Not that he expected operations in the Isonzo sector to be easy. However he also believed that the Italian army could strike further north and bypass the mountains either side of the river so as to come at the Austro-Hungarian forces in the rear. Italian Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna judged that Italian gains (from Gorizia to Trieste) were most feasible at the coastal plain east of the lower end of the Soča (Isonzo). The Austrians had fortified the mountains ahead of the Italians' entry into the war on. With the rest of the mountainous 400-mile length of the Front being almost everywhere dominated by Austro-Hungarian forces, The Soča (Isonzo) was the only practical area for Italian military operations during the war. Italian troops did not reach the port of Trieste, the Italian General Luigi Cadorna's initial target, until after the Armistice. The corridor is also known as the 'Ljubljana Gate'.īy the autumn of 1915 one mile had been won by Italian troops, and by October 1917 a few Austrian mountains and some square miles of land had changed hands several times. The sixty-mile long Soča river at the time ran entirely inside Austria-Hungary in parallel to the border with Italy, from the Vršič and Predil Pass in the Julian Alps to the Adriatic Sea, widening dramatically just few kilometers north of Gorizia, thus opening a narrow corridor between Northern Italy and Central Europe, which goes through the Vipava Valley and the relatively low north-eastern edge of the Kras plateau to Inner Carniola and Ljubljana. Remains of an Austro-Hungarian fortification between Bovec and Log pod Mangrtom As a result the Austro-Hungarians were forced to move some of their forces from the Eastern Front and a war in the mountains around Soča river began. The area between the northernmost part of the Adriatic Sea and the sources of the river Soča (Isonzo) thus became the scene of twelve successive battles. Italian Field Marshal Luigi Cadorna, a staunch proponent of the frontal assault, had plans of breaking into the Slovenian plateau, taking Ljubljana and threatening Vienna. The Italian army wanted to penetrate in central Carniola, present-day Slovenia.

In April 1915, in the secret Treaty of London Italy was promised by Allies the territory of Habsburg empire which were mainly inhabited by ethnic Slovenes. 3 Primary sector for Italian operations.

Isonzo offensive