Page - 999 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Attack by the Allies 999 On 24 October 1918, the Italians opened their offensive on the mountain front. It was the anniversary of the start of the breakthrough Battle of Flitsch-Tolmein. One year after their serious defeat, which had even appeared catastrophic, the Italians gathered with Entente troops to apply the death blow to the Habsburg Monarchy. The Allies had an oppressive superiority. The Imperial and Royal Airship Divisions, for example, could offer only 30 aeroplanes against the approximately 600 Allied aeroplanes.2477 Al- most like an ambush, the artillery bombardment commenced from the Grappa massif on Monte Tomba. Shortly thereafter, thousands of guns fired along the entire front. A phenomenen manifested itself in the process : the troops under fire defended them- selves as though there were no collapsing front and no homeland drifting apart. They did what most troops do when they are attacked. They fought for their lives. The mil- itary organisation offered a quantum of security. There were regiments with losses of 30 to 70 per cent.2478 Poles, Ruthenians, Czechs and Hungarians fought, even though they had already long since made it clear that it was no longer their war. The report of the Army High Command to the Emperor to the effect that the offensive had begun as expected but that there was no cause for concern, however, had to be regarded as premature after only a few hours. The Italians had not expected to be successful with their offensive on the very first day. The fact that it was ultimately only a question of time, however, had to be clear to everyone. The losses of the Imperial and Royal troops were high, too high  – and they could not be replaced. The only thing that benefitted them was the circumstance that they had prepared for months for this fighting. In South Tyrol, so-called ‘winter posi- tions’ had been prepared, to which the soldiers could fall back. All orderliness came to an end, however, when on 24 October a new directive of the Hungarian government to the Honvéd and the Hungarian members of the Common Army arrived, calling on them to return home immediately.2479 Budapest hoped with the help of the Hungarian soldiers withdrawn from the south-western front to consolidate the Balkan front and avert the danger for Hungary in the south. On the second day of the Italian offensive, the Austro-Hungarian troops began to abandon terrain. Their fighting capacity and the will to resist decreased almost by the hour. Some troop bodies no longer had any officers who had not at least been wounded.2480 The last reserves were now to be thrown into the defence, but one troop body after another refused. On 24 October the Mountain Rifle Regiment No. 2 mutinied in Ljubljana. Alongside almost all Hungarian troops, the Czech troops, who had remained loyal to the last, finally also defied their superiors, and no longer wanted to advance into the fire. The personnel of the 13th, 26th and 43rd Territorial Infantry Divisions, as well as the Imperial and Royal 29th Infantry Divi- sion, the Moravian 5th Infantry Division and others, demanded a departure from the battlefield. Two Croatian divisions, the 42rd and the 57th, also mutinied.2481 Only in individual cases was it possible to convince a few people to advance together. The others