Synopses & Reviews
Despite a strategically vulnerable position, an ill-prepared army, and questionable promises of military support from the Allied Powers, Romania intervened in World War I in August 1916. In return, it received the Allies' formal sanction for the annexation of the Romanian-inhabited regions of Austria-Hungary. As Glenn Torrey reveals in his pathbreaking study, this soon appeared to have been an impulsive and risky decision for both parties.
Torrey details how, by the end of 1916, the armies of the Central Powers, led by German generals Falkenhayn and Mackensen, had administered a crushing defeat and occupied two-thirds of Romanian territory, but at the cost of diverting substantial military forces they needed on other fronts. The Allies, especially the Russians, were forced to do likewise in order to prevent Romania from collapsing completely.
Torrey presents the most authoritative account yet of the heavy fighting during the 1916 campaign and of the renewed attempt by Austro-German forces, including the elite Alpine Corps, to subdue the Romanian Army in the summer of 1917. This latter campaign, highlighted here but ignored in non-Romanian accounts, witnessed reorganized and rearmed Romanian soldiers, with help from a disintegrating Russian Army, administer a stunning defeat of their enemies. However, as Torrey also shows, amidst the chaos of the Russian Revolution the Central Powers forced Romania to sign a separate peace early in 1918. Ultimately, this allowed the Romanian Army to reenter the war and occupy the majority of the territory promised in 1916.
Torrey's unparalleled familiarity with archival and secondary sources and his long experience with the subject give authority and balance to his account of the military, strategic, diplomatic, and political events on both sides of the battlefront. In addition, his use of personal memoirs provides vivid insights into the human side of the war. Major military leaders in the Second World War, especially Ion Antonescu and Erwin Rommel, made their careers during the First World War and play a prominent role in his book.
Torrey's study fosters a genuinely new appreciation and understanding of a long-neglected aspect of World War I that influenced not only the war itself but the peace settlement that followed and, in fact, continues today.
Review
"A masterful account of its subject, one that presents decades of research in a clear and absorbing narrative. . . . Likely will stand as the definitive account of the war in Romania for decades to come."—Army History
Synopsis
A pathbreaking study of the Romanian Front in World War I. Provides a unique account of Romanian military operations and restructures our understanding of the Balkan and south Russian theaters of operation.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
List of Abbreviations
1. The Road to War, 1914-1916
2. The Romanian Army and War Plan
3. On the Eve of War
4. The Invasion of Transylvania
5. The War Opens on the Dobrogean Front
6. The Flamanda Maneuver
7. The Austro-German Counteroffensive in Transylvania
8. Battles on the Frontiers
9. The Battle for Wallachia
10. Retreat to Moldavia
11. Reconstructing the Romanian Army: January-June 1917
12. The Russo-Romanian Offensive: Marasti, July 1917
13. The Austro-German Offensive: Marasesti, August 1917
15. Between War and Peace: September 1917-January 1918
16. Bessarabia and the Peace of Buftea: January-March 1918
17. Peace, Demobilization, Reentry: March-November 1918
Epilogue
In Conclusion
Notes
Selected List of Sources
Index