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First Balkan War

The First Balkan War lasted from October 1912 to May 1913 and involved actions of the Balkan League (the Kingdoms of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro) against the Ottoman Empire. The Balkan states' combined armies overcame the initially numerically inferior (significantly superior by the end of the conflict) and strategically disadvantaged Ottoman armies, achieving rapid success.

The war was a comprehensive and unmitigated disaster for the Ottomans, who lost 83% of their European territories and 69% of their European population.[10] As a result of the war, the League captured and partitioned almost all of the Ottoman Empire's remaining territories in Europe. Ensuing events also led to the creation of an independent Albania, which dissatisfied the Serbs. Bulgaria, meanwhile, was dissatisfied over the division of the spoils in Macedonia and attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, on 16 June 1913, which provoked the start of the Second Balkan War.


During the war, many civilians, overwhelmingly Muslim Turks, were either killed or forced to flee their homes. The highly politicized and disorganized units of the Ottoman army were quite incapable of evacuating the civilians in the war zone. This situation left many civilians in the occupied areas defenseless against the invading armies of the Balkan League. Although there are discussions about the exact amount of civilian casualties, when the war ended great changes occurred in the demographic makeup of the Balkan region.[11]

with three divisions (2nd Infantry (minus regiment), 3rd Infantry and 1st Provisional divisions).

I Corps

with three divisions (4th (minus regiment) and 5th Infantry and Uşak Redif divisions).

II Corps

with four divisions (7th, 8th and 9th Infantry Divisions, all minus a regiment, and the Afyonkarahisar Redif Division).

III Corps

with three divisions (12th Infantry Division (minus regiment), İzmit and Bursa Redif divisions).

IV Corps

with three divisions (Samsun, Ereğli and İzmir Redif divisions).

XVII Corps

with six-plus divisions (10th and 11th Infantry, Edirne, Babaeski and Gümülcine Redif and the Fortress division, 4th Rifle and 12th Cavalry regiments).

Edirne Fortified Area

with two-plus divisions (Kırcaali Redif, Kırcaali Mustahfız division and 36th Infantry Regiment).

Kırcaali Detachment

An independent cavalry division and the 5th Light Cavalry Brigade.

Under the tyrannical and paranoid regime of , the Ottoman army had been forbidden to engage in war games or maneuvers out of the fear that it might be the cover for a coup d'état.[131] The four years since the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 had not been enough time for the army to learn how to conduct large-scale maneuvers.[131] War games in 1909 and 1910 had shown that many Ottoman officers could not efficiently move large bodies of troops such as divisions and corps, a deficiency that General Baron Colmar von der Goltz stated after watching the 1909 war games would take at least five years of training to address.[132]

Sultan Abdul Hamid II

The Ottoman army was divided into two classes; Nizamiye troops (conscripted for five years) and Redif (reservists who served for seven years). Training of the Redif troops had been neglected for decades, and the 50,000 Redif troops in the Balkans in 1912 had received extremely rudimentary training at best.[134] One German officer, Major Otto von Lossow, who served with the Ottomans, complained that some of the Redif troops did not know how to handle or fire a rifle.[135]

[133]

Support services in the Ottoman army, such as logistics and medical services, were poor. There was a massive shortage of doctors, no ambulances and few stretchers, and the few medical faculties were entirely inadequate for treating the large numbers of wounded.[135] This resulted in most of them dying, which damaged morale. In particular, the badly-organized transport corps was so inefficient that it was unable to supply the troops in the field with food, which forced troops to resort to requisitioning food from local villages.[135] Even so, Ottoman soldiers lived below the subsistence level with a daily diet of 90 g of cheese and 150 g of meat but had to march all day long, leaving much of the army sickly and exhausted.[135]

[135]

The heavy rainfall in the fall of 1912 had turned the mud roads of the Balkans into quagmires, making it extremely difficult to supply the army in the field with ammunition, which led to constant shortages at the front.

[136]

After the 1908 revolution, the Ottoman officer corps had become politicized, with many officers devoting themselves to politics at the expense of studying war. Furthermore, the politicization of the army had led it to be divided into factions, most notably between those who were members of the Committee of Union and Progress and its opponents.[137] Additionally, the Ottoman officer corps had been divided between Alayli ("ranker") officers who had been promoted up from NCOs and privates and the Mektepli ("college-trained") officers who had graduated from the War College.[138] After the 1909 counterrevolution attempt, many of the Alayli officers had been purged.[138] The bulk of the army, peasant conscripts from Anatolia, were much more comfortable with the Alayli officers than with the Mektepli officers, who came from a different social milieu.[138] Furthermore, the decision to conscript non-Muslims for the first time meant that jihad, the traditional motivating force for the Ottoman Army, was not used in 1912, something that the officers of the German military mission advising the Ottomans believed was bad for the Muslims' morale.[138]

[137]

The principal reason for the Ottoman defeat in the autumn of 1912 was the decision on the part of the Ottoman government to respond to the demands from the Balkan League on 15 October 1912 by declaring war at a time when its mobilization, ordered on 1 October, was only partially complete.[129] During the declaration of war, 580,000 Ottoman soldiers in the Balkans faced 912,000 soldiers of the Balkan League.[130] The bad condition of the roads, together with the sparse railroad network, had led to the Ottoman mobilization being grossly behind schedule, and many of the commanders were new to their units, having been appointed only on 1 October 1912.[130] Many Turkish divisions were still involved in a losing war with Italy far away in the Libyan provinces. The stress of fighting on multiple fronts took a massive toll on the Ottoman Empire's finances, morale, casualties and supplies. The Turkish historian Handan Nezir Akmeşe wrote that the best response when they were faced with the Balkan League's ultimatum on 15 October on the part of the Ottomans would have been to try to stall for time via diplomacy while they completed their mobilization, instead of declaring war immediately.[130]


War Minister Nazım Pasha, Navy Minister Mahmud Muhtar Pasha and Austrian military attaché Josef Pomiankowski had presented overly-optimistic pictures of the Ottoman readiness for war to the Cabinet in October 1912 advising that the Ottoman forces should take the offensive at once at the outbreak of hostilities.[130] By contrast, many senior army commanders advocated taking the defensive when the war began, arguing that the incomplete mobilization and serious logistic problems made taking the offensive impossible.[130] Other reasons for the defeat were:

was a prime mover in the establishment of the Balkan League and saw it as an essential tool in case of a future war against its rival, Austria-Hungary.[139] Russia was unaware of the Bulgarian plans for Thrace and Constantinople, territories for which it had long held ambitions.

Russia

not feeling ready for a war against Germany in 1912, took a position strongly against the war and firmly informed its ally Russia that it would not take part in a potential conflict between Russia and Austria-Hungary if it resulted from actions of the Balkan League. France, however, failed to achieve British participation in a common intervention to stop the conflict.

France

The , although officially a staunch supporter of the Ottoman Empire's integrity, took secret diplomatic steps encouraging the Greek entry into the League to counteract Russian influence. At the same time, it encouraged Bulgarian aspirations over Thrace since the British preferred Thrace to be Bulgarian to Russian, despite British assurances to Russia on its expansion there.

British Empire

struggling for an exit from the Adriatic and seeking ways for expansion in the south at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, was opposed to any other nation expanding in the area. At the same time, Austria-Hungary had internal problems with the significant Slavic populations that campaigned against the German–Hungarian joint control of the multinational state. Serbia, whose aspirations towards Bosnia were no secret, was considered an enemy and the primary tool of Russian machinations, which were behind the agitation of the Slav subjects. However, Austria-Hungary failed to achieve a German backup for a strong reaction. Initially, German Emperor Wilhelm II told Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand that Germany was ready to support Austria-Hungary in all circumstances, even at the risk of a world war, but the Austro-Hungarians hesitated. Finally, in the German Imperial War Council of 8 December 1912, the consensus was that Germany would not be ready for war until at least mid-1914 and notes about that passed to Austria-Hungary. Thus, no actions could be taken when the Serbs acceded to the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum of 18 October and withdrew from Albania.

Austria-Hungary

The , already heavily involved in internal Ottoman politics, officially opposed the war. However, Germany's effort to win Bulgaria for the Central Powers, since Germany saw the inevitability of Ottoman disintegration, made Germany toy with the idea of replacing the Ottomans in the Balkans with a friendly Greater Bulgaria with the borders of the Treaty of San Stefano. This was based on the German origin of the Bulgarian King Ferdinand and his anti-Russian sentiments. Finally, when tensions again grew hot in July 1914 between Serbia and Austria-Hungary, when the Black Hand, an organization backed by Serbia, assassinated Franz Ferdinand, no one had strong reservations about the possible conflict, and the First World War broke out.

German Empire

Although the Great Powers noticed the developments that led to the war, they had an official consensus over the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, which led to a stern warning to the Balkan states. However, each Great Power took a different unofficial diplomatic approach since interests conflicted. Since the mixed unofficial signals cancelled any possible preventive effect of the mutual official warning, they failed to prevent or end the war:

List of places burned during the Balkan Wars

List of Serbian–Turkish conflicts

List of wars between democracies

Journalists of the Balkan Wars

Erickson, Edward J. (2003). Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912–1913. Westport, CT: Greenwood.  0-275-97888-5.

ISBN

Fotakis, Zisis (2005). Greek Naval Strategy and Policy, 1910–1919. London: Routledge.  978-0-415-35014-3.

ISBN

Hall, Richard C. (2000). The Balkan Wars, 1912–1913: Prelude to the First World War. London: Routledge.  0-415-22946-4.

ISBN

Hooton, Edward R. (2014). Prelude to the First World War: The Balkan Wars 1912–1913. Fonthill Media.  978-1-78155-180-6.

ISBN

Langensiepen, Bernd; Güleryüz, Ahmet (1995). The Ottoman Steam Navy, 1828–1923. London: Conway Maritime Press/Bloomsbury.  0-85177-610-8.

ISBN

Michail, Eugene. "The Balkan Wars in Western Historiography, 1912–2012." in Katrin Boeckh and Sabine Rutar, eds. The Balkan Wars from Contemporary Perception to Historic Memory (Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2016) pp. 319–340.

online

Murray, Nicholas (2013). The Rocky Road to the Great War: the Evolution of Trench Warfare to 1914. Dulles, Virginia, Potomac Books  978-1-59797-553-7

ISBN

Pettifer, James. War in the Balkans: Conflict and Diplomacy Before World War I (IB Tauris, 2015).

Akmeşe, Handan Nezir (2015). The Birth of Modern Turkey: The Ottoman Military and the March to World I. I.B. Tauris.

Schurman, Jacob Gould (2004). The Balkan Wars, 1912 to 1913. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger.  1-4191-5345-5.

ISBN

Seton-Watson, R. W. (2009) [1917]. The Rise of Nationality in the Balkans. Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar.  978-1-113-88264-6.

ISBN

Trix, Frances. "Peace-mongering in 1913: the Carnegie International Commission of Inquiry and its Report on the Balkan Wars." First World War Studies 5.2 (2014): 147–162.

Uyar, Mesut; Erickson, Edward (2009). A Military History of the Ottomans: From Osman to Atatürk. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International.  978-0-275-98876-0.

ISBN

Stojančević, Vladimir. Prvi balkanski rat: okrugli sto povodom 75. godišnjice 1912–1987, 28. i 29. oktobar 1987.

Vŭchkov, Aleksandŭr (2005). . Angela. ISBN 978-954-90587-2-7.

The Balkan War 1912–1913

Ratković, Borislav (1975). [First Balkan War 1912–1913: Operations of Serbian Forces]. Istorijski institut JNA. Belgrade: Vojnoistorijski Institut.

Prvi balkanski rat 1912–1913: Operacije srpskih snaga

The Bulgarian Ministry of War (1928). Войната между България и Турция през 1912–1913 г. [The War between Bulgaria and Turkey, 1912–1913]. Vol. I, II, VI, VII. State Printing House.

Further reading

Hall, Richard C.: , in: 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.

Balkan Wars 1912–1913

Archived 14 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine

Map of Europe during First Balkan War at omniatlas.com

Films about the Balkan War at europeanfilmgateway.eu

Clemmesen, M. H. Not Just a Prelude: The First Balkan War Crisis as the Catalyst of Final European War Preparations (2012)

Archived 20 September 2018 at the Wayback Machine

Anderson, D. S. The Apple of Discord: The Balkan League and the Military Topography of the First Balkan War (1993)

Major 1914 primary sources from BYU