The year 1866 was not an auspicious time to join the Italian
Army. The service was still reeling from the disastrous influence of its
constabulary duties during the brigantaggio, the period from the unification of
Italy to the late 1860s, when the primary function of the army was maintaining
law and order, and was not, therefore, organized to engage a major European
opponent. Although theoretically reforms had been set in motion since the late
1850s, the Italian Army defeated at Custozza in June continued to be plagued by
natural inertia, the causes of which were a rigid officers corps, a lack of
operational precedents, and a dearth of natural resources and national
cohesion. It was in this atmosphere that Luigi Cadorna began his military
career.
When he joined the army, Cadorna, like his colleagues, faced
slow advancement and poor salaries. However, certain ambitious and motivated
officers were interested in the study of the art and science of war, forming a
‘dedicated and compact’ corps. Luigi showed potential and an exceptional
ability to organize, and in 1892 at forty-two years of age, he earned his
colonelcy. Nevertheless, he was overshadowed in many respects by his father.
Raffaele Cadorna had enjoyed much success during his career, fighting in 1848–9,
and serving in the Piedmontese Army in the Crimea. In 1866, his corps was one
of the few noteworthy Italian success stories, which helped to distance him
from Italy’s dismal failures in the Seven Weeks’ War. Raffaele’s crowning
achievement came in September 1870, when he completed the unification of Italy
by capturing Rome during the Porta Pia while the French were fighting the
Franco-Prussian War.
The years after the demise of France as Europe’s chief land
power was a monumental era in the evolution of warfare. It was in this climate
that Luigi formulated the ideas that were to prevail later in his military
tenure. He was quick to see that the Italian Army had to modernize in order to
compete in European military circles. However, this was easier to conceptualize
than it was to implement. The need for quick mobilization was readily apparent,
but in Italy, with its mountainous terrain and regional population differences,
the new standards of military rail organization proved difficult to realize.
Military modernization was expensive; and although Italy spent most of her
national expenditure on the armed forces during this period, by August 1914
Italy was still considered in its military infancy. Cadorna was just reaching
the higher command positions as the Italian Army grappled with these imposing
dilemmas.
Four years after being promoted to colonel, Luigi was
appointed to the General Staff, and there had to wait fourteen years before
obtaining corps command. When the Chief of Staff position became vacant around
the same time, Cadorna was considered, but was passed over for the more pliant
Alberto Pollio, although many believed that Cadorna was better suited to
address many of the army’s more urgent problems. However, Pollio was
pro-German, and therefore seemed to be a safe choice in this era of diplomatic
and military instability. Pollio continued to plan military operations with
Germany and Austria-Hungary, although the alliance had been deteriorating for
some time. Indeed, the reason that Italy joined the Triplice in 1882 was the
need to capitalize on German military prestige. The central difficulty with the
alliance was that the national antagonism between Rome and Vienna hindered
diplomatic and military co-operation, and by the turn of the century, many European
commentators questioned its validity. From 1902 to the beginning of the First
World War, Italy negotiated with Great Britain and France, although the Italian
government did not want to see the French continue to grow into a Mediterranean
power. This created an enormous rift between Italy’s political and military
leaders, for the politicians kept the negotiations secret, and continued to do
so right until Italy declared war in May 1915. To operate in a diplomatic and
military climate that was basically Clausewitzian in nature, communications
between the heads of state and the military leaders were a necessity.
Correspondence between the Italian government and the military establishment
was virtually non-existent, and when the representatives did talk about crucial
matters, the meetings were normally strained and led to misunderstandings.
Furthermore, the lines of communication between the army and the navy were
worse than existed between the politicians and the generals. These conditions
so hampered Italian military operations that Cadorna must have felt that he was
an island in a sea of confusion. With no reliable information coming from any
quarter, Cadorna became isolated in his own theories. This made him appear like
a hapless and disconnected commander, out of touch with reality, and unable to
keep his finger on the pulse of contemporary diplomatic and military attitudes.
Just after assuming his country’s highest military rank
after Pollio’s death in July 1914, it seems that many of Cadorna’s characteristics
became readily apparent. He was born of an aristocratic family in the northern
Italian region of Piedmont, and therefore it was assumed that he inherited many
‘Nordic’ traits from his Germanic ancestors. He was a firm disciplinarian, who was
often regarded as cold and indifferent to the conditions of his front-line
soldiers. However, Cadorna was preparing the Italian Army for the storm of the
First World War from the time he was appointed Chief-of-Staff until Italian
mobilization, for he needed to rectify numerous weaknesses before the army
could become an effective force. Cadorna was not a ‘from the front’ style of
commander, choosing to lead by telephone and courier, staying behind the lines
to perceive the front as a whole instead of becoming fixated on one particular
sector. The truth of the matter was that most of his contemporaries could not
produce solutions to the complexities of modern attritional warfare, and it was
Cadorna’s misfortune that many considered the Italian Army defeated by its
reputation before it was ever engaged in military operations.
In a conundrum rare in the annals of military-diplomatic
history, Italy needed to align herself with the leading land and naval powers
to achieve anything diplomatically. Desiring to manoeuvre behind the shield of
German military might, Italian diplomats also had to consider that the Italian
peninsula presented over 4100 miles of indefensible coastline, therefore Great
Britain and the spectre of the Royal Navy heavily influenced any Italian
military venture. Although this difficulty was not as severe just after 1871,
due to the awe in which Germany was held after her impressive defeat of France,
as the Royal Navy continued to assert its presence in world affairs, Italy’s
diplomatic bonds with Germany and Austria-Hungary weakened. At the time of the
Sarajevo assassination, Italy was in a quandary about what she would do in case
of a European war. When Cadorna assumed command, he fell straight into this
abyss, for he was not kept abreast of the vicissitudes in Italian diplomacy.
While Italian politicians wrangled with Allied and Triplice negotiators for
territorial compensation, Cadorna remained dangerously unaware of the change in
Italian foreign policy. Just a few weeks before Italy was to announce that she
was going to war with Austria-Hungary, Cadorna was informed to make the
necessary plans for conducting an offensive against the Habsburg Empire.
Cadorna, taken completely by surprise and astonished that he was kept in the
dark for so long, rightfully exploded ‘What? I knew nothing!’ Much of the
military planning to this time had been directed against France. Although
exigency plans had been created for a war with Vienna, many changes had to be
implemented before the Italian high command could enact any effective strategy
against Austria-Hungary.
No one was prepared for the tactical realities of the First
World War. Not only did Cadorna have to contend with an army that was
materially weak and engaged in a nasty little colonial war, but, in addition,
his theatre of operations was arguably the most difficult of the entire war.
Hemmed in along the northern frontier with mountains often reaching elevations
over 10,000 feet, the Italians were at a severe topographic disadvantage. Any other
avenue of approach to the Austro-Hungarian Empire would have to be by sea, an
unlikely prospect considering the strained relations that existed between the
army and navy. Selecting the extreme north-east sector of the Austro-Italian
frontier just north of the Adriatic Sea for his main effort, Cadorna soon found
himself in a slugging match with a skilled and determined enemy. Since most of
the writings about the influence of modern weapons on tactics were poorly
received or simply ignored, Cadorna reacted to the stalemate in a typically
First World War fashion: headlong assaults with massive concentrations of
artillery and infantry. Although the existing historiography does not cover the
matter in detail, it was an Italian characteristic to make up for the
deficiencies in weapons and tactics with the blood of the foot soldier. To
assuage the popular myths created by the debacle at Caporetto, and by British
and American veterans of the Second World War, the Italian infantryman between
May 1915 and October 1917 displayed abundant courage and zeal when coming to
grips with the Austro-Hungarians. However, Cadorna failed to consider the
wellbeing of his main instrument, for rest in the rear areas was almost unheard
of in most Italian divisions. The morale of any soldier would be devastated by
the rigours of combat without periods of recuperation.
Since Cadorna fought his war from behind the lines, the
Italian high command was slow to develop tactical innovations that considered
the hostile geography of the Italian front. More often than not, Italian
infantrymen had to attack over rocky and rugged surfaces, up slopes averaging
between thirty and forty-five degrees, against a well-equipped enemy protected
by defences excavated out of solid rock. Much of what the Italians learned
tactically was from the Austrians, who were refining tested German operational
and tactical practices, or from the French, who were not known at this time to
be a source of tactical innovation. A good example of this was the Austrian
offensive in the Trentino in May 1916. Using loose formations that used terrain
features to open holes in the Italian lines after a tremendous artillery
preparation, the Austrians enjoyed some success before the weight of their
attack caused the logistic apparatus to break down. Using this information to
form infiltration units of his own, Cadorna shifted ample reserves and guns to
the Isonzo while the Austrians were preoccupied with the Brusilov offensive on
the Eastern Front to capture Gorizia in August 1916. Proving adept at handling
large bodies of men over Italy’s less than adequate rail system, Cadorna
shifted the brunt of his army and guns to the Isonzo after the abortive
Austrian attack on the Asiago plateau. Massing one of the largest artillery concentrations
ever to be used on the Italian front, and employing select infantry units at
certain concentration points, the Italians captured Gorizia, Mount Sabotino,
and carried the western section of the Carso plateau in two weeks, whereas
before nearly six months of offensive action failed to secure any of these
objectives.
At the beginning of the war, the Italian Army consisted of
thirty-five divisions. When Cadorna started his eleventh battle on the
Bainsizza plateau in September 1917, he had sixty-five divisions at his
disposal. The drain of attritional mountain warfare and rapid growth produced
severe problems, such as an acute lack of munitions. Cadorna had to organize,
arm, and train over one million men in two years – not an inconsiderable feat
for an institution that was not known for its organizational capacity,
especially considering that going into the conflict the Italians were still
suffering substantial casualties in Africa. It is in this realm where Cadorna
did his best work, and if it were not for this progress, the results of the
Austro-German offensive in October would have been far worse.
Nearly two years of continual action was not only sapping
Italy’s material ability to wage the war, it was also draining her morale.
Cadorna, a strict disciplinarian far removed for the realities of trench
warfare, failed to allow his soldiers to have any substantial periods of rest
and relaxation, and therefore they lost much of their elan. Moreover, the
offensive posture of Cadorna’s military operations often forced Italian
division and corps commanders to neglect their forward defences. Just after the
Italian successes in September on the Bainsizza, Cadorna ordered defences to be
strengthened, for the near capitulation of Russia had freed Austrian formations
from other duties, and he feared an enemy offensive. Although the Italians had
fortified certain areas, mainly in the topographically favourable stretches of
terrain around Gorizia and the Carso plateau, the Austro-German army struck on
the upper Isonzo, along a lightly defended ridge just south of the small town
of Caporetto. The Italians had planned to use a mobile defence, but the speed
of the enemy advance caught them completely off guard, and soon the Italian
Second Army was in flight, while the Third Army was forced to enact a strategic
withdrawal across the Fruili Plains. The enemy offensive forced Cadorna to
leave behind much of his heavy equipment and artillery – the accumulation of
two years’ hard work. These losses, and the capture of about 300,000 men
severely crippled the Italian war effort.
Not having secured the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Army
after two years of extreme hardship and losses, Cadorna was sacked and replaced
by one of his corps commanders, Armando Diaz. Cadorna’s cold and indifferent
attitude toward not only his soldiers, but also toward the politicians had not
ingratiated him with any power bloc that might have proved beneficial to him in
case of a disaster. Therefore, Cadorna was supposedly kicked upstairs, and was
sent to represent Italy on the Supreme Allied War Council. Soon thereafter, an
investigation fixed the blame for the debacle squarely on his shoulders, and
Cadorna retired in disgrace in December 1918. In all fairness, the Italian
government needed a scapegoat, and since Cadorna was no longer the Chief of
Staff and had directed the Italian armies since the beginning of the war, he
was the logical choice. The government failed to pay attention to Cadorna when
he warned that the front-line soldiers were being saturated with anti-war
propaganda, which was growing vociferously all over Europe. He should have
expected a great deal of criticism for his lack of preparedness when the
Central Powers struck; however, the government should have realized that by
attaching most of the blame to Cadorna, they had negated a fair record of
success along the Isonzo during the first two years of the war.
The reputation of the Italian Army and Cadorna continues to
languish. Holger Herwig, for example, recently deprecated him and his Austrian
counterpart General Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf in the following way: ‘Both
ignored terrain and weather. Both underestimated supply. Both stressed the will
to fight. Both devised grandiose strategies that bore little relation to ready
strength. And both insisted on their own infallibility.’28 However, Cadorna
should not be uncritically blamed for the apparent lack of Italian progress
during the war. He took an army embroiled in a colonial venture and forged it,
under the most trying conditions, into one comparable with other European
armies of the era. It is easy to say the Italian Army was bad, and that Cadorna
was unimaginative or, as John Keegan puts it, a ‘château general’. However, the
Italian Army had to attack in the most inhospitable front of the entire war,
and was capable of capturing many key objectives, often when their efforts were
hampered by lack of artillery and ammunition. The Austrian defences were
exceedingly strong and set in mutually supporting positions across the front,
providing Austrian machine gunners and artillery officers with strong positions
for enfilade fire. Cadorna had conducted reconnaissance of the front before the
war, and knew what his soldiers would have to face while fighting in the
mountainous terrain. He was aware that operations on the Italian front would
take patience and technical innovation, and was quick to adopt new weapons,
such as the trench mortar and the teleferiche railway. The latter was a cable
anchored to a base and stretched to the summit of an elevation, on which a cart
or basket moved supplies and men to areas where the altitude and slope
prohibited road construction. The need for mechanical assistance played an
important role in the development of Cadorna’s army. Unfortunately, these
gadgets were seen as the answers to tricky tactical and operational questions
instead of being incorporated into existing doctrine, or being the catalysts
for entirely new procedures. Often when certain divisions formulated new
practices, the lack of communication on the administrative level prevented them
from being disseminated. This is probably Cadorna’s most glaring fault, and
shows just how isolated he was from the various contingents of his own army.
Contending with the rocky rugged terrain and the Austrian
positional supremacy should have been an ideal catalyst for tactical
innovation. However, the topographical compartmentalization of the front
prevented the Italian high command from forming a clear picture of what was
working or failing. Still, the Italians implemented some astonishing tactical
changes, which were generally a result of learning from the enemy, or from
division commanders who assessed certain areas and formed their units according
to specific geographic problems. As the first four Isonzo offensives attempted
to pierce the Austrian defences, the first just north of Mount Sabotino, the
last three on the topographically more conducive Carso plateau, the Italians
found it impossible to make any substantial progress against the enemy while
using tactics that would not have been out of place on a battlefield during the
Napoleonic era or during the American Civil War. This was not just an Italian
problem – even the much vaunted Germans went to war in 1914 with tactical
formations that were little changed since the victorious campaigns of 1866 and
1870–1. Realizing that they had to contend with perplexing terrain
difficulties, and that their methods lacked the finesse to overcome and retain
most defensive positions, the Italians began to search for solutions and,
unfortunately, looked to the French for tactical answers. Although not as inept
as many historians portray it be, the French Army was not exactly the source
from which any belligerent would want to borrow military instructions at this
stage of the war. The French were also enamoured by the results of the Wars of
German Unification, and thought the answer to their military conundrum was to
emulate the German model on a larger, more efficient scale. Each nation is a
separate and unique entity, and therefore should forge its military
accordingly. Therefore the problem with Italy, and indeed much of Europe, was
that she should have been trying to create a national force based on her own
capabilities and limitations instead of copying a successful yet dated German
model. The Italian Army needed to be Italian, not a mere imitation of the
German Army whose strength was as much from economic and industrial power as it
was from any radical advances in the military arts and sciences.
By the time the Austrians struck in the Trentino, the
Italians had received some tactical advice from the French, who were then going
through the horrors of Verdun. However, the problem was not that they were
receiving procedural assistance from the French, it was that they were usually
receiving this help nearly six months after the tactics were first employed.
Considering the rigid and ponderous methods prevalent in the Italian Army, it
was usually several more months before any of this experience could be translated
into military practice. Some procedures would take even longer to employ
because of material deficiencies. The result was that the Italians were
tactically and operationally behind most of the other major belligerents. A
case in point was the massive artillery concentration used against Austrian
defences on the Bainsizza. An overwhelming concentration of guns was nearly a
constant goal of Allied and Central Power planners since the beginning of the
war, the desire increasing after the German attack at Verdun. The attack on
Verdun began in February 1916. The battle of the Bainsizza started in August
1917. This was just three months before the Central Powers introduced new
tactical methods at Caporetto. Cadorna was methodical, but he often did not push
tactical and operational changes fast enough, and hardly had time to use the
old methods before he fell victim to a new set of offensive procedures.
Many historians wonder why Cadorna did not use the navy to
land combat units in an area where geography would allow them to be employed
more effectively. The army and navy never enjoyed a convivial relationship, and
therefore could not count on each other to be the most ‘co-operative’ partners.
Both were wary of enterprises that would waste resources and leave themselves
in the lurch. Cadorna was hesitant to release any of his battalions to make a
landing along the eastern coast of the Adriatic, and the navy did not want to
risk its capital ships in the same enterprise, for they knew amphibious operations
would force a major surface action with the Austrian Navy. Although the
Italians had landed approximately 40,000 troops along the north African coast
during the war with Turkey in 1910–1, the aftershocks of this campaign still
weighed upon the minds of military planners. Moreover, the areas where troops
could be landed did not offer better geographic conditions that existed on the
Isonzo Front. Italian formations were landed in Albania, and promptly suffered
a reverse in the field and had to be evacuated with the loss of much equipment.
Another venture, where Italian forces were deployed in Salonika, did little
more than isolate a sizeable force. The enterprise held little chance of
tactical success, and did not make a strategic contribution until the collapse
of the Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian armies late in 1918.
In hindsight, Cadorna seems to be just another commander
that falls into the stereotype of a First World War general, an indifferent man
who sent his soldiers to die by the thousands, while staying safely behind the
front, out of harm’s way. This is only half true. Cadorna was conscious of the
heavy losses the Italians were suffering – one and a half million casualties
during the war, 460,000 of which were fatalities – if not from a humanitarian
viewpoint, from operational realism. He knew that the Italian nation could not
go on indefinitely due to its lack of natural resources and economic reserves.
He used the only commodity the Italians possessed, a sizeable population base,
until better operational and tactical methods could be developed. It was his
misfortune that the Central Powers were generally the first to introduce
innovative tactical and operational procedures, and just happened to test them
in the secondary theatres before employing them on the Western Front.
It is curious that the Italians have been castigated for
their debacle at Caporetto, as Cadorna skilfully withdrew his Third Army across
the congested Fruili Plains, and even managed to salvage certain portions of
the Second Army. Although trying to establish defensive positions on the major
waterways in the eastern sector of the plains, he was forced back to the Piave
River before he could restore his front. Geography and distance prevented the
British or the French from saving the Italians, for by the time Allied troops
reached Italy, Cadorna had stabilized the front, but had been fired in the
process. Haig finally had to succumb to French pressure for overall direction
of the war so that unity of command could re-establish Allied defences on the
Western Front.
Cadorna was not totally forgotten after Caporetto. He went
on to be the Italian representative on the Supreme Allied War Council, and
exhibited an uncanny grasp of military problems. There are two reasons for
this. The first is that Cadorna had invaluable experience in handling an army;
the second was that he was a well-known theoretical writer about European
military affairs, and had dealt academically with many problems concerning
coalition warfare before the war. Cadorna’s problem was that he undoubtedly
held the wrong post, for he could not deal appropriately with the minutiae of
war. His father, the general who had shown some promise in the Seven Weeks’
War, realized his full potential as the Minister of War for the government of
Tuscany in 1859. It was in this area where Cadorna showed his optimum
potential. Once the politicians confided in him concerning Italy’s diplomatic
endeavours, Cadorna followed their policies and worked energetically toward
their realization. His realistic mind, although restricting his creativity,
never allowed him to entertain fantastic or unrealistic schemes. This aptitude
for the diplomatic-military sphere was clearly seen at the Supreme War Council,
for he could quickly equate objectives with available means and gauge probable
outcomes, not only in a military sense, but in the diplomatic realm as well.
This could be a result of having to contend with Italy’s chronic lack of
resources while trying to conduct a major war effort – something that he lost
sight of during the offensives of 1915, but then addressed in future
operations. Therefore, his organizational talents would have been better suited
to the war ministry, and were not geared to the frustratingly complex
phenomenon of a First World War army command. After the war, Cadorna busied
himself with writing a book about the Italian front, much of which was in
defence of his actions connected with Caporetto. Falling into relative
obscurity, he was somewhat revitalized when Mussolini, ever the astute
politician and consummate showman, made Cadorna a Field Marshal in 1924. This
ceremony was an empty gesture, doing nothing to vindicate Cadorna’s reputation,
which still suffers today from a lack of scholarship and interest. He will
never be known as one of the great captains of history, but considering what he
did with what he had available, his story deserves better treatment.
Soon the Western Front would be embroiled in a chaotic
retreat, and many of the divisions sent to Italy would be recalled. However,
with Cadorna fading into the history of the First World War, a new phase of the
war emerged in Italy, as British and French contingents arrived to bolster
their crippled ally.
