Prelude to Blitzkrieg

Michael B. Barrett

Description

Origins of lightning war on the Eastern Front in WWI

In contrast to the trench-war deadlock on the Western Front, combat in Romania and Transylvania in 1916 foreshadowed the lightning warfare of WWII. When Romania joined the Allies and invaded Transylvania without warning, the Germans responded by unleashing a campaign of bold, rapid infantry movements, with cavalry providing cover or pursuing the crushed foe. Hitting where least expected and advancing before the Romanians could react—even bombing their capital from a Zeppelin soon after war was declared—the Germans and Austrians poured over the formidable Transylvanian Alps onto the plains of Walachia, rolling up the Romanian army from west to east, and driving the shattered remnants into Russia. Prelude to Blitzkrieg tells the story of this largely ignored campaign to determine why it did not devolve into the mud and misery of trench warfare, so ubiquitous elsewhere.

List of Maps
Preface
List of Selected Abbreviations
1. Romania Enters the War
2. The Central Powers Respond
3. The First Dobrogea Campaign
4. Clearing Transylvania
5. The Second Dobrogea Campaign
6. Stalemate in the Mountains
7. Moldavia: The Forgotten Front
8. The Drive across Walachia
9. The Fall of Bucharest and the End of the 1916 Campaign
10. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Histoire
• World War I
• Military
• History of Europe
• Germany
• Première Guerre mondiale
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 23 octobre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253008701
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Prelude to Blitzkrieg
TWENTIETH-CENTURY BATTLES
Spencer C. Tucker, editor
Prelude to BLITZKRIEG
The 1916 Austro-German Campaign in Romania
Michael B. Barrett
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
Fax orders 812-855-7931
2013 by Michael B. Barrett
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barrett, Michael B.
Prelude to Blitzkrieg : the 1916 Austro-
German Campaign in Romania /
Michael B. Barrett.
pages cm. - (Twentieth-century battles)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00865-7 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00870-1 (electronic book) 1. World War, 1914-1918 - Campaigns - Romania. 2. Romania - History - 1914-1918. I. Title.
D565.A2B37 2013
940.4 275 - dc23
2013010181
1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14 13
To
SARA M. BARRETT
Contents
List of Maps
Preface
Selected Abbreviations

1 Romania Enters the War
2 The Central Powers Respond
3 The First Dobrogea Campaign
4 Clearing Transylvania
5 The Second Dobrogea Campaign
6 Stalemate in the Mountains
7 Moldavia: The Forgotten Front
8 The Drive across Walachia
9 The Fall of Bucharest and the End of the 1916 Campaign

10 Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Maps

MAP 1 Transylvanian-Romanian Theater of Operations
MAP 2 Romanian Theater of Operations: Railroad Lines
MAP 3 The Dobrogea
MAP 4 The Battle of Turtucaia: 4 September 1916
MAP 5 The Battle of Sibiu: 26 September 1916
MAP 6 The Battle of Brasov: 7-9 October 1916
MAP 7 The Romanian Danube Crossing: 2 October 1916
MAP 8 Breakout Attempt by the 11th Bavarian Infantry Division: 23-28 October 1916
MAP 9 Ambush at Agas: 17 October 1916

MAP 10 The Northeast Front: November 1916
MAP 11 LIVth Army Corps (Special Purpose) Breakout: 11-17 November 1916
MAP 12 Breakout into Walachia: November 1916
MAP 13 Breakout, Group Krafft Red Tower Pass Region: 16 October-21 November 1916
MAP 14 Battle for Bucharest: 28 November-3 December 1916
MAP 15 Advance to the Sereth-Putna Rivers: December 1916-January 1917
Preface
Although every war has its iconic imagery, none matches the grim horror of the Western Front during World War I. Materialschlacht was the German term for the carnage, a word as brutal sounding as its portrayal of industrial-scale slaughter. Trenches, barbed wire, poison gas, artillery barrages, and machine guns mowing down mud-soaked millions formed the landscape of the Western Front. Capping the picture are aristocratic officers living in luxury far from danger, indifferently sending soldiers to their deaths just to capture a few feet of ground.
This familiar picture of stalemated armies, however, depicts the war in the west, where by late 1914 trenches ran in solid lines from the Swiss-German-French border junction to the English Channel in Belgium. In the east, the picture was quite different. There were trenches, to be sure, but the vast area meant that these took the form of local fortifications. Maneuvering, from the first clash in 1914 to the last blows in 1917, was a normal feature of battle. Fighting often took the form that prewar theorists had envisioned: bold, rapid movements of infantry turning enemy flanks, with cavalry conducting reconnaissance or providing a screen of cover for advancing infantry. Infantry remained the queen of the battle by virtue of its mobility, which translated into speed - a speed that allowed a determined attacker to outflank or penetrate enemy positions before reserves could be brought to bear. Infantry that outran its artillery support quickly perished, a development that required the gunners to match the pace of the infantry. Even cavalry remained useful in the east, where the open spaces allowed the exploitation of a breakthrough and the rapid pursuit of a retreating foe. Speed was the elixir of success.
In Transylvania and Romania in 1916, the nature of combat bore a greater resemblance to the opening moves of World War II - a decisive period of rapid movement and battles, called the blitzkrieg by the Allies - than it does to the stereotype of World War I, with trenches and deadlock. Hitting where least expected and advancing without the fixation on protecting exposed flanks so endemic in the west, the German 9th Army defeated two Romanian armies inside Transylvania, poured over the formidable Carpathian Mountains onto the plains of Walachia, rolled up the entire Romanian army from west to east, and drove the shattered remnants against Russia within four months. The rate of advance of the 9th Army in Transylvania in September or across Walachia in November-December 1916 compares favorably with the heady days (for the Germans) of the blitzkrieg in 1939-1940. Of course, blitzkrieg is not a term associated with World War I.
Ironically, the 9th Army was led by General Erich von Falkenhayn, sacked as chief of staff of the Prussian army on the eve of the campaign in August 1916 owing to the perception that his strategy of attrition in the west and failure to pursue a decisive victory in the east had created a debacle. Given the opportunity in Romania to salvage his reputation, von Falkenhayn grasped the imperative for speed. Winter came early in the Carpathian Mountains, and unless he drove the Romanians back and secured the passes through the mountains before weather shut down operations, the Romanians would remain on Austro-Hungarian territory until well into 1917. Von Falkenhayn had few troops at his disposal and, at least initially, his forces would be outnumbered. Getting reinforcements from the other theaters of the war would take weeks. In addition, the projected theater of operations in Romania sat at the edge of the least developed and most remote region of Austria-Hungary, Transylvania, compounding the logistical problems of mounting a campaign. Against all odds, von Falkenhayn succeeded brilliantly, proving himself to be a master of operational warfare as his soldiers smashed through the Carpathian Mountains and raced across Walachia.
The chimera of open warfare that so tantalized the leaders on the Western Front was the norm in the east, raising the question, which front was the true face of war: the stalemate in the west or the vast battles of open warfare characteristic of the Eastern Front? For the man who had the task of rebuilding the shattered German army after the war, General Hans von Seeckt, operations in the eastern theater provided the answer and illustrated the nature of future combat.
Following his participation in the Marne Campaign of 1914, von Seeckt served exclusively for the rest of the war in the east. In May 1915, as chief of staff in August von Mackensen s 11th Army, he directed the impressive breakthrough at Gorlice-Tarnow. For the next six weeks the 11th Army rolled across the foothills of the Beskiden and Northern Carpathian Mountains, forcing the Russians to evacuate Galicia and eventually Poland. Over a quarter-million Russians were captured. In the fall of that year, again as von Mackensen s chief of staff, but this time at the level of army group, von Seeckt directed three armies into Serbia and chased the Serb forces into Albania and Greece within three months. In 1916 he became chief of staff of Army Group Archduke Karl, the senior Austrian headquarters in the southeast Balkan region. That group directed much of the campaign in Romania in 1916.
Von Seeckt became disenchanted during the war with the German fixation on enveloping the enemy, a tactic driven into a generation of staff officers by the late chief of the general staff, Count Alfred von Schlieffen (1833-1913). He had seen the stalemate that arose when going around an enemy flank took too long and forfeited surprise or when it could not be done at all. In such cases, the general cannot simply declare that he is at wit s end; he will be acting quite in the spirit of Count Schlieffen, if, with a clear objective in view, he launches his masses at the most effective point. 1 A breakthrough would allow the successful attacker the same opportunity as an envelopment to operate in the enemy s vulnerable rear areas. Present at the most decisive operations of the east, von Seeckt observed firsthand the achievements of fast-moving, combined arms operations that either broke through the enemy s lines or went around them, but that in all cases came to operate in his rear areas, surprising him and cutting the vital lines of communication to his front-line forces, leaving them paralyzed.
During the Romanian Campaign of 1916, von Seeckt and his Austrian commanders at Army Group Archduke Karl exerted little real authority over the determined and headstrong von Falkenhayn or von Mackensen, operating in Bulgaria. Nonetheless, von Seeckt had a front-row seat on an operation that exemplified many of the hallmarks of the philosophy and tactics he incorporated after the war when in command of the Reichswehr - tactics that, when fully developed in the late 1930s, became known as the blitzkrieg.
This book is not, however, about von Seeckt and the development of blitzkrieg tactics in the postwar German Reichswehr. The his