Serbian Campaign (World War I)
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| Serbian Campaign | |||||||
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| Part of Balkans Theatre (World War I) | |||||||
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| Combatants | |||||||
 Austria-Hungary German Empire Bulgaria(1915-1918) |
 Serbia Greece(1916-1918) Montenegro |
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| Commanders | |||||||
| August von MackensenOskar Potiorek Nikola Zhekov |
Radomir Putnik Nicholas I |
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The Serbian Campaign was fought from August 1914, when Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia at the outset of First World War, until the end of the war in 1918. The front ranged from the Danube to southern Macedonia and back north again, involving forces from almost all combatants of the war.
The Serbian Army was decimated towards the end of the war, falling from about 420,000[1] at its peak to about 100,000 at the moment of liberation. The Kingdom of Serbia had lost 1.3 million inhabitants[verification needed] during the war[2] (both army and civilian losses), which represented 33% of its overall population and 60% [3] of its male population - a demographic disaster that is still obvious today. (In official : Serbia lost 370,000 soldiers, or 26 percent, of all mobilised people (for ex. France 16.8; Germany 15.4; Russia 11.5; Italy 10.3 per cent).
Contents |
[edit] Setting the Stage
This article is part of the series on the |
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| Medieval Serbia | |||
| Raška | |||
| Serbian Empire | |||
| Moravian Serbia | |||
| Battle of Kosovo | |||
| Serbian Despotate | |||
| Ottoman Serbia | |||
| First Serbian Uprising | |||
| Second Serbian Uprising | |||
| Modern Serbia | |||
| Principality of Serbia | |||
| Kingdom of Serbia | |||
| Serbian Campaign (World War I) | |||
| Kingdom of Yugoslavia | |||
| Nedić's Serbia | |||
| SFR Yugoslavia | |||
| FR Yugoslavia | |||
| Serbia and Montenegro | |||
| Republic of Serbia
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World War I was, in at least one sense, started when a group of young men (calling themselves Young Bosnia), most likely backed by a secret Serbian society (the Black Hand) assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Austria-Hungary, furious about the murder and many previous Serbian attempts to destabilize their Slavic territories, issued a set of demands, the July Ultimatum. Serbia accepted all but one of them, but mobilized its army on July 25, 1914. The Austrians rejected the Serbian response and mobilized their southern army for a war against Serbia.
For complex reasons, the dispute between Austria-Hungary and Serbia escalated into a war which involved Russia, Germany, France, and United Kingdom. Within a week, Austria-Hungary had to face a war with Russia, which had the largest army in the world at the time. The result was that Serbia became just another front to the massive fight that started to unfold along Austria-Hungary's border with Russia. Serbia had an experienced army, having fought two wars in the last two years, but it was also exhausted and poorly equipped and the Austrians thought that they would fall in less that a month. Serbia's strategy was to hold on as long as they could and hope the Russians could defeat the main Austro-Hungarian Army. Serbia constantly had to worry about its hostile neighbor to the east, Bulgaria, with which it had fought several wars, most recently in the 1913.
The Serbian army at the start of the war was some 180,000 strong, commanded by Marshal (Vojvoda) Radomir Putnik. However he was in poor health in a hospital in Austria. The Austrian government arrested him at the hospital but then inexplicably put him on a train back to Serbia just before the war began (C. Falls p. 38). Putnik brilliantly handled the Serbian Army, even though he almost never left his special hospital room in Serbia.
[edit] 1914
The war against Serbia started on August 12, when Austro-Hungarian armies crossed the border, the Drina River (see map).
While the entire Austro-Hungarian Army was very large, due to the Russian declaration of war, the Austro-Hungarians could only attack with two small armies (the Fifth and the Sixth) over the Bosnian border. They had around 280,000 men, and were much better equipped than the Serbians. Overall, Austrian command was in the hands of the ineffective General Potiorek.
However, Austria-Hungary Empire had the third largest population in Europe in 1914, almost twelve times the population of the Kingdom of Serbia. And the Russian Empire not only bordered Austro-Hungary, but also the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire, both of which also boasted large populations; Germany's being the second largest in Europe behind Russia.
The Serbian Army threw back repeated attempts to cross the Drina and Sava rivers (this action is called the Battle of Cer or the Battle of Jadar). After very hard fighting, the Austro-Hungarian Army halted their attempts. In early September, the Serbs launched a small offensive into southern Bosnia, hoping to incite a revolt among their fellow Slavs. However, the offensive had no effect and was driven out within a few weeks.
September 7 brought a renewed attack across the rivers by the Austrian army. Marshal Putnik ordered a retreat into the surrounding hills as the Serbian army was running very low on artillery shells, food and clothing (which had to be supplied by the Allies, and they were short themselves).
The Austro-Hungarian Army, having pushed up to the new Serbian positions, launched another massive attack on November 5. The Serbians withdrew under pressure and finally evacuated their capital city of Belgrade, which had become essentially indefensible, on November 30. The Austro-Hungarian Army entered the city on December 2.
[edit] Battle of Kolubara
At this point, Marshal Putnik correctly sensed that the Austrian forces were dangerously weakened and so he ordered a full scale counter-attack with the entire Serbian Army on December 3 (this is sometimes called the Battle of Kolubara). The fighting was furious along the front lines for three days until the Austrian General Potiorek lost his nerve and ordered yet another retreat back to across the rivers into Austrian territory. See second map. The Serbian Army recaptured Belgrade on December 15.
The first phase of the war against Serbia had ended with no change in the border but the casualties were incredible compared to earlier wars, though sadly, not out of keeping with other campaigns of this war. The Austrian army lost around 247,000 (total forces used in the campaign were 450,000 men). Serbian losses were 140,000. Austrian General Potiorek was removed from command and replaced by Archduke Eugen of Austria (C. Falls p. 54). On the Serbian side, a deadly typhus epidemic killed hundreds of thousands of Serbian civilians during the winter months.
[edit] 1915
Early in 1915, with the Ottoman defeats at the Battle of Sarikamis and in the First Suez Offensive, the German Chief of the General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn tried to convince the Austrian Chief of Staff, Conrad von Hotzendorf, of the importance of conquering Serbia. If Serbia was taken, then the Germans would have a rail link from Germany, through Austria-Hungary and down to Constantinople (and beyond). This would allow the Germans to send military supplies and even troops to help the Ottoman Empire. While helping the Ottoman Empire was hardly in Austria's interests, the Austrians did want to defeat Serbia. However, Russia was the more dangerous enemy, and furthermore, with the entry of Italy into the war on the Allied side, the Austrians had their hands full (see the Italian Campaign (World War I) for details).
Both the Allies and the Central Powers tried to get Bulgaria to pick a side in the Great War. Bulgaria and Serbia had fought two wars in the last 30 years, the first in 1885 (see Serbo-Bulgarian War for details), the second in 1913 (see the Second Balkan War for details). The result was that the Bulgarian government and people felt that Serbia was in possession of lands to which Bulgaria was entitled, and when the Central Powers offered to give them what they claimed, the Bulgarians entered the war on the side of the Central Powers. With the Allied loss in the Battle of Gallipoli and the Russian defeat at Gorlice, King Ferdinand signed a treaty with Germany and on September 23, 1915 began mobilizing for war.
During the preceding nine months, the Serbians had tried, and failed, to rebuild their battered armies and improve their supply situation. Despite their efforts, the Serbian army was only about 30,000 men stronger than at the start of the war (around 225,000) and was still not well-equipped. Although the Allies (Britain and France) had talked about sending serious military forces to Serbia, nothing was done until it was too late. When Bulgaria began mobilization, the French and British sent two divisions to help Serbia, but they arrived late in the Greek town of Salonika. Part of the reason for the delay was the Greek government's conflicted views about the war.
Against Serbia were marshalled the Bulgarian Army, a German Army, and an Austro-Hungarian Army, all under the command of Field Marshal Mackensen, totalling more than 420,000 soldiers. The Germans and Austro-Hungarians began their attack on October 7 with a massive artillery barrage, followed by attacks across the rivers. Then, on the 11th, the Bulgarian Army attacked from two directions, one from the north of Bulgaria towards Niš, the other from the south towards Skopje (see the map). The large Bulgarian Army broke through the weaker Serbian forces that tried to block its advance. With the Bulgarian breakthrough (battle of Morava, battle of Ovche Pole, Battle of Kosovo (1915)), the Serbian position was hopeless; either their main army in the north could try to retreat, or would be surrounded and forced to surrender.
Marshal Putnik ordered a full retreat, south and west through Montenegro and into Albania. The weather was terrible, the roads poor, and the army had to help the tens of thousands of civilians who retreated with them with almost no supplies or food left. But the bad weather and poor roads worked for the refugees as well, as the Central Powers forces could not press them hard enough, and so they evaded capture. Most of the fleeing soldiers and civilians didn't make it to the coast, though - they were lost to hunger, disease, attacks by enemy forces and Albanian tribal bands. The circumstances of the retreat were disastrous, and all told, some 155,000 Serbs reached the coast of the Adriatic Sea, 30,000 of them soldiers, and embarked on French transport ships that carried the army to various Greek islands (many went to Corfu) before being sent to Salonika. The survivors were so weakened that thousands of them died from sheer exhaustion in the weeks after their rescue. Marshal Putnik had to be carried during the whole retreat and he died a bit more than a year later in a hospital in France.
The French and British divisions marched north from Salonika in late November under the command of French General Maurice Sarrail. However, the British divisions were ordered by the War Office in London not to cross the Greek frontier. So the French divisions advanced on their own up the Vardar River. This advance was of some limited help to the retreating Serbian Army as the Bulgarian Army had to concentrate larger forces on their southern flank to deal with the threat. By mid-December, General Sarrail concluded retreat was necessary in the face of determined Bulgarian assaults on his positions.
This was a nearly complete victory for the Central Powers. The railroad from Berlin to Constantinople was finally opened and as a result, Germany was able to prop up its weak partner, the Ottoman Empire. The only flaw in the victory was the remarkable retreat of the Serbians Army, which was almost completely disorganized though and had to be fully rebuilt from scratch. However, they took part in the fighting throughout the rest of the war on various fronts and performed well.
For the subsequent events see Macedonian front (World War I).
[edit] Summary
Once Germany and Bulgaria attacked in coordination with Austria-Hungary, the smaller Serbian Army could not sustain the attack alone, so the order was given for the temporary withdrawal to Greek islands. Greece was not a major power, not friendly to the Allies, and the northern border of Greece offered superior defensive positions for a minor power like Bulgaria to defend.
The ramifications of the war were manifold. In the Treaty of Neuilly, Greece got Western Thrace, and Serbia received some minor territorial concessions from Bulgaria. Austria-Hungary was broken apart and Hungary lost much land to both Yugoslavia and Romania in the Treaty of Trianon. Serbia assumed the lead position in the new state of Yugoslavia, joined by their old ally, Montenegro, while Italy established a quasi-protectorate over Albania.
[edit] Serbian losses
Serbia had suffered enormous casualties during the war. The Serbian First Army had been decimated towards the end of the war, falling from about 420,000 [4] at its peak to about 100,000 at the moment of liberation. The Kingdom of Serbia lost 1.3 million inhabitants[verification needed] during the war[5]- (both army and civilian losses) - which represented 33% of its overall population and 60% [6] of its male population- a demographic disaster whose effects are still evident today. More specifically, Serbia lost 370,000 soldiers, or 26 percent, of all mobilized manpower (for comparison: France 16.8; Germany 15.4; Russia 11.5; Italy 10.3 percent). In addition, Serbia suffered 1,100,000 civilian casualties during the war, amounting to more than 1/4 of all inhabitants of pre-war Serbia. In the end of the war there were 114,000 disabled soldiers and 500,000 orphaned children.,--cit. Serbian History : Dusko M.Kovacevic, Dejan Mikavica, Branko Beslin, Biljana Simunovic-Beslin)
[edit] Sources
- Falls, Cyril The Great War (1960).
- Esposito, Vincent (ed.) (1959). The West Point Atlas of American Wars - Vol. 2; maps 46-50. Frederick Praeger Press.
[edit] See also
| Theatres of World War I |
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| European (Balkans – Western Front – Eastern Front – Italian Front) – Middle Eastern (Caucasus – Mesopotamia – Sinai and Palestine – Gallipoli – Aden – Persia) – African (South-West Africa – West Africa – East Africa) – Asian and Pacific (German Samoa and New Guinea – Tsingtao) – Other (Atlantic Ocean – Mediterranean – Naval – Aerial) |
