A crazed Great Britain urges a broken Russia, a nose-picking, dozing Italy, and a sullen France to continued offensives in a German postcard imagining the November 6, 1917 Entente Ally Conference of Rapallo after the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo. The Battle, also known as the Battle of Caporetto, was a disastrous defeat for Italy and the first Austro-Hungarian offensive on the Isonzo Front. The Austrians had significant German support.
Entente Konferenz der XII. IsonzoschlachtEntente Conference of the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo
"— Painlevé is complaining of unfair comment. People forget, he urges, that it was he who brought about the abdication of King Constantine of Greece; the Rapallo Conference, resulting in the Single Command for which he had been working so long; the Franco-British agreements ensuring our food supplies; the selection of Pétain; the wise moderation in suppressing the mutinies; the arrest of Duval and Bolo; the prompt dispatch of French troops to Italy, etc., etc."
Entry between December 2 and 6, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, French senior civil servant. Paul Painlevé was appointed French War Minister in March 1917, and was also Prime Minister from September 12 to November 16, 1917, replaced by Georges Clemenceau. The French forced King Constantine I of Greece to abdicate on June 11, 1917. Allied commanders met at Rapallo, Italy on November 6, 1917 after the disastrous Italian defeat in the Battle of Caporetto. At the Conference, both the French and British agreed to dispatch troops to support the Italians, who had already stabilized their line on the Piave River. After the failure of the Nivelle offensive in the spring, large parts of the French army mutinied in May and June. Robert Nivelle was replaced by Henri Pétain who rebuilt the army and demonstrated his commitment to not squandering soldiers' lives with well-prepared, limited offensives.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 298, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
1917-12-03, 1917, December, Painlevé, Pétain, Painleve, Petain, Rapallo Conference, Paul Painlevé, Henri Pétain, Paul Painleve, Henri Petain, Constantine, King Constantine
