The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 (50 page)

Under Mussolini, the myth of a military strike was discouraged; it undermined the Fascists’ very different myth of the war as the foundation of modern Italy, a blood rite that re-created the nation. The fact of defeat at Caporetto had to be swallowed: a sour pill that could be sweetened by blaming the government’s weakness. Fascist accounts of the Twelfth Battle tended to whitewash Cadorna and defend the honour of the army (‘great even in misfortune’) while incriminating Capello and indicting the government in Rome for tolerating defeatists, profiteers and bourgeois draft-dodgers. Boselli (‘tearful helmsman of the ship of state’) and his successor Orlando were particularly lampooned. One valiant historian in the 1930s turned the narrative of defeat inside out by hailing Caporetto as a deliberate trap set and sprung by Cadorna, ‘the greatest strategist of our times’. The Duce himself called Caporetto ‘a reverse’ that was ‘absolutely military in nature’, produced by ‘an initial tactical success of the enemy’. Britain and France could also be condemned for recalling, in early October 1917, most of the 140 guns they had lent Cadorna earlier in the year. Even so, the defeat was not to be examined too closely. When Colonel Gatti wanted to write a history of Caporetto, in 1925, Mussolini granted access to the archives in the Ministry of War. Then he had second thoughts; summoning Gatti to Rome, he said it was a time for myths, not history. After 1945, leftist historians argued that large parts of the army had indeed ‘gone on strike’, not due to cowardice or socialism, but as a spontaneous rebellion against the war as it was led by Cadorna and the government.

That primal fear of dissolution survives in metaphor. Corruption scandals are still branded ‘a moral Caporetto’. Politicians accuse each other of facing an ‘electoral Caporetto’. When small businesses are snarled up in Italy’s notorious red tape, they complain about an ‘administrative Caporetto’. When England lost to Northern Ireland at football, it was ‘the English Caporetto’. This figure of speech stands for more than simple defeat; it involves a hint of stomach-churning exposure – rottenness laid bare.

Source Notes
TWENTY-FIVE
Caporetto: The Flashing Sword of Vengeance

1
the greatest army in Italy since the Caesars
: Rocca, 3.

2
‘
re-establish the links
’: Strachan, 182.

3
Russians discovered other elements
: Stevenson, 165.

4
‘
crumbling or incomplete
’: Griffith. See also, 53–7, 59–64, 97–100, 194, 196.

5
recognised a century earlier by Napoleon
: Reynolds, 241.

6
‘
as bad as could be imagined
’: Ludendorff, 212.

7
the attack should proceed along the valley floors: Weber, 378.

8
over a six-day period, to avoid alerting
: Wilks & Wilks [2001], 16.

9
‘
in excellent spirits
’: Gatti [1997], 196.

10
‘
as if the mountains themselves
’: Krafft von Dellmensingen, quoted by Pavan, 104.

11
‘
our offensive intentions
’: Wilks & Wilks [2001], 37.

12
‘
the thunderbolt of the counter-offensive
’: Wilks & Wilks [2001], 39.

13
Cadorna unambiguously rejected
: According to Gatti’s diary for 20 October. Gatti [1997], 196.

14
fewer than half of the division’s battalions
: Wilks & Wilks [2001], 41.

15
saw soldiers at their posts
: Comisso, 301.

16
‘
to the point of cretinism
’: Roscioni, 135.

17
‘
that stuttering idiot of a King
’: Dombroski, 27.

18
he had let another officer take
: Gorni, 163.

19
the last Italian veteran of the Twelfth Battle
: From the ‘
Cime e trincee
’ website http://www.cimeetrincee.it/delfino.htm, accessed June 2007. Also: Paolo Rumiz, ‘Quei maledetti giorni che vissi a Caporetto’, La Repubblica, 24 May 2005; Bultrini & Casarola; Elena Percivaldi, interview with Borroni, October 2004, ‘
In Memoriam
’ website, http://blog.libero.it/grandeguerra1418/, accessed June 2007.

20
they start throwing away their rifles
: Frescura, 249.

21
‘
to welcome their German liberators
’: Krafft von Dellmensingen, quoted by Pavan, 111.

22
‘
The country
has the right to know
’: De Simone, 38.

23
‘
finds us strong and well prepared
’: Gatti [1997], 202.

24
‘
Napoleon himself could not
’: Gatti [1997], 204.

25
They walk the plank
: Ungarelli, 29–48.

26
‘
The men are not fighting
’: De Simone, 45.

27
‘
Why doesn’t someone shoot them?
’: De Simone, 58 

28
‘
infantry, alpini, gunners, endlessly
’: Frescura, 254–253.

29
‘
the panic blast ran through
’: Winthrop Young, 322, 323.

30
‘
in good order, unbroken and undefeated
’: Quotations from Lt. Hugh Dalton, then serving with a British battery that was retreating with the Third Army. Dalton, 110, 108.

31
as if they had found the solution: De Simone. From Freya Stark’s diary, 29 October: ‘Only the officers look unhappy about the war.’

32
‘
Then we’re going too,
’
someone said
: De Simone, 75.

33
not
‘
very vigorous in combat
’: Wilks & Wilks [2001], 140.

34
affirmations of complete confidence
: Gatti [1997], 212.

35
‘
almost deserted with broken windows
’: Wilks & Wilks [2001], 121.

36
‘
After five days of fighting
’: De Simone, 98.

37
‘
This is how he repays your valour!
’: Cicchino & Olivo, 233–4.

38
‘
The wooden bridge was nearly
’: Hemingway, 234.

39
‘
Anger was washed away
’: Hemingway, 242.

40
Ludendorff was not yet convinced
: On 3 November, Ludendorff stated that the River Piave had to be the final objective of the offensive. Stevenson, 379.

41
‘
The Italians seem a wretched people
’: Winter, 26.

42
‘
ablaze from end to end
’: From the diary of Giuseppina Bauzon, of Versa, quoted by Fabi [1991b], 108.

43
ready to trust their troops to the bravery of the Italian soldiers but
: Sonnino’s diary, quoted by Morselli.

44
‘
At the last the great victory
’: Hindenburg, 287.

45
Krauss accused Boroević
: Rothenberg [1976], 208.

46
‘
the annihilating mentality
’: Pieri [1986], 355.

47
these works were hardly in hand
: Pieri [1986], 315.

48
loathed his tall, handsome cousin
: Bosworth [1979], 15.

49
land, home, family and honour – in that order
: Minniti, 31.

50
he once explained to the King
: De Simone, 96. 

51
‘
almost nobody remembered
’: Cadorna [1967].

52
a fist punching through a barrier
: Weber, 382.

53
‘
a shaped charge
’: Ullman & Wade. Available at http://www.dodccrp.org/files/pdf/Ullman_Shock.pdf, accessed in May 2007.

54
Probably he was scoring points
: This is Isnenghi’s argument in Cimprič.

55
parroted the conspiracy theory
: Cornwall [2000], 44.

56
‘
contributed to the disaster
’: Buchan, 326.

57
. For a recent contention that ‘a widespread attitude of defeatism’ was partly responsible for Caporetto, see Jonathan Dunnage,
Twentieth Century Italy
:
A Social History
(Harlow: Longman, 2002), 44. Dunnage, however, concedes that ‘bad military leadership and training were equally to blame’.

58
‘
The fate of Italy is being decided
’: Minniti, 106.

59
many officials believed
: Procacci [1999], 134.

60
the essence of Caporetto lay
: Isnenghi & Rochat, 396.

61
‘
a people of stragglers
’: Revelli.

62
‘
great even in misfortune
’: Piazzoni.

63
One valiant historian: Fabio Todero [1999]. The historian was Fernando Agnoletti.

64
‘
a reverse
’: Preface to Alberti.

65
it was a time for myths, not history
: Gatti [1997], xii.

66
a spontaneous rebellion against the war
: De Simone, 46

1 
Gadda served on the eastern Carso in August 1916, when Ungaretti was on Mount San Michele. It is as if James Joyce and T. S. Eliot – equivalent innovators in English prose and poetry – both volunteered, fought on the Somme, and survived.