Romanians outside Hermannstadt

On 1 September 1916 units of the Romanian 1st Army were cautiously approaching Hermannstadt (Romanian Sibiu, Hungarian Nagyszeben), the former seat of the governors of Transylvania and the chief centre of the Transylvanian Saxons. The town was almost defenceless, and that same day two of its inhabitants offered the Romanian commander its surrender. Hermannstadt was not, however, taken. Some chronologies of the war record under this date that the Romanians captured the town, but this is untrue: according to the Austrian official history and studies based on Romanian documents, the Romanians halted a few kilometres from Hermannstadt and never occupied it.

The Romanian Olt-Lotru Group, soon renamed the 23rd Division, crossed the border during the night of 27/28 August and after several days of fighting seized the Red Tower Pass (Turnu Roșu) in the valley of the Olt. On 30 August its combined columns attacked the weak Austro-Hungarian 143rd Infantry Brigade on the line from Poplaca to Cisnădie (Heltau), which they took that day. General Béla Tanárky, commander of the Hungarian 51st Honvéd Division, which had arrived by rail to relieve the town, then had only five and a half battalions in Hermannstadt. He judged that a counter-attack had no chance and during the night of 30/31 August withdrew the defenders to the hills north of the town. On 1 September another regiment of his division arrived from Galicia at nearby Sebeș (Mühlbach) and occupied the road and railway south-east of Hermannstadt.

In the town itself only Major Reiner remained, with a single lines-of-communication battalion and an armoured train. His task was to remove military stores and state property. Most of the inhabitants fled, according to some estimates as many as two thirds. The Romanians, however, followed the retreating defenders slowly and halted on an arc of hills around the exit from the pass, from the village of Racovița through Cisnădie to Șelimbăr. On 1 September their patrols reconnoitred the roads to Hermannstadt and nearby Șelimbăr. That same day two burghers from Hermannstadt came to the headquarters of the Romanian group and, although no one had authorised them to do so, offered to surrender the town. The Romanian general did not decide on his own but asked his army headquarters for permission to occupy the town. As the Austrian official history writes, through a “grotesque chain of errors, misunderstandings and indecision” the Romanians did not occupy the almost undefended town. This did not change even on 4 September, when the commander of the 1st Army, General Ioan Culcer, came to the front in person, and the 13th Division and a cavalry brigade already stood behind the 23rd Division.

In English-language studies one can read that on 2 September Romanian artillery shelled Hermannstadt and Romanian advance units entered the town and withdrew the next day. Erich Ludendorff noted in his memoirs that “Roumanian patrols were soon seen in Hermannstadt”. Even if this was so, the Romanian army never took control of Hermannstadt. Major Reiner’s battalion remained in the town throughout September, and on 18 September even repulsed a Romanian attack on its southern suburb. Romania at that time reckoned time by the Julian calendar, so in Romanian documents 1 September was recorded as 19 August.

The hesitation outside Hermannstadt was one of the first signs of the slowness of the Romanian offensive. The Austrian official history notes that for the following weeks the Romanians stood before the town almost idle. The capture of one of the most important towns of Transylvania would have been a great political success for Romania. The Central Powers used the time the Romanians lost outside Hermannstadt to bring up reinforcements. At the end of September it was here that the German 9th Army inflicted on the Romanians their first great defeat in Transylvania.