Capture of Belgrade

On 9 October 1915 Austro-Hungarian and German troops took Belgrade. Three days earlier the artillery of General Hermann Kövess’s army had opened the Central Powers’ attack on Serbia, and on the night of 6–7 October his infantry forced the Sava and the Danube at the foot of the Serbian capital. For two days and nights the Austro-Hungarian 59th Infantry Division clung to the riverbank below the fortress, while the Serbs tried again and again to push it into the river. On the evening of 8 October, however, the landing force broke into the streets of the city, and in the west the German XXII Reserve Corps seized the crossings over the Sava and the Banovo brdo hill.

The defenders withdraw

Shortly after midnight the commander of the defence of Belgrade, General Mihailo Živković, concluded that the city could no longer be held. His battalions, bled white after three days of shelling and hand-to-hand fighting, withdrew to the range of hills south of the city, from Vračar through Žarkovo to Ostružnica. They manned the new line at about 10 a.m. Some of the inhabitants fled the city with the army, and the soldiers marching in found empty streets and burnt-out ruins after the three-day bombardment in many districts.

The flag over Kalemegdan

At dawn a battalion of the German 43rd Reserve Division entered the southern part of Belgrade without a fight and occupied the Konak, the residence of the Serbian kings. At almost the same time units of the Austro-Hungarian 59th Division climbed the walls of the Kalemegdan fortress, and from 6 a.m. the black-and-yellow Habsburg flag flew over it. The Austro-Hungarian soldiers made contact with the Germans at the Konak. Around noon the 9th Mountain Brigade passed through the deserted streets to the southern edge of the city and linked up with the German corps, while the 18th Mountain Brigade, after a brief fight with Serbian rearguards, occupied the south-eastern exits from Belgrade. The British chronology of the war says briefly that Belgrade was occupied by Austrian troops. In reality the city was taken jointly by units of the Austro-Hungarian VIII Corps and the German XXII Reserve Corps, although they were under the command of the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army.

The fighting did not end with the fall of the city. In the afternoon Živković threw the fresh Timok Division against the Germans who had taken Banovo brdo, but was repulsed. In the evening there was fierce fighting for the Veliki Vračar hill (today the Zvezdara (PL) district), which was finally held by an Austro-Hungarian battalion supported by the fire of monitors on the Danube. The Serbs were still holding on to Dedinje hill. All day pontoons and ferries carried further units across to the Serbian bank, and on the night of 9–10 October the Austro-Hungarian 57th Infantry Division entered the fighting.

In enemy hands for the second time

This was already the second time in this war that the enemy had entered Belgrade. The first time the Austrians occupied the abandoned city on 2 December 1914, but after only two weeks, following the defeat on the Kolubara, they had to withdraw from it. This time it was different. Kövess was in no hurry to pursue. Field Marshal August von Mackensen, who commanded the whole expedition against Serbia, ordered him on the night of 9–10 October to consolidate his gains and to advance further only after careful artillery preparation. By 11 October the troops of the 3rd Army had occupied the semicircle of hills south of Belgrade. The city was to remain under Austro-Hungarian occupation until November 1918.

The capture of the capital was an important propaganda success for the Central Powers, but it did not decide the outcome of the campaign. The Serbian army was retreating in good order, and only a few days later it was also to be attacked from the east, by the Bulgarians. The losses of the attackers showed how hard the fighting for Belgrade had been. According to the Austrian official history, the 59th Infantry Division had lost more than a thousand men by 9 October, and the German XXII Reserve Corps about the same.