Battle of the Argesch
Map of the battle
situation on December 1st and 2nd and troop movements on December 3rd, 1916
| date | December 1 to December 6, 1916 |
|---|---|
| place | Argeș River near Bucharest , Romania |
| output | Victory of the Central Powers |
| consequences | Capture of Bucharest |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| Romanian 1st Army with 9 infantry and 2 cavalry divisions, 2 Russian divisions, together about 150,000 men |
Army group Mackensen with Danube Army and right wing of the 9th Army , together 11 Inf. And 3 Cavalry divisions with about 175,000 men |
| losses | |
|
70,000 prisoners |
unknown |
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1916–1917
1916:
Transylvania ( Sibiu ) -
Turtucaia -
Dobrich -
Cobadin (1) -
Flămânda Offensive -
Cobadin (2) -
Târgu Jiu -
Argesch -
Rimnicul Sarat
1917:
Putna -
Oituz Pass (1) -
Mărăşti -
Mărăşeşti -
Oituz Pass (2)
The Battle of the Argesch (also called the Battle of the Argesul or the Battle of the Argeș ) was a battle in the Romanian theater of war during the First World War . It took place on the Argesch River , a tributary of the Danube, in December 1916. The Romanian army was defeated here by the Danube Army under the command of the German Field Marshal August von Mackensen . As a result, Romania's capital Bucharest was conquered.
prehistory
The Romanian declaration of war on August 27, 1916 against Austria-Hungary was preceded by secret negotiations with Russia . The tsarist empire accepted Romanian territorial claims to Bukovina , Transylvania and the Banat . With the accession to the Entente and the invasion of Transylvania by the Romanian army, the Central Powers were forced to open another front.
The Romanian army advanced into Hungarian Transylvania. However, the Romanians were repulsed in the Battle of Sibiu (September 22-29) by the German 9th Army under the command of the former head of the OHL Erich von Falkenhayn . In a large-scale urban warfare - which was rather untypical for the First World War - Kronstadt was recaptured by October 8th . In mid-November, the Kühne group ( General Command 54 ) at Târgu Jiu, in cooperation with the Schmettow cavalry corps, was able to break through south into Wallachia and occupy Craiova .
In addition, on November 23 and 24, 1916, Mackensen's river crossing at Sistowa occurred completely unexpectedly for the Romanians on their southern Danube border . With the help of Austrian pioneer forces, the newly formed Danube Army ( General Command 52 ) under General Robert Kosch with the 217th Infantry Division , the Combined Cavalry Division (General Hans von der Goltz) and the Bulgarian 1st and 12th Divisions were brought across the river. On November 25th, the troops of the Central Powers were already assembled in the northern bridgehead on the Romanian-Bulgarian border near Zimnicea , with the following Turkish 26th Division serving as a reserve. The Danube Army crossed the Teleormanu River on November 26th and began its advance on Bucharest. On November 28, the first clash between the advance guard of the German 217th Division and the Romanian 18th Division under General Alexandru Referandu took place near Prunaru.
The Romanian army command had assembled most of their troops under General Alexandru Averescu on the northern section of the Carpathian Mountains and thus exposed the unprotected Danube border of Romania. The resulting predominance of the medium forces in the section of the Danube Army was 40 German and Bulgarian battalions and 188 guns compared to 18 battalions and 48 guns of the Romanian Danube group.
With the involvement of the allied Russian 6th Army , the Romanians in the south under General Constantin Prezan began to prepare a counterattack to avoid encircling Bucharest. The plan was to attack the advance troops of the Central Powers on the southern and western aprons of Bucharest on the Argesch on both flanks before Bucharest could be encircled. The Russian general Vladimir Sakharov did not agree to the attack plan, but promised to accelerate his 47th Corps to protect Bucharest and thus to strengthen the Romanian defense in the south.
The French high command sent General Henri Berthelot to assist the Romanian ally . Although he only had an advisory role, he was considered to be the head of the plan of attack on the Danube Army and the later defense of Bucharest.
The battle
On December 1st the Romanian attack began; he was initially successful. The Bulgarian 12th Division on the right wing had to retreat towards the afternoon after heavy fighting against the Romanian 18th Division and lost contact with the rest of the army. The Romanian army managed to capture a large number of Bulgarian infantrymen. The left wing of the Danube Army near Flamanda was still lagging behind the center, which is why the left flank of the 217th Infantry Division in the center under Lieutenant General Kurt von Gallwitz-Dreyling was massively attacked by the Romanians on the night of December 2nd. The 217th Division had to withdraw in the morning hours of December 2nd and wait for reinforcements.
The front line was still confusing on December 2nd. The 217th Division was still alone facing the enemy. The front threatened to collapse between her and the Bulgarian 12th Division.
On the morning of December 3, the Romanian 21st and 18th Infantry Divisions attacked again with all their might to force a breakthrough. The intervention of the 7th and 9th Jäger Battalions, which had closed the gap between the Bulgarian 12th Division and the 217th Division at dawn, stabilized the threatened sector. The battle continued undecided all morning.
The Romanian counterattack only stalled when the right wing of the German 9th Army under General von Falkenhayn intervened in the Battle of the Argesch. From the west from the Slatina area , the Schmettow Cavalry Corps ( 6th and 7th Cavalry Divisions ) and the Kühne Group with the 41st and 109th Infantry Divisions were approaching the Argesch line. From the north-west via Curtea de Argesch , the Alpine Corps came as "Gruppe Krafft" with the 216th and 301st divisions . The intervention of the Bavarian 11th Division (Gen. Paul von Kneussl ) of the Kühne group helped the stuck parts of the Danube Army to renew their attack and to push back the Romanians on the opposite side. The Romanian units had to break off their attack and withdraw to the river bank of the Argesch.
Now the joint attack of the Danube Army and the 9th Army on the crews of the river began. During this attack, parts of the Danube Army were again wedged in and the 217th Division suffered another crisis in the center. The Romanian corps that had been set up for the counter-attack consisted for the most part of poorly trained and well-equipped reservists and was commanded by General Sosescu, who was of German descent. His reluctance to crush the Danube Army at the right moment and thus to thwart the attack by the 9th Army across the river was in retrospect viewed by the Romanian military as treason.
Another setback during the battle was the capture of a Romanian military transport by a German guard. The transporter contained the defense and attack plans of the Romanian high command that were to be brought to the front line.
The consequences
On December 6, the northern Romanian defense line was also attacked and rolled up by the left wing of Falkenhayn's 9th Army. When the Romanian troops withdrew to the capital, these grain fields burned down near Ploeşti . The German I. Reserve Corps under Curt von Morgen occupied Targoviste and Ploeşti, the latter together with the XXXIX operating to the east . Reserve corps under General Hermann von Staabs .
After the cavalry corps under General von Schmettow broke into the forts on the north-western front of the city, the garrison capitulated and Bucharest was occupied by the Central Powers. King Ferdinand I fled to Iași . The intact Russian 6th Army withdrew on the south wing along the Danube into the Dobruja by the end of the month and covered against the Bulgarian 3rd Army under General Stefan Neresow, which was marching on the other bank of the river .
The remnants of the Romanian army fought their way back towards the Sereth . The Romanian losses during the "Battle of the Argesch" and the defense of Bucharest were devastating. In total, the Romanians had lost around 150,000 dead and wounded and as many prisoners since entering the war. The German army lost around 60,000 soldiers.
literature
- Cornélis Willcox, Edwin Stuart: International Military Digest, Volume 3 . The Cumulative Digest Corporation, 1917.
- Holland Thompson, James Bryce, William Petrie: The Book of History: The events of 1916 ... 1917 and Summary. The Grolier Society, 1920.
- Hermann Stegemann : History of the War . Volume IV. 1921, reprint 2012, Salzwasser-Verlag, Paderborn, ISBN 978-3-86382-741-0 .
- William King: King's Complete History of the World War. The History Associates, 1922.
- Erich Karitzky: Reserve Jäger Battalion No. 9 . Verlag Gerhard Stalling , Oldenburg i. D. 1925 ,.
- Hanson Baldwin: World War I: An Outline History. Hutchinson & Co., London 1962.
- Anton Wagner: The First World War. A look back. Carl Ueberreuter Verlag, Vienna 1981, pp. 214-218 (Troop Service Pocket Books, Volume 7).
- Norman Stone : The Eastern Front 1914-1917. Penguin, London 1998. ISBN 978-0-14-026725-9 .
- David F. Burg, L. Edward Purcell: Almanac of World War I. The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 2004. ISBN 0-8131-2072-1 .