Austro-Hungarian occupation of Serbia 1915–1918

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Division of Serbia into an Austro-Hungarian and a Bulgarian occupation zone

The Austro-Hungarian occupation of Serbia from 1915 to 1918 during the First World War (officially kuk military administration in Serbia , Hungarian katonai igazgatás Szerbiában ) lasted from 1915 to 1918.

prehistory

On June 28, 1914 , the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip murdered the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este in Sarajevo . This led to the July crisis and the outbreak of the First World War. Trying Austria-Hungary , Serbia crush quickly militarily, but failed due to poor planning and the fierce Serb resistance. In three offensives between August and December 1914 , the Austro-Hungarian army failed to decisively defeat the Serbian army. The Serbs remained undefeated in major skirmishes, the Battle of Cer in August, the Battle of the Drina in September and the Battle of the Kolubara in November and December of that year and finally forced the invaders to retreat to their own territory.

From October 6, 1915, after negotiations with Bulgaria which led to its accession to the alliance , the Central Powers undertook a new campaign against Serbia . Until the beginning of December 1915, Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian troops were able to occupy all of Serbia. The country was divided between Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria.

After the occupation, a military administration was established with a governor and a civil commissioner at its head.

The military administration

The question of whether all Serbian areas should be annexed or the rest of Serbia should continue to exist as a formally independent state dependent on the monarchy, could never be resolved internally due to the resistance of Hungary and its Prime Minister István Tisza to larger annexations of Serbian areas. As if continuing the war goal conflict between Tisza and chief of staff Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf also created frictions in the administration of the Government General Serbia. The tensions between the Hungarian government and the Army High Command (AOK) arose right at the beginning of the military occupation of the (west) Serbian territories. Tisza demanded that Hungarian administrative officials be used as a matter of urgency in the military administration of the occupied area, because the conquered Serbian areas would belong to the Hungarian sphere of interest, just as the Polish areas belong to Austria.

Conrad, however, strove for a South Slavic union within the monarchy, under Croatian leadership. The establishment of the military government was for him the preparation of an annexation of these areas in this sense. Therefore, he fended off the Hungarian claims. The Hungarian civil commissioner for Serbia, Ludwig Thallóczy (since January 16, 1916) was therefore so hindered and ignored by the military administration that he even applied for a transfer to Albania. Tisza's interventions with Army Commander Archduke Friedrich and Foreign Minister Burián in March 1916 were ultimately successful and the responsible military personnel such as Johan Ulrich von Salis-Seewis were replaced at the beginning of July. In September civil (under Thallóczy) and military administration of Serbia were separated. After a trip through the occupied Serbian territories, Tisza fought violently against the allegedly "too mild" military administration. Through affable and accommodating treatment of the population and the “very open endeavor to play the definitive master of the country”, the “firm intention of annexing the whole of Serbia is very evident”. The fact that Tisza accused the AOK of treating the population too mildly did not lack “a certain grotesque note”. The occupation policy of Austria-Hungary, however, seems to have been relatively humane compared to the repressive actions of Bulgaria.

Nevertheless, partisan activities also took place in the Austrian-occupied part of Serbia , which spread from the Bulgarian-occupied part.

The surrender of the ally Bulgaria on September 29, 1918 and the capture of Belgrade, until then the seat of the governor for Serbia, on November 1, 1918, ended the occupation of Serbia. On December 1, 1918, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was proclaimed.

Military commander

Governors

See also

literature

  • Gordana Ilic Marković (Ed.): Veliki Rat. The great war. The First World War as reflected in Serbian literature and the press. Promedia, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-85371-368-6 .
  • Olga Manojlović Pintar, Vera Gudac Dodić: “An Ugly Black Night”. Remembering the Austro-Hungarian Occupation of Serbia 1915-1918. In: Oto Luthar (Ed.): The Great War and Memory in Central and South-Eastern Europe. (= Balkan Studies Library , 17), Brill, Leiden 2016, ISBN 978-90-04-31623-2 , pp. 71-84.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andrej Mitrović: Serbia's Great War, 1914-1918. Purdue University Press, 2007, ISBN 1-55753-476-4 , pp.?.
  2. ↑ Milorad Ekmečić,? P. 353.
  3. ^ Gerhard Ritter : Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk. The problem of "militarism" in Germany. Volume 3: The tragedy of statecraft. Bethmann Hollweg as war chancellor (1914–1917). Munich 1964, ISBN 3-486-47041-8 , p. 110.
  4. ↑ a b József Galántai: The Tisza Government's War Target Policy 1913-1917. In: Nouvelles études historiques. Publiées à l'occasion du XIIe Congrès International des Sciences Historiques par la Commission Nationale des Historiens Hongrois . Budapest 1965, pp. 201–225, here: pp. 211f.
    Andrej Mitrovic: The War Aims of the Central Powers and the Yugoslavia Question 1914-1918. In: Adam Wandruszka, Richard G. Plaschka, Anna M. Drabek (eds.): The Danube Monarchy and the South Slavic Question from 1848 to 1918. Texts from the first Austrian-Yugoslav historians' meeting in Gösing 1976. Vienna 1978, pp. 137–172, here : P. 153.
    Gabor Vermes: István Tisza. The Liberal Vision and Conservative Statecraft of A Magyar Nationalist. Columbia University Press, New York 1985, ISBN 0-88033-077-5 , p. 325.
  5. ↑ Rudolf Jerábek: Military and Politics in the first half of 1916. With an appendix on the tradition in the form Gabelsberger shorthand. Rough Housework, Vienna 1983, p. 124.
  6. ↑ Rudolf Jerábek: Military and Politics in the first half of 1916. With an appendix on the tradition in the form Gabelsberger shorthand. Rough Housework, Vienna 1983, pp. 59 and 85.
  7. ↑ 100 Years of the First World War - Occupied Territories - Serbia Austrian State Archives.
    Manfried Rauchsteiner : The death of the double-headed eagle. Austria-Hungary and the First World War. Böhlau, Vienna / Graz / Cologne 1993, ISBN 3-222-12454-X , p. 467.
  8. ↑ Milorad Ekmečić,? P. 366.