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Serbian campaign

The Serbian campaign was a series of military expeditions launched in 1914 and 1915 by the Central Powers against the Kingdom of Serbia during the First World War.

Serbian campaign
Part of the Balkans theatre of World War I

Serbian infantry positioned at Ada Ciganlija.
Date28 July 1914 – 24 November 1915
(1 year, 3 months, 3 weeks and 6 days)
Location
Result

Central Powers victory

Belligerents
Casualties and losses
  • 340,000+ battle and non-battle casualties
  • 405,000+ battle casualties
450,000[1] to 842,000[2] Serbian civilians died of war-related causes from 1914 to 1918

The first campaign began after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914. The campaign, euphemistically dubbed "punitive expedition" (German: Strafexpedition) by the Austro-Hungarian leadership,[3] was under the command of Austrian General Oskar Potiorek. It ended after three unsuccessful Austro-Hungarian invasion attempts were repelled by the Serbians and their Montenegrin allies. The victory of the Serbian army at the battle of Cer is considered the first Allied victory in World War I, and the Austro-Hungarian Army's defeat by Serbia has been called one of the great upsets of modern military history.[4][5]

The second campaign was launched, under German command, almost a year later, on 6 October 1915, when Bulgarian, Austro-Hungarian, and German forces, led by Field Marshal August von Mackensen, successfully invaded Serbia from three sides, pre-empting an Allied advance from Salonica to help Serbia. This resulted in the Great Retreat through Montenegro and Albania, the evacuation to Greece, and the establishment of the Macedonian front.[6] The defeat of Serbia gave the Central Powers temporary mastery over the Balkans, opening up a land route from Berlin to Constantinople, allowing the Germans to re-supply the Ottoman Empire for the rest of the war.[7] Mackensen declared an end to the campaign on 24 November 1915. Serbia was then occupied and divided between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Bulgaria.[8]

After the Allies launched the Vardar Offensive in September 1918, which broke through the Macedonian front and defeated the Bulgarians and their German allies, a Franco-Serbian force advanced into the occupied territories and liberated Serbia, Albania, and Montenegro. Serbian forces entered Belgrade on 1 November 1918.[9]

The Serbian army declined severely from about 420,000[10] at its peak to about 100,000 at the moment of liberation. The estimates of casualties are various: Original Serb sources claim that the Kingdom of Serbia lost more than 1,200,000 inhabitants during the war (including both military and civilian losses), which represented more than 29% of its overall population and 60% of its male population.[11][12] More recent historical analysis has estimated that roughly 177,000 Serbian soldiers lost their lives or were not returned from captivity, while the civilian death toll is impossible to determine, numbering in the hundreds of thousands.[13] According to estimates prepared by the Yugoslav government in 1924, Serbia lost 265,164 soldiers or 25% of all mobilized troops. By comparison, France lost 16.8%, Germany 15.4%, Russia 11.5%, and Italy 10.3%.[14]

Background edit

Austria-Hungary precipitated the Bosnian crisis of 1908–09 by annexing the former Ottoman territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which it had occupied since 1878. This angered the Kingdom of Serbia and its patron, the Pan-Slavic and Orthodox Russian empire.[15] Russian political manoeuvring in the region destabilized peace accords that were already unravelling in what was known as "the powder keg of Europe."[15]

 
Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Young Bosnia, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne

In 1912 and 1913, the First Balkan War was fought between the Balkan League of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro and the fracturing Ottoman Empire. The resulting Treaty of London further shrank the Ottoman Empire by creating an independent Principality of Albania and enlarging the territorial holdings of Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece. When Bulgaria attacked both Serbia and Greece on 16 June 1913, it lost most of its Macedonian region to those countries, and additionally, the Southern Dobruja region to Romania and Adrianople (the present-day city of Edirne) to Turkey in the 33-day Second Balkan War, which further destabilized the region.[16]

On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb student and member of an organization of national revolutionaries called Young Bosnia, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo, Bosnia.[17] Though the political objective of the assassination was the independence of the southern Austro-Hungarian provinces mainly populated by Slavs from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it also inadvertently triggered a chain of events that embroiled Russia and the major European powers. This began a period of diplomatic manoeuvring among Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, France, and Britain called the July Crisis. Austria-Hungary delivered the July Ultimatum to Serbia, a series of ten demands intentionally made unacceptable to provoke a war with Serbia.[18] When Serbia agreed to only eight of the ten demands, Austria-Hungary declared war on 28 July 1914.

 
The Austro-Hungarian government's declaration of war in a telegram sent to the government of Serbia on 28 July 1914, signed by Imperial Foreign Minister Count Leopold Berchtold.

The dispute between Austria-Hungary and Serbia escalated into what is now known as World War I, drawing in Russia, Germany, France, and the British Empire. Within a week, Austria-Hungary had to face a war with Russia, Serbia's patron, which had the largest army in the world at the time. The result was that Serbia became a subsidiary front in the massive fight that started to unfold along Austria-Hungary's border with Russia. Though Serbia had an experienced army, it was exhausted from the conflicts of the Balkan Wars and poorly equipped, which led the Austro-Hungarians to believe it would fall in less than a month. Serbia's strategy was to hold on as long as it could and hope the Russians could defeat the main Austro-Hungarian Army, with or without the help of other allies. Serbia constantly had to worry about its hostile neighbour to the east, Bulgaria, with which it had fought several wars, most recently in the Second Balkan War of 1913.

Military forces edit

Austro-Hungarian edit

The standing peacetime Austro-Hungarian army had 36,000 officers, including non-commissioned officers and 414,000 enlisted personnel. During mobilization, this number could be increased to 3,350,000 men of all ranks. The operational army had over 1,420,000 men, while another 600,000 were allocated to support and logistic units (train, munition and supply columns, etc.). The rest (around 1,350,000) were reserve troops available to replace losses and form new units.[19] This vast military power allowed the Austro-Hungarian Army to replace its losses regularly and keep units at their formation strength. According to some sources, there were an average of 150,000 men per month during 1914 sent to replace the losses in the field army. During 1915 these numbers rose to 200,000 per month.[20][unreliable source?][better source needed] According to the official Austrian documents in the period from September until the end of December 1914, some 160,000 replacement troops were sent to the Balkan theatre of war, as well as 82,000 reinforcements as part of newly formed units.[21][unreliable source?]

The prewar Austro-Hungarian plan to invade Serbia envisioned the concentration of three armies (2nd, 5th and 6th) on Serbia's western and northern borders to envelop and destroy the bulk of the Serbian army. However, with the beginning of the Russian general mobilization, the Armeeoberkommando (AOK, Austro-Hungarian Supreme Command) decided to move the 2nd army to Galicia to counter Russian forces. Due to the congestion of railroad lines towards Galicia, the 2nd Army could only start its departure on 18 August, which allowed the AOK to assign some units of the 2nd Army to take part in operations in Serbia before that date. Eventually, the AOK allowed General Oskar Potiorek to deploy a significant segment of the 2nd army (around four divisions) in fighting against Serbia, which caused a delay in the transport of these troops to the Russian front for more than a week. Furthermore, the Austro-Hungarian defeats suffered during the first invasion of Serbia forced the AOK to permanently transfer two divisions from the 2nd Army to Potiorek's force. By 12 August, Austria-Hungary had amassed over 500,000 soldiers on Serbian frontiers, including some 380,000 operational troops. However on 16 August a significant part of the 2nd army was ordered to the Russian front, thus this number fell to some 285,000 active troops, including garrisons.[22] Apart from land forces, Austria-Hungary also deployed its Danube River flotilla of six monitors and six patrol boats.

Many Austro-Hungarian soldiers were not of good quality.[23] About one-quarter of them were illiterate, and most of the conscripts from the empire's subject nationalities did not speak or understand German or Hungarian. In addition, most of the soldiers — ethnic Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Romanians and South Slavs — had linguistic and cultural links with the empire's various enemies.[24]

Serbian edit

 
Uniform of Serbian soldiers from 1914

The Serbian military command issued orders to mobilize its armed forces on 25 July, and mobilization began the following day. By 30 July, mobilization was completed, and the troops began to be deployed according to the war plan. Deployments were completed by 9 August when the troops had arrived at their designated strategic positions. During mobilization, Serbia raised approximately 450,000 men of three age-defined classes (or bans) called poziv, which comprised all capable men between the ages of 21 and 45.

The operational army consisted of 11+12 infantry (six of 1st and five of the 2nd ban) and one cavalry division. Aged men of the 3rd ban were organized in 15 infantry regiments with about 45–50,000 men designated for use in rear and line of communications duties. However, some of them were by necessity used as part of the operational army as well, bringing its strength up to around 250,000 men.[25] Serbia was in a much more disadvantageous position when compared with Austria-Hungary concerning human reserves and replacement troops, as its only source of replacements were recruits reaching the age of military enlistment. Their maximum annual number was theoretically around 60,000 and was insufficient to replace the losses of more than 132,000 sustained during operations from August to December 1914. This shortage of military power forced the Serbian army to recruit under and over-aged men to make up for losses in the opening phase of the war.

 
Maxim МG 10 of Serbian Royal Army

Because of the poor financial state of the Serbian economy and losses in the recent Balkan Wars, the Serbian army lacked much of the modern weaponry and equipment necessary to engage in combat with their larger and wealthier adversaries. Only 180,000 modern rifles were available for the operational army, which meant that the Serbian military lacked between one-quarter to one-third of the rifles necessary to fully equip even their front-line units, let alone reserve forces.[26] Although Serbia tried to remedy this deficit by ordering 120,000 rifles from Russia in 1914, the weapons did not begin to arrive until the second half of August. Only 1st ban troops had complete grey-green M1908 uniforms, with 2nd ban troops often wearing the obsolete dark blue M1896 issue, and the 3rd ban had no proper uniforms at all and were reduced to wearing their civilian clothes with military greatcoats and caps.[27] The Serbian troops did not have service issued boots at all, and the vast majority of them wore everyday footwear made of pig skin called opanak.

Ammunition reserves were also insufficient for sustained field operations as most had been used in the 1912–13 Balkan wars. Artillery ammunition was sparse and only amounted to several hundred shells per unit. Because Serbia lacked a significant domestic military-industrial complex, its army depended entirely on imports of ammunition and arms from France and Russia, which were chronically short of supplies. The inevitable shortages of ammunition later would include a complete lack of artillery ammunition, which peaked during the decisive moments of the Austro-Hungarian invasion.

Comparative strength edit

These figures detail the number of all Austro-Hungarian troops concentrated on the southern (Serbian) theatre of war at the beginning of August 1914 and the resources of the entire Serbian army (however, the number of troops available for the operations on both sides was somewhat less):

Type Austro-Hungarian[19] Serbian
Battalions 329 209
Batteries 200 122
Squadrons 51 44
Engineer companies 50 30
Field guns 1243 718
Machine guns 490 315
Total combatants 500,000 344,000
 
Montenegrin troops outside of Lovćen, October 1914.

Serbia's ally Montenegro mustered an army of about 45–50,000 men, with only 14 modern quick-firing field guns, 62 machine guns and some 51 older pieces (some of them antique models from the 1870s). Unlike the Austro-Hungarian and the Serbian armies, the Montenegrin army was a militia type without proper military training or a career officer's corps.

Note:

According to Austro-Hungarian military formation,[28] the average war strength of the following units was:

  • Battalion: 1000 (combatants)
  • Battery: 196
  • Squadron: 180
  • Engineer companies: 260

The strength of corresponding Serbian units was similar:

  • Battalion: 1116 (combatants and non-combatants)
  • Battery: 169
  • Squadron: 130
  • Engineer company: 250

Heavy artillery

Austro-Hungarian Serbian
12 mobile batteries:
  • 4 305 mm mortars
  • 5 240 mm mortars
  • 20 150 mm howitzers
  • 20 120 mm cannons

Additionally, Austro-Hungarian fortresses and garrisons near the Serbian and Montenegrin borders (Petrovaradin, Sarajevo, Kotor etc.) had about 40 companies of heavy fortress artillery of various models.

13 mobile batteries:

Order of battle edit

Serbian army edit

  • First Army, commanded by general Petar Bojović; Chief of Staff colonel Božidar Terzić.
    • Cavalry division, four regiments, Colonel Branko Jovanović
    • Timok I division, four regiments, General Vladimir Kondić
    • Timok II division, three regiments
    • Morava II division, three regiments
    • Danube II division (Braničevo detachment), six regiments
    • Army artillery, colonel Božidar Srećković
  • Second Army, commanded by general Stepa Stepanović; Chief of Staff colonel Vojislav Živanović
    • Morava I division, colonel Ilija Gojković, four regiments
    • Combined I division, general Mihajlo Rašić, four regiments, regiment commanders Svetislav Mišković, X, X and Dragoljub Uzunmirković
    • Šumadija I division, four regiments
    • Danube I division, colonel Milivoje Anđelković, four regiments
    • Army artillery, Colonel Vojislav Milojević
  • Third Army, commanded by general Pavle Jurišić Šturm; Chief of Staff colonel Dušan Pešić
    • Drina I division, four regiments
    • Drina II division, four regiments, regiment commanders Miloje Jelisijević, X, X and X
    • Obrenovac detachment, one regiment, two battalions
    • Jadar Chetnik detachment
    • Army artillery, colonel Miloš Mihailović
  • Užice Army, commanded by General Miloš Božanović
    • Šumadija II division, colonel Dragutin Milutinović, four regiments
    • Užice brigade, Colonel Ivan Pavlović, two regiments
    • Chetnik detachments, Lim, Zlatibor, and Gornjak detachments
    • Army artillery

Austro-Hungarian army edit

August 1914:

  • Balkan force
    • 5th Army, commanded by Liborius Ritter von Frank
    • 6th Army, commanded by Oskar Potiorek
      • 1. infantry division
      • 48. infantry division
      • 18. infantry division
      • 47. infantry division
      • 40. Honvéd infantry division
      • 109. Landsturm infantry brigade
    • Banat Rayon and Garrisons
      • 107. Landsturm infantry brigade
      • sundry units of infantry, cavalry and artillery
  • Parts of the 2nd Army, commanded by Eduard von Böhm-Ermolli
    • 17. infantry division
    • 34. infantry division
    • 31. infantry division
    • 32. infantry division, commanded by Andreas von Fail-Griessler
    • 29. infantry division
    • 7. infantry division
    • 23.infantry division
    • 10. cavalry division
    • 4. march brigade
    • 7. march brigade
    • 8. march brigade

1914 edit

1915 edit

Aftermath edit

1916–1918 edit

 
A 1976 Yugoslav postage stamp depicting the collapse of the Salonika front by war artist Veljko Stanojević

The Serbian army was evacuated to Greece and met with the Allied Army of the Orient. They then fought a trench war against the Bulgarians on the Macedonia Front, which was mainly static. French and Serbian forces re-took limited areas of Macedonia by recapturing Bitola on 19 November 1916 as a result of the costly Monastir Offensive, which brought stabilization of the front.

French and Serbian troops finally made a breakthrough in the Vardar Offensive in 1918, after most German and Austro-Hungarian troops had withdrawn. This breakthrough was significant in defeating Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary, which led to the final victory of World War I. After the Allied breakthrough, Bulgaria capitulated on 29 September 1918.[29] Hindenburg and Ludendorff concluded that the strategic and operational balance had now shifted decidedly against the Central Powers and insisted on an immediate peace settlement during a meeting with government officials a day after the Bulgarian collapse.[30] On 29 September 1918, the German Supreme Army Command informed Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Imperial Chancellor Count Georg von Hertling, that the military situation facing Germany was hopeless .[31]

German Emperor Wilhelm II in his telegram to Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand I stated: "Disgraceful! 62,000 Serbs decided the war!".[32][33]

The collapse of the Macedonian front meant that the road to Budapest and Vienna was now opened for the 670,000-strong Army of General Franchet d'Esperey as the Bulgarian surrender deprived the Central Powers of the 278 infantry battalions and 1,500 guns (the equivalent of some 25 to 30 German divisions) that were previously holding the line.[34] The German high command responded by sending only seven infantry and one cavalry division, but these forces were far from enough for a front to be re-established.[34] In September, Entente armies spearheaded by Serbian and French troops, broke through the remaining German and Bulgarians defense, forcing Bulgaria to exit the war and liberating Serbia two weeks before the ceasefire.[35]

End of the War edit

The ramifications of the war were manifold. When World War I ended, the Treaty of Neuilly awarded Western Thrace to Greece, whereas Serbia received some minor territorial concessions from Bulgaria. Austria-Hungary was broken apart, and Hungary lost much land to Yugoslavia and Romania in the Treaty of Trianon. Serbia assumed the leading position in the new Kingdom of Yugoslavia, joined by its old ally, Montenegro. Meanwhile, Italy established a quasi-protectorate over Albania, and Greece re-occupied Albania's southern part, which was autonomous under a local Greek provisional government (see Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus), despite Albania's neutrality during the war.

Casualties edit

 
The Entente casualties

Before the war, the Kingdom of Serbia had 4,500,000 inhabitants.[36] According to The New York Times, 150,000 people are estimated to have died in 1915 alone during the worst typhus epidemic in world history. With the aid of the American Red Cross and 44 foreign governments, the outbreak was brought under control by the end of the year.[37] The number of civilian deaths is estimated by some sources at 650,000, primarily due to the typhus outbreak and famine, but also direct clashes with the occupiers.[38] Serbia's casualties accounted for 8% of the total Allied military deaths. 58% of the regular Serbian Army (420,000 strong) perished during the conflict.[39] According to the Serb sources, the total number of casualties is placed around 1,000,000:[40] 25% of Serbia's prewar size, and an absolute majority (57%) of its overall male population.[41] L.A. Times and N.Y. Times also cited early Serbian sources which claimed over 1,000,000 victims in their respective articles.[42][43] Modern western and non-Serb historians put the casualties number either at 45,000 military deaths and 650,000 civilian deaths[44] or 127,355 military deaths and 82,000 civilian deaths.[14]

 
The remains of Serbs killed by Bulgarian soldiers during the Surdulica massacre. It is estimated that 2,000–3,000 Serbian men were killed in the town during the first months of the Bulgarian occupation of southern Serbia.[45]

The extent of the Serbian demographic disaster can be illustrated by the statement of the Bulgarian Prime Minister Vasil Radoslavov: "Serbia ceased to exist" (New York Times, summer 1917).[46] In July 1918, the U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing urged the Americans of all religions to pray for Serbia in their respective churches.[47][48]

The Serbian army suffered a staggering number of casualties. It was significantly destroyed near the war's end, falling from about 420,000[10] at its peak to about 100,000 at the moment of liberation.

The Serb sources claim that the Kingdom of Serbia lost 1,100,000 inhabitants during the war. Of 4.5 million people, there were 275,000 military deaths and 450,000 among the ordinary citizenry. The civilian deaths were attributable mainly to food shortages and the effects of epidemics such as Spanish flu. In addition to the military deaths, there were 133,148 wounded. According to the Yugoslav government, in 1924, Serbia lost 365,164 soldiers, or 26% of all mobilized personnel, while France suffered 16.8%, Germany 15.4%, Russia 11.5%, and Italy 10.3%.[citation needed]

At the war's end, there were 114,000 disabled soldiers and 500,000 orphaned children.[49]

Attacks against ethnic Serb civilians edit

The assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg was followed by violent anti-Serb demonstrations of angry Croats and Muslims[50] in the city during the evening of 28 June 1914 and for much of the following day. This happened because most Croats and many Muslims considered the archduke the best hope for establishing a South Slav political entity within the Habsburg Empire. The crowd directed its anger principally at shops owned by ethnic Serbs and the residences of prominent Serbs. Two ethnic Serbs were killed on 28 June by crowd violence.[51] That night there were anti-Serb demonstrations in other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[52][53]

Incited by anti-Serbian propaganda and collusion with the command of the Austro-Hungarian Army, soldiers committed numerous atrocities against the Serbs in both Serbia and Austria-Hungary. According to the German-Swiss criminologist and observer R.A. Reiss, it was a "system of extermination." In addition to executions of prisoners of war, civilian populations were subjected to mass murder and rape. Villages and towns were burned and looted. Fruit trees were cut down, and water wells were poisoned in an effort on the Austro-Hungarian part to discourage Serb inhabitants from ever returning.[54][55][56]

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ Urlanis, Boris (1971). Wars and Population. Moscow Pages 66,79,83, 85,160,171 and 268.
  2. ^ Milošević 2008, p. 7.
  3. ^ Merrill, C. (2001). Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars. G - Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated. p. 167. ISBN 978-0-7425-1686-1.
  4. ^ Schindler, John R. (2002). "Disaster on the Drina: The Austro-Hungarian Army in Serbia, 1914". War in History. 9 (2). Sage Publications, Ltd.: 159–95. doi:10.1191/0968344502wh250oa. JSTOR 26014058. S2CID 145488166.
  5. ^ Rose, R.A.D. (2018). History of Europe. EDTECH. p. 195. ISBN 978-1-83947-278-7.
  6. ^ Hughes Philpott 2005, p.48
  7. ^ Hart 2013, p.325>
  8. ^ DiNardo 2015, p. 117
  9. ^ Fred Singleton (1985). A Short History of the Yugoslav Peoples. Cambridge University Press. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-521-27485-2. ww1 Serbian army entered belgrade.
  10. ^ a b "Serbian Army, August 1914".
  11. ^ Чедомир Антић, Судњи рат, Политика од 14. септембра 2008.
  12. ^ Владимир Радомировић, Највећа српска победа, Политика од 14. септембра 2008.
  13. ^ Bjelajac, Mile (2015). "Serbia". 1914-1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
  14. ^ a b Tucker 2005, p. 273.
  15. ^ a b Keegan, John (1998). The First World War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 48–49. ISBN 0375400524.
  16. ^ Willmott 2003, pp. 2–23
  17. ^ Willmott 2003, p. 26
  18. ^ Willmott 2003, p. 27
  19. ^ a b Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg 1914 - 1918, vol. 1, Wienn 1930, p68
  20. ^ http://digi.landesbibliothek.at/viewer/image/AC03568741/1/LOG_0003/ Die Entwicklung der öst.-ung. Wehrmacht in den ersten zwei Kriegsjahren, 10
  21. ^ http://digi.landesbibliothek.at/viewer/image/AC01351505/1/LOG_0003/ Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg 1914 -1918, vol. 2 Beilagen, Wienn 1930, table I )
  22. ^ http://honsi.org/literature/svejk/dokumenty/oulk/band1.html Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg 1914 - 1918, vol. 1, Wienn 1930, p68
  23. ^ Jordan 2008, p. 20
  24. ^ Willmott 2009, p. 69
  25. ^ James Lyon, A peasant mob: The Serbian Army in the eve of the Great War, JMH 61, 1997, p501
  26. ^ James Lyon, p496
  27. ^ Thomas, Nigel (2001). Armies in the Balkans 1914-18. p. 38. ISBN 1-84176-194-X.
  28. ^ Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg 1914–1918, vol. 1, Wienn 1930, p.82
  29. ^ Tucker, Wood & Murphy 1999, p. 120
  30. ^ Robert A. DOUGHTY (2005). Pyrrhic Victory. Harvard University Press. pp. 491–. ISBN 978-0-674-01880-8.
  31. ^ Axelrod 2018, p. 260.
  32. ^ James Lyon (12 October 2020). "The Battle of Dobro Polje – The Forgotten Balkan Skirmish That Ended WW1". Military History Now. Retrieved 21 November 2019.
  33. ^ Stephanie Schoppert (22 February 2017). "The Germans Could no Longer Keep up the Fight". History Collection. Retrieved 21 November 2019.
  34. ^ a b Korsun, N. "The Balkan Front of the World War (in Russian)". militera.lib.ru. Retrieved 27 September 2010.
  35. ^ Moal, F.L. (2008). La Serbie: du martyre à la victoire, 1914-1918. Collection "Les nations dans la Grande Guerre." (in French). 14-18 Éditions. ISBN 978-2-916385-18-1.
  36. ^ "Serbia in 1914".
  37. ^ "$1,600,000 was raised for the Red Cross" (PDF). The New York Times. 29 October 1915.
  38. ^ "The Minor Powers During World War One - Serbia". First World War.com.
  39. ^ Serbian army, August 1914
  40. ^ "Политика Online". www.politika.rs.
  41. ^ Тема недеље: Највећа српска победа: Сви српски тријумфи: ПОЛИТИКА (in Serbian)
  42. ^ . Archived from the original on 21 July 2013. Retrieved 7 July 2017.
  43. ^ "Asserts Serbians face extinction" (PDF).
  44. ^ Sammis 2002, p. 32.
  45. ^ Mitrović 2007, p. 223.
  46. ^ "Serbia restored" (PDF).
  47. ^ "Serbia and Austria" (PDF). New York Times. 28 July 1918.
  48. ^ "Appeals to Americans to pray for Serbians" (PDF). New York Times. 27 July 1918.
  49. ^ Banac, Ivo (1988). The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics. Cornell University Press. p. 222. ISBN 978-0-8014-9493-2. its postwar population included some 114,000 invalids and over half a million orphans
  50. ^ Christopher Bennett (1995). Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse: Causes, Course and Consequences. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. p. 259. ISBN 978-1-85065-232-8. Retrieved 7 September 2013.
  51. ^ Robert J. Donia (2006). Sarajevo: A Biography. University of Michigan Press. pp. 123–. ISBN 0-472-11557-X.
  52. ^ Joseph Ward Swain (1933). Beginning the twentieth century: a history of the generation that made the war. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
  53. ^ Christopher Bennett (January 1995). Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse: Causes, Course and Consequences. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. pp. 31–. ISBN 978-1-85065-232-8.
  54. ^ How Austria-Hungary waged war in Serbia (1915) German criminologist R.A. Reiss on atrocities by the Austro-Hungarian Army
  55. ^ Augenzeugen. Der Krieg gegen Zivilisten. Fotografien aus dem Ersten Weltkrieg Anton Holzer, Vienna
  56. ^ "Executions, various". www.ww1-propaganda-cards.com.
  57. ^ Honzík, Miroslav; Honzíková, Hana (1984). 1914/1918, Léta zkázy a naděje. Czech Republic: Panorama.

Sources edit

Books edit

  • Babac, Dušan M. (2016). The Serbian Army in the Great War, 1914-1918. Solihull: Helion. ISBN 978-1-910777-29-9.
  • Bataković, Dušan T., ed. (2005). Histoire du peuple serbe [History of the Serbian People] (in French). Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme. ISBN 978-2-8251-1958-7.
  • Buttar, Prit (2014). Collision of Empires: The War on the Eastern Front in 1914. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78200-972-6.
  • Ćirković, Sima (2004). The Serbs. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4051-4291-5.
  • Cox, John K. (2002). The History of Serbia. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-31290-8.
  • DiNardo, Richard L. (2015). Invasion: The Conquest of Serbia, 1915. Santa Barbara: Praeger. ISBN 978-1-4408-0093-1.
  • Đorđević, M. P.; Živojinović, D. R. (1991). Srbija i Jugosloveni za vreme rata 1914-1918. Vol. 5. Beograd: Biblioteka grada Beograda.
  • Dragnich, Alex N. (2004). Serbia Through the Ages. Boulder: East European Monographs. ISBN 978-0-88033-541-6.
  • Falls, Cyril, The Great War (1960) 978-1440800924
  • Fryer, Charles (1997). The Destruction of Serbia in 1915. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-88033-385-6.
  • Gumz, Jonathan E. (2009). The Resurrection and Collapse of Empire in Habsburg Serbia, 1914-1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-89627-6.
  • Hadži-Vasiljević, Jovan (1922). Bugarska zverstva u Vranju i okolini, 1915-1918. Zastava.
  • Peter Hart (2013). The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-997627-0.
  • M. Hughes; W. Philpott (29 March 2005). The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan UK. ISBN 978-0-230-50480-6.
  • Jordan, David (2008). The Balkans, Italy & Africa 1914–1918: From Sarajevo to the Piave and Lake Tanganyika. London: Amber Books. ISBN 978-1-906626-14-3.
  • Lyon, James B. (2015). Serbia and the Balkan Front, 1914: The Outbreak of the Great War. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4725-8005-4.
  • Mitrović, Andrej (2007). Serbia's Great War 1914-1918. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. ISBN 978-1-55753-476-7.
  • Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg 1914 - 1918, vol. 1, Wienn 1930 [1]
  • Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg 1914 -1918, vol. 2 Beilagen, Wienn 1931 [2]
  • Pavlowitch, Stevan K. (2002). Serbia: The History behind the Name. London: Hurst & Company. ISBN 978-1-85065-477-3.
  • Sammis, Kathy (2002). Focus on World History: The Twentieth Century. Vol. 5. Walch Publishing. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-8251-4371-7.
  • Hew Strachan (1998). World War I: A History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820614-9.
  • Temperley, Harold W. V. (1919) [1917]. History of Serbia (PDF) (2 ed.). London: Bell and Sons.
  • Tomac, Petar; Đurašinović, Radomir (1973). Prvi svetski rat, 1914-1918. Vojnoizdavački zavod.
  • Tucker, Spencer; Wood, Laura M.; Murphy, Justin D. (1999). The European Powers in the First World War: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-8153-3351-7. OCLC 40417794.
  • Tucker, Spencer (2005). World War I: Encyclopedia, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO. p. 273. ISBN 978-1-85109-420-2.
  • Willmott, H. P. (2003). World War I. Dorling Kindersley. ISBN 978-0-7894-9627-0.
  • Willmott, H. P. (2008). World War I. Dorling Kindersley. ISBN 978-1-4053-2986-6.
  • Willmott, H. P. (2009). World War I. Dorling Kindersley. ISBN 978-0-7566-5015-5.
  • Axelrod, Alan (2018). How America Won World War I. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4930-3192-4.
  • Josephus Nelson Larned (1924). The New Larned History for Ready Reference, Reading and Research: The Actual Words of the World's Best Historians, Biographers and Specialists; a Complete System of History for All Uses, Extending to All Countries and Subjects and Representing the Better and Newer Literature of History. C.A. Nichols Publishing Company.
  • Prit Buttar (2015). Germany Ascendant: The Eastern Front 1915. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4728-1355-8.

Journals edit

  • Silberstein, Gerard E. "The Serbian campaign of 1915: Its diplomatic background." American Historical Review 73.1 (1967): 51-69 online
  • Pisarri, Milovan (2013). "Bulgarian Crimes Against Civilians in Occupied Serbia during the First World War". Balcanica (44): 357–390. doi:10.2298/BALC1344357P.
  • Radić, Radmila (2015). "The Serbian Orthodox Church in the First World War". The Serbs and the First World War 1914-1918. Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. pp. 263–285. ISBN 978-86-7025-659-0.
  • Radojević, Mira (2015). "Jovan M. Jovanović on the outbreak of the First World War". The Serbs and the First World War 1914-1918. Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. pp. 187–204. ISBN 978-86-7025-659-0.

External links edit

  • Bjelajac, Mile: Serbia, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
  • Tasić, Dmitar: Warfare 1914-1918 (South East Europe), in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
  • Years which changed the war - WWI in documents from Archive of Serbia
  • "Jugoslovenska kinoteka" (in Serbian). Kinoteka.
  • Popović, Andra (1926). Збирка књига Универзитетске библиотеке у Београду Ратни албум : 1914-1918 (in Serbian). Digital National Library of Serbia.
  • W. H. Crawfurd Price (1918). Serbia's Part in the War ... Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company. (Public Domain)
  • Milošević, Krsman (2008). Србија у великом рату (in Serbian). Народна Библиотека Србије, Београд: CIP. ISBN 978-86-82777-16-8.

serbian, campaign, series, military, expeditions, launched, 1914, 1915, central, powers, against, kingdom, serbia, during, first, world, part, balkans, theatre, world, iserbian, infantry, positioned, ciganlija, date28, july, 1914, november, 1915, year, months,. The Serbian campaign was a series of military expeditions launched in 1914 and 1915 by the Central Powers against the Kingdom of Serbia during the First World War Serbian campaignPart of the Balkans theatre of World War ISerbian infantry positioned at Ada Ciganlija Date28 July 1914 24 November 1915 1 year 3 months 3 weeks and 6 days LocationSerbia Montenegro AlbaniaResultCentral Powers victory Serbian retreat through Albania Austro Hungarian occupation Bulgarian occupationBelligerentsCentral Powers Austria Hungary Bulgaria from 1915 Germany from 1915 Allied Powers Serbia MontenegroCasualties and losses340 000 battle and non battle casualties405 000 battle casualties450 000 1 to 842 000 2 Serbian civilians died of war related causes from 1914 to 1918 The first campaign began after Austria Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914 The campaign euphemistically dubbed punitive expedition German Strafexpedition by the Austro Hungarian leadership 3 was under the command of Austrian General Oskar Potiorek It ended after three unsuccessful Austro Hungarian invasion attempts were repelled by the Serbians and their Montenegrin allies The victory of the Serbian army at the battle of Cer is considered the first Allied victory in World War I and the Austro Hungarian Army s defeat by Serbia has been called one of the great upsets of modern military history 4 5 The second campaign was launched under German command almost a year later on 6 October 1915 when Bulgarian Austro Hungarian and German forces led by Field Marshal August von Mackensen successfully invaded Serbia from three sides pre empting an Allied advance from Salonica to help Serbia This resulted in the Great Retreat through Montenegro and Albania the evacuation to Greece and the establishment of the Macedonian front 6 The defeat of Serbia gave the Central Powers temporary mastery over the Balkans opening up a land route from Berlin to Constantinople allowing the Germans to re supply the Ottoman Empire for the rest of the war 7 Mackensen declared an end to the campaign on 24 November 1915 Serbia was then occupied and divided between the Austro Hungarian Empire and Bulgaria 8 After the Allies launched the Vardar Offensive in September 1918 which broke through the Macedonian front and defeated the Bulgarians and their German allies a Franco Serbian force advanced into the occupied territories and liberated Serbia Albania and Montenegro Serbian forces entered Belgrade on 1 November 1918 9 The Serbian army declined severely from about 420 000 10 at its peak to about 100 000 at the moment of liberation The estimates of casualties are various Original Serb sources claim that the Kingdom of Serbia lost more than 1 200 000 inhabitants during the war including both military and civilian losses which represented more than 29 of its overall population and 60 of its male population 11 12 More recent historical analysis has estimated that roughly 177 000 Serbian soldiers lost their lives or were not returned from captivity while the civilian death toll is impossible to determine numbering in the hundreds of thousands 13 According to estimates prepared by the Yugoslav government in 1924 Serbia lost 265 164 soldiers or 25 of all mobilized troops By comparison France lost 16 8 Germany 15 4 Russia 11 5 and Italy 10 3 14 Contents 1 Background 2 Military forces 2 1 Austro Hungarian 2 2 Serbian 2 3 Comparative strength 2 4 Order of battle 2 4 1 Serbian army 2 4 2 Austro Hungarian army 3 1914 4 1915 5 Aftermath 5 1 1916 1918 5 2 End of the War 5 3 Casualties 5 4 Attacks against ethnic Serb civilians 6 See also 7 References 8 Sources 8 1 Books 8 2 Journals 9 External linksBackground editMain articles Causes of World War I and July Crisis Austria Hungary precipitated the Bosnian crisis of 1908 09 by annexing the former Ottoman territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina which it had occupied since 1878 This angered the Kingdom of Serbia and its patron the Pan Slavic and Orthodox Russian empire 15 Russian political manoeuvring in the region destabilized peace accords that were already unravelling in what was known as the powder keg of Europe 15 nbsp Gavrilo Princip a member of the Young Bosnia assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand the heir to the Austro Hungarian throne In 1912 and 1913 the First Balkan War was fought between the Balkan League of Greece Bulgaria Serbia and Montenegro and the fracturing Ottoman Empire The resulting Treaty of London further shrank the Ottoman Empire by creating an independent Principality of Albania and enlarging the territorial holdings of Bulgaria Serbia Montenegro and Greece When Bulgaria attacked both Serbia and Greece on 16 June 1913 it lost most of its Macedonian region to those countries and additionally the Southern Dobruja region to Romania and Adrianople the present day city of Edirne to Turkey in the 33 day Second Balkan War which further destabilized the region 16 On 28 June 1914 Gavrilo Princip a Bosnian Serb student and member of an organization of national revolutionaries called Young Bosnia assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria the heir to the Austro Hungarian throne in Sarajevo Bosnia 17 Though the political objective of the assassination was the independence of the southern Austro Hungarian provinces mainly populated by Slavs from the Austro Hungarian Empire it also inadvertently triggered a chain of events that embroiled Russia and the major European powers This began a period of diplomatic manoeuvring among Austria Hungary Germany Russia France and Britain called the July Crisis Austria Hungary delivered the July Ultimatum to Serbia a series of ten demands intentionally made unacceptable to provoke a war with Serbia 18 When Serbia agreed to only eight of the ten demands Austria Hungary declared war on 28 July 1914 nbsp The Austro Hungarian government s declaration of war in a telegram sent to the government of Serbia on 28 July 1914 signed by Imperial Foreign Minister Count Leopold Berchtold The dispute between Austria Hungary and Serbia escalated into what is now known as World War I drawing in Russia Germany France and the British Empire Within a week Austria Hungary had to face a war with Russia Serbia s patron which had the largest army in the world at the time The result was that Serbia became a subsidiary front in the massive fight that started to unfold along Austria Hungary s border with Russia Though Serbia had an experienced army it was exhausted from the conflicts of the Balkan Wars and poorly equipped which led the Austro Hungarians to believe it would fall in less than a month Serbia s strategy was to hold on as long as it could and hope the Russians could defeat the main Austro Hungarian Army with or without the help of other allies Serbia constantly had to worry about its hostile neighbour to the east Bulgaria with which it had fought several wars most recently in the Second Balkan War of 1913 Military forces editAustro Hungarian edit See also Alfred Redl The standing peacetime Austro Hungarian army had 36 000 officers including non commissioned officers and 414 000 enlisted personnel During mobilization this number could be increased to 3 350 000 men of all ranks The operational army had over 1 420 000 men while another 600 000 were allocated to support and logistic units train munition and supply columns etc The rest around 1 350 000 were reserve troops available to replace losses and form new units 19 This vast military power allowed the Austro Hungarian Army to replace its losses regularly and keep units at their formation strength According to some sources there were an average of 150 000 men per month during 1914 sent to replace the losses in the field army During 1915 these numbers rose to 200 000 per month 20 unreliable source better source needed According to the official Austrian documents in the period from September until the end of December 1914 some 160 000 replacement troops were sent to the Balkan theatre of war as well as 82 000 reinforcements as part of newly formed units 21 unreliable source The prewar Austro Hungarian plan to invade Serbia envisioned the concentration of three armies 2nd 5th and 6th on Serbia s western and northern borders to envelop and destroy the bulk of the Serbian army However with the beginning of the Russian general mobilization the Armeeoberkommando AOK Austro Hungarian Supreme Command decided to move the 2nd army to Galicia to counter Russian forces Due to the congestion of railroad lines towards Galicia the 2nd Army could only start its departure on 18 August which allowed the AOK to assign some units of the 2nd Army to take part in operations in Serbia before that date Eventually the AOK allowed General Oskar Potiorek to deploy a significant segment of the 2nd army around four divisions in fighting against Serbia which caused a delay in the transport of these troops to the Russian front for more than a week Furthermore the Austro Hungarian defeats suffered during the first invasion of Serbia forced the AOK to permanently transfer two divisions from the 2nd Army to Potiorek s force By 12 August Austria Hungary had amassed over 500 000 soldiers on Serbian frontiers including some 380 000 operational troops However on 16 August a significant part of the 2nd army was ordered to the Russian front thus this number fell to some 285 000 active troops including garrisons 22 Apart from land forces Austria Hungary also deployed its Danube River flotilla of six monitors and six patrol boats Many Austro Hungarian soldiers were not of good quality 23 About one quarter of them were illiterate and most of the conscripts from the empire s subject nationalities did not speak or understand German or Hungarian In addition most of the soldiers ethnic Czechs Slovaks Poles Romanians and South Slavs had linguistic and cultural links with the empire s various enemies 24 Serbian edit nbsp Uniform of Serbian soldiers from 1914 The Serbian military command issued orders to mobilize its armed forces on 25 July and mobilization began the following day By 30 July mobilization was completed and the troops began to be deployed according to the war plan Deployments were completed by 9 August when the troops had arrived at their designated strategic positions During mobilization Serbia raised approximately 450 000 men of three age defined classes or bans called poziv which comprised all capable men between the ages of 21 and 45 The operational army consisted of 11 1 2 infantry six of 1st and five of the 2nd ban and one cavalry division Aged men of the 3rd ban were organized in 15 infantry regiments with about 45 50 000 men designated for use in rear and line of communications duties However some of them were by necessity used as part of the operational army as well bringing its strength up to around 250 000 men 25 Serbia was in a much more disadvantageous position when compared with Austria Hungary concerning human reserves and replacement troops as its only source of replacements were recruits reaching the age of military enlistment Their maximum annual number was theoretically around 60 000 and was insufficient to replace the losses of more than 132 000 sustained during operations from August to December 1914 This shortage of military power forced the Serbian army to recruit under and over aged men to make up for losses in the opening phase of the war nbsp Maxim MG 10 of Serbian Royal Army Because of the poor financial state of the Serbian economy and losses in the recent Balkan Wars the Serbian army lacked much of the modern weaponry and equipment necessary to engage in combat with their larger and wealthier adversaries Only 180 000 modern rifles were available for the operational army which meant that the Serbian military lacked between one quarter to one third of the rifles necessary to fully equip even their front line units let alone reserve forces 26 Although Serbia tried to remedy this deficit by ordering 120 000 rifles from Russia in 1914 the weapons did not begin to arrive until the second half of August Only 1st ban troops had complete grey green M1908 uniforms with 2nd ban troops often wearing the obsolete dark blue M1896 issue and the 3rd ban had no proper uniforms at all and were reduced to wearing their civilian clothes with military greatcoats and caps 27 The Serbian troops did not have service issued boots at all and the vast majority of them wore everyday footwear made of pig skin called opanak Ammunition reserves were also insufficient for sustained field operations as most had been used in the 1912 13 Balkan wars Artillery ammunition was sparse and only amounted to several hundred shells per unit Because Serbia lacked a significant domestic military industrial complex its army depended entirely on imports of ammunition and arms from France and Russia which were chronically short of supplies The inevitable shortages of ammunition later would include a complete lack of artillery ammunition which peaked during the decisive moments of the Austro Hungarian invasion Comparative strength edit These figures detail the number of all Austro Hungarian troops concentrated on the southern Serbian theatre of war at the beginning of August 1914 and the resources of the entire Serbian army however the number of troops available for the operations on both sides was somewhat less Type Austro Hungarian 19 Serbian Battalions 329 209 Batteries 200 122 Squadrons 51 44 Engineer companies 50 30 Field guns 1243 718 Machine guns 490 315 Total combatants 500 000 344 000 nbsp Montenegrin troops outside of Lovcen October 1914 Serbia s ally Montenegro mustered an army of about 45 50 000 men with only 14 modern quick firing field guns 62 machine guns and some 51 older pieces some of them antique models from the 1870s Unlike the Austro Hungarian and the Serbian armies the Montenegrin army was a militia type without proper military training or a career officer s corps Note According to Austro Hungarian military formation 28 the average war strength of the following units was Battalion 1000 combatants Battery 196 Squadron 180 Engineer companies 260 The strength of corresponding Serbian units was similar Battalion 1116 combatants and non combatants Battery 169 Squadron 130 Engineer company 250 Heavy artillery Austro Hungarian Serbian 12 mobile batteries 4 305 mm mortars 5 240 mm mortars 20 150 mm howitzers 20 120 mm cannons Additionally Austro Hungarian fortresses and garrisons near the Serbian and Montenegrin borders Petrovaradin Sarajevo Kotor etc had about 40 companies of heavy fortress artillery of various models 13 mobile batteries 8 150 mm mortars Schneider Canet M97 22 120 mm howitzers Schneider Canet M97 20 120 mm Schneider Canet M1897 long gun Order of battle edit Serbian army edit Main article Order of battle of the Serbian Army in World War I First Army commanded by general Petar Bojovic Chief of Staff colonel Bozidar Terzic Cavalry division four regiments Colonel Branko Jovanovic Timok I division four regiments General Vladimir Kondic Timok II division three regiments Morava II division three regiments Danube II division Branicevo detachment six regiments Army artillery colonel Bozidar Sreckovic Second Army commanded by general Stepa Stepanovic Chief of Staff colonel Vojislav Zivanovic Morava I division colonel Ilija Gojkovic four regiments Combined I division general Mihajlo Rasic four regiments regiment commanders Svetislav Miskovic X X and Dragoljub Uzunmirkovic Sumadija I division four regiments Danube I division colonel Milivoje Anđelkovic four regiments Army artillery Colonel Vojislav Milojevic Third Army commanded by general Pavle Jurisic Sturm Chief of Staff colonel Dusan Pesic Drina I division four regiments Drina II division four regiments regiment commanders Miloje Jelisijevic X X and X Obrenovac detachment one regiment two battalions Jadar Chetnik detachment Army artillery colonel Milos Mihailovic Uzice Army commanded by General Milos Bozanovic Sumadija II division colonel Dragutin Milutinovic four regiments Uzice brigade Colonel Ivan Pavlovic two regiments Chetnik detachments Lim Zlatibor and Gornjak detachments Army artillery Austro Hungarian army edit August 1914 Balkan force 5th Army commanded by Liborius Ritter von Frank 9 infantry division 21 landwehr infantry division 36 infantry division 42 Honved Hungarian home guard infantry division 13 infantry brigade 11 mountain brigade 104 Landsturm infantry brigade 13 march brigade 6th Army commanded by Oskar Potiorek 1 infantry division 48 infantry division 18 infantry division 47 infantry division 40 Honved infantry division 109 Landsturm infantry brigade Banat Rayon and Garrisons 107 Landsturm infantry brigade sundry units of infantry cavalry and artillery Parts of the 2nd Army commanded by Eduard von Bohm Ermolli 17 infantry division 34 infantry division 31 infantry division 32 infantry division commanded by Andreas von Fail Griessler 29 infantry division 7 infantry division 23 infantry division 10 cavalry division 4 march brigade 7 march brigade 8 march brigade1914 editMain article Serbian campaign 1914 1915 editMain article Serbian campaign 1915 Aftermath edit1916 1918 edit Main articles Macedonian front and Liberation of Serbia Albania and Montenegro 1918 nbsp A 1976 Yugoslav postage stamp depicting the collapse of the Salonika front by war artist Veljko Stanojevic The Serbian army was evacuated to Greece and met with the Allied Army of the Orient They then fought a trench war against the Bulgarians on the Macedonia Front which was mainly static French and Serbian forces re took limited areas of Macedonia by recapturing Bitola on 19 November 1916 as a result of the costly Monastir Offensive which brought stabilization of the front French and Serbian troops finally made a breakthrough in the Vardar Offensive in 1918 after most German and Austro Hungarian troops had withdrawn This breakthrough was significant in defeating Bulgaria and Austria Hungary which led to the final victory of World War I After the Allied breakthrough Bulgaria capitulated on 29 September 1918 29 Hindenburg and Ludendorff concluded that the strategic and operational balance had now shifted decidedly against the Central Powers and insisted on an immediate peace settlement during a meeting with government officials a day after the Bulgarian collapse 30 On 29 September 1918 the German Supreme Army Command informed Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Imperial Chancellor Count Georg von Hertling that the military situation facing Germany was hopeless 31 German Emperor Wilhelm II in his telegram to Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand I stated Disgraceful 62 000 Serbs decided the war 32 33 The collapse of the Macedonian front meant that the road to Budapest and Vienna was now opened for the 670 000 strong Army of General Franchet d Esperey as the Bulgarian surrender deprived the Central Powers of the 278 infantry battalions and 1 500 guns the equivalent of some 25 to 30 German divisions that were previously holding the line 34 The German high command responded by sending only seven infantry and one cavalry division but these forces were far from enough for a front to be re established 34 In September Entente armies spearheaded by Serbian and French troops broke through the remaining German and Bulgarians defense forcing Bulgaria to exit the war and liberating Serbia two weeks before the ceasefire 35 End of the War edit The ramifications of the war were manifold When World War I ended the Treaty of Neuilly awarded Western Thrace to Greece whereas Serbia received some minor territorial concessions from Bulgaria Austria Hungary was broken apart and Hungary lost much land to Yugoslavia and Romania in the Treaty of Trianon Serbia assumed the leading position in the new Kingdom of Yugoslavia joined by its old ally Montenegro Meanwhile Italy established a quasi protectorate over Albania and Greece re occupied Albania s southern part which was autonomous under a local Greek provisional government see Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus despite Albania s neutrality during the war Casualties edit nbsp The Entente casualties Before the war the Kingdom of Serbia had 4 500 000 inhabitants 36 According to The New York Times 150 000 people are estimated to have died in 1915 alone during the worst typhus epidemic in world history With the aid of the American Red Cross and 44 foreign governments the outbreak was brought under control by the end of the year 37 The number of civilian deaths is estimated by some sources at 650 000 primarily due to the typhus outbreak and famine but also direct clashes with the occupiers 38 Serbia s casualties accounted for 8 of the total Allied military deaths 58 of the regular Serbian Army 420 000 strong perished during the conflict 39 According to the Serb sources the total number of casualties is placed around 1 000 000 40 25 of Serbia s prewar size and an absolute majority 57 of its overall male population 41 L A Times and N Y Times also cited early Serbian sources which claimed over 1 000 000 victims in their respective articles 42 43 Modern western and non Serb historians put the casualties number either at 45 000 military deaths and 650 000 civilian deaths 44 or 127 355 military deaths and 82 000 civilian deaths 14 nbsp The remains of Serbs killed by Bulgarian soldiers during the Surdulica massacre It is estimated that 2 000 3 000 Serbian men were killed in the town during the first months of the Bulgarian occupation of southern Serbia 45 The extent of the Serbian demographic disaster can be illustrated by the statement of the Bulgarian Prime Minister Vasil Radoslavov Serbia ceased to exist New York Times summer 1917 46 In July 1918 the U S Secretary of State Robert Lansing urged the Americans of all religions to pray for Serbia in their respective churches 47 48 The Serbian army suffered a staggering number of casualties It was significantly destroyed near the war s end falling from about 420 000 10 at its peak to about 100 000 at the moment of liberation The Serb sources claim that the Kingdom of Serbia lost 1 100 000 inhabitants during the war Of 4 5 million people there were 275 000 military deaths and 450 000 among the ordinary citizenry The civilian deaths were attributable mainly to food shortages and the effects of epidemics such as Spanish flu In addition to the military deaths there were 133 148 wounded According to the Yugoslav government in 1924 Serbia lost 365 164 soldiers or 26 of all mobilized personnel while France suffered 16 8 Germany 15 4 Russia 11 5 and Italy 10 3 citation needed At the war s end there were 114 000 disabled soldiers and 500 000 orphaned children 49 Attacks against ethnic Serb civilians edit Main articles Anti Serb riots in Sarajevo and Schutzkorps The assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie Duchess of Hohenberg was followed by violent anti Serb demonstrations of angry Croats and Muslims 50 in the city during the evening of 28 June 1914 and for much of the following day This happened because most Croats and many Muslims considered the archduke the best hope for establishing a South Slav political entity within the Habsburg Empire The crowd directed its anger principally at shops owned by ethnic Serbs and the residences of prominent Serbs Two ethnic Serbs were killed on 28 June by crowd violence 51 That night there were anti Serb demonstrations in other parts of the Austro Hungarian Empire 52 53 Incited by anti Serbian propaganda and collusion with the command of the Austro Hungarian Army soldiers committed numerous atrocities against the Serbs in both Serbia and Austria Hungary According to the German Swiss criminologist and observer R A Reiss it was a system of extermination In addition to executions of prisoners of war civilian populations were subjected to mass murder and rape Villages and towns were burned and looted Fruit trees were cut down and water wells were poisoned in an effort on the Austro Hungarian part to discourage Serb inhabitants from ever returning 54 55 56 nbsp Austro Hungarian propaganda postcard saying Serbs we ll smash you to pieces nbsp Anti Serbian propaganda postcard nbsp Austro Hungarian soldiers executing Serbian civilians during World War I 1916 57 nbsp Austro Hungarian firing squad executing Serbian civilians in 1917 nbsp Memorial to military and the concentration camp victims in Jindrichovice nbsp Remains of the Stip massacre victimsSee also editAustro Hungarian occupation of Serbia Bulgarian occupation of Serbia World War I Albania during World War I Momcilo Gavric soldier Serbian army s retreat through Albania World War I World War I casualtiesReferences edit Urlanis Boris 1971 Wars and Population Moscow Pages 66 79 83 85 160 171 and 268 Milosevic 2008 p 7 Merrill C 2001 Only the Nails Remain Scenes from the Balkan Wars G Reference Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers Incorporated p 167 ISBN 978 0 7425 1686 1 Schindler John R 2002 Disaster on the Drina The Austro Hungarian Army in Serbia 1914 War in History 9 2 Sage Publications Ltd 159 95 doi 10 1191 0968344502wh250oa JSTOR 26014058 S2CID 145488166 Rose R A D 2018 History of Europe EDTECH p 195 ISBN 978 1 83947 278 7 Hughes Philpott 2005 p 48 Hart 2013 p 325 gt DiNardo 2015 p 117 Fred Singleton 1985 A Short History of the Yugoslav Peoples Cambridge University Press p 129 ISBN 978 0 521 27485 2 ww1 Serbian army entered belgrade a b Serbian Army August 1914 Chedomir Antiћ Sudњi rat Politika od 14 septembra 2008 Vladimir Radomiroviћ Naјveћa srpska pobeda Politika od 14 septembra 2008 Bjelajac Mile 2015 Serbia 1914 1918 Online International Encyclopedia of the First World War a b Tucker 2005 p 273 a b Keegan John 1998 The First World War New York Alfred A Knopf pp 48 49 ISBN 0375400524 Willmott 2003 pp 2 23 Willmott 2003 p 26 Willmott 2003 p 27 a b Osterreich Ungarns letzter Krieg 1914 1918 vol 1 Wienn 1930 p68 http digi landesbibliothek at viewer image AC03568741 1 LOG 0003 Die Entwicklung der ost ung Wehrmacht in den ersten zwei Kriegsjahren 10 http digi landesbibliothek at viewer image AC01351505 1 LOG 0003 Osterreich Ungarns letzter Krieg 1914 1918 vol 2 Beilagen Wienn 1930 table I http honsi org literature svejk dokumenty oulk band1 html Osterreich Ungarns letzter Krieg 1914 1918 vol 1 Wienn 1930 p68 Jordan 2008 p 20 Willmott 2009 p 69 James Lyon A peasant mob The Serbian Army in the eve of the Great War JMH 61 1997 p501 James Lyon p496 Thomas Nigel 2001 Armies in the Balkans 1914 18 p 38 ISBN 1 84176 194 X Osterreich Ungarns letzter Krieg 1914 1918 vol 1 Wienn 1930 p 82 Tucker Wood amp Murphy 1999 p 120 Robert A DOUGHTY 2005 Pyrrhic Victory Harvard University Press pp 491 ISBN 978 0 674 01880 8 Axelrod 2018 p 260 James Lyon 12 October 2020 The Battle of Dobro Polje The Forgotten Balkan Skirmish That Ended WW1 Military History Now Retrieved 21 November 2019 Stephanie Schoppert 22 February 2017 The Germans Could no Longer Keep up the Fight History Collection Retrieved 21 November 2019 a b Korsun N The Balkan Front of the World War in Russian militera lib ru Retrieved 27 September 2010 Moal F L 2008 La Serbie du martyre a la victoire 1914 1918 Collection Les nations dans la Grande Guerre in French 14 18 Editions ISBN 978 2 916385 18 1 Serbia in 1914 1 600 000 was raised for the Red Cross PDF The New York Times 29 October 1915 The Minor Powers During World War One Serbia First World War com Serbian army August 1914 Politika Online www politika rs Tema nedeљe Naјveћa srpska pobeda Svi srpski triјumfi POLITIKA in Serbian Fourth of Serbia s population dead Archived from the original on 21 July 2013 Retrieved 7 July 2017 Asserts Serbians face extinction PDF Sammis 2002 p 32 Mitrovic 2007 p 223 Serbia restored PDF Serbia and Austria PDF New York Times 28 July 1918 Appeals to Americans to pray for Serbians PDF New York Times 27 July 1918 Banac Ivo 1988 The National Question in Yugoslavia Origins History Politics Cornell University Press p 222 ISBN 978 0 8014 9493 2 its postwar population included some 114 000 invalids and over half a million orphans Christopher Bennett 1995 Yugoslavia s Bloody Collapse Causes Course and Consequences C Hurst amp Co Publishers p 259 ISBN 978 1 85065 232 8 Retrieved 7 September 2013 Robert J Donia 2006 Sarajevo A Biography University of Michigan Press pp 123 ISBN 0 472 11557 X Joseph Ward Swain 1933 Beginning the twentieth century a history of the generation that made the war W W Norton amp Company Inc Christopher Bennett January 1995 Yugoslavia s Bloody Collapse Causes Course and Consequences C Hurst amp Co Publishers pp 31 ISBN 978 1 85065 232 8 How Austria Hungary waged war in Serbia 1915 German criminologist R A Reiss on atrocities by the Austro Hungarian Army Augenzeugen Der Krieg gegen Zivilisten Fotografien aus dem Ersten Weltkrieg Anton Holzer Vienna Executions various www ww1 propaganda cards com Honzik Miroslav Honzikova Hana 1984 1914 1918 Leta zkazy a nadeje Czech Republic Panorama Sources editBooks edit Babac Dusan M 2016 The Serbian Army in the Great War 1914 1918 Solihull Helion ISBN 978 1 910777 29 9 Batakovic Dusan T ed 2005 Histoire du peuple serbe History of the Serbian People in French Lausanne L Age d Homme ISBN 978 2 8251 1958 7 Buttar Prit 2014 Collision of Empires The War on the Eastern Front in 1914 Oxford Osprey Publishing ISBN 978 1 78200 972 6 Cirkovic Sima 2004 The Serbs Malden Blackwell Publishing ISBN 978 1 4051 4291 5 Cox John K 2002 The History of Serbia Westport Connecticut Greenwood Press ISBN 978 0 313 31290 8 DiNardo Richard L 2015 Invasion The Conquest of Serbia 1915 Santa Barbara Praeger ISBN 978 1 4408 0093 1 Đorđevic M P Zivojinovic D R 1991 Srbija i Jugosloveni za vreme rata 1914 1918 Vol 5 Beograd Biblioteka grada Beograda Dragnich Alex N 2004 Serbia Through the Ages Boulder East European Monographs ISBN 978 0 88033 541 6 Falls Cyril The Great War 1960 978 1440800924 Fryer Charles 1997 The Destruction of Serbia in 1915 New York Columbia University Press ISBN 978 0 88033 385 6 Gumz Jonathan E 2009 The Resurrection and Collapse of Empire in Habsburg Serbia 1914 1918 Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 89627 6 Hadzi Vasiljevic Jovan 1922 Bugarska zverstva u Vranju i okolini 1915 1918 Zastava Peter Hart 2013 The Great War A Combat History of the First World War Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 997627 0 M Hughes W Philpott 29 March 2005 The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of the First World War Palgrave Macmillan UK ISBN 978 0 230 50480 6 Jordan David 2008 The Balkans Italy amp Africa 1914 1918 From Sarajevo to the Piave and Lake Tanganyika London Amber Books ISBN 978 1 906626 14 3 Lyon James B 2015 Serbia and the Balkan Front 1914 The Outbreak of the Great War London Bloomsbury ISBN 978 1 4725 8005 4 Mitrovic Andrej 2007 Serbia s Great War 1914 1918 West Lafayette Purdue University Press ISBN 978 1 55753 476 7 Osterreich Ungarns letzter Krieg 1914 1918 vol 1 Wienn 1930 1 Osterreich Ungarns letzter Krieg 1914 1918 vol 2 Beilagen Wienn 1931 2 Pavlowitch Stevan K 2002 Serbia The History behind the Name London Hurst amp Company ISBN 978 1 85065 477 3 Sammis Kathy 2002 Focus on World History The Twentieth Century Vol 5 Walch Publishing p 32 ISBN 978 0 8251 4371 7 Hew Strachan 1998 World War I A History Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 820614 9 Temperley Harold W V 1919 1917 History of Serbia PDF 2 ed London Bell and Sons Tomac Petar Đurasinovic Radomir 1973 Prvi svetski rat 1914 1918 Vojnoizdavacki zavod Tucker Spencer Wood Laura M Murphy Justin D 1999 The European Powers in the First World War An Encyclopedia Taylor amp Francis ISBN 978 0 8153 3351 7 OCLC 40417794 Tucker Spencer 2005 World War I Encyclopedia Volume 1 ABC CLIO p 273 ISBN 978 1 85109 420 2 Willmott H P 2003 World War I Dorling Kindersley ISBN 978 0 7894 9627 0 Willmott H P 2008 World War I Dorling Kindersley ISBN 978 1 4053 2986 6 Willmott H P 2009 World War I Dorling Kindersley ISBN 978 0 7566 5015 5 Axelrod Alan 2018 How America Won World War I Rowman amp Littlefield ISBN 978 1 4930 3192 4 Josephus Nelson Larned 1924 The New Larned History for Ready Reference Reading and Research The Actual Words of the World s Best Historians Biographers and Specialists a Complete System of History for All Uses Extending to All Countries and Subjects and Representing the Better and Newer Literature of History C A Nichols Publishing Company Prit Buttar 2015 Germany Ascendant The Eastern Front 1915 Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN 978 1 4728 1355 8 Journals edit Silberstein Gerard E The Serbian campaign of 1915 Its diplomatic background American Historical Review 73 1 1967 51 69 online Pisarri Milovan 2013 Bulgarian Crimes Against Civilians in Occupied Serbia during the First World War Balcanica 44 357 390 doi 10 2298 BALC1344357P Radic Radmila 2015 The Serbian Orthodox Church in the First World War The Serbs and the First World War 1914 1918 Belgrade Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts pp 263 285 ISBN 978 86 7025 659 0 Radojevic Mira 2015 Jovan M Jovanovic on the outbreak of the First World War The Serbs and the First World War 1914 1918 Belgrade Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts pp 187 204 ISBN 978 86 7025 659 0 External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Serbia in World War I Bjelajac Mile Serbia in 1914 1918 online International Encyclopedia of the First World War Tasic Dmitar Warfare 1914 1918 South East Europe in 1914 1918 online International Encyclopedia of the First World War Years which changed the war WWI in documents from Archive of Serbia Jugoslovenska kinoteka in Serbian Kinoteka Popovic Andra 1926 Zbirka kњiga Univerzitetske biblioteke u Beogradu Ratni album 1914 1918 in Serbian Digital National Library of Serbia W H Crawfurd Price 1918 Serbia s Part in the War Simpkin Marshall Hamilton Kent amp Company Public Domain Milosevic Krsman 2008 Srbiјa u velikom ratu in Serbian Narodna Biblioteka Srbiјe Beograd CIP ISBN 978 86 82777 16 8 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Serbian campaign amp oldid 1217220118, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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