Third Battle of Monte Grappa

The Third Battle of Monte Grappa was the mountain part of the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, the last offensive of the Italian army. On 24 October 1918, the first anniversary of Caporetto, General Gaetano Giardino’s Italian 4th Army attacked the Austro-Hungarian positions in the Grappa massif, between the Brenta and the Piave. It was to pin down the Austrian reserves before the main forces crossed the river, and to descend on the enemy’s rear at Feltre. The hungry and exhausted soldiers of the monarchy, who were expecting an armistice rather than a battle, nevertheless defended themselves with a tenacity that surprised both sides. For almost a week they beat off assaults on the rocky summits of Asolone, Pertica, Solarolo and Spinoncia, often retaking by counter-attack what they had lost in the morning. The Italians lost more than 25,000 men in those days. Only when the main attack had crossed the Piave and the Austro-Hungarian front on the plain had collapsed did the troops of the Belluno Group abandon the massif, on the night of 30–31 October. On 31 October the Italians entered Feltre, and on 1 November Primolano in the Brenta valley.

Name and dates

The Italians count the fighting for the Grappa as separate battles. The first was fought in November and December 1917, when the Italian army stopped the pursuit from Caporetto here, the second in June 1918, during the last Austro-Hungarian offensive, and the third in October 1918, as part of the Battle of Vittorio Veneto. Some Italian works distinguish more rounds of fighting and call this last one the “battle of victory”. The Austrian official history (Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg) describes it as the defensive battle in the Grappa mountains and dates it to 24–28 October, that is, to the days in which, in its account, the Italian attack was repulsed.

We adopt the dates 24 October – 1 November 1918. At dawn on 24 October the 4th Army went over to the assault. The fighting continued with pauses until 30 October, and on the night of 30–31 October the Austrians abandoned the massif. On 31 October and 1 November Italian divisions occupied the Feltre basin and the Brenta valley as far as Primolano, that is, all the objectives set for them before the battle. The 4th Army then set off in pursuit towards Trento, which was already part of the general pursuit after the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian army. Some Italian works end the battle on 31 October, the day Feltre was taken.

Background

Monte Grappa, a massif 1,775 metres high, rises above the Venetian plain between the Brenta valley to the west and the Piave gorge to the east. After the defeat at Caporetto it became the most important pillar of the Italian defence. If the enemy had come down from here to Bassano, he would have found himself in the rear of the armies defending the Piave. As early as autumn 1916 General Luigi Cadorna had ordered roads, caverns, cableways and a water supply to be built in the massif. In the First Battle of the Piave, in November and December 1917, the Austrians and Germans took several summits here, among them Monte Pertica and Monte Asolone, but did not come down to the plain. In June 1918, in the Second Battle of the Piave, the Austrians attacked on the Grappa again and took several positions, among them Col Moschin, which was retaken by counter-attack the next day by the arditi of Major Giovanni Messe. From then on the front in the massif ran across summits from which the Austrians looked down on the plain, while the Italians held the top of the Grappa itself.

The Chief of Staff of the Italian army, General Armando Diaz, decided to break the front on the middle Piave and strike towards Vittorio. The attack on the Grappa was at first only to pin down the Austrian reserves. Diaz feared, however, that the Austrians might strike from the massif at the flank of the armies crossing the river, and his plan provided that in the second phase the 4th Army, together with the neighbouring 12th Army, would advance north on Feltre and cut off the Austrian troops in the mountains from those on the plain. When the rains swelled the Piave and the offensive had to be postponed, Diaz moved another 400 guns to the Grappa and gave Giardino the task of an independent, determined attack.

According to the British official history the Austro-Hungarian Belluno Group, commanded by General Ferdinand von Goglia and subordinate to the army group of Field Marshal Svetozar Boroević, had at most twelve weak divisions between the Brenta and the Piave, nine of them in the front line. They were attacked by nine Italian divisions, with three in the corps reserve of the 4th Army and with the I Corps of the 12th Army on the right wing. According to Italian works each side had about 1,400 guns in the massif. The soldiers of the monarchy were underfed, weakened by disease and weary of the war, and after Emperor Charles’s manifesto of 16 October many of them thought only of going home.

The first day (24 October)

The Italian artillery opened fire at about three in the morning, and the bombardment reached its greatest intensity in the morning. The massif was wrapped in cloud and mist, which reduced the effect of the fire. On the left wing the IX Corps of General Emilio De Bono attacked Monte Asolone, but a counter-attack by Austrian regiments threw its brigades back to their starting positions. At Monte Pertica the Pesaro Brigade twice reached the summit and was twice driven off it. The Cremona Brigade broke through onto the Prassolan ridge, but there the Austrian artillery cut it off and it lost nearly a thousand men. The attack on the Solarolo ridge and Monte Spinoncia broke down, and in the Alano valley above the Piave a Hungarian Honvéd regiment threw back the brigades of the 12th Army. The only more lasting success of the day was the capture of Monte Valderoa by the Aosta Brigade.

At 3 p.m. Giardino halted the attacks. According to Italian sources his army had by then lost more than 3,000 men and taken about 1,800 prisoners. The Austrian official history wrote that by evening the attack had been “completely shattered”, and stressed that regiments made up of Germans, Hungarians, Poles, Czechs, Croats, Serbs, Romanians, Slovenes and Slovaks had once more fought shoulder to shoulder. The swollen Piave did not allow the main forces to cross the river that day, so in the evening the Italian Supreme Command ordered Giardino to go on attacking in order to keep pinning down the enemy’s reserves.

Assaults and counter-attacks (25–29 October)

On 25 October the 18th Division reached Col della Berretta, but before noon a counter-attack forced it to withdraw. That day the Pesaro Brigade took the summit of Monte Pertica and held it, while the attacks on the Solarolo ridge cost hundreds more killed and wounded. On 26 October the Italians, led by Major Messe’s arditi, again reached the summit of Asolone but were driven off it, and De Bono’s last attack at 4 p.m. failed. Giardino admitted that the attack had not brought a decision, and in the evening Diaz agreed to break it off. That same evening the water in the Piave began to fall, and Diaz gave the order for the main forces to cross.

Before dawn on 27 October the Austrians went over to counter-attacks. They retook most of Monte Valderoa, and in the morning also the summit of Pertica, which the Italian 41st Infantry Regiment recovered only at the fifth attempt. According to Italian sources Pertica and Valderoa remained in Italian hands from then on. The Austrian official history claims, by contrast, that the defenders recovered all the positions they had lost, and that the three days of fighting were “equivalent to a defeat” for the Italians and raised the spirits of the Austro-Hungarian army. The British official history, relying on Italian sources, writes that of the summits taken in no man’s land the Italians kept only two, and that the counter-attack was the Austrians’ last offensive effort on this front.

On 28 October an Austrian attack on Valderoa was held, and Giardino received orders to resume the attacks. On the Piave the British, French and Italians already held bridgeheads on the left bank, and more and more regiments of the Austro-Hungarian army were refusing to fight. Even so, at nine in the morning on 29 October Messe’s arditi and the IX Corps attacked Monte Asolone and Col della Berretta again. They lost their first gains to counter-attacks and by eleven were back at their starting positions, and Messe himself was wounded. At Pertica nothing was achieved either. The British official history notes that on that day too the Austrians defended themselves on the Grappa with obstinacy.

The Austrian withdrawal (30 October – 1 November)

On 30 October the 4th Army was ordered to confine itself to minor actions and to prepare for the pursuit. On the plain the front had already been cut, and in the morning Italian units entered Vittorio. General Goglia reported that his reserve units had largely deserted and that the troops in the mountains were in danger of being cut off from their rear. At midnight on 30–31 October he ordered a retreat. According to Italian works about 70,000 men left the massif, leaving most of their artillery behind. The British official history notes that the Austrians held their positions on the Grappa until that night.

From the morning of 31 October the divisions of the 4th Army advanced across the summits that had been fought over for a week, and took, among others, Col della Berretta and Prassolan. In the afternoon Alpini of the 80th Division entered Feltre, ahead of the French of the 12th Army. On 1 November the IX Corps took Primolano in the Brenta valley and reached Grigno, where it clashed with rearguards, while other units took Arsiè and Fonzaso and cleared the whole Feltre basin. That same day Italian units entered Belluno. By then the Austrian troops in the mountains were retreating everywhere, and the 4th Army was ordered to march towards Trento and Bolzano.

Casualties

According to Italian works the 4th Army as a whole lost more than 25,000 killed, wounded and missing in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, including about 5,000 killed, the great majority of them in the fighting on the Grappa from 24 to 29 October. That was about two thirds of the losses of the whole Italian army in the battle. The Austrian official history estimated the Italian losses in the first three days at nearly 35,000 men, more than the Italians say the 4th Army lost in the whole battle. Nobody counted the Austro-Hungarian losses on the Grappa precisely. They were certainly heavy, because for a week the defenders retook lost summits by counter-attack, and during the withdrawal and pursuit thousands of soldiers were taken prisoner.

The ossuary on the summit of Monte Grappa, opened by King Victor Emmanuel III on 22 September 1935, holds the remains of about 12,600 Italian soldiers, most of them unidentified, and about 10,300 Austro-Hungarian soldiers, killed in all the battles for the massif.

Significance

The Italians regard the Third Battle of the Grappa as a precondition of the victory at Vittorio Veneto. In their view the stubborn attacks of the 4th Army pinned down the Austrian reserves for several days and prevented them from being moved to the Piave, where the front was being broken at that time. The British official history was sceptical. It noted that the three reserve divisions near Belluno would have had to march about 50 kilometres along mountain roads to reach Vittorio, so that even without the fighting on the Grappa they could not have been moved quickly to the river. The Austrians regarded the defence of the Grappa as their last victory. According to their official history the first days of the battle raised the spirits of the army, and Boroević believed for a moment that it would be possible to hold out until an armistice on tolerable terms.

The battle showed that the Austro-Hungarian army, even in the last days of the monarchy’s existence, could defend itself on good positions while its soldiers still held together. It could not, however, stop the disintegration that began in the rear and on the Piave. When the front on the plain broke, the defenders of the Grappa had to leave without having lost their own battle. For the Italians the massif, which they had defended since November 1917, became a symbol of endurance. Krafft von Dellmensingen, chief of staff of the German Fourteenth Army, wrote of the fighting of 1917 that the Grappa had become a “holy mountain” for the Italians.