Page 95 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

CHAPTER FIVE

in Cadore and in Trentino. A considerable contingent of German troops is supposed to take
part in the offensive, according to the forecasts I made a long time ago .
32

InTernaTIonal consequences of an IncorrecT assessMenT
Immediately after Caporetto, when the Battle on Mount Grappa-Piave River to halt the enemy
was about to begin, the Intelligence Service of the Supreme Command got involved in a harsh
controversy that risked undermining its credibility at the international level. In fact, during the
inter-allied conference of 6 November 1917 in Rapallo, the Assistant Chief of the Army Staff,
General Porro, described the situation of opposing forces on the Italian front that seemed, to some
extent, scarcely credible regarding the number of German units about to arrive on the Tridentine
front.
According to Ambassador Aldovrandi’s journal, Porro declared that the German units on the
Isonzo in the moment of the attack of 24 October supposedly amounted to 9 - a figure not quite
different from the actual 7 units plus some reinforcement units - and added: “after 24 October,
–
other consistent information reports that 12 to 15 fresh German units have been directed against
us. They come from Alsace, Romania, and the German heartland, amounting to 150 battalions. It
would seem they will be sent to Trentino”. To the next question from Lloyd George: “How many
German Divisions are there?”, the French Minister Franklin-Bouillon, without waiting the Porro
replay, answered: “General Porro has already pointed out that the German Divisions, along with
the reinforcement units, are from 21 to 24” .
33
Therefore, the Porro evaluation of enemy forces present on the Italian front slightly exceeded
the right figure but was completely incorrect regarding the predicted deployment of new German
units in Italy. The reason of the mistake could be probably found in the credit given by the Italian
Intelligence Service to fake news disseminated by the Austro-Hungarian and received also by
allied Intelligence Offices, regarding an imminent attack in Trentino with the support of German
forces.
Aldovrandi’s journal reports that after Porro’s statements, General Robertson remarked: “the news
I received this morning quote no more than 6 German Divisions along the whole Italian front”
- a rounded down estimate - and then Lloyd George insisted on stressing the difference between
Porro’s estimate and the English one , while it would have been more appropriate to focus on the
34
reliability of information regarding the assumed movement of German units from other fronts to
the Trentino front.
The macroscopic discordance between the estimate of 21-24 units, attributed to Porro and evidently
absurd, and that of 6 Divisions provided by Roberston - incorrectly presented also to the press
- discredited Cadorna’s Supreme Command as a whole and sped up the decision to change the
Italian military top level, as wanted by the Allies .
35

32 Supreme Headquarters - Office of Situation, War Bulletins and Missions Abroad, Letter no. 4929 of 23 October 1917,
Imminente offensiva austro-germanica sulla nostra fonte (Imminent Austro-Hungarian Offensive on our front), AUSSME,
Series E-2.
33 Luigi Aldrovandi Marescotti, Guerra diplomatica, ricordi e frammenti di diario (1914 -1919), Mondadori, Milano, 1937,
p.150. The Author attended to the entire meeting, as representative of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. David Lloyd George
was the British Prime Minister and Henry Franklin-Bouillon was the French Prime Minister.
34 ibidem, p.151 -152.
35 Such discordance was negatively commented on by the British press, which caused the intervention of the Italian ambassador
in London: “It is still important to reaffirm the truth concerning the size of enemy forces. It is necessary and urgent to prevent
this large public from being under the false and absurd impression - which may be difficult to counter in the long run - that
the only cause of our failure was not an overwhelming enemy but cowardice and treason. […]” (Headquarters, General

93