Battle of Hermannstadt

The Battle of Hermannstadt was the first major victory of the Central Powers in the campaign against Romania and the first battle in which the new German 9th Army of General Erich von Falkenhayn took on the Romanian Army. From 26 to 29 September 1916 three German and Austro-Hungarian divisions attacked from the north the Romanian I Corps, which had been standing idle before Hermannstadt since early September, while the mountain Alpenkorps crossed the ridges to its rear and cut the road in the Red Tower Pass (Turnu Roșu). The Romanians managed to break out of the tightening ring, but in disorder, leaving behind prisoners, guns and baggage trains. Falkenhayn did not destroy I Corps, as he had intended, but he cleared the Hermannstadt basin and could turn against the Romanian 2nd Army near Brașov.

Name and dates

The Austrian official history calls this engagement the Battle of Hermannstadt (Schlacht bei Hermannstadt), Romanian historiography the Battle of Sibiu (Bătălia de la Sibiu), and English-language literature uses the names Battle of Hermannstadt and Battle of Nagyszeben, after the German and Hungarian names of the town. The battle was part of the wider Battle of Transylvania, the campaign in which the Central Powers drove the Romanians out of Transylvania.

We adopt the dates 26–29 September 1916, following the Austrian official history and Romanian historiography. The attack began on the morning of 26 September, although one of the Hungarian divisions had already taken a forward hill in front of the Romanian positions on the evening of 25 September. The last Romanian units left the battlefield on the morning of 29 September, and at noon that day the Romanian rearguard came down from the mountains. Romania was then using the Julian calendar, so in Romanian documents the battle lasted from 13 to 16 September.

The Romanians never took Hermannstadt itself. In the first days of September they halted a few kilometres from the town but did not occupy it, and some accounts mention at most Romanian patrols that appeared in the town. The statement in some chronologies that on 29 September the Austrians “recaptured” Hermannstadt is therefore inaccurate. The battle was fought south of the town, which remained in Austro-Hungarian hands throughout.

Background

Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary on 27 August 1916. Its 1st Army under General Ioan Culcer crossed the Southern Carpathians at three points: at Hermannstadt, in the Petroșani basin and on the Danube near Orsova. At Hermannstadt the so-called Olt-Lotru group (later the 23rd Division) took the Red Tower Pass and by 31 August had driven the weak Austro-Hungarian 143rd Infantry Brigade and the arriving battalions of the Hungarian 51st Honvéd Division back onto the hills north of the town. The Romanians, however, halted on the arc of hills around the exit of the pass, from the village of Racovița through Cisnădie (Heltau) to Șelimbăr (Schellenberg), and did not enter the almost defenceless town. For the next three weeks they stood there almost idle. From 14 September the units at Hermannstadt, namely the 13th and 23rd Divisions and the 1st Cavalry (Călărași) Brigade, formed I Corps under General Ioan Popovici.

Meanwhile the fortunes of the campaign began to turn. After the defeat at Turtucaia the Romanian high command transferred some troops from Transylvania to the Danube, halted the offensive in Transylvania on 9 September and on 15 September decided to shift the main effort to the south. The Central Powers, where after Hindenburg’s appointment as Chief of the General Staff the Hindenburg–Ludendorff duo had taken over the high command, brought divisions to Transylvania from other fronts. Assembled at Hermannstadt were the German 187th Division, the 76th Reserve Division, General Egon von Schmettow’s cavalry corps and the Alpenkorps, a German mountain division that had previously fought in the Tyrol, Serbia and at Verdun, among other places. On 17 September Falkenhayn, dismissed at the end of August as Chief of the General Staff, arrived in Transylvania, and on 19 September he took command of the new 9th Army. General Hermann von Staabs’s group had just recaptured the Petroșani basin with its coal mines.

Falkenhayn’s plan

The first order from German headquarters instructed the 9th Army to defeat the Romanians at Hermannstadt by striking both flanks. After reconnaissance, however, Falkenhayn concluded that the wooded slopes of the Cibin Mountains and the Făgăraș Mountains were too difficult for such a manoeuvre. He noticed instead that it was possible to follow the ridge of the Cibin Mountains all the way to above the Red Tower Pass, the only road by which the Romanians could withdraw down the Olt valley into Wallachia. General Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen’s Alpenkorps was to cross the mountains to the Romanian rear and cut the road in the pass, while Staabs’s XXXIX Reserve Corps (187th Division, 51st Honvéd Division and 76th Reserve Division) struck from the north towards the exit of the pass. Schmettow’s cavalry was to cover the left flank against the Romanian 2nd Army, which stood further east on the Olt, and to reach the entrance of the pass from the east across the Olt. The divisions were to bypass Hermannstadt itself to spare the town, a cultural centre of the Transylvanian Saxons.

On 22 September the Alpenkorps began its climb into the mountains. For several days it marched along ridges at over 2,000 metres, across the Cindrel peak, and the Romanians paid it almost no attention. General Popovici received reports of German units in the mountains and asked for reinforcements, but General Culcer refused, because he was planning the 1st Army’s main operations in the Jiu valley. The high command, preoccupied with the Danube front, merely instructed the 2nd Army to reinforce one detachment if necessary and to move its cavalry westwards.

According to the Austrian official history, the forces of the two sides on the eve of the battle were similar: 35 German and Austro-Hungarian battalions of 500–600 rifles each against 25 Romanian battalions at full strength. Falkenhayn, however, had a huge superiority in artillery: 54 batteries, including three batteries of 21 cm mortars, against 16 Romanian batteries, of which only two had howitzers.

Course of the battle

26 September. From the morning the artillery of the Central Powers shelled the Romanian trenches. On the western flank the German 187th Division under General Edwin Sunkel took the villages of Gura Râului and Poplaca after heavy fighting, but the Romanian 23rd Division held the hills to the south of them. The 51st Honvéd Division approached the Romanian positions and stalled, while the 76th Reserve Division repulsed a Romanian counter-attack from Șelimbăr. Schmettow’s cavalry forded the Olt and approached the entrance of the pass from the east. The most important events took place in the mountains: the Alpenkorps came down to the road in the pass at several points between Boița and Câineni. Popovici realised that he was in danger of being cut off and threw his reserves into the pass, while smaller Romanian units attacked the Germans from the south. The Bavarians failed to cross to the eastern bank of the Olt or to widen their blocking position. Falkenhayn was dissatisfied with the first day: Staabs was advancing slowly, and there had been no news from the Alpenkorps all day.

27 September. After a heavy artillery preparation XXXIX Reserve Corps renewed its attack. The 187th Division threw the Romanian 23rd Division back across a stream, took and lost again the village of Cisnădioara (Michelsberg), and the 51st Honvéd Division approached Cisnădie and Șelimbăr. The Alpenkorps found itself in a difficult position. Five Romanian battalions attacked it with determination, and from the south battalions of the Romanian 20th Division, brought up from the Danube, were climbing the mountains to open the pass from the Wallachian side. The Germans had to give up the road in the pass along almost its entire length and could only keep it under fire. That day the Romanian high command at last ordered the 2nd Army under General Grigore Crăiniceanu to come to the rescue. The orders, however, left Brașov only in the early afternoon, and the divisions of the 2nd Army, previously pulled far to the rear, had to march several dozen kilometres.

28 September. The Romanian I Corps was exhausted by its losses, and reports that the pass had been closed, together with German aerial bombs dropped on stations and headquarters, broke its morale. Attacked from the front by the 187th Division and from the rear by the Alpenkorps, the 23rd Division fell back to a line near the village of Sadu (Zoodt), and the 13th Division, threatened by Schmettow’s cavalry, which had broken into Avrig (Freck) and closed the ring from the east, abandoned its positions without orders in the afternoon. By evening the whole corps was crowded into a small area at the exit of the pass, under fire from ever closer German batteries. Popovici could no longer count on the 2nd Army and ordered a retreat over the mountains. Three battalions with mountain artillery pushed the few, tired companies of the Alpenkorps off the slopes above the road. During the night Romanian carts, guns and columns squeezed through the pass under machine-gun fire. Almost all the artillery was saved, but many carts were hastily thrown into the Olt. The infantry escaped along paths through the Făgăraș Mountains east of the river.

29 September. In the morning the last Romanian brigade left the battlefield, and the 1st Cavalry Brigade covered the passage over the mountains until noon. In the evening the completely shattered units of I Corps gathered at Câineni and its surroundings, on the Romanian side of the mountains. The Romanian 2nd Army meanwhile was advancing westwards on a broad, extended front, but it never reached Hermannstadt. Its 6th Division ran into the German 89th Division, handed over to Falkenhayn by the Austro-Hungarian 1st Army, on 29 September and was destroyed by artillery and machine-gun fire.

Losses

According to the Austrian official history, the Romanians left behind on the battlefield 3,000 prisoners, 13 guns and much equipment. Other sources give similar numbers of prisoners. There are no complete figures for the killed and wounded on either side. It is known that the Romanian 23rd Division and part of the 13th Division suffered heavy losses, and their remnants were completely intermingled after coming down from the mountains. The Alpenkorps also suffered significant losses in the fighting for the road in the pass.

Significance

The Battle of Hermannstadt was not the victory Falkenhayn had wanted. The encirclement failed because the Alpenkorps was too weak to close the pass on its own against a desperate enemy, and the Germans had no heavy artillery in the mountains. Falkenhayn himself later admitted that in the decisive hours of the battle his army’s position had been critical, and that he had been saved above all by the irresolute conduct of the Romanian command. Romanian historiography holds that the battle was not so much won by the Germans as lost by the Romanians: for three weeks Popovici had done nothing to strengthen his position, and the 2nd Army had set out to help him too late.

Even so, the consequences of the battle were serious. The Hermannstadt basin was cleared, and the 9th Army could turn east, towards Brașov, against the weakened Romanian 2nd Army. Popovici lost his command, and his successor, General David Praporgescu, was killed in October in the fighting in the Olt valley. Within two weeks of the Battle of Hermannstadt the Romanians had been driven out of almost all of Transylvania. The Red Tower Pass, however, became the scene of bitter fighting. The Romanians held its southern part and the mountains on both sides of the valley, and the fighting with the Alpenkorps, which after the battle was given the task of holding the pass, continued in the Olt valley until November.