Chapter 255: Italy's Collapse |
Valiant, decisive, and seeking only Verona, regardless of the casualty count.
This was how later historical records evaluated Marshal Leopold's performance during the Battle of Verona in late May 1916.
Starting late on the night of May 25 and lasting until the final days of the month, the Demanian infantry's relentless, rotational assaults on Verona were a textbook example of fierce decisiveness.
Three infantry corps, comprising nine divisions, were thrown into the battle in waves. Because the narrow battlefield could only accommodate so many troops at once, one unit would mount a continuous twenty-four-hour offensive before being rotated out, giving the Italian defenders trapped inside Verona absolutely no time to catch their breath.
If this had been a mobile or field battle, the Italians' combat quality would have likely seen them break in less than a day. Fortunately for them, they were fighting a defensive war on their home soil, entrenched within a heavily fortified zone they had spent years developing.
Furthermore, while Verona's defenders were not the Italian army's elite mountain divisions, they were at least considered a solid core force, which allowed them to hold out for four to five days before finally collapsing.
Under the creeping barrage of 120mm mortars;
Under the frenzied charges of the Demanian Army's Storm Battalion soldiers wielding submachine guns;
Under the brutal urban pacification that followed—where any stragglers resisting from behind ruined cover were met with flame tanks that scoured every crevice of the rubble clean;
The Italian defenders finally and utterly broke in the early hours of May 30, announcing their surrender.
General Mario Salerno, the city defense commander, personally surrendered his sidearm to Marshal Leopold.
Even so, the vast majority of Verona had already been destroyed. The Demanians had no intention of showing mercy to enemies stubbornly fighting street to street; any resistance resulted in the immediate flattening of an entire city block. Since the Italians had never declared Verona an open city and chose to resist within it, the destruction of its buildings was considered a legally justified act of war.
However, the Demanian Army exercised restraint. The moment the Italian army announced its surrender, the destruction of the city's architecture came to an almost synchronized halt.
When accepting General Mario Salerno's surrender, Marshal Leopold only had one thing to say: "Merely living on this land does not make you descendants of the Roman Empire; you could just as easily be migrants from elsewhere! How could the Roman Empire produce descendants as treacherous as you? Everything that happened today is the consequence of your perfidy and your opportunistic betrayal of our alliance!"
Indeed, there were far stronger grounds for punishing Italy than the other warring nations, for they had secretly signed the Triple Alliance treaty before the war broke out.
Other countries were at least honorable enemies, but these opportunists scurrying in their rat holes were nothing but two-faced, backstabbing, faithless garbage. Launching a harsh and relentless offensive to terrify them into submission as quickly as possible was absolutely necessary—and it brought no feelings of guilt whatsoever.
There was no need to speak of chivalry or honor when dealing with traitors.
As early as May 26, when the Alps defense line was utterly breached and Verona was just beginning to be besieged, the other nations were already aware of this latest development in the Italian theater.
When the first border fortress fell on May 23, nations like the Brit Nation and Francia were still suspicious, believing Italy was simply being unreliable and trying to swindle them for more aid.
But when the latest news arrived on the 26th, they were completely stunned.
How could such a militarily incompetent major power exist in the world? They had tens of kilometers of depth in the natural barrier of the Alps, yet it was pierced as easily as a paper window.
The Franks' inefficient and chaotic parliament hastily held another day-long meeting to discuss what to do, yet they failed to reach any immediate conclusions.
Just as they were finally nearing a decision, news arrived that Verona had surrendered on May 30. The remnants of two Italian corps were now crawling and begging for their lives like stray dogs.
The Italian forces on the Isonzo River frontline had halted their offensive on the 27th, attempting an orderly withdrawal toward Venice. But with the Austrian army pinning them down on the frontal battlefield, retreating was no simple task.
By the 29th, the Italian army realized they could delay no longer; they had to leave immediately. Disregarding whether the rearguard still possessed any will to fight, Commander-in-Chief Marshal Luigi Cadorna ordered the main forces of the two field armies on the west bank of the Isonzo River, led by General Badoglio, to retreat at full speed.
As a result, the Austrians, having long anticipated that the Italians would flee in panic, crossed the Isonzo River and launched a pursuit.
Shockingly, the Italian rearguard failed to form any effective defense along the Isonzo River. The moment they saw the massive Austrian army crossing, their morale shattered, and they joined the rout. This meant that across two entire Italian field armies, virtually no units were executing their rearguard duties; they were all simply competing to see who could run faster than their allies.
The war quickly devolved into a scenario reminiscent of ancient battles, where one side's complete collapse led to them being endlessly chased and slaughtered by the enemy.
Even the traditionally unimpressive Austrian army was able to rampage forward, killing any isolated enemies and capturing any groups they encountered.
Marshal Luigi Cadorna's envisioned "orderly withdrawal" rapidly deteriorated into a general rout. The two Italian field armies were hunted down for over eighty kilometers from the banks of the Isonzo River, only stopping once they managed to flee into the city of Venice.
This eighty-kilometer flight was done entirely on foot. The vast majority of the Italian soldiers had discarded all their weapons and equipment during the collapse just to run a little faster over the long distance.
During their flight, the routed troops from the two field armies suffered casualties reaching a staggering 100,000. Those who remained were hardly fit to be called an army.
By the time they retreated to Venice, it was already June 1.
They had intended to keep fleeing, but they were intercepted near the small town of Taglio, thirty kilometers south of Venice, by the vanguard of Marshal Leopold's German 10th Army.
Taglio was a small town situated at the mouth of the Po River.
The forces cutting them off were none other than Brigadier General Rundstedt and Lieutenant Colonel Manstein's 3rd Armored Division.
Following their main force's capture of Verona, this armored division had relentlessly pushed 120 kilometers southeast along the northern bank of the Po River in a mere two days. Along the way, they had conquered and forced the surrender of several towns, thrusting straight from Verona to the mouth of the Po River in Venice's southern outskirts.
The Italians, believing that the remnants of their two field armies still numbered over 200,000 while only a single enemy armored division blocked their path, thought they still had a chance to break out. Desperate to carve out an escape route, they brazenly launched an offensive against Rundstedt.
In this open plains environment, Rundstedt certainly showed no mercy to the Italian fools. He ordered Manstein's Tank battalion to pave the way and directly counter-attacked the Italians.
In this type of mobile warfare, the massive Italian army was inherently disjointed. Their heavy artillery had either been abandoned or couldn't be deployed to the front lines in time, meaning they were relying entirely on light infantry to break the encirclement.
Light infantry charging head-on into Manstein's 130-plus light Tanks produced an inevitable result: a host of over 100,000 men was routed by a single Tank regiment and slaughtered over a twenty-kilometer stretch as they fled all the way back into the city of Venice.
Throughout this pursuit, tens of thousands of overtaken Italian soldiers surrendered on the spot, causing Manstein—whose unit only had a few thousand men—to be utterly incapable of processing prisoners who outnumbered his troops by a factor of twenty.
"Is this really how wars are fought in this world? Sixty to seventy thousand men surrendering to three thousand? Can this even be called an army?"
Lieutenant Colonel Manstein, whose hands cramped from processing prisoners, began to question his entire reality.
When the remnants of the Venetian legion retreated into the city and tallied their numbers, the two field armies had been whittled down to a mere 150,000 to 160,000 men after these repeated disasters, all of them devoid of any combat effectiveness.
Some observers might wonder: why was Brigadier General Rundstedt's 3rd Armored Division the only German vanguard sent to Venice to cut off the Italian main force's retreat? Where had Major General von Bock's 2nd Armored Division gone?
The answer, naturally, was that Marshal Leopold found the Italians far too weak. Cutting off the enemy's escape to Venice only required Rundstedt's unit to act as the spearhead, so he assigned a different task to Major General von Bock.
Also following the Italian surrender at Verona on May 30, while Rundstedt's 3rd Armored Division pushed east toward Venice, von Bock's 2nd Armored Division traveled in the exact opposite direction along the same route. In the same span of two days, they rapidly advanced 130 kilometers to the west. On June 1, von Bock fought his way into Italy's largest industrial center: the city of Milan.
This was hardly surprising, as there were no heavy Italian troop concentrations around Milan. The entire Lombardy Region only had about one corps of regular troops combined—they were utterly incapable of withstanding a blow.
Von Bock had no need for any flashy pincer movements. He simply bulldozed his way down the Verona-Milan railway line, rolling his Tanks right into Milan's Flower Square and parking them in front of the Milan Cathedral. Popping his upper body out of the Tank's hatch, he had an embedded photographer take a picture of him with the cathedral in the background.
Milan was the heart of the Lombardy Region, just as Venice was the core of the Veneto region. Half a century ago, both of these major territories had belonged to Austria.
During Italy's rise to power, they originally had territorial disputes with both Francia and Austria. The high command of the Kingdom of Sardinia employed a strategy of aligning with the strong to crush the weak: they sided with Francia against Austria, permanently ceding Nice and Savoy to the Franks to declare an end to their territorial disputes, all in exchange for the French army's help in fighting the Austrians. Subsequently, they seized the Lombardy and Veneto regions in two separate campaigns.
Now, less than ten days after Demania went to war with Italy, they had invaded Milan and besieged Venice, essentially reclaiming all the land Italy had previously taken from Austria.
Following the occupation of Milan, the surrounding small cities across the Po Valley practically surrendered at the first summons, crushed beneath the Demanian iron heel.
On June 3, the follow-up infantry forces arrived in Milan, while von Bock's armored division drove further south to Parma, seizing this vital pass between the Po Valley and the central mountain range of the southern peninsula.
With this, the gap to the northern Po Valley was completely sealed. Although the south still contained eighty percent of Italy's landmass, the reality was that it consisted mostly of rugged, worthless mountainous terrain; only the areas around Rome and Naples possessed any decently usable plains.
When the war began the previous year, Italy's population sat at nearly 37 million. Due to the massive casualties of war and other drastic population declines, Italy's remaining population was now roughly 35 million.
The Lombardy Region alone boasted a population of 10 million, while the Veneto region had 5 million.
Although the Po Valley's other two major regions, Piedmont and Bologna, were not taken from Austria and had been Italy's inherent territory since ancient times, these two areas were now inevitably bound to be lost as well. Piedmont had nearly 4 million residents, and Bologna had roughly the same. Together, the two regions accounted for over 7 million people.
In other words, the enemy forces had effortlessly taken control of Italian territory housing over 22 million people, leaving the remaining eighty percent of the land with a combined population of just over 12 million.
(Note: Notice the use of "enemy forces" here, rather than explicitly stating the Demanian Army.)
The end of the war against Italy was truly only one city away: Rome.
That same day, June 3, amidst an incredibly favorable situation, Marshal Leopold convened an emergency meeting in the newly captured city of Parma to discuss exactly how to conclude the war against Italy.
"The current situation is excellent, and our progress has been rapid. However, such speed has also led to considerable chaos. Today, we are gathered here to discuss how we will resolve the next steps."
Marshal Leopold set the tone for the meeting. He then asked Major General von Bock, who was in charge of the rapid western breakthrough and the race to claim territory, to brief everyone on some unexpected developments.
Looking rather exhausted, Major General von Bock started with a brief self-criticism. "The forces responsible for the western advance and I made a minor error. After taking Milan, I was entirely focused on completely cutting off the northwestern Italian army's retreat into the southern heartland, so I pivoted south and cut toward Parma.
"In hindsight, I should have continued pushing straight west all the way to Piedmont to thoroughly seal off the Franks' route into Italy. Because of my misjudgment, three days of westward advance were wasted. By the time I attacked Parma, the French army had actually crossed the border and, acting as 'co-defenders,' taken control of a significant portion of Italy's westernmost Piedmont region. Notably, the French army occupied Turin yesterday.
"Because the French claimed they were allied forces arriving to 'co-defend,' the Italians offered no resistance and simply let them march in. Following the current trend, the Franks might seize both the Piedmont and Liguria regions—namely, the two core cities of Turin and Genoa.
"We can still ensure that Italy's remaining core cities fall under our control in the future, but only if our forces push south from Parma and Bologna immediately. We must cross the central mountain range of the Apennine Peninsula and capture Pisa and Florence. This will smother any possibility of the French forces already in the Genoa area linking up with the Italian-controlled zones in the south, completely cutting off their path to seize further territory."
After Major General von Bock finished speaking, the two corps commanders of the 10th Army who had accompanied his westward push agreed with his assessment, believing they should invest more resources into the western route immediately.
Conversely, the other two corps commanders who had led the eastern advance alongside Rundstedt and Manstein clearly displayed expressions of regret. They tactfully pointed out, "If we head south to Pisa and Florence now, our mission to annihilate and force the surrender of the enemies trapped in the Venice encirclement will be severely delayed. We should concentrate our forces and first swallow up that massive pocket in Venice. Although the Empire's warriors are a hundred times braver than the Italians, we only have over 200,000 men in Italy right now. We cannot afford to divide our forces any further."
The meeting did not reach an immediate conclusion. Since Lelouch belonged to the Joint Army-Navy Operations Coordination Office rather than being a staff officer of the 10th Army, he only attended as an observer and did not interject.
After listening to everyone's opinions, Marshal Leopold waved his hand, signaling a tea break so that they could all carefully consider the matter.
He then had Lelouch follow him. While they enjoyed some coffee and small cakes, he asked Lelouch for his perspective.
Lelouch admitted that their previous plans had a loophole. "The plan our army drew up before the war to conquer Italy indeed miscalculated one factor: we didn't expect that the Italian army, facing the destruction of their nation, would choose not to resist and instead allow the French army to cross their shared northwestern border to 'co-defend.'
"This is an urgent matter that must be handled immediately. Therefore, we should concentrate our armored forces and the Storm Battalion as quickly as possible and race against the French army. The French should only just be arriving in Genoa. We must beat them to Pisa and cut through to Florence, limiting the French-occupied zone's spread to just the Piedmont and Liguria regions."
"And what about the enemy forces trapped in the Venice encirclement?" Marshal Leopold asked.
"Just keep them surrounded," Lelouch replied. "Ten days or so won't make a difference, and there is no need to rush into flexing our muscles to force a surrender.
"If the Italians try to use their navy to evacuate their massive army from the port of Venice, we will deploy our airship fleets at night to airdrop mines in the waters outside the port. That will delay the enemy to some extent.
"At the same time, if our minelaying offensive inflicts losses on the Italian navy, it will surely boost our allies' morale. The Austrian navy might then find the courage to charge out of the Port of Trieste and enter the Adriatic Sea to intercept the Italian fleet.
"Furthermore, given the current circumstances, I can privately disclose a portion of the plans previously discussed by His Majesty the Emperor, the General Staff, and the Admiralty. The General Staff and the Admiralty are hoping to coax the Brit Nation's navy into committing more forces to the Eastern Mediterranean. Once the Italian navy is blocked by sea mines and the Austrian navy dares to sally forth, the resulting setbacks will inevitably force the Italians to beg the Brit Nation for reinforcements. This plays perfectly into the overall strategic situation the Empire desires.
"Lastly, we must consider the post-war situation. The destruction of Italy is inevitable, but if we only crush their army while their navy remains undefeated, their navy will definitely refuse to yield. Even if we demand that they hand over their fleet after the war in exchange for ceding less territory, their navy may not comply.
"Only by handing them a minor defeat at sea and stripping them of their pride—ensuring they suffer total defeat on both land and sea—can we guarantee they won't dare bargain during the armistice negotiations!"
When Lelouch spoke these words, his mind was on 'operation rainbow' from Earth's timeline.
A crucial psychological trigger for the mass scuttling of warships during operation rainbow was the navy's belief that 'the army lost the war, while the navy never even fought—and we didn't lose the only major engagement at Jutland. Why should we suffer the humiliation of handing over all our warships?'
Regardless of whether this mindset was justified, since there was a chance to strangle such thoughts in the cradle for the enemy, Lelouch was certainly not going to hold back.
Hearing Lelouch elevate the matter to the level of coordinated land-and-sea operations across the northern and southern fronts, Marshal Leopold dropped his insistence.
"Since doing so aids in achieving the Empire's ultimate strategic goals, our 10th Army will simply cooperate. We will follow your plan: encircle Venice without rushing to annihilate the remnants of those two field armies. We will send the armored forces and the main assault units south from Bologna to Florence, using the pretext of severing the French army's encroaching claws!"
The great army quickly mobilized according to this new plan, continuing to crush all resistance and expand their gains with overwhelming force.
Lelouch also prepared to contact Admiral Spee in the Black Sea at the appropriate time to let him know it was nearly time to execute the 'munich express' mission. Once the main force of Britannia's Mediterranean Fleet was drawn west toward the Ionian Sea by the naval skirmishes between Italy and Austria, a vacuum would be left in the easternmost Mediterranean, east of the Aegean Sea.
Then, the Osman destroyer fleet would be able to escort reinforcements and supplies to land in the Beirut area. From there, they could take the Beirut-Baghdad railway to support the Middle East theater, vastly alleviating the supply shortages plaguing their forces there.
