Welcome back to the deep dive. We are so glad
to have you with us today for this custom tailored
exploration. We're looking at a historical event
that was well. So disastrous, so completely and
utterly catastrophic that its very name actually
became a permanent synonym for a catastrophic
defeat in the Italian language. Our mission today
is to unpack exactly how that happened. It really
is a profound piece of history. Yeah. We are
looking at a comprehensive account of the Battle
of Caporetto, also known as the 12th Battle of
the Isonzo, which took place on the Italian front
of World War One, stretching from October 24th
to November 19th, 1917. massive collision between
the Kingdom of Italy and the Central Powers,
primarily Austria -Hungary, but heavily reinforced
by Germany. And the sheer jaw -dropping scale
of this battle is just, it's something else.
As we go through the material today, you're going
to hear about a massive, devastating chemical
weapons attack. We're going to witness the perfection
of a terrifying new military tactic that completely
changed the rules of warfare. You'll even hear
about a young Erwin Rommel making his mark. and
it all culminates in an astonishing 150 kilometer
retreat. I want to frame the stakes for you right
from the beginning. This isn't just a story about
shifting lines on a map or a dry list of dates
and troop movements. No, definitely not. It is
an absolute master class in how a combination
of overconfidence, deep logistical failure and
sheer technological surprise can completely collapse
an army of over a million men. It's about how
rapidly things go wrong when foundational cracks
are finally exposed. OK, let's untack this. We
need to set the scene because the context leading
up to this is just grueling. is the spring and
summer of 1917. The Italian and Austro -Hungarian
armies have been fighting along the Isonzo River,
which is in modern -day Slovenia. And when I
say fighting, I mean they have already fought
11 previous battles in this exact same sector.
Eleven. Both sides are just entirely exhausted.
They are gleading each other dry. So if both
sides are at their absolute breaking point, what
did the Austro -Hungarians actually do? Did they
just sit there and wait for the front to collapse?
They panicked, to put it simply. The Italians
had actually found some success during that 11th
battle of the Isonzo. They managed to push the
Austro -Hungarians back. Emperor Karl of Austria
-Hungary looked at the situation, realized a
final breakthrough by the Italians was imminent,
and he reached out for a lifeline. It's a fascinating...
Very human detail in the historical record. Emperor
Karl writes a letter directly to Germany's Kaiser
Wilhelms II. He's essentially begging for help,
stating flatly that his forces are running out
of men and that the Germans don't send troops
to Italy immediately. The entire front is going
to shatter. What's fascinating here is the internal
friction this request caused within the German
high command. You have these massive historical
figures trying to decide the fate of the war.
Like who? Well, Paul von Hindenburg and Arthur
Arsbon -Strasenberg, they both agree that they
need to pull troops from the Eastern front and
send them to the Isonzo sector to bail out their
ally. Makes sense. But Erich Ludendorff, another
monumental figure in the German command, is dead
set against it. He fiercely opposes sending the
troops. But ultimately, he gets overruled. And
once the Germans commit, their preparation is
just chillingly methodical. In September, the
Imperial General Staff sends a team of three
experts down to the Italian front, and this team
is led by a chemist, Otto Hahn. Yes! They are
explicitly sent there to find the absolute perfect
geographical site to launch a massive gas attack.
It is a cold, highly calculated approach to warfare.
They specifically choose the Caporetto Sector.
Now, Caporetto was situated in a mountainous
valley, and up until this point, it was considered
a quiet sector. Quiet, meaning not much fighting.
Exactly. But it had a very specific advantage
for the Germans. There was a good road that ran
directly west, right through the mountain valley,
and out onto the Venetian plain. It's the perfect
funnel. It really is. And to make sure they can
exploit it, they send Lieutenant General Conrad
Krupp von Belmens again to scout the ground.
Since he is a recognized expert in mountain warfare,
they are clearly putting all their best minds
on this one specific point on the map. They even
form a brand new 14th Army, commanded by the
German Otto von Below. Which highlights a major
strategic shift. Ludendorff's strategic advisor,
Lieutenant Colonel Jorg Wetzel, advised them
to use these fresh German divisions to strike
directly at a weak point in the Italian line.
They weren't going to just spread out and fight
everywhere. They were going to concentrate their
power like a laser. And as they are meticulously
planning this out, the Italians make a massive,
almost unbelievable blunder. They actually broadcast
their local weather information openly over the
radio. Yes, they did. Wait, so they just broadcasted
it for anyone to hear? That's basically giving
the Germans a daily weather forecast complete
with a VIP invitation to attack. Talk about an
unforced error. It highlights the vital importance
of operational security, a lesson the Italians
learned in the most painful way imaginable. The
Germans were waiting for the absolute perfect
meteorological moment to deploy chemical weapons.
And the Italians were literally handing them
the atmospheric data they needed to finalize
their plans. Which brings us to the attack itself.
It is October 24th, 1917. The assault had actually
been delayed for two days because of foul weather.
But now the weather has shifted. There is zero
wind and the entire front is blanketed in this
thick heavy mist. The environmental conditions
are absolutely crucial to understand here. The
mist and the lack of wind created an atmospheric
trap. It meant that any gas released would not
blow back on the attackers, and it wouldn't dissipate
quickly. It would just settle heavily into the
valleys and trenches where the Italians were
huddled. So at exactly 02 .00 a .m. under the
cover of this thick fog, the Germans initiate
the attack. But it's not with traditional artillery.
The historical accounts describe them secretly
digging in almost 900 metal tubes on a reverse
slope. Can you explain what that means for the
listener? Of course. A reverse slope just means
the side of the hill facing away from the enemy,
so the Italians couldn't see what they were doing.
Smart. And those metal tubes were similar to
Leibniz projectors. If you aren't familiar with
World War I weaponry, think of a Leibniz projector
as a crude but highly effective early mortar.
used specifically to lob large canisters of poison
gas over a hill and into enemy trenches. And
they wire all 894 of these tubes to trigger electrically
at the exact same time. They fire canisters containing
600 milliliters of a lethal cocktail, a chlorine
arsenic agent, and diphosphine. Diphosphine is
a respiratory irritant that basically destroys
the lungs. Right. It's horrifying. The psychological
and physical impact of this cannot be overstated.
A dense cloud of poison gas literally smothered
the Italian trenches. And here is the terrifying
reality for the Italian defenders. Their issued
gas masks were only rated to protect them for
two hours or less. Oh, wow. Imagine being a soldier
in that trench. You are enveloped in a toxic
cloud. Your mask is degrading by the minute and
you know the clock is ticking. It's pure nightmare
fuel. Knowing their masks are failing, many defenders
simply flee in terror. Even so, 500 to 600 men
are killed right there in the trenches, before
they can even escape the cloud. And then, everything
goes quiet again. Just dead silence in the fog
until 0600 a .m. That silence must have been
agonizing, because at ZO600AM, the bombardment
shifts from gas to high explosives, the mortars
open up, targeting all the Italian wire in the
trenches they plan to assault. The escalation
is rapid. At 06 .41AM, 2200 guns open fire. It's
an unimaginable wall of sound and destruction.
They specifically target the Valley Road, pounding
it to dust so that the Italians can't bring up
any reserves to plug the gaps. Exactly. Then
at 0800 AM, the ground itself literally erupts.
The Germans detonate two massive mines that they
had tunneled under the Italian strong points
on the heights. And with that, the infantry charges.
But I know they weren't just marching slowly
across no man's land in the traditional trench
charge. How are these stormtroopers actually
pulling off this assault? They were using what
are called infiltration tactics, partly developed
by Oscar von Hutier. Instead of throwing a wall
of men directly at the enemy's strongest defenses,
specially trained stormtroopers acted like water
finding cracks in a dam. finding the path of
least resistance. Right. They flowed right around
the strong points, bypassed the heavy resistance,
and attacked the weak spots deep behind the lines.
And they were loaded with brand new mobile tech
to do it, right? Exactly. They were carrying
the Model 0815 Maxim light machine gun, portable
flamethrowers, light trench mortars, and even
mountain guns right there with the advancing
infantry. They were moving fast and hitting hard.
What about the flanks? If you push that deep
into a valley, aren't you worried about getting
surrounded from the mountains above? That's where
the coordination becomes truly impressive. Alpine
troops were sent to infiltrate the adjoining
ridges, specifically the Matajur and Kulavrat
crests. And as these alpine troops climbed, they
were literally unspooling telephone wires behind
them. No way. Hmm. While climbing. While climbing.
This allowed them to stay in direct contact with
their artillery and call in pinpoint strikes
on the fly to protect the storm. troopers in
the valley. It was a level of tactical flexibility
that the Italians were completely unprepared
for. Here's where it gets really interesting.
Because of these infiltration tactics, the breakthrough
is almost instantaneous. The attackers are marching
down this excellent valley road toward Italy
facing almost no opposition. they advance an
incredible 25 kilometers on the very first day.
Which is staggering. In World War I terms, advancing
25 kilometers in a single day is basically light
speed. But advancing that fast has to be incredibly
dangerous. It is incredibly dangerous. You are
effectively stretching the rubber band of your
supply lines. Advancing 25 kilometers means your
food, your ammunition, and your reinforcements
are suddenly 25 kilometers behind you. As we'll
see, that rubber band is eventually going to
snap. Right. But in the immediate moment, von
Bellow's central penetration was so deep and
so fast that it threw the entire Italian Second
Army into total disarray. And behind the lines,
the Italian command is completely collapsing.
The commander of the Italian Second Army Luigi
Capello is bedridden with a terrible fever during
all of this. He realizes his forces are ill -prepared
and are actively being routed. So he begs his
superiors for permission to withdraw his men
to the Tagliamento River to form a new defensive
line. And this introduces us to Marshal Luigi
Cadorna, the Italian Supreme Commander. Cadorna
is a figure of immense stubbornness. He's directing
the battle from 30 kilometers behind the front
lines. And when Capello begs to retreat, Cadorna
flatly refuses. He denies reality, demanding
his troops stand their ground against an enemy
that has already bypassed them. It takes Cadorna
until October 30th, six days after the attack
began to finally realize the battle is lost,
and order a retreat to the Tiglamento River.
But by then, it's too late for an orderly withdrawal.
It turns into a desperate, chaotic sprint for
survival. Total chaos. The roads become completely
choked. You have retreating soldiers, terrified
civilians fleeing their homes, horse -drawn artillery
all jammed together trying to cross the bottleneck
of the river bridges. The delay in ordering the
retreat was fatal. The German and Austro -Hungarian
forces are right on their heels the entire time,
ambushing them constantly. These desperate fighting
retreats and ambushes became known as the Battle
of Putswolo. Yeah. It allowed the Central Powers
to envelop massive portions of the Italian army
before they could cross to safety. The Italians
eventually managed to break through the encirclement,
but not before the Austro -Hungarian 55th Infantry
Division established a bridgehead across the
Tagliamento on November 2. We have to talk about
the numbers here. Yeah. Because providing you
with the exact losses is the only way to truly
grasp the scale of this disaster. The casualties
are staggering. 13 ,000 Italians were killed.
30 ,000 were wounded. And then an absolutely
massive 265 ,000 to 275 ,000 Italian soldiers
were taken prisoner. A quarter of a million men
captured. The sheer logistical burden of capturing
a quarter million prisoners in a matter of days
is difficult to comprehend. Beyond the prisoners,
there were 300 ,000 stragglers. who were separated
from their units and 50 ,000 outright deserters.
The Italian army lost over 3 ,152 artillery pieces,
3 ,000 machine guns, and 1 ,712 mortars. In the
span of this single campaign, the Italian army's
effective strength plummeted from 1 .8 million
troops down to just 1 million. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, we have to ask why
so many Italians were taken prisoner. Why did
over 250 ,000 men simply surrender? It wasn't
just the tactical surprise or the terror of the
gas. It was a complete collapse of morale. Because
of Cadorna. Exactly. The Italian Supreme Commander
Luigi Cadorna was universally detested by his
own troops. He maintained an incredibly harsh,
unforgiving disciplinary regime. Imagine being
in middle management today and having a boss
like Cadorna who just fires hundreds of executives
on a whim. It's no wonder the frontline workers,
the soldiers completely checked out. I was looking
at the records from this time and before the
battle even began, Cadorna had fired 217 generals,
255 colonels and 355 battalion commanders. Unbelievable.
He was firing anyone who disagreed with him or
failed to achieve the impossible. His troops
hated him so much that when the lines broke,
they surrendered willingly rather than fight
and die for a commander who treated them so poorly.
It is a stark reminder that an organization runs
on morale just as much as an army runs on rations
and ammunition. When the leadership shows zero
regard for the well -being of the people on the
ground, those people will abandon the leadership
the moment the pressure becomes unbearable. So
the Italians are running, the Germans and Austro
-Hungarians are chasing, and we finally see the
pendulum swing. The Italian army eventually manages
to halt their retreat and set up a new defensive
line 150 kilometers away at the Piave River in
Monte Grappa. This happens around November 10th,
but the Central Powers didn't necessarily stop
because the Italians suddenly mounted an unbreakable
defense. Why did the German advance actually
grind to a halt? This is the profound logistical
irony of Caporetto. Remember that rubber band
we talked about earlier? Yeah, the supply lines.
It finally snapped. The initial assault by the
Central Powers was incredibly successful. They
advanced over a hundred kilometers toward Venice,
but their supply lines were stretched to the
absolute breaking point. We have to remember
the geopolitical context here. The Allied naval
blockade of the German Empire was already in
full effect. Germany was struggling with massive
food shortages and widespread malnutrition at
home and in the ranks. There's a specific brilliant
detail about Erwin Rommel that highlights this
perfectly. He was a junior officer here and he
actually won the Pour la Merite for his actions
during this battle. For those who might not know,
the Port of Marietil was Germany's absolute highest
military honor at the time. Sure. But even while
achieving this incredible success, in his writings,
Rommel constantly bemoaned the demands placed
upon his poorly fed troops. The grueling night
marches, the continuous combat, and the utter
lack of food took a massive toll. It was an enemy
fire that ultimately stripped the Germans of
their momentum, it was sheer exhaustion and starvation.
They had captured all this territory, pushed
the Italians to the brink. But when they finally
reached the Piave River, they simply didn't have
the calories or the ammunition to push any further.
Their own rapid success became their logistical
downfall. And the political fallout from this
150 kilometer retreat is immediate and severe.
The disaster completely collapses the Italian
government. Prime Minister Paolo Bocelli's government
falls. And Marshal Cadorna, the stubborn commander
who refused to retreat and was hated by his men,
is finally forced to resign by the new prime
minister, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. A necessary
change. Cadorna is replaced by Armando Diaz and
Pietro Badoglio, who immediately implement a
more cautious strategy focused on rebuilding
the shattered forces. But the panic wasn't just
limited to Italy, was it? Not at all. The geopolitical
panic extended far beyond Italy's borders. The
collapse of the Isonzo front terrified the other
allies. It led to a hastily called meeting of
British, French and Italian leaders at Rapallo
in early November. They had to figure something
out. Fast. British Prime Minister David Lloyd
George used the absolute panic of Caporetto to
finally push through his idea for a supreme war
council to unify allied strategy. The allies
realized they couldn't fight separate wars anymore.
They had to coordinate. The panic was so real
that six French and five British infantry divisions,
along with air contingents, were rushed down
to Italy to help. They deployed at the Menzio
River well behind the new lines because the British
and French strategists honestly believe the Italians
couldn't even hold the Piave River line. Right.
Beyond the military shifts, the cultural scar
left by this battle on Italy is incredibly deep.
As I mentioned at the start of our discussion,
the word caporetto gained a permanent resonance.
It stopped being just a geographical location
and became a noun for a catastrophic failure.
Mussolini later used the term to describe a failed
socialist general strike in 1922, calling it
the caporetto of Italian socialism. The battle
also spawned massive literary works that gave
people a gritty, boots -on -the -ground feel
for what that horrific retreat was actually like.
It's the vivid, bloody backdrop for Ernest Hemingway's
famous novel, A Farewell to Arms, heavily influencing
the protagonist's disillusionment with the war.
And on the tact of side, Erwin Rommel used his
experiences here to write his highly influential
military handbook, Infantry Attacks. The legacy
is truly massive. So what does this all mean?
If we pull this entire narrative together for
you, we are looking at an incredible historical
moment. It's a terrifying mix of technological
innovation, like the synchronized gas attack
and tactical evolution with the storm troopers
bypassing strongholds. Yes. It is also the story
of massive, arrogant command failure by leaders
like Kadona. And perhaps most ironically, it's
the story of an army defeating itself by advancing
so quickly that it simply outran its ability
to feed its own soldiers. This raises an important
question, and it's one you can apply far beyond
military history. Capreda proves that even heavily
fortified positions, whether you are looking
at a literal trench line, a corporate business
strategy, or a seemingly unshakable market leader
can be bypassed. That's a great point. They aren't
always defeated by overwhelming brute force.
They are defeated by targeted innovation, like
those infiltration tactics and the precise exploitation
of a single weak point. Furthermore, it highlights
the absolute non -negotiable necessity of morale.
If a team fundamentally detests its leadership,
the entire structure will fold at the very first
opportunity. It is a lot to take in. But before
we leave you today, we want to leave you with
a final provocative thought to mull over on your
own. Imagine for a moment the psychological state
of those Austro -Hungarian and German soldiers
standing at the banks of the Piave River in November
1917. Just looking across the water. They had
just pulled off what was arguably one of the
greatest tactical master strokes in military
history. They broke the unbreakable stalemate
of trench warfare. They advanced 150 kilometers.
They captured a quarter of a million enemies.
By every metric of battle, they were invincible.
Yet as they stood there staring across the water,
their stomachs were completely empty. Their supply
lines were shattered. Their boots were falling
apart. And worst of all, despite this monumental
historic victory, the war still wasn't over.
It forces you to wonder. At what point does a
flawless victory stretch so far and demand so
much that it inevitably transforms into the very
seed of your ultimate defeat? Thanks for joining
us for this deep dive. We will catch you next
time.