Cornwall M. The Undermining of Austria-Hungary: The Battle for Hearts and Minds

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Austria-Hungary's Campaign

against Italy

4.1 The Italian target

The military disaster which overtook the Italians at Caporetto in October 1917

has never been attributed to any great extent to the machinations of `enemy

propaganda'. More conventional `military' reasons are usually cited in explana-

tion. General

Luigi Cadorna, the overbearing and inflexible Chief of Staff of the

Italian army, had since May 1915 concentrated almost overwhelmingly on

offensive operations against Austria-Hungary on the Giulian front. He had

launched 11 major battles on the river Isonzo, `beating inexorably on the iron

doors of the enemy', in the hope that eventually the break-through would

come and carry his troops forward to Trieste and Vienna.

The result was that

the Italians had little experience of defensive warfare except during Austria's

Trentino offensive in May 1916; and the deficiencies in Cadorna's defences and

disposition of reserves in the weeks before Caporetto showed that few lessons

had been learnt. Similarly, Italian tactics had generally not kept pace with those

of their allies on the Western Front: the Italians were especially backward in

their use of artillery, failing to coordinate artillery fire with infantry operations.

But it

was perhaps above all the boldness of the enemy plan and the element

of surprise which was crucial to its success in October 1917. In early September,

the AOK and the DOHL had resolved for the first time to launch a joint

offensive on the Italian Front, choosing for the main thrust the thinly defended

sector of Flitsch-Tolmein north of Gorizia.

What began as a cautious Austrian

design to relieve Italian pressure on the Isonzo became under German influence

an ambitious attempt, concentrating on penetrating the valleys, to push the

enemy back onto the plains behind the river Tagliamento. The operation, in

the words of the Commission which later investigated Caporetto, `was brilliant,

extremely daring and carried out with energy, shrewdness and the use of

methods which were new to us'.

These included a massive increase in artillery

and the employment of phosgene gas for the first time on the Italian Front.

Austria-Hungary's Campaign against Italy 75

While the German 14th army under General Otto von Below was being con-

structed in

the crucial offensive sector, through the astonishing use of 2400

trains to bring up men and materiel, the Central Powers undertook a diversion.

German Alpine troops were at first dispatched to the Trentino and in October

Emperor Karl inspected the forces there so as to distract Italy's attention; mean-

while, German

troops who were clustered in the front line of the 14th army

were ordered to wear Austrian caps.

These red herrings were partially success-

ful. Cadorna,

ever mindful of the near-disaster of May 1916, remained unsure

about the significance of movements in the Tyrol, while on the Giulian front

weather conditions in October ± constant rain and fog ± aided the enemy

camouflage and hindered Italian air reconnaissance.

Yet it

is undisputed that the Italian Comando Supremo [CS] had abundant

evidence of Austro-German designs in the weeks before the offensive.

On top

of steady reports about accumulating forces in the Flitsch-Tolmein region, the

Intelligence service knew from Czech and Romanian officer deserters on 20±1

October precise details about the enemy plans and line-up. Where the service

failed was not in gathering accurate information, but in sifting and interpreting

it correctly. For in contrast to the innovative and imaginative work by some

Italian Intelligence officers attached to the individual armies, there existed

something of an `Intelligence muddle' [ guazzabuglio] at the CS.

The Uffizio

Situazione, Cadorna's real Intelligence section, showed `excessive diffidence'

in the face of the mounting evidence, preferring to interpret it as a range of

impending local attacks. This in turn certainly matched Cadorna's own view-

point. He

found it difficult, especially at a time when the season was so far

advanced, to conceive of the enemy launching a major offensive rather than

responding to Italy's initiatives, and this despite the opportunities now avail-

able to

the Central Powers because of the rapid disintegration of the Russian

army. It was in a relaxed frame of mind that the Chief of Staff retired to his villa

at Vicenza for a fortnight in October 1917, having issued few specific orders to

his troops in the case of an enemy attack.

On 24 October the enemy managed to break through all Italian defences and

advance, past the village of Caporetto, 20 miles in one day. Cadorna and others

immediately ascribed this success and the subsequent disintegration of the

Italian 2nd army not to military factors, but to `defeatist propaganda' which had

allegedly been steadily undermining Italian morale. In the view of Brigadier-

General Charles Delme

-Radcliffe, influential head of the British Military

Mission and fully cognisant of CS thinking, the rout was `brought about by

the deliberate and premeditated action of the troops in dropping their equip-

ment and

abandoning their positions under the instigation of . . . insidious

propaganda conducted by pacifists, socialists and enemy agents'.

Throwing

the blame for low morale onto `outsiders' like this had been a favourite hobby

of Cadorna for years; in the summer of 1917 he had sent four notorious letters

76 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

to the Italian government of Paolo Boselli, warning it to act rigidly against

defeatist forces in the interior which were damaging morale in the war zone.

Certainly it was the case, partly because of the way in which Italy had entered

the war in May 1915 (pushed in by a political minority leading an unpoliticized

majority of the population), that the country as a whole had never been

properly mobilized for the war effort. Its morale and disunited consciousness

could usefully be compared to the situation in Austria-Hungary. In November

1916, it is true, Boselli had responded to press criticism and entrusted one of his

cabinet ministers, Vittorio Scialoja, with the role of nurturing propaganda at

home and abroad. Scialoja seems to have used to good effect a `Union of Italian

teachers' (Unione degli insegnanti italiani per la guerra nazionale) which he

had founded himself, but his efforts to raise national morale were always

limited by the lack of funding from the Italian Treasury.

For many civilians

the war was not their war, nor a life and death struggle; even less was it to be

labelled the fourth war of the Risorgimento. Rather it was an experience which

affected them chiefly because of the horrors faced by their loved ones at the

front and, by 1917, the economic pinch beginning to affect them at home.

Their own war-weariness could not fail to interact with that of their relatives in

the war zone. They could be expected to urge their men, that instead of

returning from leave, they should join the mass of deserters in the hinterland

which one historian has recently estimated at 100 000 on the eve of Capor-

etto. Thus, as one Italian general remarked later, `every relative corrupted a

relative'.

This phenomenon, however, must be kept in proportion. The Com-

mission which

investigated Caporetto was admirably careful when assessing

the effects of such a vague concept as `defeatist propaganda'. It characterized

defeatism among the troops as a complex mixture of tendencies with diverse

origins. It acknowledged that certain events in 1917 outside the war zone

probably damaged troop morale. These included news of the disintegration of

the Russian army as well as Pope Benedict's peace initiative; but the Commis-

sion was

far less convinced about the effect of the violent riots which took place

in August in Turin, or about the CS claim of widespread socialist subversion in

Italy. Despite clear signs that the hinterland was not sufficiently mobilized for

war, the Commission came to the conclusion that defeatism in the army could

largely be laid at the door of the military authorities themselves, caused by

military deficiencies and military errors.

Foremost among military failings was the simple absence of victory. After 30

months of warfare the Italians had made insignificant advances in their front

line while sacrificing over 300 000 men. Even the trumpeted conquest of the

Bainsizza plateau in August 1917 had been achieved at enormous human

expense. The rank and file felt keenly this discrepancy between gain and sacri-

fice, all

the more so as many of them had never come to terms with the idea of

Austria-Hungary as a real enemy; by 1917 they were beginning to despair that

Austria-Hungary's Campaign against Italy 77

their task would ever be finished. With this mentality, they increasingly

resented their superiors' steady preference for ostentatious offensives. Their

resentment was even more deep-seated because of the type of regime which

Cadorna was running in the war zone. He insisted on maintaining merciless

discipline of a kind which far exceeded that in other belligerent armies. While it

has been calculated that one in every dozen Italian soldiers was brought before

a military tribunal during the war, the CS also encouraged summary executions

for petty disobedience. For example, General Andrea Graziani, later revered as

commander of the Czechoslovak Legion, was not unusual in ordering one

soldier to be executed on the spot for continuing to smoke a pipe during an

inspection.

Punishment therefore far exceeded the crime, leaving troops with

the feeling that the system of discipline was arbitrary and unjust.

It might

also be suggested, at least according to the Commission of inquiry,

that Italian soldiers were less responsive to mechanical discipline (allegedly on

the German model) and needed a more sensitive approach from their officers.

This was a view shared by one British commander: `The besetting sin of the

Italian soldier is vanity ± if that bubble is pricked he deflates into a useless pulp,

but tell him that you trust him and that he really is a fine fellow and he will

fight for you to the death.'

Instead of this, the authorities prior to Caporetto

had maintained discipline largely by coercion. The Italian soldiers' `sensitive

nature' was even used by some commanders to justify tight control. Thus

General Capello, head of the infamous 2nd army, kept his troops in the rear

in constant activity on the grounds that `our soldiers are too southern to be

spontaneously or voluntarily active'.

The result

of this regime was that the men were often caught between two

horrors: on the one hand, the misery of lengthy stays in what they termed the

`slaughter-house' of the trenches, with inadequate food, water or sanitary con-

ditions; on

the other, the experience of rigid discipline and meagre recreation

when away from the front line. In the 2nd army, according to the Commission,

many soldiers returned to the trenches more exhausted than previously.

They

also had few opportunities to take full leave (perhaps vital to their morale in

view of tight Italian family bonds), since the CS viewed the interior as the major

source of `defeatism' and, at most, allotted the men a fortnight every year. This

was a gnawing source of discontent and a prime motive behind the Catanzaro

mutiny in July 1917. The Italian military authorities, in short, shared the out-

look of

their Austro-Hungarian contemporaries in being far more concerned

about keeping their troops under surveillance, immune from potential dangers,

than they were about actively boosting their morale. Before Caporetto there

was no consistent system of official propaganda among the troops. In the

Italian 1st army, commanded by the enlightened General Pecori-Giraldi,

some initiative had been taken to set up special rest homes (case del soldato)

near the front, where soldiers could go to recuperate; the idea spread and the

78 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

homes numbered 170 by October 1917. But propaganda in the army as a whole

was usually limited to occasional, organized meetings between officers and

men. Such `pep talks' were often counter-productive, either because the

themes addressed were alien to the actual experience of life in the trenches,

or ± more importantly ± because the officers or propagandists were held in

such low esteem by the rank and file. During the war, as in other armies, the

original officer corps had been decimated, but the CS then exacerbated the

resulting instability by punishing officers who `failed' in their duties; for in-

stance, in

the space of ten months, 24 corps commanders were dismissed from

their posts.

The junior officers who were rapidly promoted in their stead

lacked the authority which could only come from participating in the horrors

of the front. Many remained aloof, failing to nurture their troops' morale

through regular contact; others perhaps, were too familiar or lenient in

their relations. But their general inexperience was, as Delme

-Radcliffe noted,

`one of the most important causes which adversely affects the morale of the

troops'.

Before Caporetto, it was this combination of experiences in the war zone

which effectively depressed the morale of the Italian army. If the breakthrough

itself was primarily due to enemy tactics and the Italians' misreading of the

situation, the rout which followed seems to have owed much to longstanding

grievances which had bred a defeatist mentality. A good number of Italian

soldiers viewed Caporetto not as a disaster, but as `the end of a nightmare . . . a

condition of collective relief and happiness'.

It was this mentality which

Austrian front propaganda now sought to exploit.

4.2 The launch of an Austrian campaign

The Italian commissioners who investigated Caporetto gave due attention to

the nebulous rumours about `enemy propaganda', but came to no firm conclu-

sions. Although

they suggested that enemy agents had indeed been encour-

aging defeatism

in the Italian hinterland, they considered such contacts too

`complex' to investigate, adding only that the number of such agents could

not have been very extensive and should not deflect attention away from the

essentially military causes of defeatism.

With only slightly more substance,

the Commission tackled the issue of enemy propaganda at the front itself. They

were able to cite a CS circular from 18 June 1916 on the subject of neutralizing

Austrian propaganda among the Italian troops.

From this document (which

incidentally was well known to the AOK as well),

it emerges that the Austrians

had been using propaganda against Italy for some time, sending over leaflets

which exalted Austrian successes or promised good treatment for Italian prison-

ers of

war. Yet, although this activity may have increased in the spring of

1917,

the impression remains that these were sporadic efforts left to local

Austria-Hungary's Campaign against Italy 79

officers' initiative which, as on the Eastern Front, lacked any coordination until

the AOK embarked on a concrete campaign.

As for

the weeks before Caporetto, the Commission suspected correctly that a

trickle of `debilitating propaganda' was reaching some Italian troops on the

Giulian front.

One Austrian officer, characteristically sceptical of such work,

wrote later that neither the Italian officers nor their men had responded: `in

most sectors the results were zero'.

But the evidence of one Austrian propa-

gandist, Franz

Kreuz, is equally viable. When Kreuz fell into Italian hands in

early 1918 he revealed to his captors an unusual story. Before the war, he

claimed, he had worked as a waiter in hotels on Lake Garda and, as a linguist,

had come to the attention of the AOK. It had sent him to a `propaganda school'

at Dresden and thence to the Russian front where in 1917, he boasted, he

had secured the `highest awards' as a propagandist. In September he had

been transferred to the Giulian front and, at Rombon and C

iginj

(near Flitsch

and Tolmein respectively), began to contact Italians in the weeks before the

offensive.

There he was operating in a sector which some Italians already

described wittily as `the front of the separate peace' because of its high incid-

ence of

fraternization.

Besides taking them gifts and assuring them of his

friendship, he subtly warned them little by little of the approaching danger:

they ought to desert since, `the German chemists have invented terrible weap-

ons' ±

gas ± and `no mask will be able to protect you'. His departing words for

them were equally striking: `Goodbye to all of you who will remain alive,

goodbye too to those who will not live!'

Even allowing for Kreuz's exaggera-

tions, the

implication of his account, that gas was used more as a psychological

weapon against Italy than as a material weapon, seems to ring true to German

military hopes at the time.

More importantly, his account is further testi-

mony to

the growing appreciation during 1917 of front propaganda as a

respectable military occupation. Kreuz himself expressed pride in his work:

We who

execute ideas are also soldiers, just like those others who are dying

with a rifle in their hand. I maintain that we are more than soldiers, for our

work is more dangerous and requires intelligence and daring bravery to such

a degree that one man in every ten thousand is capable.

These words in some ways echo Arz's praise for the propagandists in August

1917. And many at the AOK were, as we have seen, equally appreciative after

their experiences on the Eastern Front, now envisaging Italy as the next target.

Whether Max Ronge, head of Austrian military Intelligence, had a hand in

preparing the new campaign against Italy is not clear. On 12 September he had

met his German counterpart at Baden to discuss Intelligence arrangements for

the Caporetto offensive, but his memoirs make no mention at all of preparing

propaganda in this direction.

By October, however, the Austrians were

80 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

certainly clear about their new target. They felt, from various Intelligence

sources, that the situation in Italy could well be such as to provoke a revolution

if their autumn offensive was successful. One of their sources for such optimism

was `Bandino', an agent in Berne who had his own contacts in Milan and

elsewhere. In early October Bandino painted for the AOK a strikingly bleak

picture of Italy. He predicted that peace would come if the Central Powers

defeated Italy on the battlefield, occupied Italian territory and simultaneously

swamped Italy with leaflets. The manifestos should announce that the Habs-

burg regime

was no longer the same which had oppressed northern Italy in

1848, that it planned no conquests and had no bone to pick with the Italian

people, only with their `false and treacherous government'. Bandino argued

that such arguments would find a willing ear among Italy's growing socialist

and pacifist movement. Indeed, their agitation, coupled with the clear evidence

of military unrest, would `undoubtedly produce in the last weeks of November a

general movement of rebellion' in Italy, leading on to full revolution with

Soviets and a general strike on the Russian model.

Bandino's ideas were among those incorporated into the AOK's first guide-

lines about

propaganda against Italy, drawn up in a memorandum on 18

October, a week before the Caporetto offensive. In assessing the prospects for

a successful campaign, the memorandum fixed upon the pacifist spirit in Italy

and the reports of unrest, all of which suggested that a military setback might

result in revolution. But whether or not this occurred, the Austrians still felt

that a military defeat would produce an environment to be exploited in their

propaganda. They could dwell on the way in which Italy was economically

isolated, dependent on imports which were steadily restricted because of the

U-boat war; they could emphasize the indifference of Italy's allies, especially

England which treated Italy as a `spineless tool'; and, as in Russia, they could

bring home to the Italian population the `reality' of the Central Powers' success

in the war. Apart from this, the AOK guidelines noted the real prospects for

propaganda amongst the Italian troops. They were quite accurate in their

portrayal of Cadorna's army, an army where discipline was exceptionally

harsh, where the men distrusted their junior officers, where desertion was rife

(30 000 deserters in Milan alone according to Bandino), and where war-weari-

ness was a natural response to the lack of military achievement: namely, that

for every square kilometre conquered, about 5400 Italians had lost their lives.

All this material, according to Baden, could be used to advance the will towards

peace: `In conclusion it might still be noted that the [Italian] army with its

Romance character will be easier to influence than the Russian. Today's Italians

will find it hard to endure a powerful setback. But that is the moment to bring

propaganda into action.'

The main campaign therefore was to begin after the offensive had succeeded,

in the same way as the Central Powers had resurrected propaganda in the East

Austria-Hungary's Campaign against Italy 81

after their advances in August 1917. However, the AOK had also already

decided to use its proven weapon prior to the offensive. Whether its orders

encompassed the type of activity engaged in by Franz Kreuz is unclear. But on

15 October Baden had ordered that planes should be used to distribute leaflets

over the Italian army, specifying further that the propaganda should be factual

so that it would not be possible for unlucky pilots to be court martialled by the

Italians.

The background to this command was the AOK's own resolution,

from earlier in the war (firstly in July 1916), that enemy pilots who were found

spreading `treason' or openly inciting desertion would be court martialled.

The AOK's new commitment to this decision was to limit the type of material

which could be employed in its campaign against Italy. But it did not stop more

indirect subversion. Thus, in October 1917 Austrian planes distributed exact

facsimiles of leading Italian newspapers such as Corriere della Sera and Giornale

d'Italia, carrying the `treasonable' message that revolution had already broken

out in Italy.

And after the break-through, the fleeing troops were showered

with manifestos which Baden had carefully prepared beforehand:

Italians! With

the greatest and seemingly most justified hopes, you marched

off twenty-nine months ago to secure a mass of long-range goals against

Austria-Hungary. In eleven Isonzo battles and numerous Alpine engage-

ments you

have bloodily come to blows, but without even being able to

achieve your short-term goals.

The Austro-Hungarian

and German troops have now broken through your

lines. They fight not against the Italian people, they fight against your

perfidious government which wants to wrest from the Monarchy territory

which has belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy for centuries.

The Monarchy

has to defend itself against this attack. We want our territ-

ory to

remain intact. On this basis we are always ready to conclude peace.

You could have this peace tomorrow. We are also ready to supply you then

with coal and grain of which we have quite enough. Thus your plight would

come to an end.

Your government

alone is responsible for the tragic war in your country

and all the consequences, the losses, the lack of everything: they are pre-

venting peace

because they will not give up their mad plans for conquest.

It might be expected that many Italians would agree with these thoughts as

they fled back to the river Tagliamento and from there back to the river Piave.

In the following weeks, aircraft of the Habsburg navy also scattered thousands

of leaflets over the Albanian front and the Italian hinterland.

Similarly, the

KPQ contributed in its own way by arranging for pacifist material to be

smuggled into Italy via neutral Switzerland.

Yet despite what seems to have

been a consciously concerted Austrian effort, an Italian revolution was not,

82 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

of course, one of the results of Caporetto. Baden was not too disappointed.

As recorded in the October guidelines, the confused atmosphere after any dis-

aster would

give ample scope for propaganda. As soon as the Italian Front

had stabilized, it would be possible to put the guidelines fully into operation.

The new

Italian Front, stationary only by the end of 1917, was to follow

roughly the same line until the end of the war. As in the years 1915±17, it still

stretched from Switzerland to the Adriatic, and in the mountainous west ± the

area of the Austrian 10th army [10AK] ± it had not been altered by Caporetto.

To the east, however, the Central Powers had conquered the whole of Venetia

and shortened the front by a third from the river Astico to the sea. In the

Trentino, the forces of Conrad von Ho

tzendorf

had pushed forward from the

relative comfort of Val Sugana to take up positions on the Asiago plateau; on

the plains, the Austro-German armies by 10 November had been brought to a

halt at the river Piave. The result was to divide the front neatly into two types of

terrain and climate. On the one hand there was the mountainous and Alpine

region of south Tyrol, where the 10AK (FM Krobatin) and 11AK (GO Scheu-

chenstuel) constituted

the Heeresgruppe Conrad. On the other hand, there was

the front along the fast-flowing river Piave. Here in January 1918 a new Heeres-

gruppe of

Field Marshal Svetozar Boroevic

was created, consisting of an Isonzo

army (usually abbreviated to KISA, under GO Wurm) and a new 6AK (under

Archduke Joseph) to replace German troops who had departed again for the

Western Front. Both types of terrain on the new front, the mountains and the

river Piave, were to be serious obstacles to oral propaganda, the kind which had

proved to be so effective on the Eastern Front.

The campaign

which Baden launched on 5 December 1917

would prove to

be at its most vigorous during the first six months of 1918. In fact, it would last

longer than the Russian campaign of 1917, and yet it was destined ultimately to

fail. At first, only certain sectors of the front like the 10th army could begin

work, for in December on the front of the 11th army hostilities continued.

Conrad there finally had some glory, taking the Meletta massif (which he later

termed `my last wartime success')

and pushing forward on both sides of the

river Brenta to capture both Monte Asolone and Col del Rosso by Christmas.

If this and the winter weather postponed the propaganda campaign for the

11AK, the obstacles on the Piave front were to be slightly different. Not only did

the barrier of the river require some rethinking of propaganda methods, but the

6AK, when established on the Upper Piave in early January, discovered that

their target was missing. Opposite them were newly arrived British and French

divisions, whom Baden never considered worth trying to subvert.

Baden gave clear instructions on how the campaign should be organized.

In contrast to the Russian campaign where Max Ronge and his Intelligence

section had been in overall control, that against Italy was to be supervised

until September 1918 by the Operations Section of the AOK.

It supplied

7TH

10TH

11TH

6TH

3RD

8TH

4TH

6TH

1ST

ISONZO

VAL SUGANA

Piave

Conegliano

Piave

MONTELLO

M. GRAPPA

M. PERTICA

Bassano

CIMA TRE

PEZZI

CIMONE

Asiago

Chiese

Malcesine

DOSSO

VAL DEI CONCEI

LAKE GARDA

Adige

VICENZA

Astico

Brenta

Abano

Mogliano

VENICE

The front

Italian

6TH

8TH

VAL D’ASSA

TRENTO

TONALE

PASS

Levico

Castello Tesino

Tezze

Feltre

Vittorio

Fossalta

di Piave

Mirabella

Sandrigo

Riva

PADUA

Cavazuccherina

Rivers

Austrian

armies

Key

VERONA

Map 4.1 The Italian Front in 1918