He was known as “The Father of the Bulgarian Cavalry” But this was a war in which cavalry
was often seen as a relic of the past that had no place on a modern battlefield, but
he modernized his forces to make them not just competitive in modern war, but also victorious.
I’m talking about Ivan Kolev.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War special Bio episode of “Who did what in
WW1”, today featuring Ivan Kolev.
His youth didn’t seem especially promising.
He was born September 15th, 1863 in the village of Banovka, in what is now the Odessa Oblast
- Province - in Ukraine.
He was a Bessarabian Bulgarian, and his people had settled much of the region after emigrating
from the Ottoman Empire, which included what is now Bulgaria, in the early 19th century.
Ivan left his village to study in Bolgrad, the symbolic capital of the Bulgarians in
Bessarabia.
When he finished school in 1882 he tried to find work as a teacher in Banovka, but was
rejected.
He worked as a clerk until relocating to Sofia in 1884, where he found employment as a secretary
in the District Court.
When the Serbo-Bulgarian War broke out a year later, he enlisted in the Sofia Military School.
This allowed him to volunteer and fight in the Students’ Legion, made up of Cadets.
After the war, he went to the school full time and graduated with honors.
Now, Kolev was offered service in the most modern branch of the army, the artillery.
He refused that, though, and said if he couldn’t serve with the cavalry he would leave the
military altogether, so he was assigned to the 3rd Cavalry Regiment as a Second Lieutenant.
He was promoted to First Lieutenant in 1890, and after a stint in the Military Academy
in Turin, Italy, was promoted to Captain, or Rotmister.
Fast forward to the 20th century and in 1907 Kolev served briefly in the Austro-Hungarian
army in the 7th Uhlan Regiment.
Returning to Bulgaria in 1908, he was promoted to Colonel and joined the prestigious Lebgvardeyski
Cavalry Regiment, the elite honor guard that personally escorted the monarch.
He would remain with them until the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913.
Kolev fought in both of those wars, and though his rank meant that he didn’t have to fight
at the frontlines, he often did.
Thing is, and as I said earlier, by the tim e Bulgaria entered WW1 in late 1915, cavalry
was seen by many as outdated and no longer useful in modern war.
The cavalry’s limited involvement in the Balkan Wars had led to a great deal of criticism.
Kolev responded to this by truly modernizing his cavalry to be an effective force in the
war.
Each cavalry division was now supported by a motorized infantry regiment, and they had
machine gun support.
This was a big deal, and his cavalry was vital in securing the Bulgarian flank during the
attack against Romania at Tutrakan.
His men stopped a Romanian relief force of 4,000 men, killing 600 and capturing 1,000
of them.
The town of Dobrich was the capital of Southern Dobrogea, a region that had been Bulgarian
but had been taken by Romania in the Balkan Wars.
It was Kolev who took it back, but soon his men were fighting not just Romanians, but
Russians.
A lot of Bulgarian troops were sympathetic to the Russians and some generals questioned
whether they would take up arms to fight them.
Kolev addressed his men: “Cavaliers, as God is my witness, I will be forever grateful
to the Russian people for liberating us; but what business do they have now in our Dobrogea?
We shall meet them on the battlefield and crush them, just like every other enemy that
stands in the way of a united Bulgaria!"
His men would defeat the Cossack cavalry and drive them from Southern Dobrogea, even outnumbered.
His cavalry would continue riding through Southern Dobrogea, beating both the Russians
and Romanians, and Kolev was awarded the German Iron Cross from German Field Marshal August
von Mackensen himself September 30th, 1916.
These were Mackensen’s words, “Up until now, the belief was that a cavalry attack
against infantry was impossible.
With your actions, you have proven that statement to be false.
Many upper cavaliers are envious of you and I can barely convince them with my letters,
that you actually did what you did!"
His campaign continued into Northern Dobrogea and his men were the first to enter Constanta,
Romania’s largest port.
They also managed to capture the entire Russian 265th Orenburg Division.
Kolev’s campaign ended in January 1917, with the capture of Tulcea, not far from the
village of his birth.
By this time, he was being hailed as “The Liberator of Dobrogea”.
However, his health had begun to fail.
He had spent months in the saddle often in terrible weather conditions and had now fallen
ill with tuberculosis.
On March 17th, he relinquished command of the cavalry and went to Vienna for treatment.
That treatment would ultimately prove unsuccessful, and on July 29th, just a day after receiving
a telegram informing him that he had been promoted to Lieutenant General, Ivan Kolev
passed away.
His remains were returned to Sofia and he was given a hero’s funeral with a ten-day
period of mourning.
Mackensen even compared him to Frederick the Great, the legendary King of Prussia.
He was immortalized in works of literature by people like Yordan Yovkov and Ivan Vazov,
and officers paid their respects at his grave each year, but once the Bulgarian Socialist
Republic was declared after WW2, that all changed.
The new government heavily edited the history of the country, particularly in WW1.
Now the Macedonian front was the story of fighting against the imperial forces of the
west, Britain and France, and battles against Serbia, for example, were downplayed.
The Dobrogean Front was even more of a problem.
The idea of Bulgaria beating the Russians was a no-go, and the narrative now was how
the imperialist forces pushed the Bulgarian forces to fight in Dobrogea, but they refused
to take up arms against their Russian brothers.
Where do you think Ivan Kolev fits into that narrative?
Exactly, he doesn’t, so he was removed from the history books.
His grave was declared off limits and eventually even became lost.
Finally, in 2009, after two years of searching, a Bulgarian historian found it.
A monument to Kolev is slated to be unveiled in Dobrich this year to commemorate the 100th
anniversary of his death.
Today was a brief look at the life of a man who may be considered a forgotten hero in
Bulgarian history, and the man who German General Heinz Guderian said was the inspiration
for his armored tactics in World War Two.
I’ll end with a little piece of trivia; while each year flowers are placed on Ivan
Kolev’s grave, the natives of Dobrogea put sheaves of wheat there, for that is the symbol
of Southern Dobrogea.
We want to thank Plamen Ganev for the research of this episode.
If you want to learn more about the ruler of Bulgaria during World War 1, you can click
right here for our episode about Tsar Ferdinand.
And if you want to support our show, you can also buy our official merchandise.
See you next week.