Series editor Martin Windrow
THE BALKAN CAMPAIGN
THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN ARMY ON THE BALKAN FRONT
SERBIA
MONTENEGRO
ALBANIA
THE GERMAN ARMY ON THE BALKAN FRONT
THE OTTOMAN ARMY ON THE BALKAN FRONT
ENTENTE FORCES IN SALONIKA
BULGARIA
GREECE
RUMANIA
THE PLATES
IN 1914 THE BALKAN PENINSULA comprised 258,000 square miles with about 26 million inhabitants: Albanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Rumanians, South Slavs – Serbs (including Montenegrins), Bosnian Moslems, Croats (including Dalmatians) and Slovenes – with German, Hungarian, Italian, Jewish, Vlach and other minorities. These peoples had just emerged from 568 years of occupation by the Ottoman Turks, and lived in Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Rumania and Serbia (including present-day Macedonia); with Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia under Austro-Hungarian rule. The European remnant of the Ottoman Empire comprised the capital Constantinople, Edirne and their hinterlands.
The Balkans, whose violent instability had earned the region the title of the ‘powder-keg of Europe’, were marked by the rivalry between German-backed Austro-Hungary, ambitious to control the region; and Serbia, supported by Russia and France, which was determined to liberate Serb, Croat, Slovene and Bosnian minorities in Austro-Hungary. Meanwhile Bulgaria was anxious to regain areas in Greek and Serbian Macedonia and Rumanian Dobrudja, forfeited in August 1913 following the Second Balkan War.
Austro-Hungary had provoked Serbia by holding military manoeuvres in Bosnia-Herzegovina in summer 1914; and on 28 June a Bosnian-Serb student, Gavril Princip, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, thus igniting the First World (or ‘Great’) War.
The four Central Powers – Germany, Austro-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria – intended to link up territorially by Austro-Hungary occupying Serbia and Montenegro, and dominating Albania, leaving Greece and Rumania as benevolent neutral states. This strategy was opposed by the three principal European ‘Entente’ Powers – France, Great Britain and Russia.
The Austro-Hungarian ‘Balkan Army’ – effectively an army group, comprising 2nd Army in Syrmia (Eastern Croatia) and Western Banat (now Vojvodina, Northern Serbia); 5th Army in East-Central Bosnia and Herzegovina; and 6th Army in North-Eastern Bosnia – attempted three invasions of Serbia and Montenegro. On 28 July 1914 the 2nd Army shelled Belgrade, and the first invasion began on 2 August. The 5th Army crossed the Drina into North-Western Serbia towards Belgrade, where it and the 2nd Army were defeated on 12-24 August by the Serbian 1st, 2nd and 3rd Armies at the battle of Cer (Lesnica) – the first Allied victory of the First World War.
A Serbian counterattack into Syrmia on 6 September was abandoned after the second Austro-Hungarian invasion on 8 September, when the 5th and 6th Armies again threatened Belgrade. At the battle of the Drina the Serbian 2nd Army forced the 5th Army back into Bosnia, while the 6th Army, after initial headway against the Serbian 3rd Army, also retreated to avoid a bold outflanking movement on 25 September, with the Serbian Uzice Group and Montenegrin armies advancing towards Srebrenica and Pale in Eastern Bosnia. The Serbs retreated tactically before the third Austro-Hungarian invasion on 6 November, with Serbian 2nd Army allowing the Austro-Hungarian 5th Army to occupy Belgrade on 2 December. The Austro-Hungarian 6th Army was halted before Valjevo and defeated on 3-9 December by the Serbian 1st Army at the battle of Kolubara, before being forced back into Syrmia. Meanwhile, the regrouped Serbian 2nd and 3rd Armies and the Uzice Group drove the 5th Army into Western Banat, liberating Belgrade on 15 December 1914.
Some 20,000 Serbian troops of the ‘Albanian Detachment’ occupied Northern and Central Albania on 29 May 1915 to forestall cross-border raids into Kosovo and South Serbia by Albanian émigrés. This, however, weakened the main Serbian force confronting the Central Powers. On 18 September 1915 Germany established Army Group Mackensen, comprising the German 11th, Austro-Hungarian 3rd and Bulgarian 1st Armies. Then, on 5 October 1915, a Franco-British force landed in Salonika and the Austro-Hungarians entered Montenegro, capturing Mount Lovcen on 10 January 1916, Cetinje on 13th and Berat in Southern Albania on 17 February 1916. On 11 October Bulgarian forces attacked Serbia, the 1st Army taking the crucial rail junction of Nis on 5 November, reaching Elbasan in Albania, and the 2nd Army advancing along the Vardar Valley to attack beleaguered Serbo-Montenegrin forces. However, on 6 October Mackensen’s 3rd and 11th Armies advanced down the Morava Valley, taking Belgrade on 8 October and Kragujevac on the 15th. As an outflanking action the Austro-Hungarian 57th, 59th and 63rd Divisions advanced from Eastern Bosnia against weak Serbian forces, occupying Üskub (now Skopje) on 22 October and brushing aside a premature Allied thrust from Salonika.
The Serbian forces now conducted their leg endary tactical retreat from 24 November across snow-laden mountain passes through Kosovo and Montenegro, across the Prokletije Mountains into Northern and Central Albania and down to the Adriatic coast, leaving the Montenegrin army to conduct a last stand before surrendering on 25 January 1916. By late December 1915 the Serbs had reached Shkodër, and on 15 January 1916 were evacuated by Allied ships from Durrës – initially to French-occupied Corfu and as far as Bizerta in French Tunisia, and from April 1916 to the Salonika Front. In January 1916 Austro-Hungary installed a military government (Militär-Generalgouvernement) in Serbia and Montenegro, using Gendarmerie and Military Police (Feld gendarmerie) to fight local Chetnik guerrillas.
The Central Powers now controlled the Western Balkans, their forces grouped from 22 April 1917 as Army Group Scholtz. The Austro-Hungarian 19th Corps in Northern and Central Albania opposed the Italian 16th Corps on a 60-mile front in South-Western Albania. The Allied Armée de l’Orient deployed along the Serbian-Greek border on a 160-mile front divided into five sectors. The French 3rd Divisional Group manned the Ochrid Sector (Skumbin River–Lake Prespa) and the Franco-Russian 2nd Group the Monastir Sector (Lake Prespa–Gradesnica) against the German 11th Army. The reconstituted Serbian forces defended the Crna Sector (Gradesnica–Crna River) with 1st–3rd Serbian Armies; the Franco-Italian 1st Group the Struma Sector (Crna–Vardar Rivers); and the British Salonika Army the Doiran Sector (Vardar–Struma Rivers), against the Bulgarian 1st and 2nd Armies. In the East the neutralist Greek 4th Corps garrisoned Eastern Macedonia against the Bulgarian 2nd and 4th Armies.
Germany vetoed an Austro-Hungarian-Bulgarian attack on Salonika in order to tie down Allied forces and discourage their transfer to the Western Front. Nevertheless, at the battle of Flórina (or Gornicevo) in the Monastir and Crna Sectors, 17 August–14 September 1916, initial gains by the Bulgarian 1st Army were retaken by the 2nd Divisional Group and the Serbian 1st Army, while the Bulgarian 2nd Army forced the British Salonika Army back in the Doiran Sector during the Struma Valley operations. Meanwhile, the Greek 4th Corps, ordered by the Athens government not to resist in order to avoid compromising Greek neutrality, surrendered Fort Rupel on 24 May and on 18 September Eastern Macedonia as far as the strategic port of Kaválla, to the Bulgarian 2nd and 4th Armies. During the successful Allied counteroffensive in the Monastir and Crna Sectors (5 October–11 December 1916) Monastir (now Bitola) was captured by Serbian cavalry and Russian infantry on 19 November at the first battle of Monastir – the first Serbian town to be liberated – thus forcing the reinforcement of the Bulgarian 2nd Army by the Ottoman 20th Corps.
The front now settled down into a stalemate which prompted the French Prime Minister, Georges ‘Tiger’ Clemenceau, unfairly to label the Armée de l’Orient ‘the Gardeners of Salonika’. The year 1917 saw minimal local gains: the British Salonika Army failed to dislodge the Bulgarian 1st Army at the battle of Lake Doiran (24-25 April and 8-9 May 1917); while in the Crna Sector, during the spring offensive, the Bulgarian 1st Army successfully resisted the Russian 2nd Brigade and Serbian 2nd Army at the second battle of Monastir (9-14 May 1917). The German 11th Army also repelled the 2nd and 3rd Divisional Groups in the Ochrid and Monastir Sectors at the battle of Lake Prespa (9-17 May 1917). The de facto abdication of the neutralist Greek King Constantine on 12 June 1917, and Greece’s declaration of war on the Central Powers on 25 June encouraged the Armée de l’Orient to plan for victory. However, Greek political instability, a malaria epidemic in the British units, the growing unreliability of Russian and French troops, and a lack of firm Allied commitment to the Salonika Front delayed the final offensive. The only clear victory was the capture on 7 September 1917 of Pogradec in the Ochrid Sector from the Austro-Hungarian 19th Corps by the 3rd Divisional Group. This led to the replacement of Gen. Sarrail, the commander of the Armée de l’Orient, on 22 December 1917, and all Allied forces in Greece were placed under his successor, Gen. Guillaumat.
Meanwhile, on 30 May 1918 Greek divisions of the 1st Divisional Group captured the Skrá di Legen ridge, on the left bank of the Vardar in the Struma Sector, from the Bulgarian 1st Army. This galvanised Greek support for the Entente. Meanwhile, the Italian 16th Corps and the 3rd Divisional Group advanced into Central Albania in early July 1918, capturing Berat; but during 14-26 August the Austro-Hungarian Army Group Albania (formerly 19th Corps) counterattacked, retaking Berat and most of the lost territory.
The advance from Salonika commenced on 14 September 1918 with a 580-gun artillery barrage, the most powerful ever seen in the Balkans, in the Monastir, Crna and Struma Sectors. On 15 September the Serbian 2nd Army supported by two French divisions, and the Serbian 1st Army, launched the final offensive in the Crna Sector, reaching the Vardar River at Negotino on 21 September. The British Salonika Army and Greek 1st Corps commenced a limited advance on 16 September, taking Belasica on the 29th; the 1st Divisional Group attacked on the 22nd, taking Prilep and Üskub on the 29th. On 30 September Bulgaria concluded an armistice with the Allies, forcing the German 11th Army, supported by Austrian and new German divisions, to regroup at Nis; but on 12 October the Serbian 1st Army took the city, followed by Krusevac on the 17th and Belgrade on 1 November. The Italian 16th Corps and 3rd Divisional Group advanced into Central Albania on 2 October against minimal resistance, occupying Durrës on 14 October, Tirana on the 15th, Shkodër on the 31st, and reaching Bar in Montenegro on 3 November, where they met the Serbian 2nd Army, which had occupied Kosovo and Montenegro.