The Capitulation of Germany's Allies: 2 - Bulgaria and Turkey

King Ferdinand I. A member of the
Saxe-Coburg dynasty, he spent
from 1918-48 in exile
in Coburg, Germany

The entry of Bulgaria to the war in 1915 had been prompted by opportunism and the ambition of its Germanophile King Ferdinand - mainly revenge on Serbia for the losses incurred in the Second Balkan War of 1913. It was followed shortly by the overrunning of Serbia, but since this time - from the Bulgarian standpoint - things had been largely at a standstill. Its more longstanding territorial aspirations against the Ottoman Empire were frustrated by the unnatural alliance with Turkey as another Central Power. Its armies, with some German support, sat behind seemingly impregnable mountain positions. The people bemoaned the deprivations of a war where the Germans exacted the high price of their support in food crops.

Turkey, and the rump of its Ottoman Empire, was crumbling at an alarming rate.

Bulgaria.  Bulgaria’s fragile resolve was tested in late May 1918 through a spirited offensive by Greek troops from Salonika along the river Vardar.

Shortly after this, the French replaced General Guillaumat as Commander-in-Chief for the front with the vigorous General Franchet d’Esperey – a hero of the Marne 1914. He set about preparing the front for action, even though at this stage the world’s eyes were on the German offensives in France. There were a few flurries of action, particularly in Albania where Bulgarian and Austrian forces made inroads to the Italian sector, but then the whole front settled back to its uncomfortable status quo. Political leadership changes in Sofia were little more than tacit recognition of the general discontent, and a new Prime Minister, Malinov, was unable to secure better terms from the Germans, or to pave the way for peace negotiations with the Allies.

As events developed in the Allies favour on the western Front, d’Esperet judged the time right to launch assaults on the Bulgarian lines. Perhaps the most notable of these was the progress of the five Serbian and South Slav Divisions. Harbouring years of hatred and three years of festering grievances over Bulgaria’s entry to the war, they fought as men possessed through near impossible conditions to advance forty miles in eight days. The key to the whole campaign was the city of Uskub (today Skopje – the capital of the still disputed area of Macedonia) . By 26^th October Uskub had fallen and the Bulgarian armies were split into two groups, retreating in almost opposite directions. There was now no hope, and on the evening of 26^th a Bulgarian staff officer carried a white flag into the British HQ. On 28^th a delegation of senior Bulgarian politicians and military accepted Franchet d’Esperey’s terms of surrender – to evacuate all occupied areas, and to put all of their military equipment and transport at the disposal of the Allies. The Allied Governments ratified the surrender, and at noon on 30^th September a separate armistice was signed.

Bulgaria’s precipitate collapse unnerved badly the German High Command. Ludendorff hoped initially that the great General Mackensen (See Post 3/7/2015) could hold the Allies back with a defensive line on the Danube, but he had only a small force, fully occupied in Roumania, leaving the Serbians and Slavs free to move west in the liberation of the Balkans. King Ferdinand of Bulgaria abdicated on 4^th November, exiled until his death in 1948.

Sultan Mehmed VI. The
Last Ottoman Sultan

Turkey. A previous post (See 30/8/2018) described how Turkey’s goose (sic) had been cooked on the capture of Damascus by Allenby’s forces and Feisal’s Arabs on 1^st October. By late October Allenby was in Northern Syria, cutting the Turkish rail connection to Baghdad, and Marshall’s Mesopotamian army was converging with Allenby towards southern Turkey. With the capitulation of Bulgaria, October also saw the Allies approaching from the west of Constantinople. Turkey was not yet surrounded – support might still arrive via the Caucasus and occupied south Russia across the Black Sea – but the position was hopeless. The old Ottoman Emperor, Mehmed V, had died in July. His brother and successor – Mehmed VI – was less prepared to be a puppet of the young Turks leadership and he insisted on a way out of the crisis. The pro-German Enver Pasha had to resign as leader on October 10^th. The new leadership and reshuffled cabinet shared the Sultan’s realistic appraisal of the situation, as their enemies approached from south, east and west. Like the Austrian Emperor, they first appealed to President Wilson to broker an armistice. When no response was forthcoming, their Plan B was to release from prison General Charles Townshend, who had been held since the fall of Kut in 1916 (see Post  1/2/2016). Townshend was sent as an emissary to the Royal Navy’s Aegean

The Armistice of Mudros 30/10/1918

HQ on Mudros island to request an armistice on behalf of Turkey. On 30^th October that armistice was signed by the Turkish delegation arriving at Mudros. The terms were similar to those of the Bulgarian truce. They included the re-opening of the Dardanelles straits and the Black Sea. Victory in south eastern Europe and the Middle East was complete.

Buchan summarises: “The surrender of Turkey brought to an end the hope of the Teutonic League of using gains in the East to redress the balance in the West. It shattered the whole fabric of policy built up laboriously during the past four years between the Baltic and the Indian Ocean. It left Germany with no crutch to lean on but her Western armies” (Buchan. A History of the Great War. Vol IV p360)