Background
Luigi Capello was born in Intra, on April 14, 1859, the son of a telegraph company official.
Luigi Capello was born in Intra, on April 14, 1859, the son of a telegraph company official.
Capello completed the Military Academy in 1878 and received a commission as an infantry lieutenant. Capello attended the General Staff College, 1884-1886 and in 1898, as a colonel, commanded a regiment.
Capello's relatively humble origins and his open criticism of army promotion policies based on seniority did not seem to slow his own career. Neither did his membership in the Masonic order nor his political contacts with Socialists like Leonida Bissolati. Promoted major general in 1910, he led a brigade into combat against the Turks in Libya the year following. By 1914, he commanded an infantry division. Even before Italy entered the war, Capello had marked himself off from the average Italian general by his concern for his men's morale and his calls for better relations between the officer corps and the rank and file.
Capello led his division to the Carso in June 1915 as part of the Third Army. In September, having been promoted lieutenant general, he took over the VI Corps facing Gorizia. By then Capello's habit of going his own way was again on display to the displeasure of General Luigi Cadorna, the commander of the Italian army. Capello put out the welcome mat for visiting politicians and journalists at his headquarters, this at a time when Cadorna was trying to wall off the army from contact with civilian authority.
In the late summer of 1916 Capello seemed the brightest star in the Italian army. His corps played a major role in the assault on Gorizia in August, the first great success for Italian arms since the start of the war. Many observers on both sides of the battle front considered him the most capable of all Italian generals. In addition, his old friend Bissolati had become minister without portfolio in the new government of Paolo Boselli.
Cadorna saw Capello being groomed to take over as commander in chief of the army. He responded by exiling Capello to the quiet Trentino sector in September. Capello returned to the Isonzo, the main front of the stalemated war in Italy, in the spring of 1917. Despite poor health, he took over command of the Second Army and, in the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo (August-September), launched a successful night attack on the strategic Bainsizza plateau. His success there so disturbed the Austrian High Command that they called for German reinforcements with which to mount a counteroffensive.
The Austro-German breakthrough at Caporetto broke the ranks of Capello's Second Army. The debate over the parties responsible for Caporetto has always included Capello as well as Cadorna. Capello must shoulder at least some of the blame for the debacle. Word of an impending enemy attack was circulating. Capello considered it best to prepare a counterthrust from Bainsizza into the flank of the Austro-German attackers; thus he ignored Cadorna's call to pull artillery from Bainsizza back to the western bank of the Isonzo. Less explicably, he put his worst troops in the danger zone; these included recently mobilized munitions workers from Turin, the center of national antiwar sentiment.
Capello's failing health forced him to leave his troops shortly before Caporetto. He returned just in time to face the enemy onslaught on October 24 and then suffered a complete physical collapse. The following day, he urged Cadorna to withdraw at once to the strong line of the Tagliamento River, thirty miles to the rear. The senior commander refused, thus permitting the enemy attack to gather momentum and to force him beyond the Tagliamento to the distant Piave line.
Capello recovered his health but received no further command in World War I. The parliamentary committee investigating the Caporetto disaster issued its report only in 1919; it placed responsibility for the defeat on Cadorna and Capello alike.
Capello remained in the army, joining Mussolini in 1922 in full uniform for the march on Rome. In 1923, however, he resigned his membership in the Fascist party when it declared that members of the Masonic order were not welcome. He nonetheless continued to play an important role in army affairs, serving as an emissary in negotiations with Germany in 1924. He soon broke with Mussolini completely as the iron fist of the dictatorship became evident.
In 1925 he was arrested and charged with complicity in a plot to murder Mussolini. He was found guilty, sentenced to thirty years of imprisonment, and stricken from the army's rolls. His serious health problems helped to get him released from confinement in 1936, although he remained forbidden from wearing the uniform of a soldier. He died in Rome, June 25,1941.