Balkan Wars
When the First Balkan War broke out in October 1912, the German General Staff determined that a naval Mediterranean Division (Mittelmeer-Division) was needed to project German power in the Mediterranean, and thus dispatched Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau to Constantinople. The two ships left Kiel on 4 November and arrived on 15 November 1912. Beginning in April 1913, Goeben visited many Mediterranean ports including Venice, Pola, and Naples, before sailing into Albanian waters. Following this trip, Goeben returned to Pola and remained there from 21 August to 16 October for maintenance.
On 29 June 1913, the Second Balkan War broke out and the Mediterranean Division was retained in the area. On 23 October 1913, Konteradmiral Souchon assumed command of the squadron. Goeben and Breslau continued their activities in the Mediterranean, and visited some 80 ports before the outbreak of World War I. The navy made plans to replace Goeben with her sister Moltke, but the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on 28 June 1914 and the subsequent rise in tensions between the Great Powers made this impossible.
After the assassination, Admiral Souchon assessed that war was imminent between the Central Powers and the Triple Entente, and ordered his ships to make for Pola for repairs. Engineers came from Germany to work on the ship. Goeben had 4,460 boiler tubes replaced, among other repairs. Upon completion, the ships departed for Messina.
Read more about this topic: SMS Goeben
Famous quotes containing the words balkan and/or wars:
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“You fade—as if the last of days
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—Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)