The Third Balkan War - Explained in 20 minutes | Balkans during WW1

The Third Balkan War Even though after the First and the Second Balkan Wars, there wasn't another isolated conflict in the Balkans. In the year of 1914, the First World War started, exactly in the same region which was marked by war, conflict and political turmoil. And because you are our subscriber, you should definitely check out our sponsor over at Squarespace. This incredible website builder includes so many features, like easy link to all social media platforms, support for podcasts, integrated analytics, but also mailing lists and email campaigns. Regardless of your future projects, having a well-structured website is of great help. From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence. And to do so, you don't need specific skills in building a website. For that, Squarespace has you covered. Allowing anyone to very quickly design a well-structured, beautiful and easy-to-navigate platform. Go to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Neither the First nor the Second Balkan War fixed the issues of those countries living in the region. As we talked about the Balkan conflicts in our previous videos, the long centuries of Ottoman hegemony over other diverse Christian people and the geographic position between the three powers, Russia, Austria and the Ottoman Empire, put the Balkans at the crossroads of interests and conflicts. And when the nations freed themselves, there was even more conflict, leading to the First, then to the Second Regional Wars, and also marking and influencing the start of the First World War. Thus, we named the Balkan Theater of the First World War as the Third Balkan War. The domino effect of history, as we call it, was incredibly well felt in this space. Every event affected the next one, and it will be felt even in the Second World War. Knowing all this, even if an isolated war didn't happen here, we can say there was a third Balkan conflict based on the same frustrations and on the outcome of the second one. But this third war was incorporated in a much larger world war. In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, Bulgarian opinion turned against Russia and the Western powers, whom the Bulgarians felt had done nothing to help them. The government aligned Bulgaria with Germany and Austria-Hungary, even though this meant also becoming an ally of the Ottomans, Bulgaria's traditional enemy. But Bulgaria now had no claims against the Ottomans, but against Serbia, Greece, and Romania. Bulgaria, recuperating from the Balkan Wars, sat out the first year of World War I. Ottoman entry into World War I was the result of two recently purchased ships of its navy, still manned by their German crews and commanded by their German admiral, carrying out the Black Sea Raid on the 29th of October 1914. There were a number of factors that conspired to influence the Ottoman government and encourage them into entering the war. The reason for joining the war on Germany's side is debated, knowing that the Ottoman Empire was an agricultural weakened state in an age of industrial warfare. Also, the economic resources of the empire were shortened by the cost of the Balkan Wars, so the reasons are not immediately clear. The Serbs never reconciled with the idea of annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria. In late June 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, arrived on a visit. Being in a car, an assassination attempt was made and was unsuccessful. But afterwards, a Serbian extremist, Gavrilo Princip, stepped up to the footboard of the car and shot Franz Ferdinand and Sophie at point-blank range. He was one of six members of a network coordinated by Danilo Ilić, who had the black-hand pan-Slavic organization behind him. The assassination led to a diplomatic maneuvering between the great powers called the July Crisis. Austria-Hungary correctly believed that Serbian officials were involved in the plot to murder Archduke. On the 23rd of July, Austria-Hungary delivered to Serbia the July Ultimatum, a series of ten demands that were made intentionally unacceptable. This was clearly an effort to provoke a war with Serbia. Serbia decreed general mobilization after two days and accepted all the terms of the ultimatum except for the demand that Austrian delegates be allowed in Serbia to take part into the investigation of the assassination. Following this, Austria-Hungary broke off diplomatic relations with Serbia and the next day ordered a partial mobilization. Finally, on the 28th of July, 1914, a month after the assassination, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia, prepared for war, ordered general mobilization. German Chancellor for an appropriate response, Kaiser Wilhelm II, asked his cousin Tsar Nicholas II to suspend the Russian general mobilization. When he refused, Germany issued an ultimatum demanding its mobilization be stopped and a commitment not to support Serbia, knowing that Russian involvement in the war will attract Germany to defend its ally, Austria-Hungary. Another was sent to France, asking her not to support Russia if it were to come to the defense of Serbia. On the 1st of August, after the Russian response, Germany mobilized and declared war on Russia. Austria-Hungary mobilized 239 battalions, 516 pieces of artillery in three armies against Serbia, the 2nd Army, the 5th with around 80,000 men and the 6th Army with around 60,000 men. The participation in this campaign for the 2nd was insignificant and she was transferred to Galicia and the Austrian numbers will grow. Serbia deployed four armies on the ground with 247,000 troops and Montenegro mobilized six divisions. The Austrian army surpassed the armies of its Balkan enemies in all respects, troops, armaments and military equipment. But even so, the defense and courage of the Serbian-Montenegrin armies spoke for itself. Austria invaded and fought the Serbian army at the Battle of Sir and Battle of Kalabara beginning on the 12th of August. Over the next two weeks, Austrian attacks were thrown back with heavy losses, which marked the first major allied victories of the war and dashed Austro-Hungarian hopes of a swift victory. Austria-Hungary could only spare one third of its army to attack Serbia. After suffering heavy losses, the Austrians briefly occupied the Serbian capital, Belgrade. A Serbian counterattack in the Battle of Kalabara succeeded in driving them from the country by the end of 1914. For the first 10 months of 1915, Austria-Hungary used most of its military reserves to fight Italy. German and Austro-Hungarian diplomats, however, scored a coup by persuading Bulgaria to join the attack on Serbia. When Germany promised to restore the boundaries of the Treaty of San Stefano, Bulgaria, which had the largest army in the Balkans, declared war on Serbia in October 1915. Britain, France and Italy then declared war on Bulgaria. Bulgaria declared war on Serbia on the 12th of October 1915 and joined in the attack by the Austro-Hungarian army under Mackensen's army of 250,000 that was already underway. Serbia was conquered in a little more than a month, as the Central Powers, now including Bulgaria, sent in 600,000 troops total. The Serbian army, fighting on two fronts and facing certain defeat, retreated into northern Albania. The Serbs suffered defeat in the Battle of Kosovo. Montenegro covered the Serbian retreat towards the Adriatic coast in the Battle of Mojkavac in the 6th to 7th of January 1916, but ultimately the Austrians also conquered Montenegro. The surviving Serbian soldiers were evacuated to Greece. After conquest, Serbia was divided between Austro-Hungary and Bulgaria. In late 1915, a Franco-British force landed at Salonika in Greece to offer assistance and to pressure its government to declare war against the Central Powers. However, the pro-German King Constantine I dismissed the pro-Allied government of Eleftherios Venizelos before the Allied Expeditionary Force arrived. The friction between the King of Greece and the Allies continued to accumulate with the National Schism, which effectively divided Greece between regions still loyal to the King and the new provisional government of Venizelos in Thessaloniki. At the end of 1915, Serbia and Montenegro were fully occupied by the Central Powers. Due to this, the front line was continuous from Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and the link between the Ottomans, Bulgarians, Austrians, and Germans was established. The German High Command, whose troops represented the main military force of the Central Powers, did not plan any large-scale offensive on the Thessaloniki front, in part because of its limited strength, but also because of logistical difficulties. The purpose was to control enemy troops in the region with the help of small German-Bulgarian troops and to focus more against the Russians and the French. In May 1916, the Entente forces of the Thessaloniki front enjoyed numerical superiority over German-Bulgarian troops. The Entente's troops were supplemented by those of the completely reorganized Serbian Army. The Serbs had formed six infantry and one cavalry divisions, placed under the nominal command of Crown Prince. The Serbian Army had 130,000 troops, and the total Allied forces in the Balkans reached 300,000. In the meantime, from 17 February 1915 to 9 January 1916, the Entente powers, Britain, France, and Russia sought to weaken the Ottoman Empire, one of the Central Powers, by taking control of the straits that provided a supply route to Russia. An attack was made on Ottoman forts at the entrance of the Dardanelles in February 1915, and was followed by an amphibious landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula in April 1915, to capture the Ottoman straits and then take control of Constantinople. But this was in the end a costly defeat for the Entente powers. When the German command decided to transfer troops from the Balkans to the French front, the Entente troops were tasked with stopping the relocation of enemy forces by launching offensive actions. In the wake of Allied attacks, the Germans continued to send troops from the Balkans to the Western Front, and the remaining Bulgarian units in the region remained relatively passive. Also in the north of the Danube, the Kingdom of Romania was neutral for the first two years of the war. King Karl I was an ethnic German from the same royal family that ruled the German Empire, and thus favored Germany. But after his death in 1914, his nephew, the new King Ferdinand, also from the same royal family, decided to join the Entente, due to the public opinion that was more inclined to France, but mainly due to the highest priority of Romania, that was to unite with Transylvania, which had Romanians as the major ethnic group. The Allies wanted Romania to join its side in order to cut the rail communications between Germany and Turkey, and to shift the balance of power in the region. Britain made loans, France set a military training mission, and Russia promised modern munitions. The Allies promised at least 200,000 soldiers to defend Romania against Bulgaria to the south and help it invade Austria. On the night of August 27, 1916, three Romanian armies, 1st, 2nd, and Northern Army, deployed according to the Romanian campaign plan, the Z-hypothesis, launched the Battle of Transylvania through the Carpathians, while the 3rd Army protected the south across Danube. In a short time, many towns were captured and the Romanian army advanced rapidly, but within weeks, sizable reinforcements began arriving at the scene. Eight German divisions and an Alpine corps were deployed under the command of Erich von Falkenhayn, and other Austria-Hungarian divisions arrived. The Entente's military actions gained momentum in August. Anglo-French units tried to break through the Bulgarian defense in the Dozrin Lake region. The Bulgarians managed to repel the attack, inflicting heavy losses on their enemies. After Romania entered the war, the Entente planned a combined offensive, which aimed to get Bulgaria out of the war. The offensive was to begin on August 20. The Bulgarian command took it before the Allies and launched its own offensive on August 17. The Bulgarian attack targeted heavily populated regions of Greece, but until the end of the year, no major changes on the Greek-Macedonian front line happened. Attacked from the south by Germans and Bulgarians, and from the west across Carpathians, in the next months, Romania suffered high losses and lost more than 60% of its territory. Romanian forces became too strained to put up effective resistance against the enemy advance. Romania had to fight on two 1,600 km long battlefields, the longest front in Europe, with a varied configuration and diverse geographical elements. Because of this situation, the offensive against Bulgaria didn't start. On the 2nd of July, 1917, after pressures made by the Entente countries, Greece joined the war against the Central Powers. Even though the majority of the country was conquered, Romania didn't capitulate, and in early July 1917, on the Romanian front, one of the largest concentrations of combat forces and war material assembled during World War I, a total of 9 armies, 80 infantry divisions with 974 battalions, 19 cavalry divisions with 550 squadrons and 923 artillery batteries, whose effectives amounted to some 800,000 men, with about 1 million in their immediate reserve. The three great battles, decisive for the Romanian nation's destiny, delivered at Marashti, Marasesti and Oitus, stopped the Central Powers' advance, and represented a turning point in the war on the Eastern Front. These battles were fought approximately on the front alignment, stabilized in early 1917. Romanian forces, together with the Russians, resisted on that front line. But in November 1917, due to the revolution in Russia, the Russian army became unorganized, and the new Russian government signed a peace agreement with Central Powers. Thus, even though Romania resisted on the front line for around a year, they were encircled, and an armistice was forced on them. The military-political situation in the Balkans since the beginning of 1918 has changed in favor of the Entente. However, from the beginning of 1917, calm prevailed along the entire length of the front, and the fighting was of low intensity. The Entente forces occupied a 350-kilometer front in the south, and was ready to launch a full offensive, taking profit off the fact that many German troops switched to the Western Front struggle against the French, British, and the new Entente power, the United States. Allied military operations began on the morning of September 14th, and in the next days, the offensive had a success. During this period, the Bulgarian army was ravaged by rebellions, and about 30,000 soldiers refused to fight. The government in Sofia, given the desperate situation in which the army found itself, did everything in its power to speed up the negotiation process for signing an armistice. The armistice between the Entente and Bulgaria was signed on in Thessaloniki. The Entente force advanced and in Serbia and in Bulgaria, and when two divisions reached Romania, the Romanian government canceled the armistice agreement and entered in the war for the second time against the Central Powers. Meanwhile, the Allied advance, the Arab revolts that happened, and the developments in Southeast Europe squashed the Ottoman government's hopes. Seeking peace, on the 30th of October 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed. At that point, the Ottoman state was bankrupt and in turmoil. This will be the end of the Ottoman Empire. After the liberation of Serbian territory, the Entente troops prepared for the invasion of Austria-Hungary. Also, large turmoil started to exist in the Empire, mainly due to so many different ethnicities that existed and the unfavorable war situation. Under these conditions, the Vienna government asked the Allies on October 27th to accept the start of separate peace negotiations. On October 29th, the Austrians accepted all the conditions of peace imposed by the Entente. After this, the Austrian-Hungary Empire will collapse. Soon after, on November 11th, 1918, Germany signed an armistice. We called this video the Third Balkan War not because it was an isolated war, but because the developments in World War I in the region were a consequence of the previous Balkan Wars. The instability of the region created the flame that ignited the war in Bosnia, and the end of this war will ignite the hate and frustration that will start a bigger war 21 years later. This war ended the multi-secular monarchies of Austria, Ottomans, and Russia that fought over the Balkans for centuries. It was the final nail in the coffin for the monarchies that fought over and subjugated the Balkan ethnicities. But the frustration and conflict was not done yet.