Germany declares war on Romania

On Monday 28 August 1916 the Wolff Agency in Berlin issued a short communiqué. Since Romania, “breaking in a shameful manner the treaties concluded with Austria-Hungary and Germany”, had the previous evening declared war on the Reich’s ally, the imperial minister in Bucharest had been instructed to ask for his passports and to declare to the Romanian government that the German Empire henceforth also considered itself at war with Romania. Thus, less than a day after the Romanian minister in Vienna had handed over the declaration of war and Romanian advance guards had crossed the Carpathian passes, Germany took its stand beside Austria-Hungary against the new enemy.

On the same day Italy, which had been fighting Austria-Hungary for more than a year but was formally still at peace with the Reich, declared war on Germany. For Berlin, however, this was a largely formal gesture. Romania’s entry into the war was a far more serious blow.

An alliance that ceased to exist

The German note spoke of broken treaties for good reason. In 1883 Romania had concluded a secret alliance with Austria-Hungary, which Germany joined on the same day. It bound Bucharest to the Triple Alliance and was renewed several times, most recently in 1913. The guarantor of this policy was King Carol I, a prince of the Catholic line of the Hohenzollerns of Sigmaringen. In the summer of 1914, however, the Crown Council, against the king’s wishes, decided that the alliance was defensive and did not apply, since Austria-Hungary had itself started the war without consulting Bucharest. Romania declared neutrality, and after Carol’s death in October 1914 the throne passed to his nephew Ferdinand I.

The new king was also a Hohenzollern born in Sigmaringen, brought up and educated in Germany. His wife, Queen Marie, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, openly favoured the Entente, and the prime minister, Ion I.C. Brătianu, had for two years been negotiating with it over the price of entering the war. For Wilhelm II a kinsman’s turning against the Central Powers was a personal affront. According to an often repeated, though poorly documented, account, the Kaiser had Ferdinand’s name struck from the register of the House of Hohenzollern.

Germany was also bound to Romania by business interests. German capital, above all the Deutsche Bank and the Disconto-Gesellschaft, controlled a large part of the Romanian oil industry around Ploiești. During its neutrality Romania sold the Central Powers grain and oil, which Germany and Austria-Hungary, cut off by the British blockade, badly needed. In Bucharest there was a pro-German party headed by the former prime minister Petre P. Carp and Alexandru Marghiloman. As late as 27 August representatives of this camp opposed entry into the war at the Crown Council, but the decision had already been taken: on 17 August Brătianu had signed a political treaty and a military convention with the Entente.

Surprise at Pless

At headquarters in Pless the news from Vienna arrived on the evening of 27 August. For the Austrians it was no surprise. For weeks their intelligence had been intercepting and reading radio messages showing that Romania’s negotiations with the Entente were nearing completion, and had passed them on to the Germans. The chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, however, trusted the reports coming from Bucharest more. According to the Austrian official history he even went so far as to suppose that the intercepted messages had been fabricated to force Germany to send troops against Romania. He believed that the Romanians would not move before gathering in that year’s exceptionally rich harvest, that is, not before mid-September. When 14 August, the day regarded as the likely date of a Romanian declaration, passed quietly, he was confirmed in this belief.

On the Kaiser, who shared Falkenhayn’s view, the news fell, as the Austrian official history puts it, “like a bolt from the blue”. According to accounts from his entourage, Wilhelm II at first sank into despondency and said that the war was lost. His fears were not groundless. Romania could field about 23 divisions, and its army stretched along the almost 700-kilometre border of Transylvania. Facing it stood only the newly formed Austro-Hungarian First Army, which by Austrian reckoning numbered about 34,000 men and 76 guns at the moment of the Romanian attack. The three Romanian armies which on the night of 27–28 August set off into Transylvania totalled about 369,000 men. Meanwhile Germany and Austria-Hungary had for two months been struggling to patch up the front in the east, broken by the Brusilov Offensive, and in the west were repelling British and French attacks on the Somme, with no reserves to spare.

Paul von Hindenburg later wrote in his memoirs that never before in world history had so small a state as Romania played so important and decisive a role, and never had two great powers been so much at the mercy of a country with barely one twentieth of their population. In his view the Romanians had only to march wherever they wished to tip the scales of the war.

Hindenburg summoned

Soon after receiving the news the Kaiser, on the advice of the chief of his Military Cabinet, General Moriz von Lyncker, summoned by telephone to Pless Hindenburg and his chief of staff Erich Ludendorff, who then commanded most of the Eastern Front. Formally it was a matter of a conference, but summoning a front commander to the Kaiser over the head of the chief of the General Staff left no room for doubt. Falkenhayn rightly understood it as proof that he had lost the monarch’s confidence. For months he had been criticised for the bloody and fruitless offensive at Verdun, and the Romanian affair was the last straw. On 28 August Falkenhayn asked to be relieved.

The very day on which Germany declared war on Romania was thus his last day in office. In the morning he still held a conference at Pless with the Austro-Hungarian chief of the General Staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf. Both agreed that the war against Romania had to be waged offensively, since there would never be enough troops for a passive defence of the 700-kilometre Transylvanian border. Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg also travelled to Pless. The next day, 29 August, the Kaiser accepted Falkenhayn’s resignation and appointed Hindenburg in his place, with Ludendorff as his closest collaborator.

The plan for war with Romania

Despite the surprise, the Central Powers had a plan ready. On 28 July, at Conrad’s request, the chiefs of staff of Germany and Austria-Hungary met at Pless with the commander-in-chief of the Bulgarian army, General Nikola Zhekov. They agreed that Romania was to be told that if it joined the Entente it would face “joint energetic action by Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey”, and concluded an agreement for the event of war. On 3 August in Budapest the Turkish commander-in-chief, Enver Pasha, acceded to it.

The plan called for the fastest and strongest possible blow, to keep the war away from Bulgarian and, as far as possible, Austro-Hungarian soil. German and Austro-Hungarian troops were to pin down as many Romanian forces as possible from the north with feint operations. The Bulgarians were to strike from the border of Dobruja at the Danube crossings at Silistra and Tutrakan, covering the flank of the main force. The main force, in turn, was to cross the Danube near Svishtov and strike at Bucharest. In northern Bulgaria an army was to be formed of four Bulgarian infantry divisions and a Bulgarian cavalry division, one German division and two Turkish ones. Austria-Hungary provided the Danube flotilla and heavy bridging equipment, which had already been secretly brought down the Danube at the beginning of August. Falkenhayn promised to send four or five infantry divisions and one or two cavalry divisions to Transylvania, but did not want to keep them there in advance, as they would be missed on other fronts. Moving them over Transylvania’s poor railways could take about four weeks.

The details were long disputed. Conrad wanted to cross the Danube as quickly as possible and advance on Bucharest, and on 10 August he even proposed entering Romania without a declaration of war as soon as the intercepted messages confirmed its agreement with the Entente. Falkenhayn and Zhekov believed that the Bulgarians should first advance deep into Dobruja and shorten the front to its narrowest point between the Danube and the Black Sea. This suited the Bulgarians, who wanted above all to fight for lands they regarded as their own.

Mackensen on the Danube

The key figure in this plan was Field Marshal August von Mackensen, the conqueror of Serbia in 1915. At the end of August he handed over command of the Macedonian front to the Bulgarians and took command of the forces in northern Bulgaria. Under him were the Bulgarian Third Army of General Stefan Toshev, the fortresses of Vidin, Ruse, Shumen and Varna, a small German detachment under Colonel von Kaufmann, an Austro-Hungarian bridging group and the Danube flotilla, reinforced by a German motor-boat flotilla. On 28 August, Falkenhayn’s last day in office, Mackensen was ordered to strike as soon as possible, with the direction and objective left to him.

The trouble was that Bulgaria was still not at war with Romania. For several days Berlin and Pless did not know whether Sofia would honour its alliance obligations. Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria and the prime minister, Vasil Radoslavov, held back, and the Romanians, encouraged by the Russians, tempted the Bulgarians with promises over Dobruja. Turkey declared war on Romania two days after Germany, and Bulgaria only on 1 September.

What came next

The German declaration of war opened a new front, which the new leadership of the German army decided to close by an offensive. As early as 29 August Hindenburg and Ludendorff halted the Danube crossing and ordered Mackensen first to advance into Dobruja. In Transylvania the German Ninth Army began to be formed, and in September Falkenhayn himself took command of it, as compensation for the loss of his post. The campaign which in August had seemed a catastrophe at Pless brought the Central Powers one of the greatest victories of the war in the autumn: on 6 December 1916 Mackensen’s troops entered Bucharest, and Romanian grain and oil fell into German hands.