Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign

Book excerpt: This illustrated WWI history sheds light on a major campaign fought along the significant yet often neglected Italian Front. From 1915 to 1917 the armies of Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were locked in a series of battles along the River Isonzo, a sixty-mile front from the Alps to the Adriatic Sea. The campaigns were fought in unforgiving terrain, with casualty counts that exceeded those of the Great War’s more famous battles. The twelfth and final battle, Caporetto, was a major victory for the Central Powers as they broke through the Italian Front. Historian John Macdonald chronicles the Isonzo battles with vivid descriptions of the battlefields and of the atrocious conditions in which the soldiers fought. The text is supported by a selection of original photographs that record the terrible reality of the conflict. The intervention of British, French and German troops is covered, as are the parts played by famous individuals, including Erwin Rommel, Benito Mussolini, Pietro Badoglio and Luigi Cadorna, the notorious Italian commander in chief. Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign examines an aspect of the First World War that was pivotal in the history of Italy, Austria and the Balkans.