With the arrival of spring, the First World War resumed in the whole of Europe. Germany, after having signed the peace agreement of Brest-Litovsk with Soviet Russia (03rd March 1918), launched yet another offensive on the western front which put France in serious difficulty. Prime Minister Clemenceau chose therefore to use his diplomatic shrewdness to destabilize the Triple Alliance and gave publicity to an attempt at a separate peace that had been offered by Charles I during the previous year.
This news angered greatly Wilhelm II. He discovered how Austria-Hungary had reached an agreement to support, once the war was over, the passage to France of Alsace and Lorraine (at that time administered by Germany). On account of this on 31st March the Kaiser met Charles I in Spa (in Belgium) and asked him to prove his trust in two ways: by the setting up of a pan-German union at the end of the war and by making an advance on the Italian front to support the German advance in France.
The Habsburg Emperor was cornered and had to accept this sort of ultimatum. The news was received favourably by Conrad who once again suggested that an attack should be made on the Asiago plateau. Svetozar Borojevic instead heard this news with a lot of pessimism: he was convinced that the central empires were on the brink of defeat and that the small number of soldiers that remained in the army would not have succeeded in breaking through the new front.
There were other problems as well: the desertion of 200,000 Hungarian soldiers weakened considerably the already meagre Habsburg divisions (made up of 5,000 soldiers instead of 12,000) with the result that even youths who were born in 1900 were asked to enlist; basic resources such as arms, ammunition and, above all, food were lacking; and finally the rumblings of civil commotion within the country and the rising nationalistic tensions had even reached the trenches and created further problems of coexistence in the trenches.
Despite all this the Emperor was adamant and ordered the start of a new offensive on 11th June 1918. The army could rely on 23 divisions that were positioned on the Asiago plateau and on 15 other divisions that were organized along the Piave. The objective was clear: to break through in the east and in the south and head for Venice and Padua so as to bring about the withdrawal of the Italian line on the Adige. In spite of everything many soldiers were pleased at this new offensive; whatever its outcome, they were sure that this would turn out to be the last battle.
