Bucharest in the First World War

Bucharest, the capital of the Kingdom of Romania, was for two years of neutrality the place where both sides competed for the Romanian army. It was here that the decision for war with Austria-Hungary was taken in August 1916, and here that its price showed soonest: in the very first days bombs from German airships fell on the city. In December 1916 the troops of the Central Powers entered Bucharest, and the capital became the seat of the occupation authorities. The king and government returned to it only at the end of 1918.

Capital of neutral Romania

Before the war the city had about 345,000 inhabitants. Prime Minister Ion I. C. Brătianu bargained with both sides for two years, while public opinion, sympathetic to France, called for the Romanians of Transylvania. On 17 August 1916 Romania signed a secret treaty with the Entente, and on 27 August a crown council met at the Cotroceni Palace and approved the entry into the war. Only the aged Petre P. Carp spoke there for war at Germany’s side.

Bombs and evacuation (1916)

The war came to Bucharest from the air. On the night of 28–29 August 1916 the German airship LZ 101 flew over the city from Yambol in Bulgaria and dropped high-explosive and incendiary bombs. According to the newspaper “Adevărul”, for the next three months the capital was attacked by aircraft by day and by airships at night. The Bucharest Museum states that it was the third European capital, after Paris and London, to be bombed by German air forces. According to the Austrian official history, by early October the raids had killed about a thousand people in the city, while “Adevărul” counts more than 1,600 dead and wounded over the whole period.

In November, when the Germans broke through the Carpathians and Mackensen crossed the Danube, the evacuation began. The state treasury, the archives and the gold of the National Bank were taken to Iași in Moldavia, the ministries and legations left, and after them thousands of refugees who stormed the trains at the North Station. Brătianu’s cabinet left the capital on 3 December, when the counter-offensive of General Constantin Prezan in the Battle of the Argeș turned into defeat. Most of the inhabitants, with neither money nor connections, stayed in the city.

An open city

Bucharest was formally a fortress with a ring of forts, but their guns had been removed even before the declaration of war to provide heavy artillery for the field army. At Mackensen’s demand the Romanians therefore declared the capital an open city. At noon on 6 December 1916 the first units of the German Ninth Army of General Erich von Falkenhayn marched in, and the districts south of the Dâmbovița were taken by divisions of the Danube Army of Field Marshal August von Mackensen. It was his 67th birthday. The Austrian official history noted that Bucharest was the fourth enemy capital, after Brussels, Belgrade and Cetinje, taken by the Central Powers.

Under occupation (1916–1918)

By 8 December a German military administration was in place in the city, with the Romanian mayor and police prefect subordinate to it. Mackensen moved his headquarters to Bucharest and from here ruled the two-thirds of the country that had been occupied. Above all the occupiers exploited Romanian oil and grain, and the inhabitants faced wave after wave of requisitions: everything was taken, from sugar to bed linen, and metal from all over the city went into guns. Food, gas, electricity and fuel were rationed, and people had to walk across the city on foot. According to the contemporary chronicler Virgil Drăghiceanu, the military regime lasted 707 days.

The Conservative leader Alexandru Marghiloman stayed in the occupied capital and, as president of the Red Cross, acted as an intermediary between the occupiers and the population. When the revolution in Russia left Romania alone, negotiations began near Bucharest. In February 1918 at Buftea, Kühlmann and Czernin talked with Prime Minister Alexandru Averescu, and on 7 May 1918 at the Cotroceni Palace Marghiloman’s government signed the peace. Wallachia and Bucharest were to remain under occupation with no end date set, but King Ferdinand I never ratified the treaty.

The king returns (1918)

After Bulgaria’s surrender the Allied army stood on the Danube, and on 10 November 1918 Romania re-entered the war. The German troops withdrew from the capital, and according to the Bucharest Museum the evacuation of the occupiers ended on 12 November. On 30 November trains arrived from Iași with the government and the legations, and on 1 December King Ferdinand and Queen Marie rode into the capital with General Henri Berthelot at their side. On the same day the assembly at Alba Iulia proclaimed the union of Transylvania with Romania, and Bucharest became the capital of Greater Romania.