Start of peace talks in Bucharest

On 24 February 1918 (11 February by the Julian calendar, which Romania used) peace talks between Romania and the Central Powers began at Buftea near occupied Bucharest. The German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Richard von Kühlmann, and the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, Ottokar Czernin, met that day with the Romanian prime minister, General Alexandru Averescu. This date is given by Czernin in his memoirs, and both ministers also cited it in a note they sent to Averescu a few days later. According to Romanian historians, the ministers had arrived in Bucharest a day earlier, on 23 February. The British chronology of the war records the start of the negotiations under 25 February.

The talk at Buftea

Both ministers had the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk behind them. On 9 February the Central Powers had concluded peace with Ukraine there, and since 18 February German troops had been advancing deep into Russia, forcing the Bolsheviks to accept peace. Romania, governed since Mackensen’s ultimatum by the Averescu cabinet, which was meant to play for time, was completely isolated. Kühlmann and Czernin met the prime minister in private at the palace of Prince Barbu Știrbey at Buftea, some twenty kilometres from Bucharest.

The talk was short. According to Czernin, practically the only subject was Dobruja. The Austro-Hungarian demands for a “frontier rectification” in the Carpathians were barely touched on, and economic matters, which later became one of the main subjects of the negotiations, were only mentioned in passing. The Central Powers had agreed beforehand that Romania would give up Dobruja as far as the Danube. Part of that region, won by the Romanians from Bulgaria in 1913, had been promised to the Bulgarians while Emperor Franz Joseph was still alive, as a reward for entering the war. The Bulgarians, however, demanded the whole of Dobruja with the mouth of the Danube, and in Berlin and Vienna it was feared that, if disappointed, they might abandon the alliance. Averescu replied that the surrender of Dobruja was impossible. Czernin took this as a non possumus, equivalent to breaking off the talks.

The road to the preliminary peace

The Austro-Hungarian minister did not want a breakdown. He promised that Romania would retain free access to the sea through Constanța and proposed that Averescu arrange a meeting for him with King Ferdinand. He wanted to convince the monarch that he could still conclude a peace now, painful but one that would let him keep his crown, whereas continuing the war would mean the end of the kingdom and the dynasty. The meeting took place on 27 February in a saloon car at the station of Răcăciuni (PL) in Moldavia. There Czernin demanded an answer from the king within 48 hours.

On 1 March the Central Powers confirmed in a note to Averescu the “bases for negotiation” set out at Buftea: the cession of Dobruja up to the Danube while securing Romania a route to the Black Sea, acceptance of the Austro-Hungarian frontier corrections, and appropriate economic concessions. On 2 March they denounced the armistice. After a three-day Crown Council at Iași Romania accepted the terms, and on 5 March at Buftea the minister Constantin Argetoianu signed the preliminary peace. The definitive Treaty of Bucharest was concluded on 7 May 1918 by the government of Alexandru Marghiloman, but King Ferdinand never ratified it.