Balkans Campaign (World War I)

Balkans Theatre
Part of World War I
A dead Serbian soldier in the snow, Albania 1915
Date 3 August 1914 – 11 November 1918 Location Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Montenegro Result Allied Victory Treaty of Bucharest Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine
Belligerents
Central Powers  Austria-Hungary  Bulgaria  Ottoman Empire  Germany	Allied Powers  Serbia  Montenegro  Russia British Empire France  Italy  Romania Greece
Commanders and leaders
Conrad von Hötzendorf Oskar Potiorek Nikola Zhekov Georgi Todorov Vladimir Vazov Stefan Toshev Paul von Hindenburg Erich von Falkenhayn August von Mackensen	Radomir Putnik Živojin Mišić Stepa Stepanović Petar Bojović Janko Vukotić Aleksei Brusilov Louis Franchet d'Esperey Maurice Sarrail George Milne Luigi Cadorna Armando Diaz Constantin Prezan Panagiotis Danglis
Strength
1,200,000	707,343 50,000 300,000 404,207 658,088 230,000
Casualties and losses
360,000+ 267,000 87,500 killed 152,930 wounded 27,029 missing/captured 203,000+ 25,000	481,000 278,000 killed 133,000 wounded 70,000 captured 535,700 335,706 dead 120,000 wounded 80,000 captured  ?  ? 30,000 9,668 killed 16,637 wounded 2,778 missing/captured 27,000 5,000 killed 21,000 wounded 1,000 captured 23,000 13,325 killed/missing ~10,000 wounded  ?

Central Powers

Allied Powers

The Balkans Campaign, or Balkan Theatre of World War I was fought between the Central Powers, represented by Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany and the Ottoman Empire on one side and the Allies, represented by France, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, and the United Kingdom (and later Romania and Greece, who sided with the Allied Powers) on the other side.

The prime cause of World War I was the hostility between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. Consequently, some of the earliest fighting took place between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. Serbia held out against Austria-Hungary for more than a year before it was conquered in late 1915.

Dalmatia was a strategic region during World War I that both Italy and Serbia intended to seize from Austria-Hungary. Italy entered the war in 1915 upon agreeing to the Treaty of London that guaranteed Italy a substantial portion of Dalmatia.

Allied diplomacy was able to bring Romania into the war in 1916 but this proved disastrous for the Romanians. Shortly after they joined the war, a combined German, Austrian and Bulgarian offensive conquered two-thirds of their country in a rapid campaign which ended in December 1916. However, the Romanian and Russian armies managed to stabilize the front and hold on to Moldavia.

In 1917, Greece entered the war on the Allied side, and in 1918, the multi-national Allied Army of the Orient, based in northern Greece, finally launched an offensive which drove Bulgaria to seek peace, recaptured Serbia and finally halted only at the border of Hungary in November 1918.

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Wikipedia