Meebs & Jovial's Quest for Power

[southbiochem]

Italian Front 1915-1918





Italy was part of the Triple Alliance but did not side with the Central Powers when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, claiming that the Alliance was a defensive one.

It was also a given that the Habsburg Empire for a long time the natural enemy of Italy

In the end, with the promise of Italian-speaking Austrian territories, the Dalmatian coast, a protectorate over Albania, the permament cession of the Dodecanese Islands and unspecified colonies in Africa, France and UK convinced Italy to join the Allies.

Italy was ill-prepared for war, specially after the major expenses that the 1911-1912 Italo-Turkish war have had. The Italian Army had a proffessional officer corps but the regular soldier was heavily undertrained.

1.- The first phase was a war that soon turn into trech/attrition warfare with continued Italian frontal offensives. Despite outnumbering local Austrian troops by 3 to 1, Italian offensives were directed into the Julian Alps, hence, Austria had a defensive advantage hard to overcome.

In the 11 Battles of the Isonzo River (1915-1917), continued Italian assaults under Luigi Cardona gained little ground and instead gave epic casualties as a result.

2.- Inbewteen the first battles of the Isonzo river, Austria attempted the Asiago offensive but failed to defeat Italian forces and in turn was driven back, with Italian troops occupying some Austrian territory instead.

[southbiochem]

3.- Battle of Caporetto: In the end of 1917 Germany came to aid Austria and a combined Austro-German force lauched a massive ofensive on October 24th, concentrated on one point: the city of Caporetto/Kobarid. In the ensuing battle the Italian lines collapsed and were driven back in disarray until they reached the Piave river. Cradona was replaced with Armando Díaz. Only the overextension of enemy supply lines and a major effort of Díaz to stabilize the front lines saved Italy from loosing the entire region and Venice. The offensive was stopped on November 12th and after 80-100 Km of Italian territory captured and 300.000 casualties for Italy.



4.- Only in 1918 did Italy regained enough strenght to think of a counter-offensive. Armando Díaz had immediately changed Cardona's mentality of throwing the troops on suicidal frontal assaults in the entire front line and instead amassed the troops for a focused assault.

The Battle of Vittorio Veneto : The German divisions had left to attend to other parts of the German front lines. After one year after the start of the Austro-German offensive, Diaz launched the long expected counter offensive on October 24th, with small divisions from France, US and UK helping.

The goal was to drive towards Vittorio, a town located in bewteen the 2 Austrian Army Groups opposing the Italian forces, thus cutting off communications bewteen them.



Along with initial successes, nationalism was tearing apart Austria-Hungary, as Czechs, Slovaks, Croats were declaring independence from the Habsburgs after living the dreads of 4 years of war. This meant that within the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Army mutinies started to erupt from soliders of Slavic ethnicities, who simply refused to keep fighting for Austria.

Facing total collapse, Austria asked for an Armistice, having most of the Slavic parts of the Army turned against them and now facing a declaration from Hungary to the dissolution of the dual monarchy.

The lack of clear instructions from Vienna meant that the Italian Army kept advancing, capturing Trento, Trieste, Gorizia, the Istria peninsula by November 4th, the day the armistice signed the day before went into effect.



The map shows Italy's territorial gains given in the Treaty of Saint Germain-en-Laye which was less that the promised by France and UK in 1915. This led to tales of a "mutilated" victory, and adding to social unrest and the crisis after the war, was a major cause to the birht of fascism and Italy's role in WWII

[MisterTinkles]

Misconceptions

Rome was filled with white marble statues

When we think of ancient Rome, it’s hard not to summon up an image of a gleaming white city, populated by pristine marble statues. In reality, these marble statues were often painted in bright colors. Let’s face it: classical Roman statues are thousands of years old, so it’s not surprising that their paint jobs have worn off after all this time. Scientists are clever, however, and they can use very small traces of pigment to reconstruct what a statue once looked like.


http://www.buzzfeed.com

[mbennet35]

*poookkkkeeeee*

[MisterTinkles]

*poookkkkeeeee*

[Evan88]

I miss this

[mbennet35]

I miss this

[southbiochem]

I miss this

I miss you..

and meebs

[MisterTinkles]

Where is Jovi?

[southbiochem]

Self-deleted, came back just to say goodbye to duckie and hasn't been on since then.

He has not replied my last e-mail