The war on the Cimbrian Highlands

The nineteenth century in Italy was marked by the bloody wars of Risorgimento. The House of Austria and the Kingdom of Italy clashed repeatedly, one to try to complete national unity, the other to oppose it.
Senso-dell'udito

After 1866, with the handover of Veneto to Italy, the changed geo-political situation prompted both sides to significantly fortify the salient Trentino border, and beginning in 1908, the fortification of the area of the Lavarone, Luserna and Folgaria plateaus, which was considered strategically important, was undertaken.

According to accounts, the first cannon shot was fired from Forte Verena at 3:55 A.M. on May 24, 1915. From that moment on a firestorm hit the Highlands. The inhabitants were evacuated swiftly: they had to leave their homes taking just a few things with them. Leaving from the railway stations of Calliano and Caldonazzo, the refugees were crammed into the train-wagons and brought to Bohemia, Moravia, in the “Barakenlager” of Mitterndorf, Katzenau and Braunau am Inn and in the so-called “wooden towns”. From May to October 1915 the fighting was violent: witness the three military cemeteries in Lavarone, Luserna and Folgaria.

Operations resumed after the winter interlude on the initiative of Gen. Konrad von Hötzendorf, who had long been planning a major offensive that would break the Italian front and allow the Royal Army to be hit from behind. Thus it was that on May 15, 1916, at 6 A.M., the Kaiserjäger and infantrymen of the Rainer regiment of the Folgaria sector received the order to attack and break through the Italian defenses on the Monte Maggio, Pioverna and Costa d’Agra lines.

This military operation became down in history as the “Strafexpedition” and led to the war frontlines to move to the mountains of Veneto and Vicenza. The offensive did not achieve its targets: the front settled and on the plateaus – no more frontline area – took over a relative peace that lasted until the end of the conflict in November 1918, when the Italian troops arrived and the refugees started to move back to their homes.

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