On 15 May 1916 the Austro-Hungarian army opened its offensive from the Trentino against Italy, remembered by Italians as the Strafexpedition. It aimed at the Venetian plain, behind the Italian armies on the Isonzo. The attackers took Asiago at the end of May but never reached the plain, and on 16 June their high command halted the offensive.
Battle of Asiago
15 May 1916 · 110 years ago
A blow from the Tyrol
The Austro-Hungarian chief of staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, prepared a large offensive from the plateaus of Folgaria and Lavarone. The Austrian official history quotes the plan as a thrust "mit gut zusammengehaltener Kraft von den Hochflächen von Lavarone und Folgaria auf Thiene und Bassano vorzustoßen" ("to push with well-concentrated force from the plateaus of Lavarone and Folgaria toward Thiene and Bassano"; our translation). The Italian Defense Ministry's guide to the Asiago war memorial describes the aim as flooding into the Venetian plain behind the Italian armies on the Isonzo. The offensive went ahead without German formations, the official history notes, because Erich von Falkenhayn, the German chief of staff, could not be won over; Christian Ortner of the Military History Museum in Vienna writes that a simultaneous attack on the Isonzo was dropped because the German forces were tied down at Verdun. Italians know the offensive as the Strafexpedition, the punitive expedition; the official history calls it the spring offensive of 1916 against Italy.1
The blow was to be struck by the 11th Army under Viktor Dankl and by the 3rd Army. According to the official history, 14 infantry divisions and 64 heavy batteries had been gathered in South Tyrol. It gives the Italian 1st Army more than 176 battalions on 15 May, citing Cadorna, and finds these figures broadly in line with the Austro-Hungarian high command's own count, but calls his account "getrübt, wenn nicht sogar verzerrt" ("clouded, if not actually distorted"; our translation) by his wish to rebut the charge that he had supported that army too late and too little.2
A general replaced
Cadorna writes that on 18 April he called operations of some size in the Val Lagarina, on the plateaus and in the Valsugana "assai probabili" (very probable), yet until the eve he thought a deep attack with a great strategic aim unlikely, partly because the Russian offensive under General Aleksei Brusilov was known to be imminent. The historian Giorgio Rochat writes in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani that Cadorna was essentially taken by surprise. According to Rochat, Roberto Brusati, commander of the 1st Army, had renewed his requests for reinforcements, and Cadorna, unconvinced, removed him. General Guglielmo Pecori Giraldi took over the 1st Army on 8 May, only days before the attack.3
A hurricane over the mountains
The Austrian official history has the battle begin at about 6 a.m. on 15 May in good visibility, with the destruction fire opening at 9: "Ein Orkan brauste über die Berge. Die Rohre liefen heiß." ("A hurricane roared over the mountains. The barrels ran hot."; our translation). Cadorna dates the start to the afternoon of 14 May, with a heavy bombardment from Lake Garda to the Valsugana that went on through the 15th, when the infantry attacked only the forward positions in the Val Lagarina and those between Monte Maronia and the Astico valley. Ortner and Rochat give 15 May as the start.4
In the official history's account, as the XX Corps of Archduke Karl Franz Joseph, heir to the throne, moved on the Costa d'Agra and Monte Coston, groups of Italians who had missed the moment to fall back came toward its advance troops "Bleich und verstört, mit erhobenen Händen" ("pale and distraught, with raised hands"; our translation). By evening both heights were taken, and on Monte Coston almost a whole battalion of the Cagliari brigade surrendered after brief resistance. Cadorna names the Cagliari brigade and the Alpini battalion Vicenza as the units that particularly distinguished themselves in defending the positions between Monte Maronia and the Astico valley.5
Asiago falls, the plain holds
In the Adige valley the Italians fell back from their forward positions and, Cadorna writes, from 19 May held the line from Coni Zugna to Passo Buole against attacks that went on until 31 May; the Defense Ministry's guide also names the defense of Passo Buole and the Pasubio. Col Santo fell, but the Pasubio was held. The Defense Ministry's guide says the attack reached Arsiero and pushed into the Asiago basin between 20 and 28 May; the official history dates the occupation of Asiago to 26 to 29 May. By the guide's account the attackers kept going until mid-June but never broke through the last mountain barrier before the plain of Vicenza.6
Cadorna meanwhile moved troops from the Isonzo, and Ortner writes that Italian resistance grew with reserves from that front. On 21 May, Cadorna writes, he ordered a new army, the 5th, of five corps to gather in the plain around Vicenza and Cittadella, ready to meet any force that came down from the plateaus; its corps were assembled there on 2 June.7
Brusilov and the halt
Italy also turned to Russia. The official history records that the Italian prime minister reminded Petersburg on 12 May of the offensive promised for the end of May, and that after 15 May Italian diplomacy worked feverishly for an early Russian attack; Ortner writes that the Italian government asked urgently for support. Brusilov's offensive began on 4 June.8
Its effect on Italy is disputed. Ortner writes that it prevented the crucial breakthrough, because troops had to be withdrawn from the front against Italy. Cadorna writes that it drew some Austrian forces away but did nothing to stop their offensive, which an Italian bulletin of 3 June had already declared halted. At 6.30 p.m. on 16 June, the official history says, an order of the high command reached Bolzano (Bozen) to give up two more divisions and go over to the defensive. According to the Defense Ministry's guide, the Italian counteroffensive began the same day.9
Prisoners and the dead
Archduke Eugen's order of the day, quoted in the official history, claimed "Mehr als 47.000 Gefangene" ("more than 47,000 prisoners"; our translation), among them almost 1,000 officers, with 318 guns and 191 machine guns. The official history counts the Austro-Hungarian forces in Tyrol, about 220,000 men, as losing 5,000 dead, 23,000 wounded, 14,000 sick and 2,000 prisoners between 15 May and 15 June.10
One prisoner was Damiano Chiesa of Rovereto, an artillery lieutenant in the Italian army. Umberto Corsini writes in the Dizionario Biografico that Chiesa was captured at Costa Violina on 16 May and tried for high treason on 19 May. He was shot that evening in Trento, at the castle of Buonconsiglio. The Defense Ministry's guide records that Cesare Battisti and Fabio Filzi, of Trento and of Pisino in Istria, were captured later, on 10 July at Monte Corno, and hanged at Trento on 12 July.11
A government falls
In Rome, Rochat writes, the government looked for a scapegoat: on 25 May a communiqué of the Stefani agency announced that Brusati had been retired. Federico Lucarini, in the Dizionario Biografico, links the Strafexpedition to the resignation of Antonio Salandra's cabinet on 10 June; the historical portal of the Chamber of Deputies dates the end of Salandra's second government to 18 June 1916. In August the Italians took Gorizia on the Isonzo. The breakthrough at Caporetto on 24 October 1917 is on our page for 24 October, and the wider war in the greatest battles of World War I.12
Battle of the Sutjeska, 1943: Operation Schwarz and Tito's breakout
15 May 1943 · 83 years ago
German and Italian forces launched a joint offensive to trap and destroy the main Yugoslav Partisan army by the Sutjeska river in Bosnia. The operation failed in its aim, and that failure is seen as a turning point of the war in Yugoslavia.
Read the full story of Battle of the Sutjeska, 1943: Operation Schwarz and Tito's breakout ›Also on this day
1864: in the American Civil War, Confederate troops under Major General John C. Breckinridge defeated the Union force of Major General Franz Sigel at New Market, Virginia. Sigel reported 5,500 men against 8,000 to 9,000 and a loss of about 600 killed and wounded and 50 prisoners; the National Park Service gives 6,275 Union and 4,090 Confederate troops engaged and estimates 841 and 520 casualties, the American Battlefield Trust 4,087 Confederates and 531 Confederate casualties. Among Breckinridge's troops were the cadets of the Virginia Military Institute; their commandant, Lieutenant Colonel Scott Shipp, reported many of them "shoeless" after losing their shoes and socks in the deep mud, and the ground later became known as the Field of Lost Shoes. The Official Records note that Shipp's casualty list shows 8 cadets killed and 44 wounded; the cadet John S. Wise wrote of a corps of 225 that lost fifty-six killed and wounded; the institute counts 257 cadets, ten of whom were killed or died of their wounds.13
