Actually not much. Diaz distinguished himself from Cadorna for a less centralized command and greater attention to the living conditions of the soldiers. There was a drastic reduction in decimations, which are remembered as the most distinctive trait of Cadorna's command, and longer periods of stops away from the front. And the officers lived less in terror of being demoted for real or alleged mistakes, as Cadorna used to do. The other generals were more involved in the elaboration of the Italian strategy, unlike before. And generally Diaz knew how to be friendlier than his predecessor, being more sympathetic even to allied commands.

The one between Cadorna and Diaz is a handover similar to those that occurred in the rest of Europe: the general seen as insensitive to losses and cruel to the troops (Cadorna, Joffre, von Falkenhayn) is replaced by others perceived as more charismatic and loved. by soldiers (Diaz, Foch, Hindenburg). Surely the latter had understood that modern warfare is not only the elaboration of theoretical plans or and the army's obedience to them, but also the morale of the soldiers and public opinion.

But otherwise Cadorna's contribution to the Italian victory should be greatly re-evaluated. The army with which Diaz stops the Austrians on the Piave and then overwhelms them in Vittorio Veneto was built entirely by Cadorna, who over the years made it more and more modern and heavily armed, to the point of making it a better war instrument than the Austrian one and comparable to those of the rest of the Entente. The Austrian collapse is also provoked by the long-term effect of Cadorna's attacks: his strategy was at first to exhaust the Austrian human and material reserves with a series of frontal battles, exhaustion that came in the autumn of 1918. The Austria-Hungary deserves credit for having resisted much longer than everyone expected: after the disastrous battles of 1914 against the Russians and the Serbs, everyone thought that it was the Habsburg Empire that would collapse first and not the Russian one. Cadorna intended to accelerate that announced collapse, which finally came but later than expected.

But in any case Cadorna was one battle to win his war: a last offensive on the Isonzo in 1917 would have led to the breaking of the Austrian front, the fall of Trieste and the end of the dual monarchy. The Austrians themselves knew this, and in fact they implore the Germans to help them in a counter-offensive before it is too late. Thanks to German innovations and Italian errors, the counter-offensive succeeds, the Italian front is broken through at Caporetto and, by the logic of the continuous fronts typical of the First World War, the Italian army is forced to fold everything even where it had not fought, in order to recreate a continuous line of defense on the Piave. But even the retreat itself was well managed by Cadorna, who as the last act of his command organized the preparation of the then decisive line of the Piave.