In the summer of 1918 the First World War took a very favourable turn for the allies of the Triple Agreement. On the western front the French troops attacked the Germans and won the battle of Amiens (in August); on the south east front Bulgaria collapsed (in September) while Turkey was on the point of a definite surrender. The countries of the Agreement would not and could not allow such a clear cut advantage to escape from their hands; General Foch, Commander-in-Chief of the French forces, therefore asked Armando Diaz to support this great global action by means of an attack on the Veneto front.
The Italian general refused. In fact he preferred not to take any initiative because he was afraid that this might lead the army to defeat in the same way as his predecessor. According to his programme, Italian soldiers would not be well prepared before the spring of 1919.
The Italian government too was in favour of this attack and towards the end of September started to lose its patience with Diaz. According to some rumours it now seemed in fact sure that in the space of a few days Charles I would surrender and this would have placed Italy in a weak position in any future peace talks: in order to be able to claim a right to what had been decided in the Treaty of London, it was necessary to defeat the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the battlefield.
In fact the rumours that the end of the war was in sight were confirmed by a diplomatic encounter between the American President Woodrow Wilson and representatives of the central empires who were urging the application, in any future treaties, of the Fourteen Points. This was an unmistakable sign that their surrender was near. Diaz was thus obliged to hasten his own plans and on 09th October he submitted a plan for an offensive on the Italian front that included the zone of Mount Grappa and Medio Piave. The objective was to break through in this zone and, in particular, the road that led to Vittorio Veneto and proceeded towards the river Livenza.
The Eight Army was set up in haste under the command of General Enrico Caviglia. The Tenth Army led by the English Lord Cavan and consisting of Italian and English divisions took its position on the right flank while on the left flank there was the Twelfth Army, under the leadership of General Jean César Graziani, a Frenchman and including French and Italian divisions. The Fourth Army remained on Mount Grappa under General Giardino while the other divisions (on the Asiago plateau and on Basso Piave) for the moment kept their positions.
In the next days the level of the water of the river Piave rose because of the heavy rains and this compromised the plan that had been drawn up by Diaz: without steady bridges it was impossible to cross the river. But the date that had been set for the start of the offensive, 24th October, could not be postponed. Diaz then changed his tactics: the first attack was to be launched on Mount Grappa in order to go up again the Valle del Brenta and to surround from the east the Asiago plateau. Once this objective had been reached, action on the Piave could get under way.
