Rapallo Conference

On 7 November 1917, at Rapallo, a seaside resort on the Ligurian Riviera about 25 kilometres east of Genoa, a three-day conference of the prime ministers of Britain, France and Italy came to an end. It had been called after the defeat at Caporetto, formally to settle what military help the Allies would give Italy. It produced more than that: the Allies demanded a change of Italian commander-in-chief and created the Supreme War Council, the first permanent body meant to direct their war jointly.

The road to Rapallo

The idea of a joint Allied body was not new. As early as December 1915 the British and French had considered the rules of an inter-Allied war council, but nothing came of it. The British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, at odds with his own generals, returned to it in the autumn of 1917. In September, during the meeting at Boulogne, he discussed it privately with the French Prime Minister Paul Painlevé, and on 14 October he proposed to the French a permanent staff of officers who would assess the war as a whole rather than from the point of view of a single army. According to the British official history (Edmonds), on 30 October, when Painlevé came to London to discuss help for Italy, the two prime ministers agreed a preliminary outline of the new body. The Italian defeat provided an opportunity to win over the other allies.

Meanwhile French and British divisions were already on their way to Italy, and the Italian army was falling back from the Tagliamento line to the Piave. Lloyd George arrived at Rapallo on 4 November together with General Jan Smuts, a member of the War Cabinet, the Cabinet Secretary Maurice Hankey and Lieutenant-General Henry Wilson, already chosen as British military representative on the future council. Painlevé left Paris on 3 November. From Italy, where they had been assessing the situation for several days, came the chiefs of the general staffs, General Ferdinand Foch and General William Robertson. On the evening of 4 November the British and French conferred among themselves. They rejected the proposal of General Philippe Pétain, who doubted whether the Italian army still existed and wanted to divide the whole front from the Channel to the Adriatic between himself and Field Marshal Douglas Haig. They agreed instead, on the advice of the chiefs of staff, that General Luigi Cadorna must go.

The talks

The first session began on 5 November at 8 p.m. Italy was represented by the new Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, who had headed the government for a week, the Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino, the War Minister General Vittorio Alfieri and the Deputy Chief of Staff General Carlo Porro. The Italians described the situation as very grave: the retreat from the Tagliamento had just begun. They asked for fifteen British and French divisions, without which, they claimed, they could not hold the Piave line. Porro asserted that nine German divisions had attacked at Caporetto and that twelve or fifteen more had since arrived from the Western Front. Foch and Robertson thought this unlikely, and Robertson, relying on his intelligence, stated that the Germans had only six divisions in Italy. As is known today, he was right. Lloyd George later wrote that Porro made the worst possible impression on everyone present.

The British and French decided that eight Allied divisions would suffice. The British minutes speak of eight, the French of twelve. Edmonds believes the latter figure, six French and six British divisions, was adopted later, after Foch’s report of 13 November. Lloyd George promised two more divisions at once and more if needed, and Painlevé did the same. Both prime ministers also demanded changes in the Italian high command and the removal of Cadorna. The Italians replied that the matter was under consideration. According to some historians Orlando had already decided to dismiss Cadorna, but the pressure of the Allies, who did not want to place their troops under his orders, settled the matter.

The Supreme War Council

Exploiting the dispute over the number of German divisions, which showed how differently the Allies saw the same war, Painlevé formally moved the creation of a Supreme War Council. Lloyd George later claimed the idea as his own, while the British official history writes of a proposal by Painlevé agreed beforehand with the British. All three countries agreed at once, and the fifth session of the conference, on 7 November, became the first session of the new council.

The agreement concluded at Rapallo that day laid down that, for better co-ordination of action on the Western Front, a Supreme War Council was established, composed of the prime minister and one member of the government of each of the great powers fighting on that front. The council was to watch over the general conduct of the war, prepare recommendations for the governments and see that they were carried out. The general staffs and commanders-in-chief remained responsible to their own governments, but their war plans were to be submitted to the council, which would ensure they were consistent. Each power was to appoint to the council a permanent military representative, whose sole duty was to advise it on technical matters. The representatives were General Foch for France, General Wilson for Britain and General Cadorna for Italy. The council was to meet at least once a month.

The only dispute concerned its seat. The French wanted the council to sit in Paris, but Lloyd George insisted on placing it outside the capital, to emphasise its independence of the French government. Painlevé finally agreed to Versailles. Robertson, an opponent of the whole idea, ostentatiously walked out of the room as soon as it came up for discussion and, according to Lloyd George’s memoirs, told Hankey to record that he had taken no part in the discussion. “I wash my hands of it,” he is said to have said. The first task of the permanent military representatives was to examine the situation on the Italian front and advise how much help, and of what kind, Britain and France should give Italy.

Peschiera and Paris

On the night after the talks ended most of the delegates travelled from Rapallo to Peschiera on Lake Garda, where the next morning they were received by King Victor Emmanuel III. Lloyd George set out to him, in rather sharp words, the conference’s opinion of the Italian command. The King replied that he did not agree with all the charges against Cadorna, but that it had already been decided to replace him, and assured them that the army would hold on the Piave. Cadorna’s successor was General Armando Diaz, and Cadorna himself was to take the post of Italian military representative at Versailles.

The creation of the council was announced on 12 November in Paris at a luncheon given by Painlevé for deputies and senators. Lloyd George made a speech there that caused a storm. He said that Allied unity in strategy had so far been a fiction and that joint plans had been produced by stitching together the separate plans of each front. “Stitching is not strategy,” he said. He also asked what would have happened if the Allies had broken 50 kilometres into the enemy’s lines and taken 200,000 prisoners and 2,500 guns. In Britain critics saw the speech as an attack on the generals and an attempt to subordinate commanders to politicians.

Significance

The Rapallo Conference was the first step towards a unified Allied command, though still a very cautious one. The Supreme War Council had no authority over the armies, and the staffs and commanders-in-chief remained answerable to their own governments. Lloyd George soon assured the House of Commons that he was opposed to the appointment of an Allied generalissimo. The council nevertheless began regular work at Versailles at the beginning of December, and its permanent military representatives prepared joint assessments of the situation on all fronts. When in the spring of 1918 the German offensive nearly separated the British and French armies, the Allies went further and in March entrusted Foch with co-ordination, and then with command of all their forces in the west. For Italy, Rapallo meant above all the promise that it would not be left alone: by mid-December six French and five British divisions had arrived in Italy.