Page - 512 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

512 South Tyrol : The End of an Illusion (I) lean National Defence Command. The latter was in turn given the command of the 11th Army. And this could not remain a secret. When the Germans first began to ask questions, attempts were made to explain the destination of the divisions by claiming that the forthcoming Fifth Battle of the Isonzo had made the relocations necessary. However, this battle ended after just a few days, when it was cut short by the Italians. Despite all the machinations aimed at preserving secrecy, the German liaison officers already knew by around 25 March of the overall plans and, a few days later, learned of the details of the planned offensive. The Italians had been alerted even earlier, and also had an overview of the situation by the end of March and beginning of April. The Army High Command wanted to arrange for a series of deflection manoeuvres to be conducted in order to fool the Ital- ians, but nothing more of any consequence was done. The Navy, which was ordered to act along similar lines as it had done at the beginning of the war with Italy, felt itself unable to take such a step. Its commander, Admiral of the Fleet Haus, sent a dispatch to Conrad stating that so many torpedo vessels had become inoperative that there was no guarantee that the battleships could be protected against submarines and mines. An angry Conrad then wrote back that he would make a note of the low value of the bat- tleships for later.1205 An air attack on bridges in the hinterland behind the Isonzo front and on railway facilities was repeatedly delayed, before the Army High Command fi- nally demanded in no uncertain terms that it take place on 27 March. On this day, how- ever, the weather was poor, the bombers failed to find their targets, and four aeroplanes were lost. On 18 April, the Italians finally achieved a spectacular success in the Dolo- mites : after months of preparation, they detonated the peak of the Col di Lana. It was the first large-scale mine detonation of the mountain war. The sound of drilling that had been heard since January had been initially interpreted by the Austrians occupying the mountain as Italian cavern construction. Then they became suspicious and began to press ahead with counter-tunnels. Even so, it was not clear what was happening below the peak. Instead of reducing the garrison on the peak to just a few men, however, half a battalion remained in position among the rocks  – until during the night of 18 April the mine with its 5,500 kilograms of dynamite was ignited. Of the 280-man garrison from the Tyrolean Rifle Regiment No. 2, over 100 were buried under the rocks. The prominent peak belonged to the Italians. Conrad’s only response to this dramatic episode in the mountain war was to say that ‘the defence of Tyrol is rather passive’.1206 By contrast, in Vienna, the detonation of the peak caused a great upset, which Conrad was at a loss to understand. He compared the last defensive success in Bessarabia, which had led to the loss of nearly 16,000 men, to the Col di Lana and wrote derisively : ‘Now […] the small Col di Lana heap (there is no more space than that), which is occupied by 2 companies at most, is ascribed such significance.’1207