Page - 404 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

404 The Third Front After the first failure, the Chief of the Italian General Staff selected two focal points : the 2nd Army was to attack the bridgehead at Gorizia, and the 3rd Army the karst descent between Sagrado and Monfalcone, the so-called Doberdò Plateau. This rocky area, with sparse vegetation, would very soon turn out to be a murderous stone desert, but it did have one advantage : there were only very few houses and, accordingly, few people who had to be evacuated. The military was in its element, and as long as the Imperial and Royal troops dominated the Karst heights, the Italians appeared to find it too risky to make a foray along the coast to Trieste. On the Austrian side, the success of the defensive action during these first few days brought a growing sense of confidence that for a time grew into a feeling of superiority, since an enemy who was numerically far superior had been resisted in hastily prepared positions and under conditions that had been anything but ideal. The success of the defence clearly also encouraged the Army High Command to float ideas of conducting an offensive against Italy, which had at first been rejected as almost absurd. Here, it was assumed that the operational and strategic disposition would be similar to that which had been the case with Russia, on which attempts had also been made to impose the law of action through an early offensive. However, the troops on the Imperial and Royal south-western front were certainly too weak to conduct an offensive. In order to become capable of an attack, even to a limited extent, they needed reinforcements from the east- ern front. Thus, once again the dilemma arose for Austria-Hungary that had been a bur- den to the Germans in the interim, namely the question of which theatre of war had the greatest priority. In Austria-Hungary, the decision had very clearly been taken in favour of the Russian theatre of war following the failure of the three offensives against Serbia. Now, the issue of priority re-surfaced, and presented itself with greater urgency than ever. The advisor to the Army High Command on Italian matters, Lieutenant Colonel Karl Schneller, already noted on 11 June 1915 in connection with the attack on Lviv (Lemberg), that he regarded it as futile. By contrast, it would be far more advantageous ‘to throw ourselves at the southern enemy, in other words, in particular to conduct a destructive strike against the Italians, which could succeed four weeks after completion of deployment’.957 However, Schneller failed to convince Conrad with this idea. The capture of Lviv on 22 June did however make troops and above all artillery available there, which were then to be directly transported to the south-west. Schneller also had a very clear vision in this regard, and noted further : ‘Today already talk to Pflug [the artillery advisor in the Army High Command] about the artillery preparation for an attack, beginning from the plateau, towards the rear of the main enemy force.’ In this way, the idea was formed that would only be implemented a year later, and which aimed at operating towards the rear of the Italians from the mountains and the heights of the Sette Comuni, and beating the entire Italian troop force, which was gathered in the north-east of Italy, in a vast encirclement battle.