Belgrade in the First World War

Belgrade, the capital of the Kingdom of Serbia, lay right on the border with Austria-Hungary, on a high bank where the Sava flows into the Danube. That is why the war reached it first: on the night of 28–29 July 1914 the first shells of the war fell on it. The enemy entered the city twice, in December 1914 for less than two weeks, and in October 1915 for three years of occupation. On 1 November 1918 the Serbian army recovered Belgrade, and a month later it became the capital of a new state of the South Slavs.

A city on the front line (1914)

Across the Sava lay Zemun, then Hungarian, linked to Belgrade by a railway bridge. The government knew that the capital would be within range of the guns, and as early as 25 July 1914 Regent Alexander decided to move the government, parliament and administration to Niš. A few hours after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, river monitors, and at dawn the batteries in Zemun, opened fire on the city. The Serbs managed to blow up the bridge over the Sava before the enemy could use it.

Through the summer and autumn Belgrade was a front-line city. In September its defenders even crossed the Sava and took Zemun, but came back after a few days. At the end of November, during the third Austro-Hungarian offensive, the Serbian command shortened its front on the Kolubara and gave up the capital without a fight. On 2 December, the 66th anniversary of Franz Joseph I’s accession, General Oskar Potiorek reported to the Emperor that the city had been taken. The rejoicing did not last. After their defeat in the Battle of the Kolubara the Austro-Hungarians withdrew across the rivers on the night of 14–15 December, and on 15 December the Serbs returned to Belgrade.

Fall and occupation (1915–1918)

In the autumn of 1915 the Central Powers came back with much larger forces. As part of the conquest of Serbia, Field Marshal August von Mackensen sent against Belgrade the Austro-Hungarian Third Army of General Hermann Kövess, reinforced by a German corps and the heaviest artillery. On the night of 6–7 October, after two days of shelling, its infantry crossed the Sava and the Danube. For two days and nights the defenders of Belgrade under General Mihailo Živković tried to push the landing force back into the river. On 9 October the Habsburg flag was flying over the Kalemegdan fortress, and the Germans occupied the Konak, the residence of the Serbian kings.

The city was ruined and emptied. According to the “Encyclopedia of Modern Europe”, of the roughly 90,000 inhabitants before the war, between seven and twelve thousand remained in October 1915, and in 1916 the occupiers already counted forty-eight thousand. Belgrade was the seat of the Austro-Hungarian Military General Governorate, which ran the Austro-Hungarian part of occupied Serbia. The occupiers closed the university and banned the Cyrillic alphabet, and requisitions brought the population to the brink of starvation.

The historian Tamara Scheer, who studied daily life in occupied Belgrade, described it as an environment of “pseudo-peace”. Austro-Hungarian officers and officials were allowed to bring their families to the city, and society was divided into the officers and those who shared their comforts, and everyone else.

Liberation and a new capital (1918)

In the autumn of 1918, after the breakthrough on the Macedonian front, the Serbian First Army of Vojvoda Petar Bojović marched north. Kövess, who in October took command in Belgrade of all the Central Powers’ troops in Serbia, Montenegro and Albania, decided to withdraw them across the Danube and the Sava. On 1 November the last of the occupying soldiers left for the far bank, blowing up the bridges behind them, and the Serbs marched into the city. They did not shell it, so that the destruction of 1915 would not be repeated.

Ruined Belgrade quickly became a centre of high politics. At the beginning of November Regent Alexander arrived, and on 13 November a military convention with Hungary was signed there. The royal palace was uninhabitable, so the regent stayed in the Krsmanović house, and there on 1 December 1918 he proclaimed the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In December the government returned, having left the capital in July 1914. Food and medicines were short, and typhus and Spanish flu were spreading, but Belgrade became the political, economic and cultural centre of the new kingdom.