NATO Manual

The Carpathian winter war of 1915 presents one of the most significant — and, in terms of human sacrifice, most tragic — chapters of World War I. The mountain battles that pitted allied Austro-Hungarian and German armies against Russian troops were unprecedented in the age of total war. In the winter of 1915, the Dual Monarchy launched three separate and equally ill-conceived offensives: an initial effort on 23 January; a second uncoordinated assault on the Russians on 27 February; and a third and final effort to liberate Fortress Przemysl in late March. The Karpathenkrieg comprised three separate campaigns launched by the Habsburg Supreme Command from mid-January to April 1915. The Eastern Front operation, which ultimately engaged more than one million men on each side, could hardly have been conducted under worse conditions. The Carpathian Theater lacked the railways, roads, communication lines, and other important resources necessary for maneuvering mass armies. Moreover, the contenders soon found themselves ensnared in an inhospitable mountain environment in wintertime.

The Habsburg command had made no prewar contingency plans for a mountain campaign lasting into the winter months — one of its many failures — and this would prove to be a disastrous mistake. Infantry masses were deployed into the mountainous theater with no provision for winter uniforms or suitable equipment. Conrad's troops were sent to the mountains in winter without the most rudimentary winter provisions, including warm clothes, and saws with which to fell trees for firewood. Boots with cardboard soles, for example, quickly became unusable.

Thousands of Habsburg troops fell victim to "the white death,” living in the open in subfreezing temperatures with no shelter. Weary soldiers spent the long winter nights struggling to stay awake to avoid frostbite or freezing to death as nighttime temperatures dropped to as low as -25°F. Emotional fatigue set in amongst the living, compounded by the lack of food and sleep.

Nevertheless, Conrad's soldiers continued their attacks. Troops were expected to undertake exhausting marches through meter-deep snow to reach the battlefield, only to find no shelter awaiting them. In a cruel twist of fate, frigid conditions were interspersed with sudden periods of rising temperatures and thaw. Steady rain and melting snow turned the valley terrain into a pit of mud as troops, artillery, ammunition, animals, and supply wagons sank into the mire. Rising floodwaters swept away bridges and soldiers were forced to lie in the waterlogged positions.

The troops had to dig out in order to go on patrol, launch an assault, or clear defensive positions and the limited roads and trails essential for the movement of supplies. The shoveling required hours, sometimes days, and the burden of these tasks contributed to the physical and moral decline of Habsburg forces. Utterly exhausted, many of the troops became apathetic or committed suicide by shooting themselves or exposing themselves to enemy fire. Tens of thousands of horses, too — critical to the Habsburg supply chain — succumbed to overexertion and starvation.

Russian Artillery in the Carpathians

Habsburg Third Army suffered immense losses during the first Carpathian offensive. Two weeks after it began, official sources listed 88,900 men as casualties. Their total losses during the offensive exceeded 75 percent, most of them resulting from severe frostbite, exposure, or illness. The Third Army commander, Svetozar Boroevic, rightfully claimed that his army had not been prepared for the demands of a mountain winter campaign.

On 1 March, during the second offensive Colonel Georg Veith of the Third Army wrote: "Fog and heavy snowfalls, we have lost all sense of direction; entire regiments are getting lost, resulting in catastrophic losses." Habsburg archduke Joseph August, commander of VII Corps, reported that over two days his Hungarian Honvéd Division "suffered terrible losses; its effective force numbers less than 2,000. . .and tomorrow, despite the casualties, we have to attack again. My corps losses since 1 March: 12 officers, 1,121 men killed, 46 officers and 2,121 men wounded, 2 officers and 685 men missing. This is really terrible."

With the failed third Carpathian push grinding to a halt, the army's offensive efforts ended on 23 March. When Conrad ordered the South Army commander to transfer "dispensable" units to the embattled Third Army, he declined, stating that he required them for future operations. Conrad grew despondent, with his adjutant describing the situation as hopeless. An entry in the V Corps logbook observed, "It is as though Heaven is against us. When we attack, it starts snowing and more than one meter deep. When the Russians attack, the snow freezes and movement is possible."

Austrian Troops Retreating

For the Dual Monarchy, never to be forgotten was the series of operations that opened in 1915 in the Carpathian Mountains. Conrad's flawed planning and failures in the campaign also resulted in the German military exerting greater control over the Habsburg command structure. One of the most ill-conceived campaigns of the war, the Carpathian winter war offers far too many examples of how not to conduct winter mountain battle and provides a stark lesson about the negative effects of inadequate leadership.

Religious souls visualize hell as a blazing inferno with burning embers and intense heat. The soldiers fighting in the Carpathian Mountains during that first winter of the war know otherwise.

Colonel Georg Veith, Third Army, k.u.k.

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The weather also affected the vehicles used along the Western Front. Antonia Gamwell worked as an ambulance driver with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry.

Of course in the winter it was bitter and we couldn’t keep the cars mobile, I mean they just froze of course if they were left to freeze. But we had to keep winding them up. We tried every other way, we tried putting hot bottles in the engines and under the bonnet and heavy bonnet covers and every device we could possibly imagine, but it was no use. We had to simply stay up, there were details. So many of us – six I think it was – used to be on duty and every twenty minutes we went up and wound up the whole lot.

Despite the extra layers, many of the men still fell victim to frostbite and trench foot. Walter Grover was a private in the Royal Sussex Regiment.

All the time you’ve got in the trenches you never knew you’d got trench feet. Your feet were terribly cold with no feeling but when you got out of the line and you took your boots and socks off then your feet swelled up and you could never get your boots on again. And the agony of trench feet, you know, chaps used to groan with it and of course some actually lost their feet with it, you know, frostbite. Trench feet is something to be endured to describe it.

In extreme cases, men even died from exposure to the biting cold. Charles Wilson came close to such a fate with an attack of pneumonia.

We were behind the line; we were in reserve, we were at Mametz Wood. We were under canvas in the middle of winter, this was December and I’d been down on a course and had come back. And my kit had gone on up, I knew where the battalion was, I was there before I left, I knew the way up to the battalion and had left my kit to be sent on, my valise, to be sent up with the rations. But my kit never arrived and I had no cover and the battalion had only one blanket per man. It was a very hard frost and I arrived at this place very hot and sweaty and got a chill and was carried down from that to hospital.

Front Line on a Glacier: The Marmolada
By Richard Galli

North Glacier on the Marmolada

The highest mountain in the Dolomite range of the Alps at 3342 meters, the Marmolada (marmalade) Massif or "group" comprises of a vast northern glacier and a soaring, semicircle of cliffs and peaks on the sunny southern side. Three months of summer and nine months of winter make its annual weather cycle. Astride the old, pre-1915 border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, this icy giant became a major battlefield of the First World War's Gebirgskreig or Italian Front. As with Tofane, Monte Piano, and the Tre Cime massifs in other mountainous sectors, Marmolada was vital to the control of its region.

Topside Ice Trench

Marmolada had all characteristics and dangers unique to high mountain warfare, including the thin atmosphere [70 percent of sea-level at 3,000 meters in altitude]; ice, snow, and scree; and frequent blizzards or dense fog banks covering attacks. Avalanches, falling rock and lightening, long-range shooting duels, artillery, and hand to hand fighting; as well as exposure to extremely low temperatures and high winds killed men in equal numbers. Injuries such as frostbite, snow blindness, altitude sickness, and malnutrition caused by the severe climate competed with the usual war wounds, disease, and stress—especially for troops that must stay on position and not let down their guard. Patrols, observation posts and assault units resembled mountaineers as much as soldiers. Supply was carried out by backbreaking corvée [on the backs of men and mules] and téléphérique [both manpowered and motor-driven cable-cars.] Despite being surrounded by frozen water, this vital need of humans was difficult to obtain or store. With most of their army in Russia, the Austrians concentrated on defending their empire's lofty southern flank. On Marmolada, between the Italian and Austrian forces, was a vast no-man's-land of glacier crevasse and bergschrund or soaring rock cliffs, needle-like arêtes, and knife-edge ridges with their blocking "gendarmes." All these are great challenges for mountaineers defining war on this Alpine front as somewhere between unique and incredible.

Glacier Combat
Patrolling — Artillery Port — Connecting Tunnel

Combat on this icy amphitheater began in 1915 with a rush for the high points unoccupied in times of peace. In June the first action took place with the Alpini Belluno Battalion capturing the strategic Padon and Ombretta Passes. The word "pass" is a stretch, for only to climbers were these notches on knife-edge ridges considered passes. They did, however, look down onto the great glacier and Austrian positions. While Austro-Hungarian forces controlled the massif's central ridge, the Punta Penia [3342 m.] summit and the cliffs below it, as well as the great northern glacier, the Italians controlled, or one might say "clung" to the southeast and southwestern cliffs. In winter the basic strategy became survival, a mighty undertaking for large groups of men in these high mountains, from the first deep snowstorms in September until the last blizzards of heavy snow in May.

It was beneath the surface of the great glacier that a "city of ice," unseen and untouchable by Italian artillery or gunfire, was constructed. Designed by Lieutenant Leo Handl of the Kaiserjager, a labyrinth of tunnels connected five clusters of buildings or "cities." [see map] Each outpost was composed of barracks, electric generators, supply depots, first aid stations, and kitchens. Some of these buildings were beneath 60 meters of glacial ice. Cable cars brought soldiers and supplies to the last safe [from fire] ridge, where they went beneath the glacier through tunnels bored through rock connecting to ice passages. From rock ridge and cliff poked the snouts of machine gun and cannon, with their hidden ports and interlocking fields of fire.

Concept of the Ice City

The last full-scale battle on Marmolada was during the last week of September 1917 when Alpini units, a battalion of the 3rd Bersaglieri and a regiment of regular infantry [Alpi Brigade], captured Point 3259, also known as Marmolada d'Ombretta. The victory was short-lived, as in early November of 1917, the Italians abandoned their hard-won gains and positions on Marmolada without a shot, during the great retreat after Caporetto. Total losses by both sides in two years of fighting on and around the Marmolada amounted to over 9,000 dead—one third killed in action, another third dying in avalanches, and the remainder of cold-related injuries. Most of them remain entombed in the mountain's rock and ice.