Salonikifront
The Salonikifront , also Macedonian or Macedonian Front , was a secondary theater of the First World War from 1915 to 1918. It emerged when the Central Powers , including Bulgaria , conquered Serbia in autumn 1915 and the Entente intervened with troop landings in Thessaloniki in favor of the allied Serbs, so that all major European powers invaded the south-east European area. In the course of 1916, the front was therefore fortified in the position between Lake Ohrid and the Strymonian Gulf on the Aegean Sea through the construction of staggered trench systems in which trenches , machine gun nests , artillery positions and fortifications were set up. In addition to the use of airships by the Central Powers to bomb Thessaloniki, almost 300 aircraft and in the Battle of Lake Dojran (September 18-19, 1918), poison gas grenades were also used. After the Entente, after long hesitation about the strategic benefit of a massive deployment of troops in Southeast Europe, decided to prepare for a major offensive in late summer 1918 under the leadership of the Serbian and French General Staff, over 600,000 soldiers faced each other. Due to the presence of all European Entente allies with the exception of Belgium and Portugal (British with Australians, French, Serbs, Italians, Russians, Albanians and Greeks) and the presence of colonial troops from Indochina and sub-Saharan Africa, the duck force was marked by a noticeably large ethnic heterogeneity . It was under French leadership.
The front, which runs mainly in what is now the Republic of North Macedonia and the Greek region of Macedonia , was the main front of the Bulgarian army in the First World War on the side of the Central Powers, alongside the Romanian theater of war that was established in 1916 .
The collapse of this front resulted from a Serbian-French offensive with the decisive battle on Dobro polje (September 14-17, 1918). It led to the rapid breakthrough in the rear area of the Salonika front and the resulting dissolution of the Bulgarian army. This also meant the inevitable defeat of the Central Powers. Separate armistice agreements were concluded with Germany's allies (Bulgaria September 29, 1918, Ottoman Empire October 30, 1918, Hungary November 13, 1918). The battle of Dobro polje is one of the most important decisive battles of the First World War. In the interwar period , revanchist circles sought the blame for the German defeat on Germany's allies and their military incapacity.
background
During the initial phase of the First World War, both the Central Powers and the Entente endeavored for Tsarist Bulgaria to enter the war on their side. These efforts reached their climax after Italy entered the war in May 1915. The goal of the Central Powers Germany and Austria-Hungary was to establish a land connection to the allied Ottoman Empire by the overthrow of Serbia in league with Bulgaria , in order to be able to support it in particular in the battle of Gallipoli .
Serbia and Bulgaria had been bitter enemies since the Second Balkan War , in which Bulgaria claimed the part of Macedonia awarded to Serbia in the First Balkan War. Bulgaria, the loser of this war, had lost large parts of the territories previously won in the First Balkan War to Serbia, Greece and the Ottoman Empire in the Peace of Bucharest .
Due to the German-Austrian successes on the Eastern Front in 1915, Bulgaria tended more towards the side of the Central Powers in the summer of 1915, especially since the Entente Powers were unable to offer comparable territorial concessions at the expense of Serbia. On September 6, 1915, identical secret friendship and alliance agreements between Bulgaria and the German Reich and Austria-Hungary were signed in Sofia . On the same day, a military convention followed in Pless between Bulgaria on the one hand and the German Reich and Austria-Hungary on the other. In it Bulgaria undertook to support the allies with at least four divisions within five days of the start of the German-Austrian attack on Serbia . This breakthrough was made possible by the Ottoman decision to cede Bulgaria a strip of territory on the Mariza , which was of great importance for Bulgaria's access to the Mediterranean at Dedeagatsch .
Serbia, having learned of the negotiations, responded preventively at the beginning of September by transferring troops to the Bulgarian border. At the same time, they asked the Entente for help in an expected invasion, as they would not be able to withstand a combined attack by the Central Powers and Bulgaria on their own. Preparatory Austro-Hungarian troop transfers to the Temesvár area had been observed since the end of August.
Bulgaria mobilized on September 22, 1915 , which prompted an immediate response from Greece, which also mobilized the following day. The Bulgarian government said soothingly that the measure served to defend the country's neutrality. In Serbia, however, it was clear that an attack was imminent. There was a plan to give the Bulgarian government an ultimatum to end their mobilization, otherwise the offensive would be taken and advance on Sofia. For this purpose the Entente and Greece were asked to provide troops. Serbia's allies reacted cautiously at first, as they did not want to provoke a decision by Bulgaria. It was not until October 4, 1915, on the eve of the Central Powers ' Serbian campaign , that they presented Bulgaria with an ultimatum to remove the German officers from the country.
Allied intervention
The Entente Powers had already planned to intervene in Serbia at the beginning of 1915, when Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos offered support to Greece should Romania or Bulgaria agree to participate. The Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić had made similar advances , who with Allied support wanted to build a strong southern front against Austria-Hungary in order to push it out of the war. None of the projects went beyond the planning stage, the Entente troops were instead sent to Gallipoli.
In connection with the Greek mobilization of September 23, 1915, Venizelos made an appeal to the Allies to come to the aid of his country. According to the treaty of alliance with Serbia of 1913, Greece was obliged to provide assistance should Serbia be attacked. However, it shied away from the consequences of entering the war, unless the great powers were ready to support it. The French government immediately responded in the affirmative. On September 24, 1915, the order was issued to General Bailloud to be ready for embarkation for Saloniki with a division (156th), which was currently deployed with the Dardanelles. The British government also promised to send a unit from the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force .
Since Venizelos wanted to prevent a break with King Constantine over an Allied landing in Greece, which the latter refused as long as his country was neutral, he suggested diverting the French division to an Aegean island and keeping it there. The French chose limnos for this purpose. In the meantime the British had withdrawn one of their divisions, the 10th (Irish) Division under Bryan Mahon , from Gallipoli.
The French were already ready at this point to completely liquidate the Dardanelles company, for which they first needed British approval. For Joseph Joffre , a major French engagement in Serbia on the scale of several corps, as requested by the commander-in-chief of the Armée d'Orient , Maurice Sarrail , was unthinkable. Priority was given to the home front, on which the great autumn offensive in Champagne and Artois had just begun. At the Dardanelles, however, only two French divisions were deployed, compared to thirteen British ones, and a unilateral complete withdrawal of the French was out of the question. The support of Serbia seemed important enough to move additional units from the motherland.
On October 5, 1915, the day before the attack by the Central Powers on Serbia, the first Allied troops landed in Salonika. The day before there had been a scandal in the Greek parliament: Venizelos demanded that Greece should now side with Serbia. King Constantine called him on October 5, 1915 and declared that he could not support this policy. Venizelos then resigned. This wasted the chance for the Allies to secure the support of the Greek army.
Meanwhile, the competent ministers of the Allied Powers held several conferences. It was decided to concentrate the forces in Macedonia, for which the British should provide a corps of around 65,000 men after the conclusion of the autumn offensives in France and the French three infantry and two cavalry divisions with about the same number of soldiers. Nonetheless, this was recognized as insufficient to provide effective support to Serbia, which was faced with a majority of at least 500,000 soldiers from the Central Powers.
Course of the fighting
Advance into Macedonia
On October 12, 1915 General Sarrail landed with the first parts of the 57th Division in Saloniki and took over command of the Armée d'Orient . His primary task was to shield the railway line from Saloniki to Skopje against a Bulgarian attack. Due to the low strength of his forces at that time, he decided to let his troops advance only to Krivolak in the Tikveš region for the time being . The main part of his forces (156th Division) was supposed to defend the Valandovo area and the Demir Kapija gorge . From October 21, 1915, the first skirmishes with Bulgarian troops took place here.
The British government hesitated at first, despite all French efforts, to stand by the Serbian ally. The British government's lack of interest in Serbia contrasted with much deeper British interests in relation to the territorial issues of Albania, Bulgaria and, in particular, the Dardanelles, which also had anti-Serb tendencies in the leading British political circles at the time. In particular, the British diplomats blamed Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić for refusing to accommodate the Bulgarians during the diplomatic alliance negotiations and for alleged involvement in the Sarajevo attack . Winston Churchill commented on the stubbornness of the Serbian government in the negotiations for the alliance with Bulgaria in an undiplomatic way: "You stayed crazy until the end."
On October 24, 1915, the Bulgarians took Skopje and cut ties between the Allied troops and the Serbian army. From November 3 to 12, 1915, the French troops, which were increased by the 122nd Division, launched an offensive in the Vardar valley and attacks against Strumica , which were repulsed by the Bulgarians. At the same time, the Serbian army tried unsuccessfully to unite with the French troops via Kačanik and to break through to Thessaloniki. On November 30th, the French won an assurance from the British government that they would support the Serbian army. Joseph Joffre informed the Serbian General Staff under Radomir Putnik that the Franco-British armed forces in support of Serbia should be increased to 150,000 soldiers. However, these troops would have been available in two months at the earliest and would therefore have appeared on the scene far too late to have any tactical effect. Despite the disappointment about the lack of support, on November 4, 1915, chaired by Prince Regent Alexander I, the Serbian government decided at a special meeting in Raška to continue the war against the Central Powers. On November 25, she decided in Peć to continue to implement the resolutions of November 4, 1915, which excluded surrender, and to retreat to the allies with the entire army via Montenegro and Albania to the Adriatic coast.
The German Supreme Army Command (OHL) had meanwhile stopped the persecution of the Serbian army on November 27, 1915 in order to protect people and material in difficult terrain and under wintry conditions. On the other hand, the OHL believed that the expulsion of the then numerically insignificant French troops from Thessaloniki would have an unfavorable effect on further war planning in view of the complex territorial claims of the allies Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and therefore of The advantage would be to keep the Bulgarian army mobile through the presence of the Entente soldiers and to tie them to the Greek border. In contrast, the OHL judged the use of the Bulgarian armed forces on other fronts negatively. The whereabouts of the French expeditionary army on the Greek-Serbian border was judged to be advantageous for their own troops, as this would relieve their own western front.
The withdrawal of the defeated Serbian army, which was defeated by the army of Montenegro in the battle of Mojkovac on 6/7. January 1916 was covered against the Austro-Hungarian army, took place over the winter inaccessible mountains of Montenegro and Albania between November 25, 1915 and January 15, 1916. Meanwhile, the Allies withdrew behind the Greek border. By this time they had suffered losses of over 3,000 men. The main column of the Serbian army retreating via Peć - Andrijevica - Skutari through Montenegro and Albania, on the other hand, had lost between 60,000 and 80,000 men who died from frostbite and starvation. 15,000 deaths were also recorded among the recruits of the government column, which also included the Serbian King Peter I and Radomir Putnik , who was carried in a sedan chair over the icy mountain paths due to his poor health , who made his way via Prizren - Debar - Had taken Valona . Scutari thus reached 185,300 emaciated Serbian soldiers. On the way to Valona the number of survivors continued to decrease and only 158,000 soldiers could be transferred to Corfu and Bizerta on French warships between January 18 and February 23, 1916 . Many of these were so weakened that 7,750 soldiers died on the Greek island and in the French base in Tunisia.
Thus around 150,000 Serbian soldiers had survived the retreat, a third of the operational population of 1914. However, Serbia was still able to keep a numerically significant army, in the wake of which the entire Serbian government had escaped into exile. When the Allied Salonika Front was built, the Serbian army was later replenished by the corps formed by volunteers from America, Russia and the South Slavic countries. By February 1916, 20,000 volunteers for the Serbian army gathered in Odessa , and they were first deployed in Dobruja. The British army also recruited among the Croats of the Habsburg Empire, who were brought up on Austro-Hungarian naval ships, but initially had no success. Only when the association was transferred via Archangelsk to Thessaloniki and integrated into the Serbian army did it stabilize.
The Salonika company was up for grabs at this point. Great Britain saw no useful use of its troops in Saloniki and preferred to use the divisions landed there to defend Egypt. In the event of a German-Bulgarian invasion of Greece, the troops would have been threatened with annihilation. France and the other allies, however, spoke out in favor of maintaining the flank threat from the Central Powers in order to avoid an unfavorable impression on Serbia and the neutrals Romania and Greece.
Construction of the Saloniki Front
Due to the diplomatic defeat in the Balkans, the French government under René Viviani resigned at the end of October 1915 and was replaced by a cabinet under Aristide Briand . The French government blamed the Serbian debacle of indecision among the allies to support Serbia. Due to the loyalty of the Serbian government to the alliance, despite the catastrophic military course, the Allies saw themselves forced to better coordinate their differences of opinion in the future by voting on further plans for the wider theater of war in the Balkans. Nevertheless, the individual allies had very different priorities when it came to their own goals for a presence in the Balkans. From December 6 to 8, 1915, the allied general staffs met at the Allied conference in Chantilly . The Russians favored a strong presence in the Balkans in order to deal a decisive blow to Austria-Hungary, while the French preferred a wait-and-see stance in order to take advantage of a turnaround on one of the main fronts. The Italians wanted to concentrate only on their own sphere of interest in Albania, while the British had written off the Balkans entirely and demanded the immediate evacuation of the troops. The representative of the Serbian General Staff, on the other hand, suggested building a powerful army of up to a million soldiers, which - after the elimination of Bulgaria and the liberation of Serbia - was to attack Austria-Hungary directly in order to bring the Central Powers down from within. Although the British voted against maintaining the expeditionary army, the further defense of Salonika was decided for the first time at the conference.
As security against a German-Bulgarian attack, it was decided to first build a fortified camp ( camp retranché de Salonique ). Later, the troops standing here were to form part of the Allied offensives planned for 1916. For this purpose, the French intended to increase the troops to up to 400,000 men. This project was postponed at the Chantilly Conference in March 1916 as long as no other Balkan state (Romania) intervened on the side of the Entente in the war. However, the Allied troops should move up from Saloniki to the Greek border in order to bind the enemy. They should also be better equipped for mountain warfare.
In the meantime the remnants of the Serbian army on Corfu had been reorganized. They were transported to Chalkidiki until the end of May . The Serbian troops comprised six divisions with 120,000 men, but were not yet ready for action. The British troops had been divided into two corps under the command of the British Salonika Army , but initially remained strictly defensive at the direction of their government. Only the Allies Russia and Italy endorsed offensive operations, but only participated with small contingents (an Italian division under Carlo Petitti di Roreto and a Russian brigade under Mikhail Konstantinovich Diterichs ), which arrived in August.
Preparations for the offensive
General Sarrail had been planning an offensive against the Bulgarian-German troops in Macedonia since the spring of 1916. In doing so, however, he had to be considerate of the British, who were not prepared to support the offensive actions of the Entente without support from Romania. In June, the Allies asked Greece to demobilize the armed forces so as not to be exposed to any threat from behind.
Sarrail had four French divisions in the front at that time, to which a British division came. At the beginning of August, the French 17th Colonial Infantry Division launched a first attack on the Bulgarian positions near Lake Dojran , which resulted in heavy losses. Sarrail's main attack was scheduled for late August to coincide with the Romanian entry into the war. On July 22, 1916, at a conference in Paris, it was decided that Sarrail, previously only nominal Allied Commander in Chief, was allowed to assign the British troops areas of operations and targets and to determine the date of their deployment. Similar provisions also applied to the other allies. A new headquarters, the Commandement des Armées alliées en Orient (CAA), was set up on August 11, 1916 for the purpose of leading the Allied units .
The lengthy negotiations with Romania came to an end on August 17, 1916, when an alliance treaty and a military convention between Romania and the Entente Powers were signed in Bucharest. The treaties provided for the declaration of war and Romania's attack on Austria-Hungary on August 28, 1916 at the latest. The Allied offensive on the Salonika Front was to begin a week beforehand, on August 20, 1916.
The Bulgarian army got a few days before the allies when on August 17, 1916 it began simultaneous offensives to Florina and eastern Macedonia and occupied the territory of eastern Macedonia as far as the Struma . The Greek IV Army Corps stationed here placed itself under German protection near Kavala on September 13, 1916 .
The 1916 Monastir Offensive
The Allied offensive finally began on September 12, 1916, targeting Monastir in southwest Macedonia. While the right wing, consisting mainly of British and Italian units, was supposed to behave defensively, the left wing, Serbian-French troops, was supposed to attack and push back the Bulgarian 1st Army , which stood on a front between Kaimaktschalan and Lake Prespa .
From the beginning of October on the Cerna there was a two-month battle in the Cernabogen after the Bulgarians had withdrawn behind the river. They were now under the command of the German AOK 11 ( Arnold von Winckler ), which was provided with German reinforcements and subordinated to Army Group Below ( Otto von Below ) with the 1st Bulgarian Army . Below decided on November 18, 1916 to give up Monastir (despite Bulgarian protests). In December 1916 the Allied offensive was stopped.
Preparations for a new offensive
On October 20, 1916, at a conference in Boulogne, the Allied powers decided to considerably strengthen the armed forces in Macedonia (by about six divisions). Although this planned number was not reached, the number of Allied troops rose to almost 500,000 men at the end of 1916. The aim of these measures was to work together with Russian-Romanian armed forces in the Romanian theater of war to bring about the defeat of Bulgaria and thus to gain the upper hand in the Balkans. This hope was not fulfilled due to Romania's defeats towards the end of the year.
Military pressure was used against Greece, which had concentrated troops in Thessaly . After the request for the surrender of the Greek fleet had already been made on October 11, 1916, around 3,000 marines landed in Piraeus on December 1, 1916 , in order to receive another ultimatum after the surrender of artillery pieces to replace the loss of the Greek fort Rupel, the in May 1916 had been occupied by Bulgarian troops without resistance. This culminated in the "Battle of Athens" against troops loyal to the king, after which the Allies had to withdraw on December 2, 1916. Among other things, the Greek capital was shelled by the French battleship Mirabeau . On December 8, 1916, the blockade of Greece by Allied warships began and on December 14, 1916, an ultimatum was given to withdraw the Greek army to the Peloponnese . These measures gradually eased the pressure the French Commander-in-Chief Sarrail felt on his rear connections.
In February 1917, a smaller offensive was undertaken in Albania with the aim of opening up another supply route from Saranda to Korça . Further offensive operations in March aimed to occupy strategic high positions northwest of Monastir and on the isthmus between Lake Ohrid and Lake Prespa and to relieve the western flank of the Orient Army.
The spring offensive of 1917 and the transition of Greece to the allies
Originally planned for the beginning of April 1917, but postponed due to bad weather, the Allied spring offensive began on the evening of April 24, 1917 with the attack in the sector of the British XII. Corps between Lake Dojran and Vardar. For a gain of only 1,500 meters of trench line, the British had to accept losses of 2,600 men.
At the beginning of May 1917, further attacks followed along the front: in the zone of the French 122nd Division, reinforced by Greek volunteer units, west of the Vardar; in the west adjoining zone of the Serbian army; as well as in the zone of the Franco-Italian-Russian army in the Cernabogen. All of these attacks resulted in little or no terrain gains with high losses. The offensive was stopped on May 23, 1917.
At the same time as the spring offensive was discontinued, the Allies, led by France, had agreed on further measures against the still manifesting Greek resistance. At the beginning of June 1917, Thessaly, the granary of Greece, was occupied. At the same time, troops were landed in Piraeus and on the Isthmus of Corinth .
Under this pressure, King Constantine abdicated on June 12, 1917 in favor of his second oldest son Alexander . Venizelos was appointed prime minister, and on June 29, 1917, the new government declared war on the Central Powers. The Greek army was not mobilized at first, but the existing three divisions of the Army of National Defense were upgraded and strengthened.
The events up to the summer of 1918
In August 1917, the Allies decided to release two British divisions for the Palestine Front. In the Serbian army, which had shrunk to just under 80,000 men due to a lack of recruitment opportunities, exhaustion was felt, as was the case with the French units that had been in the front for some time.
No major fighting took place on the Macedonian front until August 1917. To prevent units of the Central Powers from being withdrawn to the Romanian front, Sarrail launched local attacks in late August and early September to simulate a major offensive. In September and October the area around Pogradec was occupied by French troops. In December 1917, General Sarrail was elevated to his post by Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau . Because of his interference in political affairs, he was no longer considered acceptable by any of the allies and was replaced by Adolphe Guillaumat .
The latter reorganized the Allied troops in the period up to April 1918 with a view to a possible offensive by the Central Powers on the Macedonian front. After the armistice between Russia's new Bolshevik government and the Central Powers in December 1917, the Russian division was detached from the front in January 1918. The French troops were divided into three divisional groups and a central reserve was created. In addition, the reorganization of the Greek army began to have an impact with the availability of new divisions.
On April 7, 1918, Ferdinand Foch ordered Guillaumat to undertake local offensives in the area of the front in Macedonia in order to disrupt the German spring offensive that had been running on the western front since March 21 . From late May to mid-June, the Greek National Defense Army Corps conducted its first major offensive operation, the Battle of Skra-di-Orte , in which a fortified Bulgarian position was taken. Around the same time, the French 3rd Division Group in eastern Albania also managed a limited offensive operation. Overall, with the withdrawal of the majority of the German troops, the situation for the Entente powers in the Balkans had shifted in their favor in the course of the year.
For the future political-military position of Serbia in the Balkans, the defeat of Italy in the Twelfth Insonzo Battle , the internal weakening of Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary, as well as the separate peace between Romania and the Central Powers in the spring of 1918 had had a positive effect. In exile, the Serbian government carried out intensive lobbying work in order to recruit among its allies for a post-war order guided by its own interests, in which the establishment of a Yugoslav state was the declared aim. The political basis was the agreement reached in the Declaration of Corfu in the summer of 1917 , in which the planned unification of Montenegro with Serbia also resulted in the resignation of the Montenegrin King Nikola . The Serbian government received the full support of the United States of America in these matters, which advocated the liberation of all southern Slavs from the Austro-Hungarian state union and decisively supported the line of the Serbian government in the establishment of this planned common South Slav state. Woodrow Wilson even worked energetically on the Italian government to correct its ambitions on the east Adriatic coast.
In June 1918 there was a change at the top of the Allied armies. Petar Bojović resigned as Chief of Staff due to differences of opinion with Guillaumat over the enlargement of the front section of the Serbian army and from then on took over command of the 1st Serbian Army. In his place Živojin Mišić was installed. A little later, Guillaumat was recalled from Macedonia and replaced by Louis Franchet d'Espèrey as head of the CAA. These changes should have a positive effect on the preparation and implementation of the offensive. Due to the popularity of Mišić 'with the French and the advocacy of d'Espèreys for a more offensive approach, a good precondition for close cooperation in coordinating the upcoming events developed for the two commanders. Despite the British rejection of any Balkan offensive, the French government had reached an agreement with the Serbian government in June to prepare it, but in complete secrecy from the other allies. The goal was set on broad targets: Bulgaria should be eliminated from the war and the conditions created to advance in the rear of the open flank of the Central Powers.
The British learned of the preparations a month later, but the French government was able to convince London that it would only be a local offensive in the area of the Serbian front section in order to improve their position. After the preparations were finished, the British refused to support them for a long time. It was not until September 9, 1918 that they gave their consent to the Serbian-French offensive. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Henry Hughes Wilson , unequivocally restricted British support for this: "If the Serbs fail, they should not count on us to save the situation."
Before the offensive, the Bulgarian-German armed force comprised 626,000 men (only 30,000 Germans), 1,600 guns and 80 aircraft. The Entente had 628,000 soldiers, 1,800 guns and 200 aircraft at their disposal. Of these, 180,000 were French with eight infantry and one cavalry division, 150,000 Serbs (including 20,000 Yugoslav volunteers) with six infantry and one cavalry division, 135,000 Greeks with nine divisions, 120,000 British with four divisions, 42,000 Italians with one division and 1,000 Albanian soldiers Essad Pashas .
The Entente troops were distributed in sections along the 450 km long front:
- from the Strymonian Gulf to Lake Kerkini the Greek I. Corps was under Panagiotis Danglis with three divisions;
- from Lake Kerkini to Majadaga on the left bank of the Vardar four British and two Greek divisions under the command of George Milne ;
- from the Majadaga to the Sušica river, a French and a Greek division under Philippe d'Anselme ;
- from the Sušica to the village of Starevina in the Moglenička Mountains, the Serbian army with six infantry and one cavalry division and two French infantry divisions under Živojin Mišić ;
- from Starevina to Kamija in Albania the French Orient Army with five French, one Italian and one Greek divisions under Paul Prosper Henrys .
The final offensive against Bulgaria
Upon his arrival, Franchet d'Espèrey immediately resumed the preparations for an offensive that had been started by his predecessor. Unlike the latter, however, he aimed from the outset for a decisive result on this front. Since the Bulgarian-German troops were spread out on the front in the form of a cordon, without creating stronger reserves in the background, the Serbian plan was implemented to initiate the breakthrough on the Serbian front, the basic idea of which was the surprise of the enemy. The area of Dobro Polje in the front section of the Serbian army was selected for a concentration of troops for a breakthrough offensive, as the opposing side least expected an attack here and because of the inaccessible area could not bring rapid reinforcements. The Serbs were to receive support from two French divisions (122nd and 17th colonial divisions) and a vigorous expansion of the breakthrough was to take place with the help of cavalry, which should cut the rear connections of the Bulgarian army. For the preparations necessary for this, Franchet d'Espèrey set about two months, his target date for the start of the offensive was September 15. On this day the Serbian troops were to attack after artillery preparation , the French and Greek divisions on Kožuf / Voros, in the Vardar valley and on Lake Doiran three days later, and the French Orient Army at Bitola eight days after the offensive began. Although this timing scheme was unfavorable for the initial breakthrough, the Serbian General Staff nevertheless accepted the plan after a violent dispute with the main commanding officer, as the morale of their own troops was considered sufficient for the implementation.
For the Serbian front section, which was halved to 30 kilometers as an attack sector, a two-fold superiority in manpower and a 3.5-fold superiority in artillery and aircraft was achieved. In parts of the 2nd Serbian Army, which had to initiate the lead of the breakthrough, there was a threefold superiority in manpower and a fivefold superiority in artillery and aircraft. 220 guns were positioned on the front section.
The first target of the attacking troops was Prilep , later Skopje should be reached. In the best-case scenario , a collapse of the Bulgarian resistance, the Allies would be able to advance to Sofia and Niš in the second phase of the offensive .
On September 14, 1918, the offensive began with 22 hours of heavy artillery fire on the Macedonian mountains. On September 15, 1918 at 5:30 a.m., the 2nd Serbian Army under Stepa Stepanović attacked. The main column of the 122nd French Division fought on the left wing. After a violent eight-hour battle, Dobro Polje was taken at 2:30 p.m., which was secured by taking the height in 1795. The left column, however, did not manage to capture the Sokol before dark, which was a prerequisite for the entry of the 1st Serbian Army. In the center, the French 17th Colonial Division had to retreat to the starting positions after initial successes. Only the Šumadija division was able to record a complete success on the first day. In just an hour she had taken the Veternik Summit, which was considered impregnable. This enabled the division to assist the 17th Colonial Division, which nevertheless did not advance. Stepanović then ordered the Yugoslav and Timoker Divisions through the ranks of the 17th, who were able to take the Bulgarian defensive positions on the Krvavica and Krvavičkom. At 6 p.m. they also reached Krvavička poljana. This opened the way to Kazjak.
The break-in was expanded on September 16 and 17, 1918. On September 18, 1918, the British and Greek troops attacked in their front sector on both sides of Lake Doiran. The Bulgarian army withdrew behind the Cerna and the Vardar, destroying their supply depots. Prilep was taken on September 23, 1918 and Skopje on September 29, 1918. The Allies had advanced around 130 kilometers in 14 days and had taken 90,000 prisoners, including five generals, and captured more than 800 pieces of artillery. Their losses amounted to 15,000 men, 3,500 of them dead and missing.
On September 26, 1918, the Bulgarians had requested a 48-hour truce. On September 28, 1918, an armistice delegation led by Finance Minister Andrei Lyaptschew arrived in Saloniki and on September 29, 1918 at 11 o'clock in the evening, the Thessaloniki armistice was signed, which came into force at noon the following day. On October 3, 1918, the disarmament and demobilization of the Bulgarian army began.
Follow-up: Liberation of Serbia and march on Istanbul
After Bulgaria left the war, several important tasks remained for the Allied Oriental Army, first and foremost the liberation of Serbia. Then the way to Hungary would also be open. Furthermore, efforts were made to take action against the Ottoman Empire to surrender it. There were two ways of doing this: the occupation of the Dardanelles to enable an Allied fleet to pass through to Istanbul, or the march on the capital itself. Furthermore, smaller units were to occupy important points in Bulgaria and support the Italian expeditionary corps in Albania. Support for a Romanian re-entry into the war and an intervention in Russia were also up for grabs.
On October 2, 1918, the Serbian 1st Army met Austro-Hungarian units (9th Division) near Kumanovo , which withdrew after a short battle. On October 4, 1918, she reached Vranje , covered by a French cavalry brigade and the Serbian cavalry division. On October 9th, larger German units were identified, the 219th Division (10th Royal Saxon) and the Alpine Corps . The next day units of the 217th Division were also cleared up by cavalry . The important railway junction Niš was bypassed extensively by the allied units and reached Kruševac on October 15th . On November 1, 1918, the Serbian 1st Army entered Belgrade and the 2nd Army was on the Bosnian border. On November 4, 1918, Hungarian negotiators were received in Belgrade; the day before, the Villa Giusti armistice had been signed in Italy , with which Austria-Hungary ended the war.
During October Bulgaria was occupied by troops under General Paul Chrétien . With a view to Romania's re-entry into the war, the Armée du Danube was formed on October 28, 1918 with three divisions under General Henri Berthelot , which should provide support against the German occupation forces. The Danube was closed at Widin on the Romanian border . The German commander-in-chief in Romania, August von Mackensen , proposed a retreat via Hungary to Upper Silesia in view of the threat to his connections to the rear.
Even before an Allied intervention in the European part of the Ottoman Empire, it surrendered on October 30, 1918 in the Moudros armistice . A French and a British division were dispatched to take part in the occupation of Istanbul .
After the end of the war, the troops of the Allied Oriental Army occupied practically the entire Balkans and some neighboring areas:
- Serbian troops parts of Hungary ( Vojvodina , Baranya ), Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia;
- British, French and Italian the Bulgarian Black Sea ports and other strategic points of the country, the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus;
- French together with Italian des Corpo di spedizione italiano in Albania Albania.
Participating commanders (selection)
- Allies
Carlo Petitti di Roreto with Maurice Sarrail and Essad Pascha Toptani
Louis Franchet d'Espèrey
Kajmakčalan staff posts: Radomir Putnik , Franchet d'Espèrey, Paul Prosper Henrys , Maurice Sarrail
- Central Powers
Otto von Below
.jpg)
Allied associations involved
France
-
Armée française d'Orient (AFO), with:
- 156th infantry division
- 57th infantry division
- 122e division d'infanterie
- 17th division d'infanterie coloniale
- 11th division d'infanterie coloniale
- 16th division d'infanterie coloniale
- 30th infantry division
- 76e division d'infanterie
- 2e to regiment de zouaves
- 1st regiment de spahis marocains
- 1st regiment de chasseurs d'Afrique
- 4th regiment de chasseurs d'Afrique
- 8th Regiment de Chasseurs d'Afrique
United Kingdom
-
British Salonika Army , with:
- 10th (Irish) Division
- 22nd division
- 28th Division
- 26th Division
- 27th Division
- 60th (2 / 2nd London) Division
Serbia
- Serbian 1st, 2nd and 3rd Army, with:
- Morava Division
- Yugoslav Division
- Šumadija Division
- Timok Division
- Drina Division
- Danube Division
- Cavalry Division
Italy
-
Corpo di spedizione italiano in Macedonia , with:
- 35ª divisions to three brigades
Russia
- 2nd and 4th independent brigade, merged in July 1917 to form the 2nd independent division
Greece
- Seres division
- Archipelago Division
- Cretan Division
- 1st, 2nd, 13th, 3rd, 4th, 14th, 9th Infantry Division (from 1918)
The battlefield today
Today several military cemeteries, museums and monuments remind of the Salonikifront. About 8098 French, 7441 Serb and 3500 Italian, 1350 British and 493 Russian soldiers were buried on the Zeitlik in Thessaloniki. The Serbian cemetery was planned by Nikolaj Petrovič Krasnov, who also redesigned the ossuary originally designed by Aleksandar Vasić. On the island of Vido, where the Serbian soldiers were in quarantine after they had withdrawn from Albania, an ossuary (built by Nikolaj Petrovič Krasnov in 1938/39) commemorates those who died of malnutrition and illness, a large number of whom were in the sea off Vido was buried ( Plava grobnica ). On the top of Kajmakčalan there is an Orthodox chapel with the ossuary of the Serbian and Bulgarian favors. Archibald Reiss urn was also brought here.
The German war cemetery in Prilep was laid out until 1933. 1683 German war dead and 146 soldiers from Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Turkey and 8 Albanian nationals were buried here.
In Belgrade, the Floka observation tower of the Serbian General Staff is reminiscent of the Saloniki Front, which once stood exposed north of Kajmakčalan on the summit of Nidže - Greek Floka - at 2361 m and after the war in Belgrade in the garden of the Old Royal Palace, today's Pionirski Park , was reproduced, as well as the large sculpture by Ivan Meštrović's Merci a la France , which is generally reminiscent of the brotherhood in arms between Serbia and France in the First World War. Živojin Mišić's study from the General Staff period on the Saloniki front is now exhibited in the Valjevo National Museum.
In Paris, the Rue du Dobropol was named after the high plateau Dobro polje (Greek Kambos, Macedon. Dobro pole), which is located in present-day Greece at around 1700 m. Here the Bulgarian army had its well-developed main defensive positions in the Moglenička Mountains between the peaks of Sokol (1822 m), Veternik (1756 m) and Kozjak (1814 m) , in the vast high mountain area of Dobro Polje, which is strewn with shell craters the terrain, which is generally above the tree line, stands out with its barrel and trenches and former artillery and machine gun positions. In Marseille , the Le Monument aux morts de l'armée d'orient memorial commemorates the dead on the Balkan front.
Monument to the Dead of the Orient Army in Marseille
Observation tower of the Serbian General Staff at Kajmakčalan, Pionirski Park Belgrade
Ossuary on Vido, Nikolaj Petrovič Krasnov
Chapel on the top of Kajmakčalan
Živojin Mišićs's study, which he used during the fighting on the Saloniki Front
Summit of the contested Voras massif
Former rifle positions on Kajmakčalan
Ossuary in the Kajmakčalan Chapel
.jpg)
.jpg)
Movie
The 1996 film Captain Conan and the Wolves of War by French director Bertrand Tavernier is set in the final phase of the war on Salonika Front in 1918.
See also
literature
Official representations
- Les armées françaises dans la Grande guerre, Tome VIII: La campagne d'Orient. 3 volumes. 1924 ff.
- Military Operations, Macedonia. 2 volumes. 1933 ff.
Secondary literature
- Richard C. Hall: Balkan Breakthrough: The Battle of Dobro Pole 1918. Indiana University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-253-35452-5 .
- Alan Palmer : The Gardeners of Salonika: The Macedonian Campaign 1915-1918. London 1965.
- Alan Wakefield, Simon Moody: Under the Devils's Eye, Britain's Forgotten Army at Salonika 1915–1918. Sutton, 2004, ISBN 0-7509-3537-5 .
Web links
- Salonika Campaign Society (English)
- Military Cemeteries of the First World War in Macedonia Region: Routes of Reading History in Search of the Common Cultural Heritage (PDF; 200 KB)
- Cemeteries Bitola and Prilep in the German War Graves Commission
- Page about Turkish participation in the Macedonian Front , turkeyswar.com
- Balkan Breakthrough The Battle of Dobro Pole 1918 Richard C. Hall (PDF)
- Andra Popović 1926: Ratni Album 1914-1918 . (448 p.) Historical standard work of Serbia on World War I as a complete PDF on the website of the Serbian Foreign Ministry (Serbian, English, French) (PDF)
Footnotes
- ↑ Richard C. Hall: Balkan breakthrough. The Battle of Dobro Pole 1918 . (Twentieth-century battles) Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2010, ISBN 978-0-253-35452-5 , p. 79.
- ↑ Richard C. Hall: Balkan breakthrough. The Battle of Dobro Pole 1918. 2010, p. 142.
- ↑ Richard C. Hall: Balkan breakthrough. The Battle of Dobro Pole 1918. 2010, pp. 165-167
- ↑ Richard C. Hall 2010: p. 173
- ↑ D. Dietrich: End of the World War on the Macedonian Front . Gerhard Stalling, Berlin 1928.
- ↑ The use of the cavalry divisions was later dispensed with because it was viewed as not very useful due to the terrain.
- ↑ L'Illustration , N ° 3801, January 8, 1916: "Pierre Ier Karageorgevitch dans la plaine tragique de Kossovo, quittant le territoire de la Vieille-Serbie sur un caisson traîné par un attelage de bœufs", photography prize par le peintre serbe Vladimir Betzitch.
- ↑ Miloš Crnjanski : Embahade . 2nd edition, Nolit, Belgrad 1984, pp. 149-152.
- ↑ Miloš Crnjanski: Embahade. 1984, p. 151.
- ↑ Miloš Crnjanski: Embahade. 1984, p. 150.
- ^ A b Petar Opačić: Solunski front - Zejtinlik . Jugoslovenska Revija, Belgrade 1978, p. 46.
- ^ Petar Opačić: Solunski front - Zejtinlik. 1978, p. 45.
- ↑ a b c d Petar Opačić: Srbija i Solunski front . Književne novine, Belgrade 1984, p. 22.
- ^ Petar Opačić: Srbija i Solunski front. 1984, p. 46.
- ↑ a b c Petar Opačić: Srbija i Solunski front. 1984, p. 23.
- ^ Petar Opačić: Srbija i Solunski front. 1984, p. 47.
- ↑ Milorad Ekmečić: Dugo kretanja između klanja i oranja - istorija Srba u novom veku 1492–1992 . Evro Giunti, Belgrade 2011, ISBN 978-86-505-1614-0 , p. 354.
- ^ Petar Opačić: Srbija i Solunski front. 1984, p. 48.
- ↑ Milorad Ekmečić: Dugo kretanja između klanja i oranja. 2011, p. 354.
- ↑ a b Milorad Ekmečić: Dugo kretanja između klanja i oranja. 2011, p. 355.
- ^ Petar Opačić: Srbija i Solunski front. 1984, p. 24.
- ^ A b c Petar Opačić: Solunski front - Zejtinlik. 1978, p. 96.
- ↑ a b c d Petar Opačić: Solunski front - Zejtinlik. 1978, p. 97.
- ^ Petar Opačić: Solunski front - Zejtinlik. 1978, pp. 97-98.
- ^ A b c Petar Opačić: Solunski front - Zejtinlik. 1978, p. 98.
- ^ Petar Opačić: Solunski front - Zejtinlik. 1978, pp. 98-99.
- ^ A b c Petar Opačić: Solunski front - Zejtinlik. 1978, p. 99.
- ^ A b c Petar Opačić: Solunski front - Zejtinlik. 1978, p. 100.
- ↑ Observation position on the Floka with regent Aleksandar I. and Živojin Mišić (JPG)
