Impossible as it may seem, the war is getting even larger.
This week yet another front opened in Southeastern Europe as Romania joined the war.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week at the Somme, the French completed the capture of Maurepas, the Bulgarians were
stopped in Macedonia and the Russians in the Carpathians, while other Russians further
south took Bitlis and Mus from the Ottoman Empire.
Here’s what followed.
The Allies may have made gains last week at the Somme, but this week it was the Germans’
turn.
On Aug 31st, they launched their biggest counter attack of the two months of the Somme campaign
so far.
On the salient around Delville Wood they unleashed a thunderous artillery bombardment, and then
the infantry came on.
They pushed the British back to the ruins of the wood, and within a few hours, all the
ground gained there by the British in the second half of August had been lost.
There was actually a huge change being made in the German army this week.
This week Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn lost his job and was replaced on August 29th
by Paul von Hindenburg; with Hindenburg’s right hand man Erich Ludendorff being named
Quartermaster General.
Falkenhayn had been losing favor as the year rolled on and the Battle of Verdun, his brainchild,
continued with hundreds of thousands of German casualties.
He had tons of enemies in the German government and high command who had been maneuvering
to get rid of him for a while.
He had also repeatedly stated that Romania would not join the Allies in the war, at least
not until the harvest was in in mid September.
When they joined now, Falkenhayn was out.
Hindenburg, at 68, was by this time the most revered person in the German-speaking world.
Since the victory at Tannenberg in August 1914 made him the savior of the Germans against
the Russian “hordes”, he’d been the big hero.
He was also physically a huge rock of a man - he stood nearly two meters tall - and he
took great care with his public image.
He was now in a position to impose great changes on both the German army and German society.
Ludendorff had a very different personality.
He was cold and high strung while Hindenburg was pretty charming and witty.
Ludendorff was a real workaholic too.
And he had seen something - the Allies enormous outlay of men and material at the Somme had
convinced him that the German army must remobilize to survive.
He ordered the establishment of stormtroop battalions in each army; he wanted to triple
artillery and machine gun production, and double that of trench mortars, and he wanted
all this to happen by May 1917, when he expected the next big Allied offensive.
But, of course, to do all this, he and Hindenburg would have to interfere heavily in German
industry.
Their industrial and propaganda drive was called “The Hindenburg Programme.”
Already this week, on the 31st, a memorandum went out outlining Germany’s disadvantage
in men and material and stressed that “men... must be more and more substituted by machines.”
(Ring of Steel).
The management of the war economy would be centralized, the army would furlough skilled
workers to help the drive, and above all, job one- production must increase dramatically.
Also, on the 29th, Hindenburg and Ludendorff urged the Kaiser to begin unrestricted submarine
warfare immediately, whatever effect that would have on the US or Scandinavia.
But that didn’t happen.
Yet.
Within two weeks there would the creation of a Supreme War Command, and Hindenburg effectively
took control of all Central Powers armies.
Even Enver Pasha, Ottoman Minister of War, and Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria were at the
conference where it was agreed.
And I said that Romania joined the war.
They did.
On August 27th, Romania mobilized and declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
On the 28th, Germany declared war on Romania and Italy declared war on Germany - that still
hadn’t happened.
On the 30th the Ottoman Empire declared war on Romania and Bulgaria followed suit the
next day.
Romania’s main national interest in going to war was gaining Transylvanian territory,
where three million ethnic Romanians lived in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
As Russian General Alexei Brusilov’s summer offensive against Austria rolled along, widening
the border between Russia and Romania at Austrian expense, and seemingly promising Russian support
and Austrian collapse, Romanian indecision about joining the war vanished.
But you want to know something?
France and Russia had signed a secret treaty with Romania on August 17th that when the
war was won, Romania would get Transylvania, Bukovina, Southern Galicia, and a part of
Hungary, but in secret France and Russia agreed with each other that they would not honor
the deal when the time came.
But even if the Romanians had known the deal was made in bad faith, it was still pretty
stupid to join the war.
Look at their situation - they had Austria-Hungary to the north and Bulgaria to the south, and
the possible support of the Russian army certainly wasn’t a guarantee of security.
Heck, against Bulgaria, that wouldn’t matter at all.
But Romania went to war with 23 divisions.
They did not, though, attack the Bulgarians, which is what the Allies in Salonika had thought
they would do, and which they could have supported, but rather moved into Hungary through the
Transylvanian Alps.
The Austrians organized local defenses into an army under General Arz von Straussenburg,
and the Germans would send two armies to fight Romania, part German and part Bulgarian, one
of them under Falkenhayn - that was his new job - and one under August von Mackensen,
the guy who steamrolled Russia and ravaged Serbia in 1915.
Can you imagine facing both Falkenhayn AND Mackensen?
Well, that was the first Romanian task of the war.
Bulgaria will attack Romania with German help from the south under Mackensen, and Austro-German
forces under Falkenhayn will attack from the north.
Still, as the week ended, Romania had occupied Eastern Transylvania.
Funny, Romania had, like Italy, been a member of the Triple Alliance in 1914.
But King Carol - who was pro-German and wanted to support Germany in the war - died in October
1914, and a new dynasty began with Carol’s nephew Ferdinand becoming king and keeping
Romania neutral.
Ferdinand was actually German by birth, interestingly enough, and because of this betrayal of Germany
by joining the Allies, Kaiser Wilhelm had his name removed from the Hohenzollern House
register.
But you know, General Brusilov and Russian chief of staff Mikhail Alexeyev both thought
that Romania was more of a liability than an asset.
The Romanian army was big on paper, sure, but it was poorly equipped.
Five divisions had no machine guns at all, the other 18 were short of them, as well as
artillery and any wheeled transport.
They had only stockpiled a six-week supply of munitions, and anything else would have
to come through Russia, which would be a pain - Russia and Romania used different railway
gauges, and anyhow there were only two single-track railway lines connecting them.
Norman Stone wrote this, “British observers felt that the operations of the Romanian army
would make a public-school field day look like the execution of the Schlieffen Plan...”
Still, when Romanian troops crossed into the Austro-Hungarian heartland, the Kaiser did
panic for a minute and even said, “the war is lost!”
And here are some notes to round out the week.
On September first, it’s announced that the German Mark is down 30% in New York.
On August 28th on the Mesopotamian front, General Sir Stanley Maude replaced General
Sir Percy Lake as British Commander in Chief.
If that sounds confusing, some sources say that already happened in July.
And in German East Africa, the British entered Morogoro on the 26th, and just because it’s
interesting, Canadian casualties so far (chronology) stand at 8,644 dead, 27,212 wounded, and 2,005
missing.
And yet another week ends.
A big shake up in the German High Command and new plans for the German army’s future.
A strong German counter attack at the Somme and a Romanian occupation of Austro-Hungarian
territory.
Amazing to think that countries are still joining the war, which has produced millions
of casualties just this summer alone.
Obviously Romania could see that, and certainly knew that her army wasn’t a match for, say,
Germany.
But Austria-Hungary looked weak and there was that same old greed we see month after
month, “if we’re gonna take that land, we gotta do it now”.
But we all know, and so should King Ferdinand have known, what the price for that possibility
of land would be - hundreds of thousands of dead Romanians.
If you want to know more about the power struggle within the Imperial German Army and how Falkenhayn
and Hindenburg clashed heads for the first time, click here to check out our episode.
Our Patreon supporter of the week is Pushproop - please support us on Patreon to keep this
show running while also making it better and better.
You can also support us by buying our official Merchandise like the legendary Foch You-Poster.
Now also available as a shirt.