Balkan Breakthrough: The Battle of Dobro Pole 1918

BALKAN BREAKTHROUGH

TWENTIETH-CENTURY BATTLES

Spencer C. Tucker, editor

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© 2010 by Richard C. Hall

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hall, Richard C. (Richard Cooper), [date]

Balkan breakthrough : the Battle of Dobro Pole 1918 / Richard C. Hall.

         p. cm. — (Twentieth-century battles)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-253-35452-5 (cloth : alk. paper)

  1. Dobro Pole, Battle of, Serbia, 1918. 2. World War, 1914–1918—Campaigns—Serbia. I. Title.

D562.D63H35 2010

940.4'37—dc22

2009031095

1 2 3 4 5 15 14 13 12 11 10

Contents

List of Maps

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Note on Transliteration

1   Balkan Politics

2   Balkan Wars

3   The Establishment of the Macedonian Front

4   Development of the Macedonian Front

5   The Lull

6   The Erosion of the Bulgarian Army

7   Breakthrough

8   Collapse

9   Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Maps

1. Balkan Peninsula, 1878

2. Balkan Peninsula, 1913

3. Central Powers Attack on Serbia, 1915

4. 1916 Battles

5. Dobro Pole, 1918

6. Bulgarian Retreat, 1918

Acknowledgments

This book is result of work that began in the library of the Air War College. I am grateful for all the assistance the staff there gave me. Also, the help of Vasil Zagarov at Bibliotelescope in Sofia was critical to the completion of the study. My colleagues at Georgia Southwestern State University were supportive and helpful. And as ever, my wife, Audrey, gave me the sympathy and encouragement to pursue my goals.

Introduction

The mountainous southeastern corner of Europe is bordered on three sides by substantial bodies of water. The Adriatic Sea in the west, the Black Sea in the east, and the Aegean or White Sea in the south form this region into the peninsula. This entire region is often called the Balkan Peninsula, after the Turkish name for the central mountain range in Bulgaria. Mountains throughout much of the region hinder advancement overland. River valleys offer the main means of access into the hinterland. Chief among these is the Danube, which empties into the Black Sea. In the west, a high mountain chain impedes access from the Adriatic. In the south, several rivers break through the mountains and afford a connection to the interior. These include the Vardar and the Struma, which cut through the rocky mountain ridges of southeastern Europe. In several locations these rivers pass through narrow defiles, with only limited level land on one or both sides of the river. The Vardar, combined with the Morava River flowing to the north, offers a relatively easy passage between the Aegean and the Danube. Several cities on the Balkan periphery provide commercial access into the interior. On the Adriatic these include Dubrovnik (It: Ragusa) and Split (It: Spaleto). On the Black Sea these commercial outlets are Burgas and Varna in Bulgaria and Constanţa in Romania. The largest and most important of these port cities is located in the south on an arm of the Aegean Sea. This is Salonika (Eng), Thessaloniki (Gk), Solun (Bg). Here a cosmopolitan population and an active economy combine to form one of the most important urban areas in southeastern Europe.¹ This port was the major maritime access point for much of the central Balkan Peninsula, including the large mixed ethnic region of Macedonia. One railroad line linked Salonika with Athens to the south and Constantinople to the east. Another extended up into Macedonia, connecting Salonika with the main city of central Macedonia, Skopie, and then on up to the Serbian capital, Belgrade.

The term Balkan has come to be associated with obscure and complex conflict in southeastern Europe. Often such conflicts lack resolution. This was not always the case. The establishment of Ottoman Turkish rule by the mid fifteenth century began a relatively peaceful era in the region. The introduction of the western European concept of nationalism into southeastern Europe at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, brought about a series of conflicts caused by the efforts of the inhabitants of southeastern Europe, also known as the Balkan Peninsula or simply as the Balkans, to emulate the western Europeans and establish nationalist states. In these conflicts, the peoples of this region initially directed their political and military efforts primarily against the Ottoman Empire. As these efforts achieved some success in throwing off Ottoman rule and establishing national states, the Balkan peoples increasingly came into conflict among themselves over Ottoman spoils. The inherent instability caused by these conflicts inevitably attracted the attention of the Great European Powers. These included Austria (Austria-Hungary after the Ausgleich of 1867), France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, and Russia. Especially interested in these issues were the two Great Powers most proximate to this region, Austria-Hungary and Russia. At Berlin in 1878, the Great Powers sought to impose an overall settlement on the region that would maintain their interests. In their efforts to preserve the Berlin settlement, they were only partly successful. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the settlement was coming undone.

The consequence of the Great Powers’ inability to preserve stability in Southeastern Europe was a prolonged conflict beginning in 1912. At first the Balkan states attempted to realize their nationalist objects by the final expulsion of Ottoman authority from Europe in the First Balkan War. Before this was achieved, the Balkan states fell to fighting among themselves over the Ottoman legacy in the Second Balkan War. The enhanced status of the Bulgarians after the First Balkan War antagonized all of their Balkan neighbors and led to the Second Balkan War and the defeat of Bulgaria. The ensuing Treaty of Bucharest failed to impose a final settlement on the region. The defeated Bulgarians were vengeful. They sought an opportunity to attain the nationalist goals denied them by their former allies. The triumphant Greeks and Serbs were not sated. They wanted additional nationalist goals. In the case of the Greeks, these largely were at the expense of the Ottomans. In the case of the Serbs, these were in Austria-Hungary.

This study focuses on the continuation of this struggle during the First World War mainly from the Bulgarian perspective. In this struggle they sought to establish a large national state corresponding to perceived ethnic and historic frontiers. For Bulgaria, the renewed fighting in Southeastern Europe during the First World War represented an opportunity to redress the verdict of Bucharest. Bulgaria’s eventual entry into the war on the side of Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the erstwhile Ottoman enemy was based purely on self interest. Unlike the militaries of the other Central Powers, Bulgarian soldiers did not fight on fronts away from their frontiers. Bulgarian soldiers fought only on the Macedonian Front in the south, often referred to in Bulgarian sources as the Southern Front, and the Dobrudzha Front in Romania. In both of these regions they fought only for Bulgarian national interests. The commander in chief of the Bulgarian army, General Nikola Zhekov, emphasized this to the chief of the German General Staff, General Erich von Falkenhayn, soon after Bulgaria’s entry in the war in 1915, when the Bulgarians found themselves fighting not only the Serbs, but to their great surprise the British and French: "We have committed our entire existence to this war, we have engaged in a bloody war and have sustained enormous losses."² The Bulgarians urged the elimination of the Macedonian Front from its inception. To their immense frustration, however, the Germans preferred to maintain it in order to concentrate Entente resources and manpower in a location remote from the decisive theaters of the war. Bulgarian military leaders warned that the Macedonian Front could become a potential problem. An Entente offensive in the summer and fall of 1916, which brought French and Serbian troops as far as Bitola, gave substance to the Bulgarian concerns. Their alarm became even more pronounced at the end of 1917 as German troops and equipment shifted to the Western Front for the great roll of the dice, and as the material and morale of the Bulgarian army deteriorated.

When Bulgaria entered the war, its material situation was bad. The Balkan Wars had already exhausted the country. The Bulgarians depended upon their German allies to provide them with most of their war equipment. Their expectations were never realized. The Germans could not meet their own demands. Nevertheless the Germans drew heavily upon Bulgaria’s food resources. As a result, by 1917 morale in the ill-equipped and hungry Bulgarian army plummeted. The situation grew even worse the next year. Bulgaria could barely maintain its forces in the field. Its hope of victory in Macedonia depended upon the success of the Germans in the west.

The anticipated Entente offensive began at Dobro Pole on 14 September 1918 with a sustained artillery attack. At first the Bulgarians resisted to the extent of their ability. Only after the French and Serbian soldiers established a sustained presence in the forward Bulgarian positions did the Bulgarian army retreat. The Bulgarians could not maintain a successful defense in their secondary positions. At this point the years of material deprivation and the uncertainties about the war effort cause discipline to collapse in some units. Other Bulgarian divisions remained intact and even fought off British and Greek attacks. The damage was done, however. Due to the lack of reserves and the disorders in the Bulgarian ranks, the gap torn in the Bulgarian lines by the Entente attack grew larger. With the Entente front widening in Macedonia and with disaffected Bulgarian soldiers seizing Kyustendil and threatening Sofia, the Bulgarian government decided to seek an armistice on 25 September, just nine days after the offensive began. In the end, for the Bulgarians poor morale proved to be a stronger motivating factor than nationalist aspirations.

The collapse of the Bulgarian army following the Battle of Dobro Pole ended the cycle of fighting in Southeastern Europe for twenty years. It was one of the few overwhelmingly decisive battles of the First World War. Within two weeks of the beginning of the Battle of Dobro Pole, Bulgaria left the war. Two months later the First World War was over. For the third time since the end of Ottoman rule in 1878, Bulgaria had failed to achieve its nationalist agenda. For the second time in five years, Bulgaria had lost a nationalist-based war. The ensuing frustrations persisted throughout the interwar period. They undermined the development of parliamentary democracy in Bulgaria. They also led Bulgaria once again to seek redress on the side of Germany in the Second World War. Then it suffered yet another defeat. Forty-five years of Soviet domination ensued.

All dates are given according to the Gregorian calendar, although Bulgaria did not officially abandon the Julian calendar until 14 April 1916. In some cases in the footnotes, dates are given in both new style and old style, or only old style (os), and are marked accordingly. Place names are generally given according to the Bulgarian usage; Skopie instead of Skoplje. Where appropriate, alternatives are provided. Names of major locations are used according to common practice; Salonika instead of Thessaloniki or Solun, Belgrade instead of Beograd.

Note on Transliteration

I have utilized the Suggestions for the Transliteration of the Bulgarian Alphabet proposed by J. F. Clarke and C. E. Black in C. E. Black, The Establishment of Constitutional Government in Bulgaria (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1943), pp. 321–23, for the transliteration of the Bulgarian alphabet, with three exceptions. I made no attempt to differentiate between the letters and . Also, I have transliterated two letters now in disuse, and , according to the usage in T. Atanasov et al., Bulgarsko-angleski rechnik (Sofia, 1983).

BALKAN BREAKTHROUGH

By the third quarter of the nineteenth century three national states had emerged in southeastern Europe from the non-national Ottoman Empire. These were Greece, Romania, and Serbia. All three sought to emulate the political and economic success of national states in western Europe. From the onset of their establishment none of these small southeastern European states considered their frontiers to be permanent. All sought to expand into neighboring territories to include greater numbers of their co-nationals in the same state or to conform to romantic notions of medieval predecessors. The Greeks sought all the Aegean Islands, Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace, then all under Ottoman control. The Romanians had claims to Habsburg Transylvania and Romanov Besserabia. The Montenegrins and Serbs contested Ottoman territories in Bosnia Hercegovina, Kosovo, and northern Albania. In addition both the Greeks and the Serbs claimed Macedonia as part of their national legacy. Not only were these small states eager to acquire territories from the large dynastic empires that bordered on southeastern Europe, they also increasingly advanced claims that overlapped each other’s national aspirations. The only apparent means of maintaining and forwarding such claims was armed action. In this regard the peoples of southeastern Europe attempted to emulate the successes of the Italians in 1861 and the Germans ten years later. These countries had unified through conflict.

As national movements grew in southeastern Europe, they often cooperated with each other. The Serbian state aided the Bulgarian revolutionary movement through the initial three quarters of the nineteenth century. A series of intra-Balkan alliances developed in the 1860s. In 1867 Bulgarian revolutionary leaders even proposed a Bulgarian-Serbian state. Bulgarian revolutionaries also found refuge in Bucharest.

The national situation became more intense in southeastern Europe in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In 1875, Orthodox and Muslim peasants in Hercegovina, the southwestern corner of Bosnia, rose against the Ottoman authorities. Both Montenegro and Serbia intervened in support of the insurrection. In the ensuing war the many Russian volunteers joined the Montenegrin and Serbian forces. A Russian general, Mikhail Chernyaev, assumed command of the Serbian army. Nevertheless the Serbs suffered defeat by the Ottomans in 1876. At the same time, Bulgarian revolutionaries mounted a national uprising against the Ottomans. The Bulgarians did not hesitate to slaughter the Turkish civilian population living there. The Ottoman authorities retaliated in kind. The result was the Bulgarian Massacres, in which the Ottomans bore most if not all of the odium. Outraged populations elsewhere in Europe, especially in Great Britain, demanded action. The Russian government, however, used the opportunity to directly intervene on behalf of the beset Bulgarians. They did so in order to demonstrate the Pan-Slavist credentials of the tsarist regime. As the largest Slavic Orthodox power, the Russians perceived some leadership responsibility to other Slavic Orthodox peoples. They also acted to gain control over the strategic Straits passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. The Straits consisted of three distinct bodies of war west to east, the narrow Dardanelles, the wide Sea of Marmara, and the narrow Bosporus. Control of this passage would ensure Russian access to year round maritime commerce and possession of the ancient imperial city of Constantinople, Tsarigrad in the Slavic languages.

In the aftermath of the defeat of the Serbian and Montenegrin efforts in Hercegovina, and with the intention of addressing Russia’s inchoate sense of Slavic nationalism and Russia’s much more concrete strategic goals in southeastern Europe, Tsar Alexander II declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 24 April 1877. A Russian force passed through Romania and crossed the Danube at Svishtov in June. It advanced to the Ottoman fortress of Pleven (Plevna). After failing to take the fortress, the Russians settled down for a siege. This lasted from July to December. After the Russians did not succeed on two occasions to take Pleven, a Romanian army reinforced them. Meanwhile in July, the Russians took control of the main north–south route across the Balkan Mountains at Shipka Pass. There they defeated Ottoman attempts to relieve Pleven in August and in September. Finally Pleven surrendered on 10 December 1877. The Russians then advanced south of the Balkan Mountains. They occupied Sofia on 4 January 1878. Ottoman resistance in Bulgaria collapsed as the Russian army reached Adrianople on 19 January 1878 and the final defensive positions in front of Constantinople, the Chataldzha lines, on 30 January. The next day the Ottomans sued for an armistice.

The ensuing peace negotiations were held at San Stefano, a suburb of Constantinople. On 3 March 1878 in the Treaty of San Stefano, the Ottomans acceded to a Russian demand for the establishment of a large independent Bulgaria. This state, which included Macedonia and most of Thrace, met the demands of the most expansive Bulgarian nationalists. Neither the other Great Powers nor the other Balkan states shared the Bulgarians’ enthusiasm for the San Stefano Treaty. Greece, Romania, and Serbia all considered that the treaty had slighted their national demands. This did little to endear the new Bulgarian state to its neighbors.

Largely because of objections from Austria-Hungary and Great Britain that San Stefano Bulgaria would give the Russians a base from which they could dominate all of southeastern Europe and threaten Constantinople, the German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, offered his services as an honest broker to revisit the settlement. A congress including representatives of all the Great Powers and the Ottoman Empire met at Berlin in the summer of 1878; they signed an agreement on 13 July 1878. Some of the Great Powers obtained direct benefit. Primary among these was Austria-Hungary, which gained the consent of the other Powers to occupy Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Sandjak of Novi Pazar, a small sliver of territory separating Montenegro from Serbia. Great Britain in turn occupied Cyprus.

This Treaty of Berlin also recognized the complete independence of Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia from the Ottoman Empire. All three countries received territorial augmentation. The Montenegrins obtained territory, although not as much as they would have under the San Stefano settlement. The Serbs got the area around Niš. The Romanians, although required to cede Besserabia to Russia, received a part of the territory south of the great bend of the Danube before it empties into the Black Sea, northern Dobrudzha, in return. This was small compensation for their efforts during the recent war. Greece got nothing.

The Treaty of Berlin dashed aspirations of Bulgarian nationalists. Bulgaria itself became a principality but remained under the sovereignty of the Ottoman sultan. The southeast around Plovdiv obtained special status as an Ottoman province with a Christian governor and received the name Eastern Rumelia. The western part of San Stefano Bulgaria, Macedonia, returned to direct Ottoman rule. This was a huge disappointment for most Bulgarians.

The Congress of Berlin attempted to establish a permanent settlement for the problems of southeastern Europe. It emphasized the role of the Great European Powers in questions arising from the development of Balkan nationalisms. Only they had the authority to consider future modifications of the settlement. Realization of the disparity between their own abilities and those of the Great Powers forced the Balkan nationalists to seek arrangements to continue their efforts.

After the Congress of Berlin, the states of southeastern Europe perceived each other as rivals for the remaining European territories of the Ottoman Empire. Montenegro and Serbia both sought territory in Albania and Hercegovina, Greece and Bulgaria in Thrace; and Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia all claimed Macedonia. Their overlapping claims undermined their abilities to realize them.

The southeastern Europeans recognized that they stood little chance individually of contradicting the collective will of the Great Powers. Therefore each state in southeastern Europe sought affiliation with either Austria-Hungary or Russia. Hohenzollern-ruled Romania resented the Russian intrusion of 1877 and the Russian confiscation of Besserabia the next year. The Bucharest government signed an alliance with Austria-Hungary in 1883, connecting Romania to the mighty Triple Alliance. Serbia, under the leadership of King Milan Obrenović, who had just assumed the royal title the previous year, likewise oriented its policy toward Vienna. Despite the disappointment of Berlin, the truncated Bulgarian principality remained pro-Russian. Alexander Battenberg, the Russian Tsar Alexander II’s nephew, became prince of Bulgaria in 1879.

The first important breach of the Berlin settlement occurred in 1885. The Russian government had closely directed its Bulgarian satellite after 1878. In 1885, however, Bulgarian revolutionaries overthrew the Ottoman regime in Eastern Rumelia. Against the wishes of his cousin Tsar Alexander III, Prince Alexander of Bulgaria announced the annexation of Eastern Rumelia by Bulgaria.¹ Prince Alexander recognized that as a foreigner ruling Bulgaria, he needed to associate himself with the national inclinations of his principality. Tsar Alexander, already infuriated by his cousin’s struggles against Russian control, ordered Russian officers and advisors home from Bulgaria. The tsar’s personal inclinations seemed to supersede Russia’s strategic interests.² The newly unified Bulgarian state lacked trained senior military officers and a Great Power patron. The Great Powers deadlocked over whether to permit the breach of the Berlin covenant.

In these circumstances, King Milan of Serbia perceived an opportunity. He did not want to see Bulgaria grow without compensation for Serbia. Accordingly, he declared war on Bulgaria on 13 November 1885. Serbian forces crossed the frontier and advanced toward Sofia. Most of the Bulgarian army was in the southeast to guard against Ottoman intervention. Furthermore, the withdrawal of Russian officers left in the Bulgarian army no higher rank than captain. Prince Alexander marched his troops to the northwest of the country and defeated the invaders at Slivnitsa 17–19 November. The Bulgarians then entered Serbian territory and moved toward Niš. At this point the Austro-Hungarians intervened to protect their Serbian client. They warned that further