Battle of Asiago
| Battle of Asiago | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Italian Front (First World War) | |||||||
The remaining alpine vegetation after the attack on Asiago. | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Italy | Austria-Hungary | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
|
Luigi Cadorna Roberto Brusati Guglielmo Pecori Giraldi Pietro Frugoni |
Conrad von Hötzendorf Archduke Eugen of Austria Viktor Dankl von Krasnik Hermann Kövess | ||||||
| Units involved | |||||||
|
1st Army 5th Army |
11th Army 3rd Army | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
|
172 battalions 850 guns |
300 battalions 2,000 guns | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
|
15,453 killed 76,642 wounded 55,635 missing or captured |
10,203 killed 45,651 wounded 26,961 missing or captured | ||||||
The Battle of Asiago, also known as Südtirol Offensive or Battle of the Plateaux (in Italian: Battaglia degli Altipiani), wrongly nicknamed Strafexpedition " (German for "punitive expedition"; this name has no reference in official Austrian documentation of the time and it is considered to be of popular origin), began with a major offensive launched on 15 May 1916 by the Austro-Hungarians on the territory of Vicentine Alps in the Italian Front of World War I. It was an "unexpected" attack that took place in the Asiago plateau (province of Vicenza, in northeast Italy, then at the border between the Kingdom of Italy and Austria-Hungary) after the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo (March 1916). The Austro-Hungarian offensive, initially successful, was followed by an Italian counter-offensive reconquering much of the lost ground and Asiago.
Commemorating this battle and the soldiers killed in World War I is the Asiago War Memorial (province of Vicenza, Veneto, northeast Italy).