page_title: Italian front (World War I)
section_title: Later battles for the Isonzo
hierarchical_section_title: Italian front (World War I) / History / Campaigns of 1915–1916 / Later battles for the Isonzo
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Die siegreiche Isonzo-Offensive. Der Durchstoss bei Flitsch. Trainkolonne der Verbündeten im Vormarsch auf einer der Pass-Strassen gen Flitsch. Filmtrupp No:5. Erzherzog Eugen-Strasse, Moistroka-Pass, Oktober 1917
context_page_description: The Italian front or Alpine front involved a series of battles at the border between Austria-Hungary and Italy, fought between 1915 and 1918 in the course of World War I. Following secret promises made by the Allies in the 1915 Treaty of London, Italy entered the war aiming to annex the Austrian Littoral, northern Dalmatia, and the territories of present-day Trentino and South Tyrol. Although Italy had hoped to gain the territories with a surprise offensive, the front soon bogged down into trench warfare, similar to that on the Western Front in France, but at high altitudes and with very cold winters. Fighting along the front displaced much of the local population, and several thousand civilians died from malnutrition and illness in Italian and Austrian refugee-camps. The Allied victory at Vittorio Veneto in November 1918, the disintegration of Austria-Hungary and the Italian capture of Trento, Bolzano and Trieste ended the military operations. Italy also refers to the Great War as the "Fourth War of Independence", which completed the last stage of Italian unification.
context_section_description: Later in 1916, four more battles along the Isonzo river erupted. The Sixth Battle of the Isonzo, launched by the Italians in August, resulted in a success greater than the previous attacks. The offensive gained nothing of strategic value but did take Gorizia, which boosted Italian spirits. The Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth battles of the Isonzo (14 September – 4 November) managed to accomplish little except to wear down the already exhausted armies of both nations.
  The frequency of offensives for which the Italian soldiers partook between May 1915 and August 1917, one every three months, was higher than demanded by the armies on the Western Front. Italian discipline was also harsher, with punishments for infractions of duty of a severity not known in the German, French, and British armies.
  Shellfire in the rocky terrain caused 70% more casualties per rounds expended than on the soft ground in Belgium and France. By the autumn of 1917 the Italian army had suffered most of the deaths it was to incur during the war, yet the end of the war seemed to still be an eternity away. This was not the same line of thought for the Austrians. On 25 August, the Emperor Charles wrote to the Kaiser the following: "The experience we have acquired in the eleventh battle has led me to believe that we should fare far worse in the twelfth. My commanders and brave troops have decided that such an unfortunate situation might be anticipated by an offensive. We have not the necessary means as regards troops."
caption: The Austro-Hungarian supply line over the Vršič pass, October 1917
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