Of course, the emphasis is on the love story and so the historic elements are little more than background detail. The film version of the book used Caporetto as its background, and was evocatively accurate about the conditions on the battlefield. But this author believes that there is a need for a shorter, highly illustrated, book that captures the emotional impact of the conflict yet respects the wider political and military background.Įrnest Hemingway’s brilliant novel A Farewell to Arms was based on his own experiences as an ambulance driver during the latter stages of the campaign on the Asiago, and on stories he was told by Italian veterans. There are a couple of good, highly detailed, academic hardbacks on the campaign and they are worth studying. Today more people are visiting the area and becoming emotionally involved in its beauty and dramatic history. This is one of the forgotten battlefields of the First World War. Many books and academic treatises have been written about the First World War but there are relatively few on the Isonzo campaign.

Since the end of the First World War this attitude has persisted. Throughout the First World War the conflict between Italy and the Habsburg (Austro-Hungarian) Empire was of little importance to the politicians, the generals, the press and the nations of the western alliance. Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign examines an aspect of the First World War that was pivotal in the history of Italy, Austria and the Balkans. The intervention of British, French and German troops is covered, as are the parts played by famous individuals, including Erwin Rommel, Benito Mussolini, Pietro Badoglio and Luigi Cadorna, the notorious Italian commander in chief. The text is supported by a selection of original photographs that record the terrible reality of the conflict.

Historian John Macdonald chronicles the Isonzo battles with vivid descriptions of the battlefields and of the atrocious conditions in which the soldiers fought. The twelfth and final battle, Caporetto, was a major victory for the Central Powers as they broke through the Italian Front. The campaigns were fought in unforgiving terrain, with casualty counts that exceeded those of the Great War’s more famous battles. This illustrated WWI history sheds light on a major campaign fought along the significant yet often neglected Italian Front.įrom 1915 to 1917 the armies of Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were locked in a series of battles along the River Isonzo, a sixty-mile front from the Alps to the Adriatic Sea.

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