War in the Balkans

Conflict and Diplomacy before World War I

James Pettifer, Tom Buchanan, James Pettifer, Tom Buchanan

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780857739681
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The history of the Balkans incorporates all the major historical themes of the 20th Century--the rise of nationalism, communism and fascism, state-sponsored genocide and urban warfare. Focusing on the centuries opening decades, War in the Balkans seeks to shed new light on the Balkan Wars through approaching each regional and ethnic conflict as a separate actor, before placing them in a wider context. Although top-down 'Great Powers' historiography is often used to describe the beginnings of the World War I, not enough attention has been paid to the events in the region in the years preceding the Archduke Ferdinand's assassination. The Balkan Wars saw the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the end of the Bulgarian Kingdom (then one of the most powerful military countries in the region), an unprecedented hardening of Serbian nationalism, the swallowing up of Slovenes, Croats and Slovaks in a larger Balkan entity, and thus set in place the pattern of border realignments which would become familiar for much of the twentieth century.

PART I

THE CONTESTED INHERITANCE

CHAPTER 1

THE BALKAN WARS AFTER 100 YEARS

Tom Buchanan

The Balkan Wars of 1912–13 have inevitably been eclipsed by the far greater conflict that started just over a year later. Yet, in their time, they were neither negligible nor anachronistic. It is easily forgotten that the battles in eastern Thrace in the autumn of 1912 involved, as one newspaper observed, “a far larger number [of soldiers] than fought at Sedan” some 40 years earlier.¹ These were, moreover, wars conducted with many of the trappings of modernity: primitive aircraft carried out daring reconnaissance and bombing missions, medical units struggled to halt the spread of infectious disease, Bulgarian warships launched successful torpedo attacks on the Ottoman fleet, and powerful searchlights swept the battlefields by night. In addition, their consequences were profound. After five centuries, Ottoman rule over the Balkan peninsula was finally ended. The Ottomans, who lost 69 per cent of the population of their European lands and 83 per cent of the territory, were left with only a small foothold in continental Europe.² In contrast, the victorious states significantly expanded in size (both Greece and Serbia grew by 50 per cent or more) while a completely new state – Albania – came into being. The wars did not only redraw borders, but also – by precipitating fierce inter-ethnic violence – changed the balance of populations across the region. Between 1912 and 1913 some 177,000 Muslim refugees fled to Turkey, while thousands more followed (in all directions across the new borders) after the end of the two wars.³ The Ottomans had finally, as Gladstone famously demanded in 1877, been unceremoniously evicted – “bag and baggage” – from Europe. All of this took place under the watchful eyes of the great powers, occasionally eliciting their intervention, and in at least two cases – Russia and Austria-Hungary – posing a challenge to their vital interests.

Origins

The Balkan Wars had their origins in three principal developments: first, the century-long decline of the Ottoman Empire, compounded latterly by the attempts by the “Young Turks” to revive the empire’s fortunes; secondly, the emergence during the nineteenth century of independent states in the Balkans, which were eager not only to enhance their territory at the expense of the Ottomans but also to exact revenge for perceived historic wrongs; and thirdly, the intensifying rivalries between the great powers and their willingness to intervene both diplomatically and militarily in the region.

By 1900 the Ottoman Empire had a population of some 24 million: these were primarily Muslim Turks, Arabs and Kurds, but there were very substantial Greek, Jewish, and Armenian minorities. The empire had historically been based on religious tolerance, and minorities were allowed to govern their own affairs in millets so long as they paid their taxes and respected Ottoman rule. This arrangement began to break down in the nineteenth century with the rise of ethnically defined “national” identities in the Balkans. Former subject peoples began to establish independent states, and asserted their sovereignty (Greece in 1832, Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro in 1878, and Bulgaria – de jure – as late as 1908). Even so, in 1900 the Ottomans still retained control of a swathe of Balkan territory, where they governed a complex and volatile mixture of communities. However, their rule in the region was not only being undermined by external threats, but also those from within its borders. In particular, the Albanians, mainly Muslim and spread widely across the western Balkan region, began to reconsider their traditional loyalty to the Sultan in the later nineteenth century as the Porte’s ability to protect them from the ambitions of neighbouring states declined. As Bernd Fischer argues in this volume, the emergence of modern Albanian nationalism and statehood was, to some extent, a choice imposed by the collapse of Ottoman power during the Balkan Wars.

Internationally, the Ottoman Empire was protected for much of the nineteenth century by the willingness of Britain to uphold the status quo. In 1853–6 Britain and France had fought the Crimean War to resist Russian encroachments on Ottoman territory. The great powers intervened again at the Congress of Berlin, following the Ottoman defeat by Russia in the war of 1877–8, to curb the gains of Russia and its Bulgarian client. However, this situation was inherently unstable as Britain had its own interests in the region. After the construction of the Suez Canal, in 1882 Britain established a form of protectorate over Egypt (still nominally an Ottoman possession). Britain also took control of Cyprus in 1878 as a military base in the eastern Mediterranean. Moreover, the Ottomans’ increasing reliance on violence to uphold their authority (such as the “Bulgarian atrocities” of 1875 and the “Armenian massacres” of 1894–6) horrified Gladstonian liberal sentiment in Britain. The only major state that expressed strong support for Turkey by the early twentieth century was Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Constantinople in 1898, before travelling on to Jerusalem and Damascus where he pledged to be the “friend for all time” of the Sultan and the 300 million Muslims for whom he was their Caliph.⁴ Under Wilhelm II Germany increased its military advisory mission to the Ottoman army, and in 1903 a German company began work on constructing a railway from Konya to Baghdad.

As a result of the military and diplomatic crisis of 1875–8 a spasmodic reform process got underway within the Ottoman Empire. The new Sultan Abdul Hamid approved a constitution and a parliament in 1876, but from 1878 onwards reverted to governing as an autocrat. Having broken with the constitutional opposition he now had to confront an exiled opposition based in Paris. This new generation of reformers, who became known as the “Young Turks”, hoped that Western institutions would allow the modernisation of the empire and a new union of its many peoples – hence their formal title, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP: established in 1889). The “Young Turks” were a diverse movement ranging from reform-minded civilian politicians to progressive junior army officers. The young Mustafa Kemal, for instance, read widely during his first posting in Syria, and greatly admired Benjamin Franklin as a scientist, diplomat and man of virtue. He helped to found a secret “Society for the Fatherland and Liberty” in 1906, and a year later, after his return to his native Macedonia, this fused with the CUP.⁵

Increasingly the Ottoman province of Macedonia (a far larger territory than the modern state of that name) became the focus for the intense nationalist rivalries between Balkan states. It was inhabited by a highly mixed population, including Muslims (some of them Slavs) and Orthodox Christians (both Greek Orthodox and, from 1870, members of the Bulgarian exarchate). There was also a substantial Jewish population, which formed the largest community in the city of Thessaloniki (also known as Salonica or Salonika).⁶ Neighbouring Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece all aspired to control this territory, either wholly or in part. During the 1890s all three sought to strengthen their position by winning over the native Slavs, either by means of nationalist propaganda, or by promoting their educational and religious interests, or, indeed, by sponsoring political and terrorist groups. Moreover, an indigenous revolutionary movement (IMRO: Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation) aspired to autonomy or even independence for Macedonia. In 1903, in response to IMRO’s failed rebellion and the subsequent Ottoman repression, Austria and Russia imposed the Mürzsteg Programme, whereby the great powers would oversee reforms of administration and policing in order to protect minority rights. These measures failed to halt the violence, and when Edward VII met Tsar Nicholas II at Reval in June 1908 they discussed imposing further reforms on Macedonia. As a result, young Ottoman officers in Macedonia led by Enver Pasha, fearful of foreign intervention and partition, rebelled against the Sultan’s rule. Abdul Hamid swiftly agreed to restore the constitution and held elections. However, Austria-Hungary took the opportunity presented by the empire’s temporary weakness to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina (which it had administered since 1878), Bulgaria declared its full independence, and Greece accepted union (enosis) with Crete. In elections held in February 1909 the Young Turks swept to power. However, in April Abdul Hamid supported a botched counter-revolution and was forced to abdicate in favour of his brother. Therefore, although the Young Turks now tightened their grip on power, the new regime inherited a crisis in Turkey’s international relations, and a perceived vulnerability that others were quick to exploit.

In 1911 the decision by Italy to seize the Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (modern Libya) further demonstrated the empire’s weakness.⁷ The Italians swiftly captured the coastal cities, but struggled to subdue the interior. The war crept ever closer to the Balkans as Italy sought to put pressure on the Ottoman government to accept defeat. Italian forces captured the Dodecanese islands, and shelled Turkish positions in the Dardanelles in April 1912. In June the Chief of the General Staff even called for an Italian attack on Smyrna (modern Izmir). Italy’s actions inspired the Balkan states (apart from Romania) to mount their own attack. In March 1912 the traditional rivals Bulgaria and Serbia (which had fought each other as recently as 1885) signed an alliance.⁸ This contained a secret agreement for each state to seize a part of Macedonia, while Russia (Bulgaria’s historic ally) would arbitrate on the remaining contested zone. Soon afterwards bilateral agreements were made between the other Balkan states, although Bulgaria failed to predetermine a division of the spoils in its agreement with Greece. The Balkan rulers rallied their people with a call to religion and liberation: for King (or Tsar as he now preferred) Ferdinand of Bulgaria the First Balkan War was “a sacred struggle of the Cross against the Crescent”, while King Peter of Serbia described it as a war of liberation “to free our brothers by blood, by language and by custom.”⁹ However, while there is considerable evidence that soldiers of the Balkan League were motivated to fight by such rhetoric, this was essentially a war fought by an unlikely alliance of states each seeking “to achieve national unity at the expense of the increasingly decrepit Ottoman Empire…”¹⁰ It was also, however, a war to advance the interest of Balkan dynasties, as both the kings of Greece and Montenegro gave substantial military roles to their sons and heirs.

On 8 October 1912 Montenegro precipitately declared war, to be followed ten days later by its larger allies. The League brought together four relatively small and economically under-developed states (with a combined population of just over ten million) against a powerful adversary. However, the Balkan states enjoyed a number of significant military advantages. The Ottoman Empire was still undergoing a major military reorganisation initiated in 1910, and the recent introduction of conscription for Christian and other minorities meant that the loyalty of some of its soldiers was suspect. The Ottoman armed forces also faced severe shortages of draft animals (used for moving both artillery and supplies), medical supplies, and trained personnel in engineering, telegraphy and other specialist areas.¹¹ In addition, the Ottomans were hampered by the sheer extent of their domains, given that the war against Italy continued until October 1912, and revolt was simmering in distant Yemen. Accordingly, the Balkan states were able to seize the initiative in Thrace and Macedonia and dictate the course of the war. Bulgaria, in particular, had invested heavily in its military and was able to field a large, well-equipped and well-motivated army. As the politician Vasil Radoslavov observed: “We have not spent 950 million leva on the army just to look at it in parades.”¹² Likewise Greece, which had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Ottoman forces in 1897, had embarked on significant political and military reform in 1910 under the leadership of the liberal populist Eleftherios Venizelos.¹³ In particular, Greece’s navy proved a powerful weapon. It swiftly won control of the Aegean, captured a number of islands, pinned down Ottoman coastal garrisons, and prevented Ottoman forces from deploying by sea in the theatre of war.

The Fi...