Second Battle Of The Isonzo

The Second Battle of the Isonzo was fought between the armies of the Kingdom of Italy and of Austria-Hungary in the Italian Front in World War I, between July 18 and August 3, 1915.

After the failure of the First Battle of the Isonzo, two weeks earlier, Luigi Cadorna, commander-in-chief of the Italian forces, decided for a new thrust against the enemy lines with a heavier artillery support.

General Cadorna's tactics were as simple as they were harsh: after a heavy artillery bombardment, his troops were to advance frontally against the Austrian trenches and take them, after having overcome their barbed-wire fences. The insufficiency of war material — from rifles, to artillery shells to shears to cut the barbed wire — nullified their numerical superiority caused by the recent arrival of 290,000 Italian soldiers.

Cadorna launched four offensives in 1915, all along the Isonzo River. The goal of these offensives was the fortress of Gorizia, the capture of which would permit the Italian armies to pivot south and march on Trieste, or continue on to the Ljubliana Pass. All four offensives failed, resulting in some 250,000 Italian casaulties for little material gain. Cadorna would ultimately fight eleven battles on the Isonzo between 1915 and 1917. Additional forces were arrayed along the Trentino salient, attacking towards Rovereto, Trento, and Bolzano. These attacks also failed. The terrain along the Isonzo and in the Trentino province was completely unsuited for offensive warfare–mountainous and broken, with no room for maneuver.