On August 27, 1916 Romania declared war on the
\nAustro-Hungarian Empire, entering the First World War. An ally of Germany
\nBulgaria, which had entered the war a year earlier, immediately sent its army
\nto attack the town of Tutrakan, south of the river Danube, opposite the
\nRomanian town of Oltenita and 70 km southeast of the capital city Bucharest.
\nTutrakan, or Turtucaia by its Romanian name, was regarded as the main base of
\noperations for the Romanian army south of the Danube, and had become
\nincorporated into the Kingdom of Romania under the Peace Treaty of 1913 that
\nput an end to the Second Balkan War. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The battle of Tutrakan took place between
\nSeptember 1 and 6, 1916, and represented the first big defeat for the Romanian
\narmy. Seen by historians as a disaster, the defeat at Tutrakan led to the
\ncollapse of the entire operations plan of the Romanian army general staff. The
\nRomanian troops on the defence totalled some 39,000 soldiers, while the joint
\nBulgarian and German forces amounted to 55,000 military. Over 6,000 Romanian
\nsoldiers were killed or wounded, while the Bulgarian-German troops sustained
\ncasualties of over 7,700 soldiers. Some 28,000 Romanian soldiers were taken
\nprisoners. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Much ink has been spilled over this topic by
\nhistorians, military and eye-witnesses. Sorin Cristescu is a historian and
\nprofessor at the Spiru Haret University in Bucharest. He says two aspects were
\nkey for the outcome of the battle: the training of the Romanian army and its
\nmorale. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The battle of Tutrakan had two underlying
\nfactors. First of all, the Romanian troops were poorly trained. Some 800,000
\nhad been mustered, but there were only enough rifles for less than 500,000 of
\nthem. Some 120,000 Lebel rifles were imported from France over 1914-1916. Of
\nthe 500,000 rifles, around 100,000 were left over from the 1877 war. 460,000
\nRomanian soldiers had crossed the Danube as part of the 1913 war, but only
\n300,000 of them were carrying rifles. The same thing happened in Tutrakan. The
\narmy had low stocks of ammunition and weapons and the cannons were mounted the
\nwrong way, so they had no effect on the enemy. It was a disaster.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Apart from military equipment and training, the
\nmorale of the army is also key to winning a war. Sorin Cristescu believes low
\nmorale also played a part in the defeat at Tutrakan:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The military disaster was also caused by low
\nmorale. By September 6 1916, Bucharest was flooded with large numbers of
\ninjured soldiers in a terrible state. The low morale was caused by the rumour
\ncirculating in Bucharest that after Tutrakan, the German-Bulgarian troops would
\nstart advancing towards the capital. An extraordinary panic took hold of people
\nand also spread among those in charge of the military. It was decided that the
\noffensive in Transylvania be halted to focus instead on the retreat in
\nFlamanda. But not all people were seized with the panic. The famous journalist
\nand editor-in-chief of the daily Adevarul Constantin Mille published an
\narticle explaining that’s the way war is. One day you have a good victory in
\nthe north, the next you suffer a defeat in the south. You shouldn’t let your
\nactions be dominated by panic. He said the German and Bulgarian troops couldn’t
\npossible reach Bucharest that quickly. Mille advised people to stay calm and
\nnot panic after the first defeat. However, the impact of the Tutrakan disaster
\nin terms of people’s morale was immense.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The defeat in
\nTutrakan has left deep scars in the Romanian collective psyche. Sorin Cristescu
\nblames it on the bad organisation of the Romanian army. But for a better
\nunderstanding of the Tutrakan disaster, one should also take into account the
\nhaste with which Romania had entered the war and the material and social
\nsituation of Romania’s mainly rural population:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
There are memorable
\naccounts of the battle of Tutrakan by George Toparceanu and Gheorghe Bratianu
\namong others. It was a tragic moment that proved the Romanian army was
\nunprepared. Why? Because it was mainly made up of farmers and, as historian
\nNicolae Iorga put it before Parliament in 1908, Romanian farmers were Europe’s
\npoorest farmers. Looking back today we could say the lack of ammunition proved
\ncrucial in the Tutrakan disaster. Every sldiers was allotted 100 bullets and
\nthe factory couldn’t produce at that time more than one bullet per day for
\nevery soldier. So troops had to spare bullets because the next supply was in
\n100 days and we know that Bucharest surrendered without a fight on the 100th
\nday of the war, the city being abandoned on December 6,1916. There
\nwas no possibility to provide fresh supplies to the troops in Tutrakan.
\nSecondly, cannon and machinegun fire from our troops constantly missed the
\nenemy who was better prepared and knew how to avoid it. So the Romanian army
\nfaced a quick and terrible defeat.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
After the battle,
\n28,000 Romanian POWs spent two gruesome years in Bulgarian prison camps until
\nliberation came in 1918, when the entire Europe celebrated the end of the Great
\nWar and peace was instated. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The battle of Tutrakan took place between September 1 and 6, 1916, and represented the first big WWI defeat for the Romanian army.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":129673,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41141],"tags":[19347,42660,42659,30786],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-129672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-history-show","tag-romania","tag-turtucaia","tag-tutrakan","tag-world-war-one"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n