Romanian Campaign (World War I)
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The Romanian Campaign was a campaign in the Balkan theatre of World War I, with Romania and Russia allied against armies of the Central Powers.
First allies, then enemies
For many years before the start of World War I, Romania was an ally of Austria-Hungary. However, under the terms of the alliance, Romania was obligated to go to war only in the event that Austria was attacked. When the war started, Romania argued that Austria herself had started the war and, consequently, Romania was under no formal obligation to join in the war. This was essentially the same argument that Italy used at the start of World War I, with the same outcome: a former ally of the Central Powers sat on the sidelines and fielded offers from both sides to join in the war. Like Italy, Romania eventually joined the Allies, but with disastrous consequences.In exchange for entry into the war, Romania demanded the territory of Transylvania, which was under Hungarian administration as part of Austria-Hungary. Romanians made up the largest ethnic group in Transylvania, though the territory, located on the western side of the Transylvanian Alps, had been part of the Kingdom of Hungary since 1867 (see History of Transylvania). The Allies accepted this deal late in the summer of 1916. If the Romanians had sided with the Allies earlier in the year, before the Brusilov Offensive, perhaps the Russians would not have lost (Cyril Falls The Great War p. 228). According to some American military historians, Russia delayed approval of the deal out of worries about Romanian territorial designs on Bessarabia (Esposito, Atlas of American Wars, Vol 2, text for map 37). According to British military historian John Keegan, before Romania entered the war the Allies had secretly agreed not to honor the territorial expansion of Romania when the war ended (Keegan, The First World War, pg. 306).
The Romanian government signed a treaty with the Allies on August 17 1916 and declared war on the Central Powers on August 27. The Romanian army was quite large, about 500,000 men in 23 divisions. However, it was a paper tiger with poor officers and poor equipment; more than half of the army was hardly trained. Meanwhile, the German Chief of Staff, General Erich von Falkenhayn correctly reasoned that Romania would side with the Allies and made plans to deal with Romania. Thanks to the earlier conquest of Serbia and the ineffective Allied operations on the Greek border, the Bulgarian army was willing to help fight the Romanians.
War Begins, Late August 1916
On August 27, three Romanian armies launched attacks through the Transylvanian Alps and into Transylvania. The attacks were initially successful in pushing weak Austrian units out of the mountains, but the Germans sent four divisions to reinforce the Austrian lines, and by the middle of September, the Romanian offensive was halted. The Russians loaned them three divisions for operations in the north of Romania but very few supplies could be sent because Constantinople remained firmly under control of the Ottoman Empire.
The first counterattack came from General August von Mackensen in command of a multi-national army of Bulgarian divisions, some Ottoman divisions, and a German division. This army attacked north from Bulgaria, starting on September 1. It stayed on the south side of the Danube river and headed towards Constanţa. The Romanian garrison of Turtucaia, encircled by German and Bulgarian troops, surrendered on September 6 (see Battle of Turtucaia).
On September 15, the Romanian War Council decided to suspend the Transylvania offensive and destroy the Mackensen army group instead. The plan (the so-called Flămânda Maneuver) was to attack the Central Powers forces from behind by crossing the Danube at Flămânda, while the front-line Romanian and Russian forces were supposed to launch an offensive southwards towards Cobadin and Kurtbunar. On October 1, 2 Romanian divisions crossed the Danube at Flămânda and created a bridgehead 14 kilometer-wide and 4 kilometer-deep. On the same day, the joint Romanian and Russian divisions went on offensive on the Dobruja front, however with little success. The failure to break the Dobruja front, combined with a heavy storm on the night of October 1/2 which caused heavy damages to the pontoon bridge, determined Averescu to cancel the whole operation. This would have serious consequences for the rest of the campaign.
Russian reinforcements under General Andrei Medardovich Zaionchkovsky arrived to halt Mackensen's army before it cut the rail line that linked Constanţa with Bucharest. Fighting was furious with attacks and counter attacks up till September 23.
Overall command was now under Falkenhayen (recently fired as German Chief of Staff) who started his own counterattack on September 18. The first attack was on the Romanian First army near the town of Haţeg; the attack halted the Romanian army advance. Eight days later, two German divisions of mountain troops nearly cut off an advancing Romanian column near Hermannstadt (modern day Sibiu). Defeated, the Romanians retreated back into the mountains and the German troops captured Turnu Roşu Pass. On October 4, the Romanian Second Army attacked the Germans at Kronstadt (modern day Braşov) but the attack was repulsed and the counterattack forced the Romanians to retreat here also. The Fourth Romanian army, in the north of the country, retreated without much pressure from the Austrian troops so that by October 25, the Romanian army was back to its borders everywhere.
Back on the coast, General Mackensen launched a new offensive on October 20, after a month of careful preparations, and his somewhat odd army defeated Zaionchkovsky's Russian troops. The Russians were forced to withdraw out of Constanţa towards the marshy delta of the Danube river. The Russian army was now both demoralized and nearly out of supplies. Mackensen felt free to secretly pull half his army back to the town of Sistova (in Bulgaria) with an eye towards crossing the Danube river.
The campaign in Romania
Falkenhayn's forces made several probing attacks into the mountain passes held by the Romanian army to see if there were weaknesses in the Romanian defences. After several weeks, he concentrated his best troops (the elite Alpen Korps) in the south for an attack on the Vulcan Pass. The attack, launched on November 10, pushed the Romanian defenders back through the mountains and into the plains by November 26. There was already snow covering the mountains and soon operations would have to halt for the winter. Advances by other parts of Falkenhayn's Ninth army also pushed through the mountains; the Romanian army was being ground down by the constant battle and their supply situation was becoming critical.On November 23, Mackensen's best troops crossed the Danube at two locations near Sistova. This attack caught the Romanians by surprise and Mackensen's army was able to advance rapidly towards Bucharest against very weak resistance. Mackensen's attack threatened to cut off half the Romanian army and so the Romanian Supreme Commander (the recently promoted General Averescu) tried a desparate counter-attack on Mackensen's force. The plan was bold, using the entire reserves of the Romanian army, but it needed the cooperation of Russian divisions to contain Mackensen's offensive while the Romanian reserve struck the gap between Mackensen and Falkenhayn. However, the Russian army disagreed with the plan and did not support the attack.
On December 1, the Romanian army went ahead with the offensive. Mackensen was able to shift forces to deal with the sudden assault and Falkenhayn's forces responded with attacks at every point. Within three days, the attack had been shattered and the Romanians were retreating everywhere. The Romanian government and royal court relocated to Iaşi. Bucharest was captured on December 6 by Falkenhayn's cavalry. Rains and terrible roads were the only things that saved the remainder of the Romanian army but more than 150,000 Romanian soldiers were captured.
The Russians were forced to send many divisions to the border area to prevent an invasion of southern Russia. The German army, after several engagements, was fought to a standstill by the middle of January 1917. The Romanian army still fought, but most of Romania was under German occupation.
Romanian casualties are estimated at between 300,000 and 400,000 (including POWs). German, Austrian, Bulgarian, and Ottoman losses are estimated at around 60,000.
This victory was an impressive feat for the German army and their generals Falkenhayn and Mackensen (Esposito, Atlas of American Wars, Vol 2, text for map 40). Most of the successful fighting had been done by German divisions (along with some Bulgarian forces in the south) who were outnumbered and often attacking over very rough ground. German advantages in this war were: better supplies, better equipment, better training, and better leadership at all levels. One of the young officers in the elite Alpen Korps was the future Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.
Aftermath
Fighting continued in 1917, as the northern part of Romania remained independent under Russian protection. In May 1917, the Romanian army attacked alongside the Russians in support of the Kerensky Offensive. After succeeding in breaking the Austro-Hungarian front at Mărăşti, the Russians and the Romanians had to stop their advance because of the disaster of the Kerensky Offensive. The Mackensen's forces counter-attack led to the Battle of Mărăşeşti, which was an important victory for Romania, as the unoccupied land with the capital Iaşi, remained free.The Germans were able to repair the oil fields around Ploieşti and by the end of the war had pumped a million tons of oil. They also requisitions two million tons of grain from the Romanian farmers. These materials were vital in keeping Germany in the war to the end of 1918 (John Keegan, World War I, pg. 308).
Clearly, Romania chose a bad time to enter the war. Entry on the Allied side in 1914 or 1915 could have saved Serbia from conquest. Entry in early 1916 might have allowed the Brusilov Offensive to succeed. Instead, they joined late, and a mutual distrust was shared by them and the one major power that could directly help them: Russia.
General Esposito argues that the Romanian high command made grave strategical and operational mistakes:
Militarily, Rumania's strategy could not have been worse. In choosing Transylvania as the initial objective, she ignored the threat to her rear. When the advance through the mountains failed, the high command refused to economize forces on that front to allow the creation of a mobile reserve with which Falkenhayn's later thrusts could be countered. Nowhere did the Romanians properly mass their forces to achieve concentration of combat power. (Esposito, Atlas of American Wars, Vol 2, text for map 40)
When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Romania was left isolated and surrounded by German forces and it had little choice but to sue for peace (see Treaty of Bucharest, 1918). After the successful offensive on the Thessaloniki front which knocked Bulgaria out of the war, Romania re-entered the war on November 10, 1918.
On November 28, 1918, the Romanian representatives voted for the union of Bukovina with the Kingdom of Romania, followed by the proclamation of the union of Transylvania with the Kingdom of Romania on December 1, 1918, by the representatives of Transylvanian Romanians and of the Transylvanian Saxons gathered at Alba Iulia.
The Treaty of Versailles recognized these proclamations under the right of national self-determination (see the Wilsonian Fourteen Points). Romanian control of Transylvania was widely resented in the new nation state of Hungary, in fact a war (of sorts) was fought in 1919 over the control of Transylvania. Hungary would regain Northern Transylvania through the Second Vienna Award in 1940, but Romania took control again at the end of that war.
Sources
- Esposito, Vincent (ed.) (1959). The West Point Atlas of American Wars - Vol. 2; maps 37-40. Frederick Praeger Press.
- Falls, Cyril. The Great War (1960), ppg 228-230.
- Keegan, John. The First World War (1998), ppg 306-308. Alfred A. Knopf Press.
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