Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 132 - Luigi Cadorna: Redux

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

Our first episode ever was about Luigi Cadorna. A lot has changed in the last nearly 3 years so we decided to redo the whole thing during a charity live stream. During the stream we raised over 5,000$ for displaced and at need victims of the recent war in Armenia. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, back to the first and so far only kind of live show, the Lions Live by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me today is Francis Horton from Hell of a Way to Die, and a guy who will hypothetically keep me from libeling someone, Kerry Shocks. I'm not committing to that. We're going to learn about island law through Kerry. It's all admiralty law, so you're good. My only recommendation for you is to take to the fucking sea if you get in trouble,

especially where you're in Hawaii. International waters is like all around you man so the show is a bit of a of a history right like it started almost three years ago now and our very first episode was about luigi codorna um and ever and back then i was not good at this podcast uh i did mostly because i didn't fucking care like i didn't think anybody would ever give me money for it uh i never thought that um three years later and 100 episodes later this would be my fucking job uh never in a million years. So, you know, it took me, you know, 20 minutes to research the first episode because, again, I didn't give a shit. And, you know, looking back at it, I'm not proud of that episode. And I've also said that I was never going to do a reboot of any episode in Lions Led by Donkey's Back catalog. But I have lied.

This is the Luigi Cadorna reboot. Luigi Cadorna 2, the Cadorna-ing. So it's gritty and sepia-toned, like if it was a shitty Zack Snyder film. And like one of Zack Snyder's films, it's being released one too many times. So before I get started, I should probably tell the difference between how things used to be and how things are now. And that is, I'm going to acknowledge the sources that I use because they're actually good. And that is between acceptance and refusal, soldiers' attitude towards the war and morale in the Italian army in the First World War. And both of those are by Vonda Wilcox. And it's the only other person I've ever seen their research where they're so thoroughly Cadorna-pilled as I have been.

Also, I'll be referencing a very short biography about Luigi Cadorna entitled Luigi Cadorna by Annie Grillini. So I believe I have to say Annie Grill grillini um are we doing that a lot so going into this do either of y'all know anything about luigi cadorna i don't i don't know who this is i don't know who we're talking about as i related i did listen to this first episode when it first came out because i listened to both like hell of a way to die i listened to all the podcasts of the bethea universe uh on my drive cross country before i went to go study for the bar exam and so so like well no so this was better even your

original shitty recording was great because it was either that or listen to barbary talk about property law um so you know i mean you could put that as a blurb on you know the uh the eventual uh 18 cd release of this podcast lions led by donkeys it's not law yeah it's a low bar but i love it so like i i vaguely i have like a vague memory of him fighting like you know uh a baker's dozen battles and uh not really getting anywhere. But like that's, you know, that was also, that was Lions Led by Donkey season one. I'm excited for the Lions Led by Donkey season two take on this one.

This is a rebirth. I don't know how many seasons it takes for us to no longer be good, but it's that one. I have to admit, I'm kind of obsessed with this guy. And a lot of it's simply because, you know. Generally speaking, even in World War One, which, you know, we all get it, generally speaking. So like, you know, even in World War One, people are generally like, well, if you fail a dozen times, even in World War I, you'll be fired. Or like, you know, he is someone that just so incredibly inept and competent and like criminally vicious.

He's a cartoon character, not to mention that, like, he kind of looks like one, too. And it's kind of incredible that he exists and he's still continued something of a hero in Italian military history. He still has an Italian military academy named after him. I mean, we have a bunch of forks named after Confederate generals. So, I mean, are we really one to judge? No, we're not. We can't talk shit on that one. But at least some of those Confederate generals won a battle.

Luigi Condona did not. So what you're saying is that you do actually have to hand it to him? You do not. I will say this of Luigi Cadona. He was not a Confederate. That's the nicest thing I can say about him. Was he a Nazi? No, but he was a fascist.

We'll get there. is a fascist. We'll get there. So it's only Nazism if it comes from a special part of Austria. Otherwise, it's just sparkling fascism. Yeah, I'm told it's

called Western chauvinism. A bunch of guys in black and yellow polo shirts told me that. Yeah, yeah. I'm not a Nazi. I'm just asking questions. Also is this podcast is now sponsored by prager you um so luigi cadorna was born in 1850 the son of a celebrated piedmontese general named general raffaele cadorna uh danny daddy cadorna had been one of the region's major leader uh leaders that being piedmont, during the Italian Risorgimento,

or the resurgence, and eventual reunification. That was actually my only fan's name for a while was Daddy Cadorna. Just instead of showing anything erotic, it just piles of corpses on the mountains like, Hey!

He was a legitimate military hero, and by all all accounts very good at his job he would fight in various italian wars of independence of which there was a ton of them and uh took off time from that to go fight the crimean war in 1855 i guess what i'm saying is that luigi didn't see his dad a whole lot um a common trait amongst military leaders who we talk about on this show is like, dad was a drunk and he left. Or dad was a general and left. Or he's probably both.

So Joe, I have a question here. So where's your commission, buddy? I actually have to go to Italy so I can kill the most amount of people with my incompetence but daddy cadorna was not just any powerful figure to have as a father he was like quite legitimately the most powerful person for someone about to take part in a military education like luigi would rafael and cadorna under the orders of Victor Emmanuel II, the King of Italy, would command the soldiers

that would invade the Papal States and capture Rome in 1870, ending the 1,100-year reign of the Papal States under the Pope nearly bloodlessly. And he personally commanded the soldiers who retook Rome. Luigi himself took part in the battle

under the command of his own father because, of course, he did. But the reason why. Yeah. And the reason why I bring that up is because Luigi was the child of a national hero, someone who has more than a few monuments still standing of him today. When he came of age, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, he got into the exact same schools his dad went into and graduated from the Turin Military Academy as a second lieutenant of artillery in 1868. Now, remember, he's an artillery officer, which some people might favorably compare to Napoleon. But just remember the fact that he hypothetically should have an education in artillery. That's going to be important going forward. He should know what he's doing.

After that, in 1870, he took part in the capture of Rome, like we talked about, which he always kind of considered his baptism of fire, but it really wasn't. Did you say it was bloodless? Mostly. So it really came down to the fact that the papal forces did not want to surrender without

a fight. So they quite literally came to a gentleman's agreement where they'd fight it out for just a little while before they surrendered. And this came down to Luigi's artillery battery firing at the outer walls of the city for about three hours. That fucking rules.

I'm going to give up, but I really need you to just blow apart someone. It's like, I can't... When the guy on the inside is just like, Oh, you can't... If you don't do something, they're just going to kill me, so me so you gotta get shot in the leg except yeah a city it's it's kind of ridiculous because it's like you could just surrender like no i'd really like you to kill some of my soldiers first okay yeah like you know like larry moe and curly yeah go out there and uh go fire at the uh the opposing troops yeah no it'll be fine. I promise.

So, after this, Luigi did the only thing a rich child of a count and national hero, at one point, Raffaele becomes a count. And a national hero could do. He rapidly ascended through the ranks of the unified Italian military. He bounced around as aides to various generals before eventually becoming

the Verona Divisional Commander. It was once during this command that we got to see what Luigi was made of, not just his dad. And that was the fact that he was a massive asshole. Now, before going on, I need to point out a little bit about military life and what, at this point,

the story is the 1800s, late 1800s. And military life is hard it's rough uh discipline and punishments for soldiers are almost always through severe beatings ration cutting and other shit that would be just considered assault or torture now um so it's either the 1800s in italy or now in Russia? Yes and yes. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's that part is important is that like if he would just like smack his soldiers around or

somebody smack his soldiers around, nobody would make a note of it. But Luigi's peers and superior commanders noted that he was exceptionally brutal and was so strict to his soldiers under his command, even other officers of the day thought he was going overboard uh so hey man hey man you can't you you can beat the privates

but you can't beat him bloody he's gonna do much more than that um but yeah he would like uh cut their rations down to like they were virtually starving and like this kind of strict disciplinarian shit you know like that shit that we talk about when uh everybody hypothetically speaks of the old military it's like they dream about things being like viciously brutal like they're going to be a go-gay or some shit and it's like this creates a problem and luigi codorna created something of a feedback loop um and this this feedback loop would define his career. Now, one of his most foremost thoughts that every problem in an army could be solved by more discipline and discipline had to be inspired through only physical punishment. So when his soldiers fucked up, they would be punished,

meaning they'd get beaten, causing a lot of them to desert because fuck that. As desertion rose, effectiveness would go down, causing more punishment and more desertions so he'd effectively like cannibalize his own military through his incompetence and this is before world war one and and most of these guys are all conscripts so they're like fuck this i'm going home yeah i mean that's legit i would too so obviously as anybody with a goddamn brain would point out just fire cadorna like that'd be the easiest way to go about this like the military was failing all of its like uh its own inspections all the way up until world war one um and you know but never once is this idea floated, like maybe we should fire Luigi,

until decades and almost a million people are dead, or at least out of the war on the Italian side. Because, like I said, World War I hadn't started yet. When World War I began, Luigi was in command of all of the Italian forces in the kingdom. But Italy was still trying to stay neutral. Though not really. They were already in talks with the Triple Entente about entering the war on their side but they were just trying to play neutral because they're like our army is fucked and we need more time um i see in the interim years codorna had not only shut up the ranks of the italian military using big don't you know who my dad is energy but he would also be the author of the main italian infantry tactics manual that would be used throughout the entire future conflict. Remember, he was an artillery officer. He was not an infantryman, but he would set the standard

for all Italian military tactics for the infantry. This means he was in a unique position to not only build the army he was going to go to war with, but also dictate how they'd be trained because they'd be trained by his manual. Meaning the success or failure of any future Italian war would quite literally land directly on his head. Now, I didn't read what Cadorna wrote, because it's an Italian. However, his infantry tactics did vary slightly from some people of the day, though every general was horribly backwards and what you'd consider modern military tactics and this is even for the day bad uh like there's a lot of wars especially the russo-japanese war which we talked about already punched a lot of holes in their tactics

and nobody took anything from it because they're like ah they're the japanese like and the right like they're right because everyone's wicked racist and like you know like even as much as the italians might be uh everyone else is racist against the italians uh the italians are also super racist against the japanese everybody's racist against the japanese um and most and the japanese are racist against everybody everybody's just real racist a lot of it came down to they didn't see Russians as truly Europeans. They saw they saw them as something in between. So like, well, that wouldn't happen to us.

We're white. You know, we're Italian. We're German. We're Austrian or whatever. So like no lessons were learned from that, though some were taken from the naval battles. Almost nothing in the land war. So Kedona's ideas came down to the army should always be attacking.

Always, always, always, no matter what, attack. A strictly disciplined force should always be able to attack. But an attacking army made it hard to do things like artillery and machine guns, which Cadorna hated most of all. He really did not like machine guns. He thought they were ungentlemanly. Yeah.

So... Winning wars is just ungentlemanly. And, like, when you constantly attack, you know, it is hard. There is two. That's Luigi's mustache. It's just peering down at you. I don't know why I can't...

I don't know how to make it move around, but I think this is enough. This is all you need to see. I'm just here in the great city of St. Louis. Just here. I just want to make sure that I'm connecting with the Heartland roots. The Italian...

I'm going to get you some toasted ravioli. One of the things that's a problem is if you're constantly attacking, it's really hard to keep artillery up, right? Because artillery is mostly pulled by pack animals during this time, or if you're really unlucky, by hand. And it's never going to move as fast. So I know I spent 20 years in the military, but I know like literally nothing about attack tactics or anything like that.

Is artillery not meant as an offensive weapon? Is it strictly defensive? It wasn't yet. It was like the concept of like indirect fire, you know, firing at something you cannot see, was developed mostly and used effectively in the Russo-Japanese War. But because they like to ignore everything from the Russo-Japanese War, the Italian military still fired from line-of-sight artillery,

meaning it's not going to be great if you're constantly attacking. Also, there was other problems. Remember how I said Luigi's an artillery officer? So he's commanding an army of damn near one million men. In that army, he has about 120 pieces of artillery out of a million people. And most of them are old and very small. And he only had like a couple dozen machine guns.

The people or the artillery? Artillery and machine guns. But he had a million people so it's not great he has a lot of manpower and nothing to go with it but we should also look at the kind of army that Luigi was building

before he kills it first of all the war was not popular in Italy there was no enthusiasm for any conflict really whatsoever Vonda Wilcox notes that almost every regular soldier, also a conscript, was at best uninterested, at worst openly opposed. That sounds like pretty much everyone who's junior

enlisted in any army ever. There was other nations that were quite enthusiastic about this war britain germany things like that but also when when has britain and germany not been enthusiastic about a fucking that's true uh and like remember almost everyone thinks this war is gonna be over very quickly to include luigi codorna like his entire idea is like ah the war will be over in a month because my amazing attack formations um to the shock of probably nobody research shows that the higher that you win the social classes the more likely you are to support the war and the poorer you were the less likely combine this with the

idea that remember that the a concept of a unified italian patriotism is very very new um like because most people consider world war one and the era around World War I kind of like the birth of nationalism. Yeah. In places like Britain and Germany, Turkey, you know, things like that. So, like, they didn't have that because they're like, we've been Italian for like 30 years. Nobody cares. Fuck off. Well, even like, I mean, even Germany, too, like it was a relatively like new nation at that point.

was a relatively like new nation at that point like it really only like existed for like a comparatively small amount of time like you know versus just being kind of prussia and like a collection of like you know other states you know bavaria and whatever and a lot of that was like uh because just a bunch of bavarians hanging out. Thankfully, nothing bad ever happens with that. Imagine Kurdistan, but Bavarian. What if a Swedish man was Italian? Since there's really no flag to rally around. Some people were. Some people were absolutely Italian nationalists, but that wasn't common.

Even for the lower classes, there wasn't really a lot to rally around uh this left italy in a very strange place while other soldiers cheered and talked about being home by christmas and winning glory and for the like the the champions of war and stuff like that italian soldiers were already deserting and maiming themselves to get a service before italy actually entered the war, which is impressive. So without a single unifying force driving people and not having enough time to do some of that, like classical political indoctrination that you would expect, the Italian military is left with the only thing Cadorna knew how to do, beat the shit out of people. I'm also just imagining like the Italian PAO at this particular like you know time like just like

really trying to like get everyone just like I'm imagining it almost like Richard Simmons like just like going out and like just trying to get everyone fucking jazzed about like going the fuck to war against Austria and just having everybody else just like flip them off and like you know try to like skate off the warehouse to go sleep or something? I actually have an appointment. I can't take part in this offensive. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm right on medical. I got to go over here. Now, part of Cadorna's obsession with the concept of discipline

is he thought that everything else soldiers would learn from basic infantry maneuvers to marksmanship didn't mean a whole lot if you couldn't get them to stick around during a fight. So he learned discipline, but not about the existence of morale, I suppose. But another part of this is, and hear me out because this is from an enlisted guy who always talks generals, I know. But Luigi Cadorna quite literally hated his soldiers under his command. tax generals, I know. But Luigi Cadorna quite literally hated his soldiers under his command. But he was not alone. Remember, Italy at this time was a kingdom. And during most of his military,

during most of his time, most of the military leadership came from some level of aristocracy or another. So when mobilization was ordered, like most countries, they pulled in hundreds and thousands of peasants to become soldiers overnight. At the time, the government was functioning under the idea that the peasants were loyal, obedient, and passive, but dumb. While the urban working class had all become contaminated with the vile ideas of socialism and thought way too highly of themselves. And it turns out if you're Luigi Cadorna, the only way to fix someone you find dumb or contaminated by the concept of the specter of socialism was by beating them

you gotta hit them this guy's quoting Marx get the beatings wait fuck is that the fireball sound yeah Is that the fireball sound? Yeah. Now, to his credit, Cadorna did ask for more time

to prepare his army for a war, but the government refused. There's a good reason to believe, even for an idiot like Cadorna, that the Italian military was not ready for any kind of war. Just a few years before, Italy fought the Turks in 1911 over some parts of Libya. And while the Italians won, it was mostly

because the Ottoman military was an even bigger disaster than they were. The Italians found themselves lacking pretty much every kind of supply imaginable right from the beginning, and they never figured out how to quite fix that at all. And this is only three years removed, four years removed furthermore italy assumed the war would be a cakewalk but instead imploded their national budget and lost nearly 10 000 casualties which doesn't sound like a lot for the era but they had deployed 30 000 soldiers just to face 8 000 turks and still got fucking curb stopped um and like as soon as this war started, they're running

out of ammo. Their logistics system is completely fucked. It looks like the Afghan National Army. Like, where's all the fuel and ammo? Oh, we lost it. I thought you were giving us that. Oh, sorry. I got a good price on it and I sold it to this guy down the way. Yeah.

Fell off the back of the truck. Yeah, like, you know, like dvd player and like you know 1999 or or socks in 2020 i've been i've been offered uh to buy socks that fell off the back of a truck interest yeah or like i always get the stakes out of a trunk i definitely uh once I definitely once, like 2007, I had a guy offer to sell me a whole stereo system out of the back of his running car next to me at a stop sign. What? Which, I mean, seemed like a deep discount,

and I wanted to trust him, but it just didn't seem like the right time. So while all this was happening, Kedrona actually retired um some of it was because he kind of didn't want to deal with this shit anymore but also because he was he was constantly having political fights like he kind of believed in a aristocracy themed military dictatorship and if you're in command of the army you should kind of be able to do what the fuck you want um so so so he's in favor of a thing that we know literally never works yeah but but benefits him absolutely he kept

blaming all of his problems on his soldiers and the government like politicians so um or like or like me after about three beers yeah he blamed everything on everyone not named luigi codorna but as world war one started he was offered the job to be commander of everything again and was um saying like the government told him like we'll stay the fuck out of your way so he accepted it um it turns out when you have a shitty person who's much better actually killing his own people than the enemy, then giving them what is effectively total power is not great. What the fuck do you say? When Italy entered World War I,

Cadorna found himself arrayed against the mostly equally incompetent Austro-Hungarian forces. And almost immediately, Italian soldiers found themselves once again lacking every basic resource that you would need to fight an army um like marinara sauce like their boots weren't even right like they lacked boots with like

hobnails on the bottom which is like common for the day for like tread so you could like walk across uneven terrain so they're pretty much just wearing slicks on their feet shit like that yeah um well hey look we we've lost wars against uh little dudes in pajamas and adidas slides that's fair you know don't don't tell me the footwear isn't there but but truly if you're sending me to war in some adidas slides i'm gonna be pretty pissed off yeah and this is some of the worst terrain. Like some Mokpas, you know. Yeah, you need some fucking off-brand Adidas. And, like, this is going to be some of the worst terrain

that the entire war is going to be fought in. Like, honestly, the worst is probably the Carpathian Mountains, in my opinion, but, like, the Alps are pretty fucking bad, especially for a lot of dudes from the city who have never been up in the mountains before. Like, let alone, alone, they don't have mountain climbing training or equipment whatsoever. And they lacked basic soldier equipment. So everything's bad.

The main battlefield of the Austro-Hungarians and the Italians that would face often, uh, would be the Asanso front, uh, otherwise known as the Asanso karst or the karst plateau. Uh, it's an incredibly rugged place and not anywhere a soldier would ever want to find themselves having to fight a war. It would be like two people not from Afghanistan fighting a war in Afghanistan against one another. That's never happened. Thankfully.

This is a very like you can't just like pull out a pickaxe and start digging trenches. Fortifications are incredibly hard to make. It's like advances mean climbing mountains and things like that. Afghanistan is such a wild place that anybody, like literally the only thing it has going for it is like it isn't a strategic place, but like everything else. It's a beautiful country, but man, it is not a good place to try to fight a war,

especially against the people from Afghanistan. A lot of people say the same things about Connecticut. Three out of 10 would not recommend. And to make things even worse, the Austro-Hungarians had gotten there first. So they occupied the high ground, meaning any Italian attack would have to go straight up the goddamn mountains. So, yep. It sounds good. It sounds fine.

Let's do it. Yeah, this is getting better and better. So Cadorna would order the italian army to do just that at the battle of the isanzo river not just once not just twice not just three times but 11 fucking times you know you really start to get the sense of how fucking spoiled we are or we were when we were in the military like and don't get me wrong i all three of us bitched and moaned about something and it's always but at no point in time is anybody just like yeah we're just gonna give you like some flat bottom shoes to walk across the Alps and then go fight a war

that nobody really wants to go fight. And also, you're not going to have any food or weapons or the things that you need to do. None of us would ever do that. Like, right now, any one of us is like, yeah, yeah, of course I'm deserting, but

what does it take to fucking stick around and just be like, well, I mean, what I'm deserting, but what does it take to fucking stick around and just be like, well, I mean, what the fuck else I got to do right now, I guess? We'll talk about how he got them to stick around. I'll give you a hint. From that description, that sounds a lot like the hooligans of Kandahar, if we're honest. Like, yeah, well, we didn't really have a lot of food,

we didn't have really a lot of comforts, and they made me sleep in a ditch for like a couple months. Significantly less Luigi's. Joe and the crew always had an MRA nearby at least. Yeah. And, you know, I did say 11 battles of the Asanzo. There is a 12th. However, the Italians were technically defending that time.

But we'll talk about that. That's how the story ends. We'll get there. We have a lot of shit to cover before we get to the battle of caporetta uh no we're not going to go over each battle because most of them end in the exact same way as the one before it um and a lot of people maybe who like are super sweaty about their italian front history will note that technically the italians did not all of these battles, and that is true. If you go by their

definition of victory in World War I, which is like the front moved a couple feet. Like, that's about it. Did you ever watch the Blackadder Goes Forth series? Yes, yeah. The one where they say,

where they bring the general in it's like look we've captured some land and it says well uh what's the scale oh it's one to one this is literally all the land like they brought in a square of turf and like look what we fought and won yeah we brought it we brought it for you to take a look at that's 100 what this is like um and but before we go into just how all of this came crashing down we have to talk a little bit about how these battles went the lives of the soldiers in the trenches and the conditions now kudorna threw his soldiers against the mountainside fortifications and the trenches of the austro austro-hungarians again and again each time expecting some kind of Napoleonic style breakthrough, which is like what he expected was like, ah, we'll punch through eventually. And like, you know, the whole line will collapse and we'll just charge all the way into fucking wherever, you know what I mean?

His entire attack, attack, attack, attack, attack philosophy meant the only way he was ever going to win is through one of these Napoleonic breakouts. That would never occur. Now, we assume, mostly from media that we consume, that large offenses were very common. Like the Western front. Like, oh, this week we're rotating up to the front line because most holders rotated in and out, which means we're going to have to go over the top line, because most soldiers rotated in and out, which means we're going to have to go over the top in this big million man offensive. Like when we pitch a World War I, you generally assume this happened all the time.

And it really worked. They were very uncommon, maybe one or two a year. And you'd have trench raids and things like that in between, artillery strikes, stuff like that. And they always caused horrific casualties. Lather, rinse, repeat to get to the numbers that we all associate with World War I. However, our perception of World War I and the Western Front of all

of these offenses happening over and over and over again every week or every month were pretty fucking true for Cadorna. He ordered a major assault against the Asanzo every three months while he was in command. Just burning through soldiers as soon as he got them. Good.

Yeah, fuck those guys. And that was the highest operations tempo of any military during the war. Furthermore, while running against machine guns is bad, regardless of where you happen to be, the Italians'

main casualty-causing weapon that the Austro-Hungarians employed against them was shellfire. Long-range artillery barrages have kind of been stuck in everybody's mind as the feature of World War I. You either get stuck in a rolling barrage or a machine gun nest in a trench, and you assume that they're equally bad. Artillery always sucks to be hit by.

However, the Italian front was much worse than everywhere else. Like the Western front was a barren hellscape of dirt and mud, but that dirt and mud actually dampened the impact of enemy artillery. Hence why airburst rounds became so common because they realized like, hmm, the fucking mud is absorbing this. But on the Italian front, shells were slamming into cliffs and rocks. And like soldiers couldn't really dig in.

So they're like not exactly great trench systems to hide in. So shells would just explode on the boulders and the rocks and the gravel and the mountainsides and shit. And it would actually create more shrapnel to wound them with rather than less. All I can think about is every time I drove through the Rockies and there was just the signs that say

falling rocks or something like that. That's something you can actually adjust for? Yeah, pretty much. According to historian John Keegan, shellfire in the rocky terrain inflicted 70% more casualties fired per round than they did anywhere else during the war. So it's not good.

It's like trying to smoke a cigarette or take a shit and you get waylaid by a fucking rock flying through the air. It only took a few months of this kind of war for the Italian soldiers and the civilians at home to outwardly turn against the war effort. Signs of refusal to show up

to conscription offices began in 1915, the same year that Italy entered the war. Whereas even in the beginning when the war was still unpopular, at least 90% of people would still report to their conscription offices on time like they were supposed to. After the honeymoon phase of the glories of war wore off, that number plummeted dramatically and keep plummeting until the end of the war, until at one point less than half of men showed up to their conscription office on time.

I mean, how are you going to find me? I always think, I mean, you always think about like, if you tried to disappear, like if you tried to like, you know, yeah, just disappear off the, off the map or something. Now in 2020, it's like impossible because you can't open up a bank account without some sort of identity. But like 1915, I'm sure it's just like, I'm just going to go to that village over there and go,

hey, a lot. And then instead of Mario, I'm going to be Luigi now. And then that's it. I can't imagine. Just go over there and just start planting. Be a farmer there. Get a job over there. And everybody will just assume that you're just a new guy

and you're just like assume that there's that you're just a new guy and you're just gone like it boggles my mind that that that anybody would be caught in 1915 although to be fair my my grandfather um was so he was drafted for world war one as well but he was drafted like he got his well his draft card was sent like right when world war one ended right after armistice so the mail carrier was just like oh i'm not gonna drop these off uh because the war is over so he wasn't delivering draft cards so the mailman went to jail for not delivering the mail but when they come kim they came to my grandpa, they're just like, well, you didn't show up. And he's just like, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

What draft cards? But they were just like, oh, nobody in this neighborhood got a draft card. And it turns out the mailman was doing practice. He was like, no, fuck that. Don't go to war. Well, it makes me think of like all like the uh like i remember like joe talking about like russian short you know conscription and like the um you know 1970s 1980s like whatever else and like there's not you know there wasn't really a system then

and you can only imagine like you know that's like the soviet union in like the 70s and the 80s you know like you know trying to send people off to afghanistan you can only imagine if it was uh and you know the you know 19 teens and it was you know a fresh like italian country that never existed before and they're trying to like get people to show up yeah it's just not gonna happen like a lot of places just resort to why is that military aged man not in the military as he's like going about the day he's like ah arrest him uh like a million like millions of italians dodged the draft and like half a million people would eventually be charged for doing it yeah i mean like my uh some people like my my uncle dodged the fuck out of the draft in vietnam you know like he just like

like he was like the fuck out of there he went to like he uh because he was in uh seattle he went to british columbia it's actually where he met like my now aunt uh you know like he went over there but like it's like one of those things where like i don't know i i get that i would just get the fuck away like you know no one's gonna tell no one's yeah i mean even like uh i know for a lot of civilian folks in World War II they would give essential workers essentially like a military rank like that's what happened to my grandfather how he ended up in the

Coast Guard because he ended up in a very essential military job it was just one of those things where he looked vaguely military age and so they just gave him a rank to like make him you know so he looked vaguely military age. And so they just gave him a rank to like make him, you know, so like no one like no one.

You know what? That sounds better than how we get captains. Yeah. I mean, that was essentially what it was. It was like, it was like you, you, your clothes look fancy. Do you want to be a captain? It was like, you're, you're doing a central job

and we don't want people to egg you. So do you want to be a chief? Right. Cool. You're a chief now. I'm going to, I'm going to start gonna start i'm gonna start rating people's fits like just like what by what military rank would i give them like if you if you've like decked out in all adidas you get to be a sergeant just like wearing if you're wearing a corn t-shirt and some like baggy jeans you're a private uh if

if you're you know if you're wearing a popped colored shirt and uh and boat shoes and salmon pants then you're obviously like very easy to do this uh yeah like i i guess i'd probably definitely i i would probably still be a specialist like yes ivy up and down like specialist wearing gym clothes all the time oh yeah i dress i mean i have i know with with covet everybody's been talking i had to like actually coach people at my work through uh through having to stay at home because so many of them like at the beginning were just like i've never had to do this i've never had to work from home and by that time i had been working from home for like four years.

I was just like, I was talking to one, some to one lady. I was like, now look, I fixed your computer and everything. And we were just talking about staying at home as like, when's the last time you showered?

And I'm not saying that in a gross HR way, literally when's the last time you showered? Can you remember right now? And there was a pause and she's like, I can't. I said, okay, please go take a shower and put on pants. Cause I know you're not can you remember right now and there was a pause and she's like i can't i said okay please go take a shower and put on pants because i know you're not wearing i know you're wearing the pants you slept in too don't i'm not wearing pants right now so yeah i have i really am i

really embraced uh male yoga pants which i guess are just joggers yeah i mean joe you were at e4 so like you probably never wore pants while you were in e4 so like you probably never wore pants while you were in not if i could help it no um and when i wore pants i tore giant holes in them on accident um so one of the things like you know if you weren't smart enough to dodge the draft or say you're like you know it can't be that bad or whatever and you found out you fucked around and found out that the army's terrible uh desertion and self-mutilation became incredibly common um punishment for desertion was much more likely and over a hundred thousand people were charged for it um but also it was kind of easy to get caught mutilating yourself which we'll talk about a little bit later

rather than looking at other factors that may have caused this cadorna once again to get caught mutilating yourself, which we'll talk about a little bit later. Rather than looking at other factors that may have caused this, Cadorna once again blamed discipline. Rules became more and more strict. Letters were heavily censored and soldiers were beaten if censors thought their letters home did not include a certain amount of excitement about the war. Cadorna cracked down on anything he considered detrimental to the army's success which you will come to be probably not surprised at this point was pretty much

anything um that like his actions directly caused uh like some people have argued that this brought on a paranoia and I would kind of have to agree at this point. Like newspapers, banned. If you were caught with anything that begins to like socialists, I don't know, zines, newsletters, propaganda, you'd probably be executed. Things like that.

Now, morale began to plummet due to constant offensive censorship and the realities of trench warfare. Cracks began to form pretty quickly. And Cadorna attempted to fill those cracks with more punishment. Even the most minuscule punishment, like even the most minuscule rule breaking, like the lowest level of punishment you

could get was a flogging. Soldiers who went AWOL were sentenced to death as were soldiers who were treated without orders. Minor insubordination was also a death sentence, even just when coming back from leave a little bit late. And to be clear, insubordination is a very easy charge to catch because the Italian military is very rigidly centralized. So if you're a journey leader, and you cut off, couldn't communicate, because this is the 1900s communication's terrible and like we're already out here assaulting this objective

we need to think on our feet. Those weren't the orders, that's insubordination. Yeah. Soon even writing some shitty words about your superior, like when we all wrote shitty things in port-a-potties about like the lieutenant or whatever, death sentence.

Yeah, maybe this was the uh the original you know writing dicks and your commander's name uh on the port of john like because you couldn't you couldn't like talk about it you couldn't write letters like uh he's a big jerk jackass but like you could draw a dick on a port of john yeah start out as z like it's everything is a death sentence it's like either that or military prison and it's a long military prison which you also could you'll probably just die of cholera or starvation um now cornice codona seemed not to differentiate between enlisted officers when it came to handing out death sentences for the most part but if you were a senior officer you're gonna skip death sentences but you he was very quick to fire people an officer or other people other than him that failed you know like he was failing at literally everything he ever did

however if you were not cadorna and failed uh like during an attack or he just didn't think that you uh didn't execute the order as he thought it should have been, you'd be immediately fired. There was like no learning opportunity here. So over the course of the war, he would fire 200 senior leaders and an unknown number of junior leaders. This led to another self-feeding loop. Officers of any level of education knew Cadorna's plans weren't working. But if they voiced their opposition anyway, they'd find themselves put up

on a charge of insubordination and shot or fired, ruining their careers or killing them. So rather than working together to come up with better plans, or they would just choose to save their own careers and maybe their lives, they'd be forced to go along with the plans they knew would fail. These would fail and either kill them or get them fired anyway. This led to what eventually created a cadre of very inexperienced yes-men who were leading soldiers into battle in some of the worst terrain of the entire war. Cool. Whatever happened to just shooting your own officers? He wasn't in the trench with them.

You're not going to frag Cadorna. He's like the commander of the entire army. He's not hanging out in a trench with you somebody somebody's got to well I guess he's only interacting with his guest man yeah like he's not doing tours of trenches

he did every once in a while but there's like way more pictures of him like visiting French trench lines rather than his own I think he knew I think he knew some fucking conscript might pot him in the back of the head um this is made worse by the fact that italian trenches were garbage um this led to like you had to dig into what you could dig into this being boulders and rocks so they would require special drills or explosives to dig into

them. Which Cadona never bothered to get, because why do we need trenches when we're always supposed to be attacking? Remember when I said the Austrians had the high ground? Well, they still did, and they could see the entire Italian trench system, or what there was of one. This meant when the Italians weren't constantly attacking, they were well within range of Austrian snipers. The Austrians also constantly assaulted the trenches with artillery by day and searchlights by night. Meaning no matter what the Italians did,

they'd be unable to sleep. And always have some kind of enemy fucking with them. And I've talked about it a little bit before that normally frontline forces would rotate out. So you'd be out the front for like a week, rotate to the reserve trench, rotate. And like so you wouldn't you're not like stuck at the front line for a prolonged period of time.

The Italians did not do that. Like you're just kind of like in for the in for the stretch. Yeah. Which is why a lot of people began breaking down. stretch yeah which is why a lot of people began breaking down um and so as i've noticed before or as i've said before sorry um italian officers didn't even want to like like they the italian officers themselves were falling apart at the seams because they weren't really in command of anything and morale began to implode even among them one noted they didn't even want to assemble a defensive action when some when they heard the Austrians were attacking them, but only did so because he didn't think the Austrians deserved the compliment of being the ones to beat them. This brings us to the hopeless attacks up

into the rocks into the Austrian positions. Thousands of Italians were ordered into battle constantly, nearly all of them pointless. Like most battles in World War I and most dudes who line bars in order to get laid, victory was measured in inches. Troopers were massacred... Troopers were massacred in large numbers, but the first people to break were not the Italians,

but the Austrians. Austrian machine gunners, having killed so many people, began to mentally break down. During one offensive, they stopped shooting at the oncoming Italians, shouting, Stop! Please go back! We won't shoot anymore!

And do you all want to die? It's incredible. The Austrians... This is this is that brand again sending waves of humans at the rampaging kill bots because they have a preset of uh 50 50 000 people they kill here there we go yeah austrians have a preset limit, and they'll eventually just shut down. After this, the Austrians actually let the Italians collect all their dead and wounded and slowly go back to their own line without shooting at them.

After this, the Austrians began rotating out their gunners a bit more, so slaughtering the Italian troops didn't weigh so heavily on them. Incredible. The Italians didn't actually care about their own soldiers seemingly as much as the Austrians did. But after breaking one too many times, Cadorna had

machine guns placed behind his own troops with orders to fire on them should they retreat without orders. This is actually like more of like most people when you when you talk about something like that they think of like the soviet union during world war one or we're sorry world war two and the barrier troops and those did exist but um i i have a feeling that the italians were actually used much more um but i'm not even sure what that sound effect is that's the that's the the hurry up your your time is running out uh now i know i've talked about morale collapsing into a pile of shit on a few occasion a year but this is where things get really really bad uh troops can naming

themselves at such a level that italian military doctors began to learn how to uh like find out what people have been doing it because they began to know powder burns on their skin the telltale the site that they shot themselves at point blank range so and if you're if you were caught doing that you'd be executed uh so soldiers began making deals with their friends to shoot them instead. Yeah, it's not too hard to be like, oh, well, hey man, you can hit a target, right? I've seen you out at the range. Can you just like

put one in my shoulder, but it like I needed it about a ten feet. I'll give you the jalapeno cheese from my MRA if you fucking put one in my foot. The jalapeno ziti. Yeah. Now, one of the foot the uh the hall the jalapeno ziti yeah uh now one of the most famous cases is uh one that happened to the catanzaro brigade which took place in the santa maria lalongo area in july 1917 the soldiers have been fighting non-stop for months without rest

after their last battle they were promised the rest period the men were exhausted and um like for a long time their leave had been suspended which was also like another punishment cadorna would just uh sit on whole units that he thought were underperforming so like they weren't going on leave they weren't going to rest in reserve trenches which is another punishment they had um they'd have been dealing with the difficult conditions and trenches, leaving a lot of their dead and wounded behind. And the ones that were still alive, like their feet were like shredded. They were starving to death. And after a few days, instead of being moved to a quieter area, which they had been promised, they were ordered to once again resume a march up the road that led back to the front that is when soldiers and officers of the brigade rebelled and began shooting their superiors and

soldiers that these soldiers which were mps uh had been brought with them in order to enforce the orders the only thing that stopped the uprising was the italian military stopping the offensive and turning their artillery against their own soldiers when it was all over all the soldiers looked down and were just like wait a minute we have guns let's just shoot we're going to die anyway we might as well shoot that fucking asshole

what if we used our guns right I know again this is 1915 Italy, so I don't know how these people, how their brains work on this. But if I'm just like, man, if I come back from leave and I'm going to get shot, I'm just going to start shooting people myself.

Yeah, I'm going to try to see how many I can take down with me. Though it is hard to get your hands in the trigger well when you have to do the Italian hand thing. And, like, to be be fair officers did this with them this was not just an enlisted thing like lieutenants and captains like yeah fuck that um like i said the only thing that stopped them was being artillery striked by their own artillery uh and the punishment for this cadorna reached all the way back in Italian history All the way to Rome And resurrected the old punishment That was rarely used even in Rome

Decimation Wait, wait Decimation? Nice For people who are unaware, decimation is a removal Of the tenth That means one out of every ten soldiers Will be killed at random By their co-soldiers

Out of 123 soldiers that were brought up on courts martial for the rebellion, 12 soldiers were chosen at random and then executed by firing squad by their compatriots. I mean, so this is slightly better than the Roman times. So if your

unit was sentenced to decimation in Rome, they would not let you use your weapons. You had to be beaten to death with rocks. Rome, they would not let you use your weapons. You had to be beaten to death with rocks. So at least they just let them get shot. Italy failed at almost every level during the war, but some of the most egregious fuck ups were some of the most basic things. Italian soldiers were reduced to hunting rats in the trenches for food, people noticed they quote looked like scarecrows this is something uh that was a little bit more common for the central powers uh soldiers of the war especially with germany in the austro hungarian empire crippled by alliance blockades like uh germany at one point had like the winter

of the turnip because there was like that was like 17 to 18 or like something like that where it was like a man-made famine yeah yeah like they essentially just had like no food left like in the fucking german empire like whatsoever tens of thousands of children starved to death uh in germany during the war because of how like locked in that shit was

um and like this this is weird for italy because the the rest of the Entente knows that Italy is fucking weak as shit and they have to prop them up by pouring tons of aid and supplies which includes weapons artillery, machine guns

all the things that they're lacking but also food but still somehow Italian soldiers are starving because one of the most basic punishments they have is cutting their rations it should be noted uh Cadorna was fat so like he had a bit of a gut on him uh yes so um while all this was going on it was pretty obvious that like I keep saying how bad off the Italians were and they were but the austrians

were even worse off um the austrians were the most inept militaries of the entire war a product of an inept government and like all of this is grinding them down to nothing um and like also the austrians didn't even have a reserve army uh at the time uh so like they were burning the candle at both ends and germany had to come bail them out um like did who who did have a good army germany actually had one of the best armies of the war that uh found itself allying with the weakest people in europe and then fighting everyone else um like they allied themselves with the ottoman empire which drew away the resources they allied themselves the austro-hungarian empire which drew away the resources um and then found

themselves fighting britain france russia the united states uh japan everybody else so like there's a good chance that maybe germany beats russia maybe germany beats the uh the uk but not everybody at once um well that was the whole thing from like, you know, like, I mean, you know, I mean, I know that the scholarship on the World War One still kind of has a, you know, divided scholarship as to whether or not, you know, like Germany could defeated one or the other. But I think essentially like the scholarship at this point is that they you know if they'd actually been able to defeat russia and they've been able to turn everything to france and britain they probably would have been able to like seal the deal maybe it's hard to tell yeah um yeah yeah obviously the eastern

front cost them a lot of people but there's also i think, once static warfare takes over, there was no way that anybody was going to win in what we consider a traditional victory. Yeah. Though, I mean, like, you know, there were a couple of times that they were like really within striking distance of Paris at that point. Yeah. Yeah. There was very close calls and then things stopped moving. Yeah, that's fair. So while all this is going on,

Germany is like, fuck, we have to relieve some pressure off Austria. They're going to get knocked out of the war. And that is where we go into the end of Cadorna's tenure as one of the worst commanders of the war. As at the 12th battle of the Asanso, otherwise known as the battle of Caporetta, or at the 12th Battle of the Isonzo,

otherwise known as the Battle of Caporetto. The Austrians, while besting the Italians, like I said, was in competition for one of the worst armies of the war, and they couldn't completely rout Cadorna either. So the Austrians had accomplished as much as they are also going to accomplish on their own at this point, which is not losing. And Cadorna's offensives have been largely pointless, but the Austrians were slowly losing ground and not to mention losing the ability to just keep up fighting the war. There was

a lot of unrest at home. The Austro-Hungarian empire was pretty fucking weak governmentally. Like the dual monarchies that were pulling apart from one another not great so okay so even with everything happening louis cordona or luigi cordona is still technically winning kind of he is technically winning which makes him technically correct the best kind of correct like like not necessarily winning, like, in a war of attrition, obviously, but, like, the fact that he is fighting the Austrians and they're getting whittled away in some way. And it's like just, you know, in a different war, they just get steamrolled.

But it's just like ah we just we have to fight these idiots before and we can't go do anything else because we have to fight the dumb people over here yeah if um if italy was just fighting uh austral hungary probably would have won um like because austral hungary austral hungary was had a commander arguably more inept than Cadorna and a guy named Conrad von Holzenklau. Holzenklau, I think. Holzenklau. Conrad von Holzenklau. And Conrad, yeah.

Conrad. I think I fucked his name up, but I'm going to get called out for it. No, Conrad von Holzen fucked his name up and I'm gonna get called out for it no Conrad von Holtzendorf sorry yeah all those people have been really relying on Lions Led by Donkeys for their correct pronunciation for the last like couple years yeah I just anybody like that

I just go with Dr. Doofenshmirtz from uh like Holtzendorf his full name was actually Honkball Hoofdiklaus. He was incredibly stupid. Very bad at his job.

Got his fucking Austrian army owned by Serbia, of all people. He was never going to win a war. But, to their credit, Austria fired him after a while. At, at this point, Cordona has kind of shot himself in the dick repeatedly to the point that Italy is about to fall apart and he still has a job.

Uh, but the Austrian is about ready to be knocked out of the war. That's the shooting yourself in the dick song. So, uh, that's the shooting yourself in the dick song so uh at this point germany knew if they didn't help austria austria was gonna get fucked so they sent seven divisions uh into the italian front to help them now this was not going to be a battle they're not like we're gonna send them down there to knock Italy out of war. We're just there to give them some breathing room. As their forces are put on Austrian lines, Italian recon planes notice them, and it was

reported to Cadorna. Italian intelligence also revealed the date, time, and location of the coming offensive actions. All the things that one probably needs to adequately prepare for such an action you know like dig in instead he didn't do anything other than push back the date of his next planned

offensive um and the italian lines were still much of the same way as they'd always been before lacking a defense in depth strategy which at this point war is just standard um and every other trench bound force at this point had already had, like, if you take one trench, the trench behind it will then start shooting at you, and then can launch a counterattack, retake the first trench. Italy didn't have that. Even worse, their lines

were so close together at some points that artillery was, like, and their artillery was super close to the front line, meaning any incoming artillery would actually just be able to knock out everything all at once. And if you look at like an aerial map of the trenches, which like the Germans could do because they have aerial reconnaissance, there was like one specific crossing point that they somehow managed to knit all of their trench

works through. So like germans knew if they if they took like this one crossroads we could literally cut their trench in half and nobody can support each other it was like it was like if you purposely designed the worst thing that you possibly could fight out of is what they did like like achilles going into the trojan war and just saying like look at my achilles heel like look at my heel like you know whatever like in a video game his ankles are just flashing

just your flashing bits this is a boss fight this is a boss fight this one specific trench line is glowing red and to Cadorna's credit he did order his subordinates to take defensive postures along the line in preparation for this attack but he didn't give them any details on what exactly that meant and what they were supposed to do now if you remember earlier

how i said how just go over there and be sold do things. Yeah, go do army shit. Here's the problem, though. I assume that's how both of you people operate. Like, I just assume that's like the ground pounder thing. Yeah, just go over there and do army stuff and don't bother me. Yeah, the problem is that he created a culture where you couldn't just do stuff.

You had to have strict orders. These orders would have timetables. This is the time it's supposed to happen at. This is the time it should be done by. But when you're just like, ah, take defensive postures, everybody just kind of freaked out. Like he created a cadre of yes-men. And if you don't listen to my every detail, I'll fucking shoot you,

which creates one hell of an atmosphere of command. This meant his units had no idea what to do. So many of them simply didn't do anything or change their normal routine, fearful of what would happen to them if they did. Other officers did come up with their own plans, but because they didn't have the same plans as the guy next to them, this meant any future defense would lack any cohesion because every unit would be fighting for themselves. defense with like any cohesion because every unit be fighting for themselves though some people like general luigi capello i know there's another luigi use this lack of orders to just deploy his soldiers offensively anyway his plan was like all of the others like this attack will fail all of our attacks fail so all of theirs will probably fail and when that occurs they always counter-attack us so i want to do that to them. At which

point, we'll chase them all the way back to their lines and take them over, right? Because that worked so well before. So even though Capello knows that there's an offensive coming, he still deploys his soldiers to prepare to go over the top of the trenches, meaning they're all in the forward trenches and not in dugouts.

This is all going to become important and bad. I do not know what that was. That was Luigi, apparently. Also, the lack of orders meant that the few in-depth lines that they had, because they have dug some back there. There's three total. The first line of reserves was the second line total in the third

line of reserves uh but because there are no concrete orders or defensive posture in place they were unmanned and the reserves were in the front line had no support weapons of their own so if like you sent the reserves up forward hypothetically they're supposed to be able to support themselves because you know at this point everything else is collapsed and it's not possible they have no machine guns and no artillery of their own so they have no they They're supposed to be able to support themselves because, you know, at this point, everything else is collapsed and it's under reserves. Not possible. They have no machine guns and no artillery of their own. So they have they effectively have no reserves. This total lack of command and control by someone who ruled as a dictator was so bad in some places that it's almost as if he did it on purpose.

In one situation, there's a pivotal road that led to the from the front line all the way to the rear like where like Cadorna was commending from it was considered incredibly important in a defensive role nice oh god it's himbo Luigi it's sexy Luigi Luigi's gonna give somebody a mustache ride before all this is over

so they Luigi's going to give somebody a mustache ride before all this is over. So they knew this road was incredibly important. The Germans also knew this road was incredibly important, right? So if you're commanding this kind of defensive procedure, you need to think like, okay, no matter what happens, we need to hold this road, right? Losing this road means that the front line and all reserve trenches and the commander uh the commanding area would all be cut off from one another so you'd assume that this would be like defended by landmines razor wire brigades

of soldiers it was actually depended by one company of soldiers at the very front line and then one platoon further back that was understrength and only had about 28 people in it. After that, there was nothing. Wait, so how many people do they have coming down on them right now? Oh, 100,000 plus. To the credit of a few Italian commanders, they did point out this weakness to Cadorna, who said, oh, you're right, promised reinforcements, who then never showed up. Nice. All this is a recipe for a massive fuck up of colossal proportions. When the Italians came up against one of the best armies of the war in Imperial Germany, their tactics had been quite advanced in comparison to the other two people in this fight.

Their weapons had been a little bit better and their soldiers were all better trained, better led and better fed than the Austrians. The Germans planned what at this point in 1970 would be a very normal offensive in the Western front. A calculated concentrated artillery bombardment with conventional munitions and gas, poison gas, followed by an infiltration attack on that same very specific part of the line

to achieve a breakthrough. So, like, there would be an artillery strike going on and on and on, but as this is happening, soldiers would be pushing up at the same spot. Oh, God, there's another sexy Luigi. Why is it anime Luigi? God. I hate it so much. So, like, people think that this...

Kerry, it just looks like you're the meat between the Mario Brothers sandwich here. I'm just the turkey between the white bread here the day after Thanksgiving. It's fine. The old pig roast. Like, this would look like a simple human wave attack, but it actually wasn't.

It was considered very advanced for the time, and Italy had no means to stop this. From the outset, the Italian soldiers began to panic. They had so far been spared gas attacks that would have been commonplace in the West since 1915. And because of that, they simply didn't have gas masks. And the ones who did, did not have ones that were up to date that could protect them from phosgene,

which is what the Germans used. The Italian artillery barely fired a shot in response because nobody was giving them any orders so they just kind of sat there oh no oh god oh his fursuit luigi why is this be glad this is the angle we're seeing why is is Luigi so thick? I'm just going to hang it right here and let's see if it'd be an issue. You know, the people that are listening to this episode

on our normal SoundCloud are going to be missing out, but also they're lucky. So, yeah, the Fage gene shells just, like, ate Italians alive because they had no gas mask that could protect them. And then the Italian artillery didn't even attempt a counter-battery because nobody told them to.

They just kind of sat there and got poison gassed. And then by the time that the Italian artillery commander attempted to do something on his own, the Germans were attacking him directly, so they lost the guns. The Italian soldiers ran from the gas, and the Germans attacked attacking him directly, so they lost the guns. The Italian soldiers ran from the gas and the Germans attacked using flamethrowers and hand grenades, two things that the Italians are not used to.

Almost immediately, the Italian line crumbled completely without fighting. Small groups of Italians attempted to fight, but without support. Aw, womp womp. That's a dead Italian sound but small groups of

Italian soldiers either with orders to stand their ground or no clear way of retreating or without orders to retreat and afraid to be shot by the military police they continue to fight on but without support and unable to communicate with one another so there was like small They continued to fight on, but without support and unable to communicate with one another.

So there was like small little pockets of resistance that would eventually just be snuffed out one by one. There was also some key bridges that needed to be blown to stop the German and Austrian advance. But they were never wired for detonation, while others were, and they were blown far too early, trapping entire divisions on the other side. In one case a bridge was blown while an entire Italian division was attempting to cross it. Retreating soldiers who still held their rifles were turned around at gunpoint by the Italian military police and forced back into the collapsing front. Soldiers noticed that the MPs were letting unarmed soldiers keep retreating though, so soon they were just tossing away their weapons so they could flee as fast as they can in order to escape the battle. Luigi Cadorna himself finally left his command bunker, leaving the entire Italian 2nd Army to die on the battlefield as he escaped. So,

so, what's his body count at by this point? That, like, soldiers have died under his command? Yeah. Well, at the end, so we'll talk a little bit at what his numbers might look like at the end of the

Battle of Caporetto. Okay. The attack, like I said, was only supposed to relieve pressure on the Austrians. And instead, the German assault broke the back of the entire Italian army. It was like that military version of... It was the military version of that last thing that the camel could no longer take. It was that last straw that broke the camel's back. And the Italian army melted in the face of it.

A quarter of a million Italian soldiers surrendered. And the German soldiers remarked that it was the first time that they, during a battle, that the enemy soldiers eagerly surrendered to them without firing a shot in defense. Another 50,000 deserted and another 300 000 just ran in every which way in order to save themselves they call them stragglers like it's going to take like months for them to show back up because they just run for their life and another 13 000 were killed and if you look at the numbers that is a shocking amount of shockingly few amount of dead people for this battle. Yeah. I was going to say, 300,000 that just ran in random directions versus 13,000 dead.

That's like if there's a bee swarm and you shoot a shotgun through it. It's like, you kill some of them. But, I mean, still, there's still lots of bees left, man. There's still a lot of bees going on. And there was like tens of thousands of wounded, a lot of them from ph I mean, still, all those bees, there's still lots of bees left, man. There's still a lot of bees going on. There was like tens of thousands of wounded, a lot of them from phosgene gas. And everything the Italian army had done over the years of war,

everything they've accomplished for this war, had been undone in a week of fighting. And they were pushed within 30 kilometers of Venice. The only reason they stopped, like the Germans stopped their advance, is because their troops had simply tired themselves out and outran their own supply line

because they didn't expect, like, holy shit, we're all the way here? Like, they didn't expect that. Once the running stopped, Cadorna did everything he could to blame his own soldiers. He blamed communists and subversives within the ranks of the army for betraying their nation. And he encouraged the government

to let them expel them from the army, which we can all assume that that just means shooting them. And Cadorna said all of these things publicly and a fair amount of people agreed with him. I don't have to point out to anybody listening that this is actually bullshit and there's zero evidence to suggest

that the communists evidence to suggest that the communists were the reason that the Italian army collapsed. It also happened to be one of the arguments put forward by a guy named Benito Mussolini on the massive failures of the Italian army during the war, like their version of the stab in the back theory.

Was he? This is Hillary all over again. It's the damn socialists. That's why Hillary Clinton didn't win. Who is the Benito Mussolini's Susan Sarandon? Antonio Gramsci? An interesting part is the Ottomans did something like this at the battle of Sarah Khamish where they blamed the Armenians.

So which led to like the genocide is like the, the Armenians are two faced, like it's a stab in the back for them as well. So like, and that was like that kind of belief survived and was like glommed onto by fascists to give a reason for their abject failure. And one of the groups that knew this was bullshit was none other than the German Empire themselves, who passed out and dropped leaflets that said, Italians, Italians, General Cadorna's communication on October 28th

opened your eyes to the enormous catastrophe that has hit your army. At this moment, so grave for your nation, your general has turned to a strange expedient in order to explain the disaster. He has the audacity to accuse the army that has followed his orders to staunch uselessness and desperate attacks many times. This is what you get in return for your valor. You've spilled your blood in many battles your enemy does not deny you the respect owed to valorous adversaries and your general has dishonored you

he insults you to save himself the German said this and like nowadays it would just be like a leaflet would just have a a screenshot of whatever tweet Cadorna put out with like owned that would be the entirety like that would be the contents a screenshot of whatever tweet Cadorna put out with owned. That would be the entirety. That would be the contents.

Cadorna would just say the numbers lie and he's being... The battle's rigged! It's rigged! Yeah. It would just be... Nowadays, it would just be a quote tweet with clapping Nancy Pelosi or something. Propaganda back then, man,

it really just hit different. I would feel inspired by that. You couldn't... I don't know. Certainly, we all fall to propaganda, but I love propaganda that assumes I'm smart. It assumes I'm stupid.

When you use a bunch of fancy early 1900 words and really pretty it up a little bit, I feel like, oh, these Germans, they care about me. They want me to not die. They don't want to machine gun me in the face. Yeah, I would just think that it would just be like. It's that old school idea of war where it's like a gentlemanly thing that war is. And it's fun and good, actually. good actually so like the idea that the enemy commander I mean a lot I think a lot of this

is like the Germans like wait if we believe or if they believe that the army is this much of a fuck up that takes away from our win because you know they completely shattered them at Caporetto and this is what finally got the government to fire Luigi Cadorna

but that only happened because like France and Britain were like, you have to fucking fire this guy. Like we can only give you so much. And that's like one of the reasons why that after Caporetto, more and more supplies reported, but also so were

allied soldiers, including Americans eventually. Like Jesus Christ, for the love of God, fucking fire that guy we can't keep propping him up um the italian army then came under the command of armando diaz and showed himself capable of not only winning a battle but crushing the austrian army at the battle of vittorino veneto and knocking them out of the war completely. And this is within months of taking command of the army. He takes a broken, shattered Italian army

that's been running scared and getting fucked up all war, one way or the other. And it's like either the enemy's not going to shoot you like somebody next to you might. And he's just like, hey, what's up, motherfuck's go let's go kill some austria hungary hungarians you go to the left and you go to the right and then you do a pincer movement they're like holy shit this man is sun zoo yeah let's fucking do it it's funny when the first things that ds did was like outlaw um corporal punishment outlaw capital punishment um like he did he uh can discontinue

decimation which now there's um the account that i brought up with the rebellion uh is the only confirmed account of cadorna using decimation against a unit but there is a rumor that he imploded against the remnants of the italian Second Army when they were treated from Caporetto. There's a lot of firsthand accounts, but nothing's for sure. Like it's not like what happened to the other unit, the Cotton Zaro Brigade or whatever. Like that's actually noted in Italian military legal history documents. There's no there's nothing noted for the other one. But a lot of people said like, no, no, we fucking saw that happen as we were running away as if they were just shooting people at random but the idea

is like yeah we're not gonna fucking do that anymore um and that like immediately made morale grow like incredible like fast enough where it's enough to beat the austrians and knock them out of the war oh weird like not just like randomly shooting like every 12th man like made morale grow who would have known? Yeah, weird how that happens. Whom's could have said? And it's interesting. A government investigation was launched into the outcome of Caporetto that squarely put the blame all on Cadorna, who just kept blaming communists. Um, and, uh, Diaz commented publicly later that fighting the battle, uh, fighting a war with the army that he took over from, uh, Cadorna was like trying to fight a battle

with a sword that had no blade, uh, because he had fucking ruined it so badly. Unfortunately, post-war Cadorna and Diaz both became ardent fascists. Cadorna and Diaz both became ardent fascists. Of course, I mean, we know Cadorna already was on the fascism trail. They were both promoted by Mussolini

to Marshal of Italy post-retirement, which might be the least surprising thing that's happened so far. They were also cornerstones to the mythos. they call them lions of the fatherland um and where mussolini is like see look they fought because like mussolini fought world war one too and there's like yeah it was totally the communists of why we got our shit

stomped in for so long um yeah they blamed uh socialists communists and trade unionists uh for their version of the stab in the back. Though they both died in the mid-1920s before they could watch their country trip over their own dick and get owned in another war. But we do have one bright spot. Cadorna's son, Raffaele Cadorna Jr., was an officer in the Italian Army during World War II. Flipped on Mussolini's bitch ass to work with the OSS and partisans to kick the Germans out and eventually kill Mussolini's bitch ass and hang him upside down.

Oh yeah. Yeah. There's always a little bit of Sun Redemption there. Yeah, you gotta take what you can get it, man. That's what you hope for. Maybe Don Jr. will suicide bomb Christmas with the family

finally man we did it we won the war on Christmas with a martyrdom operation um Inshallah so in Santala uh we do a little thing on this show

gentlemen called questions from the Legion. And this is the first time we have a live audience. It's now 64 people. I'm going to go on a stretch and say if we were doing this in real, like real live, like in a bar or whatever, we'd have significantly less than 65 people in here so awesome um also during this this has been a charity uh stream on my twitch account for um a charity that benefits people suffering uh most likely uh mostly children called focus on the children armenia uh they're suffering from the recent war in artsak uh Thousands of people were killed. Tens of thousands more were forced to flee for their lives.

And it left a lot of people food insecure, homeless. And a lot of these people moved to the Artsakh capital of Spanakert, which simply does not have the ability to take care of them all. I originally set a goal of $1,000 over the last 12 hours. We're now sitting at $3,739, which I will pay $1,000

into from Patreon to bump this up even more. So it's been incredible. So this is going to be the first live questions from the Legion. And we're going to take it from the crowd. We'll take, there's three of us. Do we want to do, are we going to just do questions for the next,

you got like a half hour left. We can do that. And. I said, do you want to stop? Do you just want to stop the recording? Because we're at like an hour and a half of this fucking recording. Yeah. Why don't we stop the recording and then just do questions and answers

for the next half hour? Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I don't know how to end that, so we're going to have to cap off an ending that Nate can slap onto the end. So, thanks everybody for tuning in, and until next time, don't

assault the Assanzo Austria don't do war don't take part in World War 1 it's bad yeah until next time later don't go to the Asanzo