the 53 divisions with a further ten in reserve
could be kept in Italy, which was now the empire’s major front. However, the
infantry divisions were down from 12,000 to 8,000 or even 5,000 men. New
battalions were at roughly half strength. Some 200,000 Hungarian soldiers had
deserted in the first three months of 1918. In the spring, Karl approved the
call-up of the class of 1900; the new intake would be boys of 17, plus older
men returning after convalescence. Cavalry divisions were even more depleted.
The railways were dilapidated from over use, and motor vehicles lacked fuel.
The industrial capacity of the empire had never been strong;
by 1917, output was declining under the double impact of battlefield casualties
and the Allied blockade. In 1918, the decline became a slump. Production of
artillery weapons and shells halved in the first half of the year, compared
with 1917. Production of rifles fell by 80 per cent in the same period.
Uniforms were tattered, there was no new underwear, and worn-out boots could
not be replaced. Food shortages helped to trigger a general strike in January.
The stoppages spread until 700,000 workers were crying for peace, justice and
bread. Radical Socialists exploited the hardship caused by hunger, war taxes
and inflation. (‘In Russia, the land, the factories and the mines are being
given to the people.’) The mainstream Social Democrats, however, decided not to
support the calls for revolution; instead they negotiated with the government.
Even so, the army had to send forces from the front to ensure order. February
brought the first significant mutiny, by naval crews in Montenegro. Food
shortages and officers’ privileges were the trigger, and the unrest spread up
the Adriatic coast. Hopes that cooperation with newly independent Ukraine would
unlock huge imports of grain came to nothing. April brought food riots in
Laibach and ‘mass rallies at which oaths for unity and independence were being
sworn’. By now, seven divisions were deployed in the interior of the empire.
The army was not cushioned against the shortages. By 1918,
it was getting only half the flour it needed. The daily rations of front-line
troops in Italy were reduced in January to 300 grams of bread and 200 grams of
meat. Even these statistics only tell half the story. A Czech NCO, Jan Triska
of the 13th Artillery Regiment, recorded the real conditions. The rations had
run out during the Caporetto offensive, and matters had grown much worse since
then. The army was ordered to provision itself from the occupied territory.
This was only possible for a month or two; in February, Boroević told the Army
High Command that the situation was critical: the men had been hungry for four
weeks, and were ‘no longer moved by incessant empty phrases that the hinterland
is starving or that we must hold out’. They must be properly fed if they were
to fight.
By late April, the men were starving. Bread and polenta were
very scarce, and often mixed with sawdust or even sand. Meat practically
disappeared. Soldiers stole the prime cuts from horses killed by enemy fire,
and orders went out for carcasses to be delivered directly to the
slaughterhouse. Triska’s battery horses were dying; only six of 36 were
healthy. Even the coffee made of chicory was in short supply. ‘Salt was only a
memory.’ The men were often given money instead of food, but there was nothing
to spend it on. The men grew so weak during May that they could only walk with
difficulty. Triska risked punishment by trading his service revolver and
ammunition for horsemeat. He collected stems of grass to boil and eat, and
picked mulberries when they could be found. Such was the condition of the men
who were sent against the Italians in June.
#
With 23 undersized divisions on the Asiago plateau, another
15 on the line of the Piave and 22 more in reserve, the Habsburg force barely
outnumbered the Italians, who had a clear advantage in firepower and in the
air. The offensive would start on the Piave, where Boroević’s divisions would
attack across the river. Conrad’s divisions were to follow up by striking from
the north.
Addressing his officers, Boroević openly criticised the
shortages of men and supplies. Due to Conrad’s stubbornness, he implied, the
Piave line was short of ten divisions. After this rare indiscretion, the field
marshal did his duty, ordering his battalion commanders to attack like a
hurricane and not pause until they reached the River Adige. ‘For this,
gentlemen, could well be the last battle. The fate of our monarchy and the
survival of the empire depend on your victory and the sacrifice of your men.’
It has been claimed that, despite everything, Habsburg morale ran high in June.
Certainly, there are reports of soldiers marching to the line with maps of
Treviso in their pockets, gaily asking the bystanders how far it was to Rome.
They would have taken heart from the order to plunder the Allied lines (no
shortages there). Different testimony came from Pero Blašković, commanding a
Bosnian battalion on the Piave. According to Blašković, a Habsburg loyalist to
the bone, everyone without exception hoped the offensive would be postponed,
for they were all aware of Karl’s muted search for a separate peace. It was
this, more than hunger or lack of munitions, Blašković says, that took the
men’s minds off victory, making them reflect that defeat would cost fewer
lives, letting more of them get safely home in the end.
The bombardment began at 03:00 on 15 June. As at Caporetto,
the Austrians aimed to incapacitate the enemy batteries with a pinpoint attack,
including gas shells. However, their accuracy was poor, due to Allied control
of the skies; many of the shells may have been time-expired, and the Italians
had been supplied with superior British gas-masks. Too many Austrian guns were
deployed in the Trentino, a secondary sector; some heavy batteries had no
shells at all; and there was no element of surprise, for Diaz’s army had agents
in the occupied territory, and deserters were talkative. The Austrian gunners
only had the advantage on the Asiago plateau, where thick fog blanketed the preparations.
At 05:10, the guns lengthened their fire to strike the
Italian rear lines and reserves. The pontoons were dragged out from behind the
gravel islands near the river’s eastern shore. The enemy batteries were still
silent; perhaps the gas shells had knocked them out? No such luck; the Italian
guns opened up, pounding the Austrian jump-off positions. The Italian riverbank
was still wreathed in gas fumes when the assault teams jumped ashore, quickly
taking the Italian forward positions amid the chatter of machine guns.
The morning went well; the Austrians moved 100,000 men
across the river under heavy rain. Watching the infantry pour over the
pontoons, Jan Triska and his gunners wondered if this time they would reach
Venice. Enlarging the bridgeheads proved more difficult. Progress was made on
the Montello, where the four divisions pushed forward several kilometres, and
around San Donà, near the sea. Elsewhere, the attackers were pinned down near
the river. Further north, Conrad’s divisions attacked from Asiago towards Mount
Grappa. Slight initial gains could not be held; the Italians had learned how to
use the ‘elastic defence’, absorbing enemy thrusts in a deep system of
trenches, then counter-attacking. By the end of the day, Blašković realised,
‘our paper house had been blown down’. The Emperor sent Boroević a desperate
telegram: ‘Hold your positions, I implore you in the name of the monarchy!’ The
answer was curt: ‘We shall do our best.’
Progress on the second day was no easier. Conrad was in
retreat; his batteries – more than a third of all the Habsburg guns in Italy –
were out of the fight. Boroević ordered his commanders to hunker down while
forces were transferred from the north. Meanwhile the Piave rose again, washing
away many of the pontoons. Supplying the bridgeheads across the torrent became
even more dangerous. The Austrians were too close to exhaustion and their
supplies too uncertain for a sustained battle to run in their favour. By the
first afternoon, Major Blašković realised that the Austrian artillery, laying
down a rolling barrage for the assault troops, were already husbanding their
shells. If the under-used Italian units further north were to be redeployed
around Montello, the Habsburg goose would soon be cooked. Overhead, the Caproni
aeroplanes chased away the Habsburg planes and British Sopwith Camels proved
their worth, bombing along the river. (‘In aviation, too, morale is very
important,’ Blašković remarked sadly, ‘but technology is even more so.’) The
pontoons and columns of men on the riverbank, waiting to cross, offered easy
targets. While the Austrians ran out of shells, the Allied artillery and air
bombardment were unrelenting. The fate of Jan Triska’s battery on the Piave was
indicative: over the week of battle, it lost 58 men, half its strength.
Conrad’s divisions were too hard pressed to transfer men to
the Piave. In fact, the opposite happened: the Italians transferred forces from
the mountains to the river. When these reinforcements arrived, on 19 June, the
Italians counter-attacked along the Piave. They failed to crack the
bridgeheads, but the Austrian position was untenable. Pontoons that had
survived the bombing were damaged by high water and debris. Blašković’s
regiment (the 3rd Bosnia & Herzegovina Infantry) ran out of shells and
bullets; the men fought on with bayonets and hand-grenades until a Hungarian
regiment managed to bring up a few crates of ammunition from the river.
Boroević told the Emperor that if the Montello could be
secured, it should be the springboard for a new offensive. Securing it would
need at least three more divisions, including artillery. If the high command
did not intend to renew the offensive from the Montello, it was pointless to
retain the bridgeheads; they should be abandoned and all efforts dedicated to
strengthening the defences east of the river. As Karl wondered what to do, the
German high command stepped in, ordering a cessation of hostilities so that the
Austrians could despatch their six strongest divisions to the Western Front.
For Ludendorff’s spring offensives were running out of steam and 250,000
American troops were arriving every month. Karl consulted his commanders in the
field, who echoed Boroević’s stark choice: either reinforce or withdraw. Then
he consulted his chief of the general staff, General Arz von Straussenberg. A
new offensive within a few weeks was, they agreed, not a realistic prospect.
Their reserves were almost used up; even if enough divisions could be
transferred to the Piave from elsewhere – and none could safely be spared from
Ukraine or the Balkans – the Italians would match them. It would not be
possible to recapture the zest of 15 June without a lengthy recovery.
Late on the 20th, Karl ordered the right bank of the Piave
to be abandoned. General Goiginger, commanding the corps that had performed so
well on the Montello, refused to obey. They had taken 12,000 prisoners and 84
guns; how could they retreat? Eventually he submitted, and the withdrawal
began. Both sides were exhausted, and the manoeuvre was completed without much
fighting. The Bosnians and Hungarians on the Montello worked their way back to
the river. The last Austrians crossed on 23 June, ending the Battle of the
Solstice. The Italians had lost around 10,000 dead, 35,000 wounded and more
than 40,000 prisoners, against 118,000 Habsburg dead, wounded, sick, captured
and missing. Early in July, Third Army units capped the achievement by seizing
the swampy delta at the mouth of the Piave which the Austrians had held since
Caporetto.
The rejoicing was widespread and spontaneous. For many
soldiers, the Battle of the Solstice cleansed the stain of Caporetto, and the
name of the Piave has ever since evoked a glow of fulfilment, as smooth as the
sound of its utterance, untouched by the horrors of the Isonzo front or the
controversy that overshadowed Italy’s victory in November. Ferruccio Parri, a
much-decorated veteran who became a leading antifascist, said at the end of his
long life that the Battle of the Solstice was ‘the only proper national battle
of which our country can truly be proud’.
For the Allies, two things were clear: the Italians were a
fighting force again, and the Austro-Hungarian army was still dangerous: its
morale had not collapsed and the soldiers were still loyal. The view inside
Boroević’s army was different; to their eyes, the civilian system had let them
down. They were still better soldiers than the Italians, but what could they do
without food or munitions? The spectacle of his own men after the battle filled
the genial Blašković with despair: ‘weary, dejected and starving, their
tattered uniforms crusted with reddish dry clay. Their weapons alone gave them
any likeness to soldiers, for otherwise they looked like beggars roaming from
pillar to post.’ Gloom settled over the Austrian lines.
