Page - 515 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Attack 515 and, while suffering terrible sacrifices, were attempting to put Falkenhayn’s notion of ‘blood tapping’ into practice. Cramon again wanted to know whether the Austrians were not afraid of a Russian diversionary offensive. After all, the first signs of a Russian offensive had been detected as early as 14 April 1915.1213Conrad assuaged his concerns, claiming that the Russians would not be in a position to attack. After the next march battalions had been incorpo- rated, additional Imperial and Royal divisions could even be released from the Eastern Front and possibly also sent to Italy. But for now, the attack in the south-west must be made.1214 On 13 May, Conrad travelled to Vienna for the last time before the start of the of- fensive in order to inform the Emperor in person. It was still possible that the weather might put paid to the enterprise at the last minute and lead to a further delay. ‘A month ago, this would have been an ambush’, Conrad told the Monarch. Now, he said, it had become ‘a duel’.1215 The Attack On 15 May 1916, the South Tyrol offensive, which in such an over-exaggerated and vindictive way had been labelled the ‘punitive expedition’, was launched. And so be- gan a unique attempt in history to begin a huge operation with two armies  – in other words, an entire army group  – in a high and medium-range mountain region and to push through southwards towards the Veneto plain and the lowlands of the Po River. The power of the artillery fire and the storming of the Italian positions by the infantry masses across snow that was still 20 cm deep had an exceptional and almost unreal quality. It was the same kind of attempt at revolutionising warfare as the strategic con- cept of ‘blood tapping’ practiced by Falkenhayn at Verdun. The two Imperial and Royal armies in the main area of attack comprised around 157,000 men altogether, while the Italian 1st Army facing them consisted of 114,000 men. With a superiority of numbers that was even less than one-and-a-half times the number of enemy troops, the balance of forces was not unequivocally clear. After preparatory fire that lasted about two hours, the infantry troops began to move. To the south of Rovereto, the troops of the Imperial and Royal VIII Corps (under General of Artillery Scheuchenstuel) made good progress. In the Terragnolo Valley, one locality af- ter another was taken. In the Sugana Valley, the Italians were surprised outright by the Imperial and Royal XVII Corps (under General of Infantry Křitek), which belonged to the 3rd Army, and hastily retreated. The Austro-Hungarian artillery fired at the Italian positions and cleared the way for its own infantry. The excessively heavy guns, with a range of over 15 kilometres, were able to hit their targets with precision thanks to the