Serbia in the First World War

Serbia was the first country to be attacked in the First World War. On 28 July 1914 Austria-Hungary declared war on it, and in 1914 its army repelled three successive invasions. In autumn 1915 Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria occupied the country, and the army, with the king and the government, escaped across the mountains of Albania to the Adriatic. Rebuilt on Corfu, the army then fought on the Salonika front, broke through the Bulgarian front in September 1918 and returned to Belgrade on 1 November. Relative to its population, the war cost Serbia more than any other state, but it brought union with the South Slavs of Austria-Hungary.

The road to war

In 1903 a bloody coup in Belgrade overthrew the Obrenović dynasty and put Peter I Karađorđević on the throne. Serbia’s relations with the Habsburg monarchy quickly worsened, culminating in the “Pig War” over imports of Serbian pork. The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 set off the Bosnian crisis, and Serbia called up its reservists. In the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 Serbia defeated first Turkey and then Bulgaria, and by the Peace of Bucharest it gained, together with Greece, almost the whole of Macedonia. It came out of these wars exhausted, in debt and without reserves.

On 28 June 1914 Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb linked to the Young Bosnia movement, shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. There is strong evidence that the assassins were helped by officers of the secret Black Hand organisation, but the government of Nikola Pašić did not want war. On 23 July Vienna handed Serbia an ultimatum with a 48-hour deadline. On 25 July Serbia ordered general mobilisation, and the government, parliament and administration moved to Niš. The same day the Austro-Hungarian minister declared the reply unsatisfactory and left Belgrade.

Three victories in 1914

The war began with the shelling of Belgrade on the night of 28–29 July. Serbia mobilised about 400,000 soldiers, and Montenegro stood at its side. In mid-August the troops of General Oskar Potiorek crossed the Sava and the Drina, but the commander-in-chief, Vojvoda Radomir Putnik, threw against them the Second Army of General Stepa Stepanović. In the Battle of Cer the Serbs routed the invaders and won the first Allied victory of the war.

In September the Serbian army briefly entered Austro-Hungarian Syrmia, and in the mountains along the Drina it halted the second invasion. There the front turned into trench warfare. Together with the Montenegrins, the Serbs also advanced into Bosnia and came close to Sarajevo, but in October they had to withdraw across the Drina.

The third invasion proved the most dangerous. Exhausted and short of ammunition, the Serbs fell back behind the Kolubara, and on 2 December the Austro-Hungarians occupied the abandoned Belgrade. The next day the First Army of General Živojin Mišić struck from Suvobor and in the Battle of the Kolubara routed Potiorek’s armies, and Potiorek lost his command. On 15 December the Serbs returned to Belgrade.

The victories cost both sides dearly. According to Austro-Hungarian figures, the monarchy lost 273,813 men on the Balkan front in 1914, while Serbia paid for its victories with losses of 2,110 officers, 8,074 NCOs and 153,373 soldiers. In winter the exhausted country fell victim to an epidemic of typhus, which in the first months of 1915 killed, according to the Serbian historian Mile Bjelajac, about 27,000 soldiers.

Defeat in 1915 and the retreat through Albania

For most of 1915 the Serbian front was quiet, while the Entente courted Bulgaria in vain and urged Greece and Romania to help Serbia. On 6 September Bulgaria concluded a secret alliance with Germany, which promised it Serbian Macedonia. On 6 October the armies of Field Marshal August von Mackensen began the conquest of Serbia, on 9 October they took Belgrade, and on 14 October Bulgaria struck from the east. The Bulgarians cut the railway to Salonika, and Greece refused to help Serbia. The French and British, who had landed at Salonika, failed to break through to the north.

Putnik did not let himself be encircled either at Kragujevac or on the Field of Kosovo. On 5 November the Bulgarians took Niš, the wartime capital, and an attempt to break through to the French at Kačanik failed. At the end of November the army, the king, the government and crowds of refugees set off across the snow-covered mountains of Montenegro and Albania towards the Adriatic. They died of hunger, cold and disease and in attacks. The Allies carried the survivors to the Greek island of Corfu and to Bizerte in Tunisia, 153,000 soldiers and recruits in all according to Bjelajac. On Corfu alone another 4,847 of them died between 23 January and 23 March 1916.

The Salonika front and the return

The rebuilt Serbian army returned to the front on 25 July 1916, this time in Macedonia, under the command of General Maurice Sarrail. In August it withstood a Bulgarian attack at Florina, on 30 September the Drina Division took Kajmakčalan and the Serbs stood on their own soil again. In the battle on the Crna the Allies took Bitola on 19 November, the first Serbian town recovered from the enemy. After that the front stood still for almost two years, and the spring offensive on the Vardar in 1917 changed nothing.

The decision came in September 1918. General Louis Franchet d’Espérey adopted a Serbian plan for an attack in the mountains, championed by Vojvoda Mišić. On 15 September Serbs and French stormed the Dobro Pole ridge and tore the Bulgarian front apart, and on 29 September Bulgaria signed an armistice.

The Serbian armies pressed on northwards. On 12 October Serbian infantry entered Niš, and on 1 November the First Army of General Petar Bojović marched into Belgrade. For Serbia, which since 6 August 1914 had also been at war with Germany, the fighting ended with the Armistice of Compiègne on 11 November 1918. On 13 November in Belgrade Hungary signed a military convention with the Allies.

The home front and the occupation

On 5 December 1914 a coalition government under Pašić was formed in Niš, and on 7 December it declared that Serbia would fight on until victory. The liberation and unification of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes became the aim of the war. In exile Pašić came to terms with the émigré Yugoslav Committee of Ante Trumbić, with whom he signed the Corfu Declaration on 20 July 1917.

Ruined and indebted after the Balkan Wars, Serbia fought the war on its allies’ money. To keep the army, the refugees and the prisoners it needed 30 million francs a month, which the Allies, after the defeat of 1915, paid it until 1919. The gold reserves were taken to France in December 1914, and the dinar lost only 10 per cent of its value during the war. In 1915 the country, which had just 360 doctors and medical staff, hosted fifteen foreign medical missions, among them the women’s hospitals of the Scottish doctor Elsie Inglis.

Occupied Serbia was divided between Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. In the Austro-Hungarian Military General Governorate the University of Belgrade was closed and the Cyrillic script banned, and requisitions brought the population to the brink of starvation. Between 150,000 and 200,000 civilians were deported to camps in Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. Early in 1917 the Toplica uprising broke out, joined by about 13,000 people. To crush it the occupiers used 26,000 soldiers.

The end of the war and the reckoning

The war gave Serbia what it had fought for. On 1 December 1918 Regent Alexander proclaimed in Belgrade the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which Montenegro also entered, having been united with Serbia a few days earlier. Serbia paid a huge price for it. It mobilised between 707,000 (US War Department figures) and 1.01 million men (Yugoslav government figures for the International Labour Office). The number of soldiers killed or dead ranges from 127,500 according to Ellis and Cox to 450,000 according to Serbian estimates. Counting the civilian victims of hunger, epidemics and camps, the war took between 16.1 and 27.8 per cent of Serbia’s inhabitants, more than in any other state.