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Tag: world war one

The railway accident in Ciurea

Romania took sides with the French-Anglo-Russian
alliance in August 1916 and formally entered World War One. In the wake of
nearly four months of violent fight, on December 6, 1916, the German army
occupied Bucharest. The Romanian authorities fled the capital city withdrawing
to Moldavia, in the north, but their withdrawal was simply chaotic. All
throughout that chaotic period of time, in the last night of 1916, nearby Iasi,
the most serious railway accident in Romanian history happened. About 1,000
people lost their lives as an oversized and overloaded train derailed in the
locality of Ciurea.

The historian Dorin Stanescu specializes in the
history of Romanian railways. He made an in-depth research of the great
accident. According to Dorin Stanescu, along a railway network of 1,330
kilometers in Moldavia, 1,000 locomotives and roughly 25,000 railroad carriages were
pulled over, that is Romania’s entire railway fleet, which literally blocked the
railroad lines, while the rolling of trains became very difficult.

Dorin Stanescu:

As the Romanian army was withdrawing to
Moldavia, a train was departing from Galati on December 30, 1916, at a time
when the city of Galati was under the German bomb-shelling and the German
occupation of the city could hardly be avoided. The train was overloaded,
heading for Iasi. There was a couple of hours’ delay in the scheduled departure
of the train. It was an overcrowded train, since many civilians wanted to go to Iasi.
Joining them were GIs who were on leave and obviously had to return to their
military units, there were also several Russian soldiers on board the train. We
must say that among those who boarded that train there were such personalities
as that of former finance minister Emil Costinescu, then there was the daughter
of former French ambassador to Bucharest, Yvonne Blondel as well as the geographer
George Valsan.

Dorin Stanescu:

The train became overcrowded as
other carriages were added along the route, while people were literally storming
those carriages. Very many people opted for boarding the train at all costs,
using event the rooftops of the carriages. So from one railway station to the
next the train was getting longer and got more and more crowded. Now, if we
think of the size of the carriages that were rolling at that time and their
available space and if we check the number of passengers as against the
available compartments, the buffers-and-chain coupling system of the carriages
and the rooftops, and examining the accounts as regards the number of carriages,
we may find out that no less than 5,000 people were on board the train, whereas
the train had a seating capacity for no more than 1,000 people. Everybody was desperate
to flee Galati, while the GIs were desperate to make it to their military
units.

On December 31, 1916, the train departing from Galati
and having Iasi as its destination point was reaching its final leg. But this
final part of the journey would be a tragical one.

Dorin Stanescu:

On December 31, 1916, the train
reached the town of Barlad and was stationed there during the night of December
30 to December 31. The following day the train rolled on, there were 120
kilometers to roll before reaching Iasi. The train hit the railway station of
Ciurea at about 12 am, the locality and the railway station were just a couple
of kilometers away from the city which was lying along a valley. It was a harsh
winter and the snowfalls had been abundant. When the train began rolling
downward along the slope, the mechanics activated the brake system.
Unfortunately, the train was so crowded that the people who were responsible
for that could not activate the proper mechanism of the carriages which had
hand brakes that were manually operated for each carriage, so that the train could
be slowed down. The train was rolling at high speed and ran off its rails.

In the railway station of Ciurea, all the rails were
full of passenger carriages and cistern tanks with a liquid cargo of oil. When
the train ran off its rails it bumped into other carriages which caused a terrible deflagration. According to eyewitness accounts, the explosions were quite like
a small-scale earthquake. Many people were thrown off in the snow but many more
died because they were crushed between the carriages, while others got killed
in the explosions. Estimates of that time reported as many as 1,000 deaths.

The aftermath of the terrible accident was
predictable, and the survivors and their descendants claimed justice.

Dorin
Stanescu:

Quite a few of the victims or their successors tried to file lawsuits
against the Railway Company and the Romanian army to receive compensations. The
case stalled, obviously, and the legal conclusion was that the territory was
under the jurisdiction of the army and the damage fell under the category of
war damage. Oftentimes the dead person takes all the blame, in Romanian
society. All the inquiry committee chose to say was that, because of the people
on board who blocked the maneuvers the personnel was supposed to make, the
train could not be stopped. There is a similarity with another accident that
happened in a similar context, this time in France. On December 12, 1917, in
the region of Savoy, a train loaded with French soldiers who were on leave, as it was
rolling along a hill, ran off its rails; the aftermath of that accident was
about the same, and so were the conclusions of the inquiry. Nobody was held
accountable for that tragedy. That train was also overcrowded and 400 people
died. Scapegoat hunt back then was purposefully avoided, and it was the war
that pleaded guilty.

The accident in Ciurea, on the New Year’s Eve of 1917,
was quite uncommon at that time. However, the war itself is something which is
quite uncommon.

(Translation by Eugen Nasta)

18 January 2021
The Battle for Bucharest

The Romanian army began its World War One operations in August 1916
after the conclusion of a military convention between Romania and the Triple
Entente and consisted of an offensive in Transylvania. The Central Powers
counterattacked, however, and obtained a resounding victory in Turtucaia in
September 1916, an event that went down in history as the disaster of
Turtucaia. In December 1916, Bucharest was under the occupation of the German,
Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian and Turkish armies.

The devastating outcome of the first part of the Romanian army’s
campaign was blamed on the poor preparation of the army. However, the historian
Sorin Cristescu of the Spiru Haret University in Bucharest is of the opinion
that had Romania entered the war from the very beginning, the situation would
have been different. He blamed the Romanian army’s lack of war experience on
the fact that Russia had refused to accept Romania as an ally. Historian Sorin
Cristescu explains:

First of all, Russia was opposed to the creation of a Greater
Romania. Despite the pressure of the public opinion in Bucharest, Romania was
not invited to enter the war, but kept at arm’s length. An opportunity appeared
in September 1914, when Lviv ell into the hands of the Russian army. Italy entered the war on May 23rd 1915 and if Romania had also
entered the war at the time, the effects could have been devastating. A third
opportunity arose on June 4th 1916, when the offensive of the
Russian armies lead by Brusilov appeared to be victorious, so Romania’s entry
into the war was only allowed when Brusilov’s campaign reached a deadlock. The
idea for Romania to enter the war reflected the interests of the members of the
Entente who were willing to do anything to put a stop to the export of vital
raw materials from Romania to the Central Powers. Speaking about how valuable
the Romanian exports were, the German general Ludendorff said in 1918 that the
raw materials coming from Romania helped the Central Powers ‘keep their head
above water’, to use his expression.

Sorin Cristescu said that contrary to what Romanians
believe, the assault on Bucharest was initiated by German and Austro-Hungarian
troops in the west:

When strong pressure was put on the Southern Carpathians
by mountain troops, the Central Powers broke through the front around 11
November 1916 in the area furthest away from Bucharest. Through Lainici Pass,
near Targu Jiu, the German troops advanced towards Craiova. The moment when
Craiova fell and they crossed the Olt, around 23 November 1916, coincides with
the German army crossing the Danube in a place they had crossed before, in
1877, at Zimnicea. The two coinciding operations, crossing the Olt and crossing
the Danube, had a devastating effect. One month before on October 26, Dobrogea
had been taken over. Mackensen walked on the Cernavoda Bridge, seeing for
himself that it was usable, that it had not been completely destroyed. The
Germans were well on their way to Bucharest on the two prongs, one with the 9th
Army Corps, headed by the former head of the general staff of the German army,
General Falkenhayn and the other headed by Mackensen.

The last attempt by the Romanian army to stop the
advance of the armies of the Central Powers was doomed to fail. Here is
historian Sorin Cristescu once again:

The moment that was supposed to be decisive was the
so-called battle on Neajlov River. The Romanian army, lacking Russian
reinforcements, which were late in arriving, tried to isolate one by one the
two German armies in an offensive such as had not been seen since 1914, so as
to defeat or at least stall them. This didn’t happen, because of the clear
superiority of the German armies and because of bad luck as the vehicle of the
Romanian officers carrying deployment orders fell into German hands. That put
the finishing touch on the disaster. But even without that episode, the result
would have been the same. On 4 December 1916, it was obvious that Bucharest
could not be defended. The forts of Bucharest had been dismantled even before
the signing of the Convention signed on August 4, 1916, and Bucharest was open
for the taking.

The offensive of the Central Powers was halted on the
Focsani-Namoloasa line on December 9 1916 in the Battle of Casin. The Romanian armed
forces, which finally had got help from the Russian forces, stopped the German
assaults, and went on the counteroffensive to stabilise the front. The fall of
Bucharest, however, marked the beginning of an occupation regime. Historian
Sorin Cristescu:

Romania would taste the drama of retreat. The
railroads became extremely crowded, as all kinds of material was being
transported to Moldavia. Parliament, the government and the royal family all
fled the capital, soon after the royal family had suffered a tragedy. Their
youngest, Prince Mircea, had died of typhoid, even though no one around him had
been sick. The decision to abandon Bucharest without a fight was made on 6
December 1916. It was Field Marshall Mackensen’s 67th birthday. One
day before that, a great honour was bestowed upon him, as the 129th
Infantry Regiment was named after him.

The occupation regime in southern Romania and
Bucharest, which lasted until November 1918, was a harsh one. Romania lost
territory in the mountain area and was under complete German economic control.
In 1918, however, things turned on their head, and Romania had its greatest
triumph in its modern history.

12 December 2016
100 Years since the Battle of Tutrakan

On August 27, 1916 Romania declared war on the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, entering the First World War. An ally of Germany
Bulgaria, which had entered the war a year earlier, immediately sent its army
to attack the town of Tutrakan, south of the river Danube, opposite the
Romanian town of Oltenita and 70 km southeast of the capital city Bucharest.
Tutrakan, or Turtucaia by its Romanian name, was regarded as the main base of
operations for the Romanian army south of the Danube, and had become
incorporated into the Kingdom of Romania under the Peace Treaty of 1913 that
put an end to the Second Balkan War.

The battle of Tutrakan took place between
September 1 and 6, 1916, and represented the first big defeat for the Romanian
army. Seen by historians as a disaster, the defeat at Tutrakan led to the
collapse of the entire operations plan of the Romanian army general staff. The
Romanian troops on the defence totalled some 39,000 soldiers, while the joint
Bulgarian and German forces amounted to 55,000 military. Over 6,000 Romanian
soldiers were killed or wounded, while the Bulgarian-German troops sustained
casualties of over 7,700 soldiers. Some 28,000 Romanian soldiers were taken
prisoners.

Much ink has been spilled over this topic by
historians, military and eye-witnesses. Sorin Cristescu is a historian and
professor at the Spiru Haret University in Bucharest. He says two aspects were
key for the outcome of the battle: the training of the Romanian army and its
morale.

The battle of Tutrakan had two underlying
factors. First of all, the Romanian troops were poorly trained. Some 800,000
had been mustered, but there were only enough rifles for less than 500,000 of
them. Some 120,000 Lebel rifles were imported from France over 1914-1916. Of
the 500,000 rifles, around 100,000 were left over from the 1877 war. 460,000
Romanian soldiers had crossed the Danube as part of the 1913 war, but only
300,000 of them were carrying rifles. The same thing happened in Tutrakan. The
army had low stocks of ammunition and weapons and the cannons were mounted the
wrong way, so they had no effect on the enemy. It was a disaster.

Apart from military equipment and training, the
morale of the army is also key to winning a war. Sorin Cristescu believes low
morale also played a part in the defeat at Tutrakan:

The military disaster was also caused by low
morale. By September 6 1916, Bucharest was flooded with large numbers of
injured soldiers in a terrible state. The low morale was caused by the rumour
circulating in Bucharest that after Tutrakan, the German-Bulgarian troops would
start advancing towards the capital. An extraordinary panic took hold of people
and also spread among those in charge of the military. It was decided that the
offensive in Transylvania be halted to focus instead on the retreat in
Flamanda. But not all people were seized with the panic. The famous journalist
and editor-in-chief of the daily Adevarul Constantin Mille published an
article explaining that’s the way war is. One day you have a good victory in
the north, the next you suffer a defeat in the south. You shouldn’t let your
actions be dominated by panic. He said the German and Bulgarian troops couldn’t
possible reach Bucharest that quickly. Mille advised people to stay calm and
not panic after the first defeat. However, the impact of the Tutrakan disaster
in terms of people’s morale was immense.

The defeat in
Tutrakan has left deep scars in the Romanian collective psyche. Sorin Cristescu
blames it on the bad organisation of the Romanian army. But for a better
understanding of the Tutrakan disaster, one should also take into account the
haste with which Romania had entered the war and the material and social
situation of Romania’s mainly rural population:

There are memorable
accounts of the battle of Tutrakan by George Toparceanu and Gheorghe Bratianu
among others. It was a tragic moment that proved the Romanian army was
unprepared. Why? Because it was mainly made up of farmers and, as historian
Nicolae Iorga put it before Parliament in 1908, Romanian farmers were Europe’s
poorest farmers. Looking back today we could say the lack of ammunition proved
crucial in the Tutrakan disaster. Every sldiers was allotted 100 bullets and
the factory couldn’t produce at that time more than one bullet per day for
every soldier. So troops had to spare bullets because the next supply was in
100 days and we know that Bucharest surrendered without a fight on the 100th
day of the war, the city being abandoned on December 6,1916. There
was no possibility to provide fresh supplies to the troops in Tutrakan.
Secondly, cannon and machinegun fire from our troops constantly missed the
enemy who was better prepared and knew how to avoid it. So the Romanian army
faced a quick and terrible defeat.

After the battle,
28,000 Romanian POWs spent two gruesome years in Bulgarian prison camps until
liberation came in 1918, when the entire Europe celebrated the end of the Great
War and peace was instated.

3 October 2016
26 August, 2016 UPDATE

The Italian government has declared a national day of mourning on
Saturday, while state funerals will be held for the people killed in the
earthquake that hit central Italy. President Sergio Mattarella will attend the
funerals. At least 260 people died in the earthquake, while several hundred
were wounded. Rescue operations continue, but they are hampered by the large
number of aftershocks. The authorities have declared a state of emergency in
the region. Prime Minister Mateo Renzi has pledged 50
million euros in funds for reconstruction works and has introduced tax
exemptions for residents. In Bucharest, the Romanian Foreign Ministry on
Friday confirmed the death two other Romanians, which takes the number of
Romanian citizens killed in the earthquake to eight. A further five Romanians are
wounded and 19 are missing. The ministry has also said that a mobile consular
team as part of its rapid reaction unit will travel to Rome to support the
efforts of the mobile teams of the Romanian embassy in Rome and of the General
Consulate in Bologna, who are already at the site. The foreign ministry stays
in permanent contact with the relevant Italian authorities, while the Romanian
embassy in Rome and the Consulate in Bologna provide assistance to the Romanian
citizens.

Romanian
Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos on Friday had talks with the European commissioner
for digital economy and society Günther Hermann Oettinger, who made a two-day
trip to Bucharest. According to a government release, the two officials talked
about the digital single market and cyber security. The government notes that
in the field of the digital single market, Romania seeks to reduce the gap
separating it from the other European states, to computerise its public
administration and increase the number of jobs in the digital sector. Also,
Romania aims to stimulate investments in the electronic communications
infrastructure and develop its IT research and innovation sector. The two
officials also discussed cyber security and crime, given that, in the current
regional context, Romania can play an increasingly important role in the field
of cyber security for the neighbouring states.

Military
ceremonies were held in Romania on Friday to commemorate its WWI heroes and
mark 100 years since Romania entered the war. Over 330,000 soldiers died in
this war and as many as 76,000 were crippled. Ceremonies were held in 100
cemeteries and memorials across the country. The creation of the Romanian unitary nation state was completed at the end of WWI, on December 1, 1918, when all of
the provinces with a majority Romanian-speaking population that had until then formed part of neighbouring multinational empires, came together under
Bucharest’s authority.

27 Syrian and Iraqi immigrants were arrested were Thursday night while
they were trying to illegally cross the border into Romania from Serbia. As
many as 600 foreign citizens have tried to illegally cross the border in the
first seven months of this year, 41% less than in the same period of last year.
According to a recent report published by the Border Police, 1,005 illegal
migrants were caught at the border in 2015. Most of the illegal migrants have
tried to cross the border hidden in various vehicles or using fake documents.
One week ago, the Romanian Interior Ministry deployed further border police and
gendarmerie forces at the border with Serbia, after several small groups of
immigrants attempted to cross the border. These actions are meant to ensure
public order and fight cross-border crime on Romania’s south-western frontier.

Romania’s football champions Astra Giurgiu and vice-champions Steaua
Bucharest on Friday found out the name of their opponents in the Europa League groups.
Astra will face the Czech side Viktoria Plzen, the Italian side AS Rome and the
Austrian side Austria Viena in Group E, while Steaua will play against the
Spanish side Villarreal, the Swiss side FC Zurich and the Turkish side
Osmanlispor in Group L. The first group matches are scheduled for the 15th
and the 29th of September.

26 August 2016
Romanian political ideas around 1918

WWI brought about the Entente powers’
victory and a fundamental change in Europe’s geopolitical map. New states were
born out of the ashes of the former empires, while others extended their
territory. Romania was in the winners’ camp and on December 1st
1918, together with the provinces of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania,
inhabited by a majority Romanian-speaking population, set the basis of the
Greater Romanian Kingdom.

The most important ideas that underlay
the construction of this political edifice took a clearer shape in the years of
WWI, especially in the case of the Romanians from Austria-Hungary. The
after-1918 historiography books insisted on the scope of the event and
accentuated the sacrifice of the Romanian nation for the union of all Romanians
into one single state around the figure of a monarch that embodied both
identities. The Communist regime seriously distorted the reality of December 1st
1918, turning it into a thousands-of-years struggle of an entire people to form
the unitary nation-state.

However, the ideas that accompanied the
fight for the rights of the Romanian ethnics in Austria-Hungary had a much more
convoluted history. Far from being united in their goals and means of reaching
these goals, the Romanians in Transylvania often had conflicting views on
matters related to the policies and national rights of their co-nationals. One
such case was the conflict between the newspaper Tribuna and the
National Romanian Party over the election tactics, a conflict that many saw as
fratricidal. This case was relevant for the social and political context of the
1890s, marked by the radicalism of a new generation of young intellectuals
championed by Octavian Goga and Octavian Tăslăuanu. It
was around that time that the idea emerged that while parties would divide a
nation, culture would unite it.

One of the most popular ideas was
federalism. Emerging in the first half of the 19th Century,
federalism spread quickly among the intellectuals who were seeking the
modernization of the state. In Austria-Hungary, the idea was even more
successful because the structure of that dual state allowed a reform in this
respect. Historian Răzvan Paraianu, from the Petru Maior University in Targu Mures, says
the Romanian federalist Aurel C. Popovici was among the leading Romanian
nationalist thinkers:

Aurel C. Popovici was one of the
greatest nationalists of the 19th century, and he wanted to federalize the
Austro-Hungarian Empire on a nation by nation basis. His theory was that the
central and eastern European nations could not survive by themselves caught
between what he called the great German race and the great Slavic race. Sooner
or later, Popovici said, these two would clash, and all these nations, such as
Romanians and Hungarians, would be crushed between the two great forces, the
two great races, as he called them. Popovici died before the Great War ended in
1917, in exile, at a time when Romania was in dire straits. Only at the end did
he realize that there was no hope for the empire because of the totally
uninspired policies run by the Istvan Tisza government.

The coming war precipitated things, and
radical solutions became more popular. Here is Răzvan Paraianu:

We should say that early in the war, the Tisza government had a
relatively favorable position towards Romanians, who had surprised him with
their enthusiasm for mobilization. He tended to take into consideration some
national demands. Things changed dramatically after Romania joined the war
against Austria-Hungary. At that time, many Romanians in the area of Brasov
welcomed with open arms the Romanian army. That being said, after the Romanian
army was forced to retreat, the Hungarian government had a vindictive policy
not only towards people who had shown their enthusiasm for the Romanian army
attacking the empire, but against Romanians in general. For instance, church
schools were suspended and were turned into state schools. They attempted an
ethnic conversion of the Romanian population. A lot of priests and teachers
were interned in camps, taken from home and moved, in order not to stir up
popular malcontent. Towards the end of the war, when things did not go as
planned for the Habsburg and German armies, the discontent was about to
explode. It was not the discontent of Romanians only, it was general
discontent. Bolshevik revolutions were erupting in Budapest, Vienna and
Germany. Against this background, Transylvanian Romanians started believing
that Romania had become a solution for all the chaos that an entire society and
state was sinking into.

Greater Romania formed on 1 December 1918 by the will and vote of
the National Assembly in Alba Iulia and some Transylvanian Romanian leaders such
as Iuliu Maniu, Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, Vasile Goldiş, and the leaders of the
Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches. All those statesmen saw in the new
political construction that was Romania an end to uncertainty, and hope in a
new model of state and society.

30 November 2015
The National Liberal Party and Romanian Neutrality Early in WWI

King Carol I himself sided the pro-German faction. The pro-Allied faction was made up mainly of politicians who wanted to promote the rights of the Romanians in Transylvania, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time. Neutrality was the temporary arrangement considered best for the early part of the war. Another reason why neutrality was tempting was the state of the Romanian armed forces. Even though efforts had been made to bring Romania in line with Western countries, the archaic economy and the backward state of the armed forces were important arguments for staying out of the conflict in the beginning. Here with details is historian Alin Ciupala:

“Romania’s situation was very complicated, because it already had an alliance treaty with Germany and its allies. It was a defensive treaty, but one which was unknown to the public and most of the Romanian political class. German imperial chancellor Otto von Bismarck, when signing the treaty, had a condition, that this treaty remained secret, and therefore it was known only to the king and a handful of politicians. This 1883 alliance brought Romania security guarantees it sorely needed as a young independent state. In 1914, the treaty was a problem, because it limited, at least in terms of international law, the freedom of movement of the Romanian political.”

Romania was therefore in a conundrum in 1914. It wanted to defend and promote the national and civil rights of the Romanians in Transylvania, Banat and Bukovina, three provinces that were an integral part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The arguments for rejecting the call of the Central Powers to observe the alliance and join them in the war and staying neutral, were summarised by pro-Ally prime minister Ionel Bratianu:

“A state like ours, which entered this alliance as a sovereign state, on equal footing, cannot be treated in this manner. (…) At the same time, Romania could never acquiesce to take up arms in a war whose point is precisely the obliteration of a small nation. (…) The public sentiment is almost unanimously against war. (…) The fate of the Romanians beyond the mountains and the Romanian national ideal are matters that no Romanian government can afford to overlook.”

VF Historian Alin Ciupala told us about the Crown Council in which neutrality was proclaimed:

“Politicians and the Prime Minister, Ionel Bratianu, were aware of the fact that the Romanian army was not prepared, it did not have the technical means to cope with the exigencies of a modern war. The military capacity of the Romanian army could be seen in 1913, when it was sent south of the Danube into Bulgaria, in the Second Balkan War. All this caused tensions in the discussions on Romania’s stance in the war. King Carol I called the Crown Council at the royal mansion in Peles, bringing together the leaders of the National Liberal Party and their government ministers, as well as other important politicians, such as his heir, Prince Ferdinand. Carol I called explicitly for Romania’s joining Germany and its allies in the war, with the 1883 defensive treaty as his main argument. The king was to face for the first time in his rule a deep disappointment, because most of the politicians there were of the opinion that Romania could under no circumstances join Germany in the war, because that would have meant a cancellation of the national project, precluding the union with Transylvania. In addition, because of the country’s and the army’s lack of preparation for the war effort, most of the participants in the Crown Council proposed neutrality. The role of the National Liberal Party and its leaders was as important as that of other politicians of that era. Ionel Bratianu himself was aware of the fact that the responsibility for the decision to join the war was a responsibility that fell solely on the Romanian political class. If we are to think strictly of the role played by the Liberals — especially the Liberal government ministers — we can say that Ionel Bratianu’s government had started a pretty well sustained activity to prepare Romania to join the war. Ionel Bratianu wanted, in fact, to delay that moment as much as possible.”

In the two years after Carol I died, the two sides in the war spent considerable effort on attracting Romania to their side. The new king, Ferdinand I, and the prime minister, Ionel Bratianu, however, had no intention of breaking neutrality until they had a level of certainty that national objectives were to be met as a result. Finally securing the guarantee of its national integrity, Romania joined the Allies in 1916. When they won the war, the long held dream of creating a Greater Romania finally came true, bringing Bessarabia, Transylvania, Banat and Bukovina into the fold of the Romanian Kingdom.

16 February 2015