Before the Battle of Dardanelles was even finished, Bulgaria thought it had seen the situation clearly.
What gave Bulgaria such confidence was not only the Allied forces that had been unable to attack the Dardanelles, but also 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 Allied Powers signed the Treaty of London and prepared to declare war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Interestingly, out of fear of Germany,
This time, Italy declared war only against 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 has 3 dreadnoughts (one Dante class, two Count of Cavour class). If you add Austria-Hungary's 3 combined ships,
At the Power level, the Allies will have 6 dreadnoughts in the Mediterranean.
The French fleet, which is tasked with defending the Mediterranean, only had two dreadnoughts at the beginning of the war and two more were being outfitted. In order to ensure the advantage over the German High Seas Fleet, Britain did not dare to easily dispatch dreadnoughts to reinforce the Mediterranean. However, because Italy and Austria-Hungary
Because of territorial conflicts, Italy chose to wait and see at the beginning of the war. After seeing the cracks in the Allies, Britain and France stepped up their efforts to win over Italy.
That was how Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on May 23, 1915. At sea, Italy mainly worked with France to blockade the Austro-Hungarian navy, and on land, Italy prepared to attack Austria-Hungary.
So the Italian army launched an attack on Austria-Hungary in the Izonzo area. However, due to the complex terrain of this area and the fact that Austria-Hungary had built a strong position here, the Italian army commanded by General Cadorna also missed the artillery preparation time.
It was too long (Italy prepared for a week of artillery bombardment in mountainous terrain, consuming one-sixth of Italy's small ammunition reserves), scattered battle lines and other reasons.
Moreover, the Italian and Austrian commanders had a simple but completely different strategy for this battle. The Italian commander Luigi Cadorna’s strategy was to attack, and he believed that only through attack could decisive results be achieved. Therefore.
Within half a year, the Italian army launched four large-scale attacks on the Austrian army in succession. Faced with these attacks, the Austrian army commander General Borchi adopted an extremely simple strategy. His countermeasure was to defend. Therefore, he only issued
An order: "All troops should build fortifications and set up obstacles in front of them and stand firm in place."
In this way, with complete fortifications, he was able to force the Italian army to fight in the unfavorable terrain of rivers and mountains. This strategy made him famous among the troops and did not cause him too much trouble in the early stages of the campaign. However, due to
The poor military quality of the Italian soldiers and the incompetent command of the officers made Italy the weakest major participant in World War I. However, now Italy is still working hard to attack the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but the results are touching.
General Cadorna still insisted on the offensive strategy, but he still ignored two other important and complementary strategic factors: Concentrate forces and invest the maximum amount of troops in decisive locations. Distribute them rationally and reserve the minimum in non-decisive locations.
Limit necessary military measures.
In 1915, Italian military decision-makers decided to launch an all-out offensive along a sixty-mile-wide front in Izonzo, which prevented them from concentrating their forces anywhere and weakened the troops both materially and morally.
Their attacks always seemed to be uncoordinated, and inappropriate artillery fire often fell behind the infantry. In addition, because the Austrian army occupied many high ground, the attack could not be said to be unexpected, because the Austrian army could attack from the high ground.
I watched all the Italian army's preparations for the attack. As a result, the Italian army suffered 250,000 casualties and prisoners in about six months. The four main offensive locations were different, but they all suffered heavy casualties and made little progress.
Italy's biggest achievement was the capture of Podgora, the gateway town to Gorizia, but Italy spent too much time on this. After the Battle of Golice, Austria-Hungary began to deploy troops for defense one after another.
The border with Italy. Now that the Austro-Hungarian Empire has retaken Austrian Poland and severely damaged the Russian army, the Austro-Hungarian Empire has turned its attention to the southern front. Serbia, the culprit of this European war, is still alive and kicking.
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 has been desperate to resist the Austro-Hungarian invasion. When the war began, Serbia mobilized 400,000 troops. However,
After three battles against Austria-Hungary, Serbia has expanded its mobilization to women, and many Serbian armies have separate female units.
Even so, Serbia now only has more than 200,000 troops. 16% of its population has been mobilized into the army, and almost all young and middle-aged people have been incorporated into the army. Even if it is so desperate, Serbia does not have much military strength. However, because of Austria-Hungary,
After being repelled three times by Serbia, Bulgaria, which was behind it, became extremely important. At this time, an extremely important news came. The weather in Serbia was abnormal. Due to the epidemic of typhoid fever, about 150,000 Serbian soldiers fell ill and lost their combat effectiveness.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire stepped up its efforts to win over Bulgaria, and finally gave Bulgaria a guarantee that the Serbian territory it had seized would be expanded to the central Krusevac region. Faced with such temptation, and coupled with the influence of Russia's loss of its important town of Warsaw, Bulgaria finally
Decided to join the Allies to fight.
The preliminary political and military negotiations for Galia's participation in the war were completed on September 6, 1915. Three documents were signed in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, and Germany, the German Army Command on the Eastern Front, Pres and the German and Austrian armies.
2 political and 1 military. On the same day, Ottoman Turkey and Bulgaria signed a treaty adjusting the two borders.
Militaryly, it was mainly a plan to finally solve Serbia. To this end, as agreed, Bulgaria issued a general mobilization order on September 22. By the day the war started, a total of 616,680 people had been mobilized. At that time, Bulgaria's total population was 4.93 million, of which 248 were men.
There are 4,122 people. For example, about 3 out of 8 adult men join the army.
Now Serbia is completely unaware of the malice coming from Bulgaria behind it. They are still focusing on the German and Austrian troops in the front. This time they attacked Serbia. Austria-Hungary finally pulled the German army over. The German 11th Army (7 German divisions) joined the invasion of Serbia.
action. Therefore, Serbia now has no energy to worry about Bulgaria behind it. Now their troops are defending against the German-Austrian coalition.
