Capture of Kragujevac

Early on 1 November 1915 the troops of the Central Powers entered Kragujevac, a town in the heart of Šumadija. The Serbs did not defend it. The day before they had blown up the ammunition stocks and workshops of the arsenal, the only arms factory in the country, and withdrawn southwards. Field Marshal August von Mackensen had hoped to trap the main Serbian forces in a pocket here and decide the campaign. All he took, however, was an empty town.

Arsenal and headquarters

Kragujevac was a special place for the Serbs. In 1818 Prince Miloš Obrenović made it the first capital of the revived principality. In the mid-19th century a cannon foundry was established there, from which grew the state armaments works, commonly called the arsenal. In 1914 the town housed the Serbian Supreme Command, from which Vojvoda Radomir Putnik, himself a native of Kragujevac, directed the victorious Battle of the Kolubara. In the autumn of 1915 the arsenal was still the only Serbian source of weapons and ammunition, although even working at full capacity it could not meet the army’s needs.

After the fall of Belgrade General Max von Gallwitz’s German Eleventh Army advanced up the Morava valley, and General Hermann Kövess’s Austro-Hungarian Third Army through the hills of Šumadija from the west. The Bulgarians attacked from the east, and their Second Army took Skopje, cutting the Serbs off from Salonika. Mackensen wanted to force the Serbian army into a decisive battle in front of Kragujevac and envelop it from three sides. On 30 October he issued his orders: the Eleventh Army was to strike straight at the town, while the Third Army was to go round it from the west through Čačak and cut the Serbs’ route into the valley of the West Morava. The Austrian official history calls the fighting of 29 October – 1 November the Battle of Kragujevac.

An empty town

No great battle took place. The Serbian command had already moved to Kruševac, and whatever could be removed from the arsenal was taken away by rail and by motor vehicle. On 31 October the German III Corps occupied the trenches on the northern approaches to Kragujevac without meeting strong resistance, while Austro-Hungarian units were nearing the town from the north-west. The roar of explosions could be heard from the direction of Kragujevac. The Serbs were destroying the ammunition stocks and the workshops of the arsenal. Airmen reported that Serbian columns were moving off to the south. On the same day Putnik ordered his armies to retreat behind the West Morava, towards Kraljevo and Kruševac. In the afternoon Mackensen, disappointed that the enemy had slipped out of the pocket, ordered a vigorous pursuit.

According to the Austrian official history, early on 1 November a delegation of townspeople handed the Germans a written capitulation of the town, and at about four in the morning the first units of the German 25th Reserve Division entered it. At eight in the morning a patrol of the Austro-Hungarian 57th Infantry Division hoisted the black-and-yellow Habsburg flag over the barracks. This led to an unpleasant dispute between the allies over who had taken the town first. In the afternoon the Austrians drove the Serbian rearguards off a hill south-west of Kragujevac. The dates in the sources differ. British war chronicles written during the war give 30 October, and the American monthly Current History gives 2 November, when the news reached the press. The Austrian official history describes the entry of the troops in detail and dates it to 1 November.

The spoils were modest. The British history of the war published by Nelson wrote that the victors found in the town only a few old field guns and several thousand damaged rifles. The British correspondent Gordon Gordon-Smith, who was then at Serbian headquarters, was told there that ten thousand tents, thousands of uniforms, hundreds of thousands of cartridges and thousands of shells had been destroyed at Kragujevac, and that the rifle and gun factory had been blown up. For the Serbs it was a painful loss. From then on they could rely only on the ammunition they carried with them.

The fall of Kragujevac meant the loss of Šumadija, the core of old Serbia, where a year earlier the fortunes of war had turned in the Serbs’ favour. The Serbian army had, however, escaped encirclement and was retreating into the mountains south of the Morava. Kragujevac later found itself in the Austro-Hungarian zone of occupation.