Nature’s Tragic Role at the Alpine Front during World War I

 

Mauricio Nicolas Vergara, PhD

The Alpine front could be considered one of the emblematic cases of WWI in extreme environments. Indeed, many of the hundreds of thousands of people who were deployed at that front fought and wintered in some of the highest and most inhospitable mountains in Europe. Namely, many men found themselves deployed in altitudes more than 3,000 meters above sea level, where no human being had ever set foot. The Alpine front ran across peaks, glaciers, cliffs, and valleys of the southeastern Alps, in large part along the border between Italy and Austria-Hungary. In particular, from May 1915, when Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary, the front ran from the northwestern part of the southern Rhaetian Alps to the southern Julian Pre-Alps.  

From October 1917, after the Italian defeat in the Battle of Caporetto, to November 1918, when the Armistice was signed, the front between these two countries was shortened. Thus, from the Venetian Prealps, it turned southern into the Venetian Plain. The main armies involved at the Alpine front were the Italian and the Austro-Hungarian armies. Troops of the German Empire, allied with AustriaHungary, and of the British Empire, France, the United States, the Czechoslovak Legion, and Romanian Legion, allied with Italy, also participated in certain moments at the front.  The experience undergone at the Alps by some of these forces proved unique and invaluable for future wars.

An especially relevant study that considered personal testimonies and memoirs to increase the understanding about the relationship between people and nature at this front is the one of Diego Leoni. In his work, La Guerra Verticale; the author obtained a comprehensive picture of the characteristics of the Alpine front by focusing on the multiple aspects of the relationship of men and armies—not just with the natural environment but also with the machinery and the animals used there. In particular, Leoni compiled a significant number of personal  testimonies and memoirs as well as other kinds of sources, such as songs, poems, and official records from archives. These sources included authors with different backgrounds that conducted different activities during the war, such as soldiers, officers, nurses, doctors, workers, etc., for both the Italian and the Austro-Hungarian armies. In this way, Leoni was able to explore the various aspects  and moments of the Alpine front that he discussed from many points of view. In turn, this led him to find a more complex and detailed understanding of the front than other authors. 

Perhaps one of the biggest merits of Leoni’s book is that it tells, probably for the first time in such a well-documented way, that for people at the Alpine front the struggle to survive natural hazards and poor health and living conditions was often on par with surviving the enemy’s weapons. From this perspective, Leoni’s book represents probably the most advanced knowledge of the role of nature at the Alpine front.

Some of the casualties directly determined by mountain environments that are named in literature are casualties due to avalanches, landslides and lightning, those crushed inside huts under the weight of snow, those fallen along the sides of the mountains and into the precipices, and those who suffered from frostbite and hypothermia.  Many also were lost and resulted in missing or dead when moving through forests, fog, storms, nighttime, or whiteouts. Around Mte. Pasubio, hundreds of carriers were lost in the fog and went missing. Poor health and living conditions determined by alpine nature also led to casualties due to natural hazards. For example, frostbite was determined by low temperatures, the natural hazard, but also by poor health and living conditions.  These were at least in part due to alpine nature, such as the nutritional and physical state of the individual, inability to move freely, and the humidity of clothes, mainly footwear.

Another direct impact of natural hazards that is important to consider are psychological damages. In all the fronts of war, these were largely related to military causes and to the health and living conditions of the soldiers.  however, at the Alpine front, nature also seemingly represented a major factor of their origin. In literature, there is neither any historical medical report nor specific study that considers this impact of mountain nature. Still there are several sources, for example those cited by Leoni, which mentioned the relevance of nature for the determination of actual mental illnesses and of mental states that could lead to mental illnesses. In Alpenkrieg, Fritz Weber mentioned the occurrence of depression and considered that some mental states originated by the environmental context at the front were “very similar to a mental illness.” More recently, Alessandro Massignani also considered the presence of depression among those living at the Alpine front due to environmental conditions and Leoni also mentioned the presence of “melancholic depression.”

Nature contributed in many ways to the poor health and living conditions present at the Alpine front. One can assume that in general this effect was more adverse on the positions along the sides of the mountains and on their peaks, where the environment was more hostile, rather than in the valleys. The impact of nature on the health and living conditions included:

• Temperature, humidity, wind, slope direction, clouds, and vegetation, which contributed to excess cold and heat;

• The limitations of resources, which contributed to many deprivations. In particular, the insufficient amount of water springs represented a serious problem for drinking, hygienic practices, cooking, and performing some works in many parts of the front.  In addition to its limited presence, many of the water sources became polluted during the war, due to the putrefaction of dead bodies and the presence of human waste and of toxic chemical substances that resulted from explosions.

Particularly during the summer, when most of the snow had melted, the lack of water was considered a main cause of casualties in some cases. According to Heinz von Lichem, there were deaths from dehydration in Monte Zugna and in the Pasubio Massif;

 

• Rugged topography, which limited the potential space for building. This contributed to overcrowded camps and barracks;

• Avalanches and other natural phenomena, which produced cold or fear of an eventual imminent accident, contributing to sleep deprivation;

• Taxing physical and mental activities. Moving required significant exertion due to, for example, slopes, snow, wind, and the fact that people had to carry heavy weight because, mainly in high and rugged places, a large part of the transport of materials for living and fighting had to be done by them.  Digging trenches, caves, and tunnels in rock and ice, shoveling snow continuously during the cold season, restoring weapons, telephone and telegraph lines, cableways, and other infrastructure frequently destroyed by weather and avalanches were some of the many other ways through which alpine nature required huge exertions;

• Moods, feelings, and mental states were affected negatively due to the alpine climate. Concerning this impact of the environment, Weber referred to restlessness, agitation, desperation, oppression, anxiety, upheaval of the nervous system, and apathy among the persons at the front.  In particular, topography and weather contributed to periods of social isolation, precluding contacts with different or larger groups of persons and with civil society and relatives. This happened, for example, when the movement between different positions was impossible or when letters and news did not reach certain sectors of the front. These living conditions highly affected the troops sense of sadness, loneliness, and melancholy. Similar outcomes also created long periods of inactivity and restriction of movements caused by inclement weather. Moreover, the frequent natural hazards represented a continuous threat that “upset the nervous system” and increased the sense of precariousness and uncertainty. These conditions particularly affected those who were not used to mountain weather.

As for the health and living conditions, the efficiency of the logistic system was also affected by both human and natural factors. The human ones regarded the intrinsic malfunction of the armies and states and the factual or potential offenses of the enemy. 

Natural elements and processes represented difficulties such as:

• Slope, vegetation, kind of surface of the ground, presence of ice on the ground, hydrography, and weather created difficulties moving.  Indeed, it was reported that some positions reached 25 days of total isolation and some others more than a month. The impact of nature on transport occurred at almost every step of the supply chain in the Alps, from the snow that stopped the trains circulating along the valleys to the avalanches that engulfed the carriers and struck cableways supplying the higher positions. Weber reported on streets and paths that were impassable for seven months;

• Rugged topography, landslides, avalanches, and hydrography, which caused difficulties and lack of potential space for construction. This contributed to a shortage of adequate roads, paths, and storehouses. The difficulty constructing roads was represented, for example, by the need of the armies to build bridges over streams or dig tunnels inside mountains but also by the low temperatures and avalanches that workers had to suffer;

• Limited resources and hostile weather, which contributed to a high demand and strong dependency of the armies on the supplies coming from the plains. This led often to an overload of the logistics system. 

Despite the still-limited knowledge about the casualties due to natural hazards, the Alpine front represents a historical case of how the consequences of waging war in inhospitable environments go beyond the difficulties concerning fighting and how nature can cause great damage to armies.

Excerpted from: "Nature’s Tragic Role at the Alpine Front during World War I – The Consequences",  Journal of Advanced Military Studies vol. 13, no. 1, Spring 2022