Chapter 214： Bulgaria joins the war

Before the battle of Dardanelles could be finished, Bulgaria thought that he had seen the situation clearly.

Can give Bulgaria such confidence, in addition to the Allied forces that have been unable to fight in Dardanelles, there is also the performance of Italy's participation in the war.

In April 1915, because Britain and France agreed to divide Fiume and Dalmatia after the war, Italy and the Allies signed the "London Treaty" and prepared to declare war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Interestingly, out of fear of Germany, this time Italy only declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was not until August 28, 1916 that Italy dared to declare war on Germany.

As for Italy, Britain and France mainly need its relatively powerful navy. At this time, Italy had three dreadnoughts (one Dante class and two Earl Cavour class). If the three combined forces of Austria-Hungary were added, the Allies would have six dreadnoughts in the Mediterranean.

The French fleet, which is responsible for the defense of the Mediterranean, has only two dreadnoughts at the start of the battle and two are being outfitted. In order to ensure the superiority of the German high seas fleet, Britain did not dare to easily dispatch dreadnought ships to reinforce the Mediterranean. However, because of the territorial conflict between Italy and Austria-Hungary, Italy chose to wait and see at the beginning of the war. After seeing the rift in the Allied Powers, Britain and France stepped up their pace to win over Italy.

Thus, Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on May 23, 1915. On the sea, Italy, together with France, blocked the Austro-Hungarian Navy, and on land, Italy was preparing to attack Austria-Hungary.

So the Italian army launched an attack on Austro-Hungary in the Izonzo area, but due to the complex terrain of this area, and the Austro-Hungarian built strong positions here. The Italian army under the command of General Cadorna also committed too much time for artillery preparation (mountain terrain Italy prepared for a week of shelling, which consumed one-sixth of the small Italian ammunition reserves), the front was scattered and other reasons. .

Moreover, the commanders of both Italy and Austria have a simple but very different strategy for this battle. The Italian commander Luigi Cardorna’s strategy is to offense, and he believes that only through offense can decisive results be obtained. Therefore, the Italian army launched four consecutive large-scale attacks on the Austrian army in six months. In the face of these attacks, the Austrian commander General Borochi adopted a very simple strategy. His strategy is to defend. Therefore, he only issued one order: "All troops should build fortifications and set up obstacles in front of them, and stick to the spot."

In this way, with complete fortifications, he can force the Italian army to fight under the unfavorable terrain of rivers and mountains. This strategy made him famous in the army and did not cause him too much trouble in the early stages of the battle. However, due to the military quality of the Italian soldiers and the mediocre command of the officers. Let Italy take the weakest main participating country in the First World War, but now Italy is still working hard to attack the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but the results are touching.

General Cardorna still insisted on the offensive strategy, but he still ignored the other two important and complementary strategic factors. Concentrate your forces and invest your forces to the maximum in decisive locations. Distribute reasonably, and retain the minimum necessary military means in non-deterministic locations.

In 1915, the decision makers of the Italian army decided to launch a full-line offensive on Izonzo's 60-mile-wide front, which prevented them from using their forces at any location and weakened the troops both materially and spiritually. Their offensive seems to always be uncoordinated, and unsuitable shelling often lags behind the infantry. In addition, because the Austrian army occupies many high ground, the attack is not surprising, because the Austrian army can watch all the Italian attack preparations from the high ground. As a result, in about six months, there were 250,000 casualties and captured Italians. The four main offensive locations were different, but they all suffered heavy casualties and made little progress.

Italy’s greatest achievement was the capture of Podgora, the gateway to Gorizia, but Italy consumed too much time for this. After the Battle of Golice, Austria-Hungary began to dispatch troops to defend the border with Italy. Now that the Austrian-Hungarian Empire has turned its sights to the southern front after the retake of Austrian Poland and the heavy damage to the Russian army, Serbia, the culprit of this European war, is still alive and well.

Since the outbreak of the war, Austria-Hungary has invaded Serbia three times, all of which were repelled by Serbia. This small country with a population of 4.3 million was also desperate to resist the Austro-Hungarian invasion. When the war started, Serbia mobilized 400,000 troops. However, after three battles against Austria-Hungary, Serbia has expanded its mobilization to women, and many Serbian troops have separate female troops.

Even so, Serbia now has only more than 200,000 troops, and 16% of its population has been mobilized in the army, and almost all young and middle-aged people have been incorporated into the army. Even so desperately, Serbia does not have much military strength However, because Austria-Hungary was repelled by Serbia three times, Bulgaria behind it became extremely important, and at this time an extremely important news came, Serbia The weather was abnormal. Due to the epidemic of typhoid fever, about 150,000 Serbian soldiers were infected and lost their combat effectiveness.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire stepped up its efforts to win over Bulgaria, and finally assured Bulgaria that the Serbian territory it seized would expand to the central Kruševac area. Faced with such a temptation, coupled with the influence of Russia's loss of its important city of Warsaw, Bulgaria finally decided to join the Allied Forces.

The early political and military negotiations for Galia's participation in the war were completed on September 6, 1915. In the Bulgarian capital of Sofia and Germany, respectively, on the eastern front of the German headquarters, Plaus and the German-Austrian armies signed 3 documents, 2 political and 1 military. On the same day, Ottoman Turkey and Bulgaria signed a treaty adjusting the two borders.

The military is mainly the final solution to Serbia's plan. To this end, in accordance with the agreement, Bulgaria issued a general mobilization order on September 22. By the day of the war, a total of 616,680 people had been mobilized. At that time, the total population of Bulgaria was 4.93 million, of which 2.484,122 were men. For example, three out of eight adult men joined the army.

Now Serbia is completely unaware of the malice from Bulgaria. They are still focusing on the frontal German and Austrian forces. This time they attacked Serbia, Austria-Hungary finally pulled the German forces over, and the German 11th Army (7 German divisions) joined the invasion of Serbia. Action. Therefore, Serbia has no energy to worry about the Bulgarian behind, and now they are defending the German-Austrian forces.