Dominic Sandbrook

The campaign starts badly, as you might expect, and it gets worse because the Italian railways aren't really up to it.

The full mobilization that was meant to take three weeks goes on for more than six weeks.

We said that the Austrians are distracted by fighting Russia in the east.

So this was Italy's moment.

Italy actually outnumbered the Austrians four to one.

on their kind of common frontier.

But because they're so slow and disorganized, they don't exploit their advantage at all.

We're going to see the Austrians in a very different light in today's episode.

The Austrians will appear to be the souls of sort of military competence.

Martial competence, yeah.

Exactly.

So Cadorna's initial target, he says, well, the first thing we'll do is we will cross the river Socha or Isonzo.

So Socha in Slovenian, Isonzo in Italian, which goes through the valleys of western Slovenia quite close to the border.

I was actually there last summer, this part of the world.

It's very beautiful, isn't it, Slovenia?

Incredibly beautiful.

Yeah.

I mean, a brilliant place.

I should be doing an advert for the Slovenian Tourist Board.

It's gorgeous, and they've turned the whole thing, basically, into a First World War sort of tourist attraction.