Balkans theatre

Balkans theatre
Part of World War I
A dead Serbian soldier in the snow, Albania 1915
Date 28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918 Location Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria Result Allied victory Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine Liberation of Serbia, Albania and Montenegro
Belligerents
Central Powers: Kingdom of Bulgaria (from 1915) Austria-Hungary German Empire (from 1915) Ottoman Empire (1916–17)	Allied Powers: Kingdom of Serbia Kingdom of Montenegro French Third Republic (from 1915) United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (from 1915) Greece (from 1917) Kingdom of Italy (from 1915) Russian Empire (1916–17)
Commanders and leaders
Nikola Zhekov Kliment Boyadzhiev Dimitar Geshov Georgi Todorov Stefan Nerezov Conrad von Hötzendorf Oskar Potiorek Stjepan Sarkotić H. K. von Kövessháza August von Mackensen Otto von Below Friedrich von Scholtz Abdul Kerim Pasha	Radomir Putnik Petar Bojović Živojin Mišić Stepa Stepanović Pavle Jurišić Šturm Janko Vukotić Maurice Sarrail Adolphe Guillaumat Louis F. d'Espèrey Bryan Mahon George Milne Panagiotis Danglis
Strength
1,200,000	707,343 50,000 300,000 404,207
Casualties and losses
~300,000 267,000 87,500 killed 152,930 wounded 27,029 missing/captured Unknown "a few thousand"	481,000 278,000 killed 133,000 wounded 70,000 captured Unknown 30,000 9,668 killed 16,637 wounded 2,778 missing/captured 27,000 5,000 killed 21,000 wounded 1,000 captured 23,000 13,325 killed/missing ~10,000 wounded 10,538 Albania: 298 KIA 1,069 wounded 847 MIA Macedonia: 2,971 KIA/MIA 5,353 wounded

The Balkans campaign, or Balkan theatre of World War I was fought between the Central Powers, represented by Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany and the Ottoman Empire on one side and the Allies, represented by Serbia, Montenegro, France, the United Kingdom, Russia and Italy, later joined by Greece, on the other side.

The campaign began with Austria-Hungary's offensive into Serbia being repulsed. A new attempt led to the Austrian and Bulgarian conquest of Serbia and Montenegro. This led to the Serbian army retreating through Albania and being evacuated to Salonika by the Allies. Here they joined with the Franco-British Allied Army of the Orient and fought a protracted trench war against Bulgarian forces on the Macedonian front. The allied army was stationed in Greece, which resulted in the National Schism regarding whether Greece should join the Allies or remain neutral (to the benefit of the Central Powers). Greece eventually joined the allies in 1917. In September 1918, the Vardar Offensive broke through the Bulgarian lines and they were forced to surrender, leading to the Liberation of Serbia, Albania and Montenegro.

Overview

The prime cause of World War I was the hostility between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. Consequently, some of the earliest fighting took place between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. Serbia held out against Austria-Hungary for more than a year before it was conquered in late 1915.

Dalmatia was a strategic region during World War I that both Italy and Serbia intended to seize from Austria-Hungary. Italy entered the war in 1915 upon agreeing to the Treaty of London that guaranteed Italy a substantial portion of Dalmatia.

In 1917, Greece entered the war on the Allied side, and in 1918, the multi-national Allied Army of the Orient, based in northern Greece, finally launched an offensive which drove Bulgaria to seek peace, recaptured Serbia and finally halted only at the border of Hungary in November 1918.

Serbian–Montenegrin campaign

Main articles: Serbian campaign of World War I and Montenegrin Campaign of World War I

The Serbian Army was successfully able to rebuff the larger Austro-Hungarian Army due to Russia's assisting invasion from the north. In 1915 the Austro-Hungarian Empire placed additional soldiers in the south front while succeeding to engage Bulgaria as an ally.

Shortly after the Serbian forces were attacked from both the north and east, forcing a retreat to Greece. Despite the loss, the retreat was successful and the Serbian Army remained operational in Greece with a newly established base.

Albania

Main article: Albania during World War I

Italian soldiers in Vlorë, Albania during World War I. The tricolour flag of Italy bearing the Savoy royal shield is shown hanging alongside an Albanian flag from the balcony of the Italian prefecture headquarters.

Prior to direct intervention in World War I, Italy occupied the port of Vlorë in Albania in December 1914. Upon entering the war, Italy spread its occupation to region of southern Albania beginning in the autumn 1916. Italian forces in 1916 recruited Albanian irregulars to serve alongside them. Italy, with permission of the Allied command, occupied Northern Epirus on 23 August 1916, forcing the neutralist Greek Army to withdraw its occupation forces from there.

In June 1917, Italy proclaimed central and southern Albania as a protectorate of Italy while Northern Albania was allocated to the states of Serbia and Montenegro. By 31 October 1918, French and Italian forces expelled the Austro-Hungarian Army from Albania.

Dalmatia was a strategic region during World War I that both Italy and Serbia intended to seize from Austria-Hungary. Italy joined the Triple Entente Allies in 1915 upon agreeing to the London Pact that guaranteed Italy the right to annex a large portion of Dalmatia in exchange for Italy's participation on the Allied side. From 5–6 November 1918, Italian forces were reported to have reached Lissa, Lagosta, Sebenico, and other localities on the Dalmatian coast.

By the end of hostilities in November 1918, the Italian military had seized control of the entire portion of Dalmatia that had been guaranteed to Italy by the London Pact and by 17 November had seized Fiume as well. In 1918, Admiral Enrico Millo declared himself Italy's Governor of Dalmatia. Famous Italian nationalist Gabriele d'Annunzio supported the seizure of Dalmatia, and proceeded to Zadar in an Italian warship in December 1918.

Bulgaria

Main article: Bulgaria during World War I

Bulgaria during World War I.

In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars Bulgarian opinion turned against Russia and the western powers, whom the Bulgarians felt had done nothing to help them. The government aligned Bulgaria with Germany and Austria-Hungary, even though this meant also becoming an ally of the Ottomans, Bulgaria's traditional enemy. But Bulgaria now had no claims against the Ottomans, whereas Serbia, Greece and Romania (allies of Britain and France) were all in possession of lands heavily populated by Bulgarians and thus perceived as Bulgarian.

Bulgaria, recuperating from the Balkan Wars, sat out the first year of World War I. When Germany promised to restore the boundaries of the Treaty of San Stefano, Bulgaria, which had the largest army in the Balkans, declared war on Serbia in October 1915. Britain, France and Italy then declared war on Bulgaria.

Although Bulgaria, in alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, won military victories against Serbia and Romania, occupying much of Southern Serbia (taking Nish, Serbia's war capital in November 5), advancing into Greek Macedonia, and taking Dobruja from the Romanians in September 1916, the war soon became unpopular with the majority of Bulgarian people, who suffered enormous economic hardship. The Russian Revolution of February 1917 had a significant effect in Bulgaria, spreading antiwar and anti-monarchist sentiment among the troops and in the cities.

In September 1918 the Serbs, British, French, Italians and Greeks broke through on the Macedonian front in the Vardar Offensive. While Bulgarian forces stopped them in Dojran and they didn't proceed to occupy Bulgarian lands, Tsar Ferdinand was forced to sue for peace.

In order to head off the revolutionaries, Ferdinand abdicated in favour of his son Boris III. The revolutionaries were suppressed and the army disbanded. Under the Treaty of Neuilly (November 1919), Bulgaria lost its Aegean coastline in favour of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers (transferred later by them to Greece) and nearly all of its Macedonian territory to the new state of Yugoslavia, and had to give Dobruja back to the Romanians (see also Dobruja, Western Outlands, Western Thrace).

Macedonian front

Main article: Macedonian front

In 1915 the Austrians gained military support from Germany and, with diplomacy, brought in Bulgaria as an ally. Serbian forces were attacked from both north and south and were forced to retreat through Montenegro and Albania, with only 155,000 Serbs, mostly soldiers, reaching the coast of the Adriatic Sea and evacuated to Greece by Allied ships.

The front stabilized roughly around the Greek border, through the intervention of a Franco-British-Italian force which had landed in Salonica. The German generals had not let the Bulgarian army advance towards Salonika, because they hoped they could persuade the Greeks to join the Central powers.

In 1918, after a prolonged build-up, the Allies, under the energetic French General Franchet d'Esperey leading a combined French, Serbian, Greek and British army, attacked out of Greece. His initial victories convinced the Bulgarian government to sue for peace. He then attacked north and defeated the German and Austrian forces that tried to halt his offensive.

By October 1918 his army had recaptured all of Serbia and was preparing to invade Hungary proper. The offensive halted only because the Hungarian leadership offered to surrender in November 1918.

Results

The French and British kept six divisions each on the Greek frontier from 1916 till the end of 1918. Originally, the French and British went to Greece to help Serbia, but with Serbia's conquest in the fall of 1915, their continued presence was did not product major effect and mobilized useful forces need on Western Front. For nearly three years, these divisions accomplished essentially nothing and only tied down half of the Bulgarian army, which wasn't going to go far from Bulgaria in any event.^{[citation needed]}

In mid 1918, led by General Franchet d'Esperey, these forces have been augmented in order to conduct a major offensive on the south flank of the Quadruplice (8 French Division, 6 British Division, 1 Italian Division, 12 Serbian Division). After the successul offensive launched on the 10th September 1918, they freed Belgrade and forced Bulgaria to Armistice on 29th September. This had a significative effect by threatening the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Armistice on 4th November 1918), and by domino effect, on the German political leadership.

In fact, Keegan argues that "the installation of a violently nationalist and anti-Turkish government in Athens, led to Greek mobilization in the cause of the "Great Idea" - the recovery of the Greek empire in the east - which would complicate the Allied effort to resettle the peace of Europe for years after the war ended."

Sources

• Dutton, D. J. (January 1979). "The Balkan Campaign and French War Aims in the Great War". JSTOR 567160. 
• Fried, M. (2014). Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans during World War I. Springer. ISBN 978-1-137-35901-8. https://books.google.com/books?id=8zHtAwAAQBAJ. 
• Mitrović, Andrej (2007). Serbia's Great War, 1914–1918. London: Hurst. ISBN 978-1-55753-477-4. 
• Lyon, James (2015) [1995]. Serbia and the Balkan Front, 1914: The Outbreak of the Great War. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4725-8005-4. https://books.google.com/books?id=vMkfCgAAQBAJ. 
• Omiridis Skylitzes, Aristeidis (1961) (in Greek). Ο Ελληνικός Στρατός κατά τον Πρώτον Παγκόσμιον Πόλεμον, Τόμος Δεύτερος, Η Συμμετοχή της Ελλάδος εις τον Πόλεμον 1918. II. Athens: Hellenic Army History Department. 
• Sfika-Theodosiou, A. (1995). "The Italian presence on the Balkan Front (1915-1918)". 
• Nigel Thomas; Dusan Babac (2012). Armies in the Balkans 1914–18. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78096-735-6. https://books.google.com/books?id=2YfvCwAAQBAJ. 
• Lyon, James B. (2015). Serbia and the Balkan Front, 1914: The Outbreak of the Great War. London: Bloomsbury. https://books.google.com/books?id=vMkfCgAAQBAJ.