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Abstract
How does morale relate to tactical and operational failure? Is it a cause or an effect? Using the Italian Army at Caporetto as a case study, this article explores the cyclical relationship between battlefield performance and morale. Combining quantitative analysis of army statistics with qualitative analysis of various official and private sources, this article analyses morale before the battle and during its opening phase. Italian morale appears surprisingly resilient and decisions to surrender or desert frequently relied on objective assessment of events rather than demoralisation. In this case it was battlefield defeat which turned disaffection into a full- scale morale crisis.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the ‘Colloquium on Morale and Combat Motivation’ at King’s College London (April 2011) and ‘Ways of War: The Society for Military History Conference’ (Lisle, Illinois, June 2011). I am grateful to participants at both events for their feedback and comments. I also owe a great debt to Jonathan Fennell and Jonathan Boff for the fruitful and in-depth discussions shared during the development of this journal special issue.
Notes
1 Official bulletin, in Relazione della Commissione d’Inchiesta, R. Decreto 12 gennaio 1918. ‘Dall’Isonzo al Piave 24 ottobre-9 novembre 1917’, 3 vols (Rome: Stabilimento Poligrafico per l’Amministrazione della Guerra 1919) [hereafter RCI], vol. II, section 588.
2 See e.g. T. Ashworth, Trench Warfare 1914–1918: the Live and Let Live System, (London: Pan 2000); J.G. Fuller, Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies 1914–1918 (Oxford: OUP 1991); G. Sheffield, Leadership in the Trenches: Officer-Man Relations, Morale and Discipline in the British Army in the Era of the First World War (London: Macmillan 2000); L. V. Smith, Between Mutiny and Obedience: The Case of the French Fifth Infantry Division During World War I (Princeton UP 1994); A. Watson, Enduring the Great War. Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: CUP 2008). On men’s willingness to kill, J. Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare (London: Granta 1999).
3 S.L.A. Marshall, Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command. (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press 2000); H. Strachan, ‘Training, Morale and Modern War’, Journal of Contemporary History 41 (April 2006).
4 A. Gatti, Caporetto: Diario di Guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino 1964), p. 204.
5 For detailed accounts of the battle’s progress see: RCI, Vol. I; the official history: Corpo di stato maggiore Ufficio Storico, L’Esercito italiano nella grande guerra, 1915–1918, 7 vols. (Rome: Provveditorato generale dello stato libreria 1927-) Vol. 4, t. 3; A. Monticone, La Battaglia di Caporetto (Udine: Gaspari 1999).
6 RCI Vol II, 191, 257–9.
7 On Italian troop sentiments see the pioneering work of M. Isnenghi, especially Il mito della grande guerra, 5th ed. (Bologna: Il Mulino 2002), I vinti di Caporetto nella letteratura di guerra (Padua: Marsilio 1967) and Giornali di Trincea 1915–1918 (Turin: Einaudi 1977). On the Italian Army’s coercive mechanisms see G. Procacci, ‘Dalla rassegnazione alla rivolta: Osservazioni sul comportamento popolare in Italia durante la prima guerra mondiale’, Ricerche Storiche 19/1 (1989) and her Soldati e prigionieri italiani nella Grande guerra (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri 2000); on military justice and indiscipline, see E. Forcella and A. Monticone, Plotone d’esecuzione: i processi della prima guerra mondiale (Bari: Laterza 1968); on psychological adaptation see A. Gibelli, L’officina della guerra: La Grande Guerra e le transformazioni del mondo mentale (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri 1991).
8 C. Malaparte, Viva Caporetto!: La rivolta dei santi maledetti, ed. M. Biondi (Florence: Vallechi 1995), 119.
9 C. De Simone, L’Isonzo mormorava: Fanti e generali a Caporetto (Milan: Mursia 1995), 46.
10 For a concise summary see N. Labanca, Caporetto: Storia di una disfatta, 2nd ed. (Florence: Giunti 2006), or C. Pavan and Ž. Cimprič, Caporetto: storia, testimonianze, itinerari (Treviso: Pavan Citation1997).
11 See V. Wilcox, ‘Morale and Discipline in the Italian Army, 1915–1918’, unpublished D.Phil thesis, Univ. of Oxford, 2006; for a brief summary, J. Gooch, ‘Morale and Discipline in the Italian Army, 1915–1918’, in H. Cecil and P. Liddle, (eds), Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword 1996).
12 R. Bencivenga, La sorpresa strategica di Caporetto, ed. G. Rochat (Udine 1997), 14.
13 John Keegan claims that French and British troops took over ‘the real defence of the country’ after Caporetto. The First World War (London: Hutchinson 1998), 413. For a corrective to this view, see: M. Gabriele, Gli alleati in Italia durante la Prima guerra mondiale, 1917–1918 (Rome: Stato maggiore dell’esercito. Ufficio storico 2008).
14 A. Sema, La Grande Guerra sul fronte dell’Isonzo (Gorizia: Libreria Editrice Goriziana 2009), 529–30.
15 Other 2nd Army corps severely affected included XXVII and XXIV, while II, VI, VIII were also in the front lines; from the reserve VII, XIV, XXVIII corps suffered heavy losses above all of prisoners. These units suffered the highest rates of capture, whereas later on, in the former rear areas, the main problem was homeward desertion.
16 Gatti, Caporetto: Diario di Guerra, 397–8, also 448.
17 Archivio del Ufficio Storico del Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito [Rome, Italy] (hereafter AUSSME) F2 and F11, Prigionieri di Guerra, 1918–1919.
18 G. Mortara, La Salute pubblica in Italia durante e dopo la Guerra (Bari: Laterza 1925) esp. 33–4.
19 See Forcella and Monticone, Plotone d’esecuzione, introduction.
20 AUSSME B1, 19° Div 123S/488g vol. 5; 150/4/210e.
21 A. Cavaciocchi, Un anno al comando del IV Corpo d’Armata, ed. A. Ungari (Udine: Gaspari 2006), 68–80, 88—91.
22 Unfortunately most detailed papers from 19th Division from the period 1–24 October were destroyed by divisional staff before ordering the retreat, making it hard to explain this sickness problem.
23 J. Fennell, Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign: The Eighth Army and the Path to El Alamein (Cambridge: CUP 2011), 27.
24 AUSSME F.11.97/cart.1., Ris. Pers. 10352.
25 G. Rochat, L’esercito italiano in Pace e in Guerra: Studi di storia militare (Milan: RARA 1991) 65, 129.
26 AUSSME B1 50th Div. Vols 3, 3A: 127/S – 1361g, 1362g.
27 By comparison, in the German Field Army, which suffered a significant officer shortage in the early part of the war, ratios were 1:38 in Aug. 1914 and 1:44 in July 1916. Watson, Enduring the Great War, 130, fn.
28 See L. Mondini, ‘La Preparazione dell’Esercito e lo sforzo Militare nella Prima Guerra Mondiale’, in L’esercito italiano dall’Unità alla Grande Guerra 1861–1918, ed. SME, Ufficio Storico (Rome: Tipografia Regionale 1980); also Ministero della Guerra, Ufficio Statistico. La forza del esercito: Statistica dello sforzo militare Italiano nella guerra mondiale (Rome: Provveditorato Generale dello stato 1927).
29 Rochat, L’esercito italiano, 130–2.
30 AUSSME. F.11.97/cart.1., Ris. Pers. 10352.
31 Ministero della Guerra, Ufficio Statistico. Dati sulla giustizia e disciplina militare, ed. G. Mortara (Rome: Provveditore generale dello stato 1927), p. 26.
32 Units failed to collect their normal data during the chaos of the battle, while large quantities of paperwork were either lost or destroyed during the retreat, so it is unfortunately impossible to make direct comparisons with the earlier data.
33 RCI, vol. II, pp.140—1.
34 See V. Wilcox, ‘Generalship and Mass Surrender during the Italian Defeat at Caporetto’, in Ian F.W. Beckett (ed.), 1917: Beyond the Western Front (Leiden: Brill 2008), 25–46, for more on the morale crisis among senior and mid-level officers.
35 Cited in M. Thompson, The White War (London: Faber 2009), 296.
36 M. Silvestri, Isonzo 1917 (Turin: Einaudi 1965), 418–19; AUSSME FDS B1 123S/488, Vol. 5.
37 AUSSME F.11.97/cart.1., Ris. Pers. 10352.
38 AUSSME F.11.97/cart.1., Ris. Pers. 10352.
39 AUSSME B1.138D/1517e. Diario Storico, 224th Infantry, 1915–31 Oct. 1917, all. 7., dated 23 Dec. 1917.
40 AUSSME F.11.97/cart.1., Ris. Pers. 10352.
41 AUSSME B1.127S/1362g, All.7, No. 814, 21/1/18. See also Cavaciocchi, Un anno al comando, 112–13; RCI, Vol. II, 108–10, 140–3.
42 AUSSME F.11.97/cart.1., Ris. Pers. 10352.
43 Bencivenga, La sorpresa strategica, 85.
44 AUSSME F.11.96/cart.2, debriefing 10313, Dec. 1918.
45 Silvestri, Isonzo 1917, 370; Ungari, ‘Introduzione’, in Cavaciocchi, Un anno al comando, 8—9.
46 Supreme Command were notified on 16 Nov. that front-line troops were solid, obedient and well-behaved. AUSSME E2:95, Ufficio Situazione, 16/11/1917, com. 38.
47 Sema, La Grande Guerra sul fronte dell’Isonzo, 536–9, Wilcox, ‘Generalship and Mass Surrender’, 43–6.
48 Similarly, Fennell highlights the importance of weaponry: technological superiority is a morale boost as well as of practical significance in combat. Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign, 274–5.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Vanda Wilcox
Vanda Wilcox teaches Modern European History at John Cabot University, Rome. She completed a DPhil at Oxford University on morale and discipline in the Italian army and has published on various aspects of the battle of Caporetto, on the emotions, experience and identity of Italian First World War soldiers, and on the memory of the war in Italy.