Second Balkan War - Bulgarian Plans For War

Bulgarian Plans For War

In 1912 Bulgaria's national aspiration, as this had been expressed through Tsar Ferdinand and the military leadership around him, exceeded the provisions of what was considered in 1878 as maximalistic, Treaty of San Stefano, since it included both Eastern and Western Thrace and all Macedonia with Thessaloniki, Edirne and Constantinople. Early evidence of the lack of realistic thinking in Bulgarian leadership was that although Russia had sent clear warnings expressed for the first time in 5 November 1912 (well before the first battle of Çatalca) that if the Bulgarian Army occupied Constantinople they would attack it, they continued and tried to take the city.

Although the Bulgarian Army succeeded in capturing Edirne, Tsar Ferdinand's ambition in crowning himself an Emperor in Constantinople proved also unrealistic when the Bulgarian Army failed to capture the city in the battle of Çatalca. Even worse, the effort in capturing Thrace and Constantinople ultimately caused the loss of the major part of Macedonia including Thessaloniki and that could not be easily accepted, leading the Bulgarian military leadership around Tsar Ferdinand to decide upon a war against its former allies. However, with the Ottomans unwilling to definitely accept the loss of Thrace in the east, and an enraged Romania (on the north), the decision to open a war against both Greece (to the south) and Serbia (to the west), was a rather adventurous one, since in May the Ottoman Empire had urgently requested a German mission to reorganize the Ottoman army. By mid-June Bulgaria became aware of the agreement between Serbia and Greece in case of a Bulgarian attack. In 27 June Montenegro announced that it would side with Serbia in the event of a Serbian-Bulgarian war. On 5 February Romania settled her differences over Transylvania with Austro-Hungary signing a military alliance and on 28 June officially warned Bulgaria that it would not remain neutral in a new Balkan war.

As skirmishing continued in Macedonia, mainly between Serbian and Bulgarian troops, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia tried to stop the upcoming conflict, since Russia didn't wish to lose either of its Slavic allies in the Balkans. On 8 June, he sent an identical personal message to the Kings of Bulgaria and Serbia, offering to act as arbitrator according to the provisions of the 1912 Serbo-Bulgarian treaty. Serbia was asking for a revision of the original treaty, since it had already lost north Albania due to the Great Powers' decision to establish the state of Albania, an area that had been recognized as a Serbian territory of expansion under the prewar Serbo-Bulgarian treaty, in exchange for the Bulgarian territory of expansion in northern Macedonia. The Bulgarian reply to the Russian invitation contained so many conditions that it amounted to an ultimatum, leading Russian diplomats to realize the Bulgarians had already decided to go to a war with Serbia. That caused Russia to cancel the arbitration initiative and to angrily repudiate its alliance with Bulgaria (see Russo-Bulgarian treaty of alliance of 1902). Bulgaria was shattering the Balkan league, Russia's best defense against Austria-Hungarian expansionism, a structure that had cost Russia so much blood, money and diplomatic capital during the last 35 years. Russia's Foreign Minister Sazonov's exact words to Bulgaria's new Prime Minister Danev were "Do not expect anything from us, and forget the existence of any of our agreements from 1902 until present." Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was already angry with Bulgaria because of the later's denial to honor its recently signed agreement with Romania over Silistra succeeded only after Russian arbitration. Then Serbia and Greece proposed that each of the three countries reduce its army by one fourth, as a first step to facilitate a peaceful solution, but Bulgaria rejected it.

Bulgaria was already on the track to war, since a new cabinet had been formed in Bulgaria where the pacifist M. Geshov was replaced by the hardliner and head of a russophil party Dr. Danev as premier. There is some evidence that to overcome Tsar Ferdinand's reservations over a new war against Serbia and Greece, certain personalities in Sofia threatened to overthrow him. In any case on 16 June, the Bulgarian high command, under the direct control of Tsar Ferdinand and without notifying the government, ordered Bulgarian troops to start a surprise attack simultaneously against both the Serbian and Greek positions, without declaring war and to dismiss any orders contradicting the attack order. The next day the government put pressure on the General Staff to order the army to cease hostilities which caused confusion and loss of initiative and failed to remedy the state of undeclared war. In response to the government pressure Tsar Ferdinand dismissed General Savov and replaced him with General Dimitriev as Commander-in-chief.

Bulgaria's intention was to defeat Serbs and Greeks and to occupy areas as large as possible before the Great Powers interfered to stop the hostilities. In order to provide the necessary superiority in arms, the entire Bulgarian army was committed to these operations. No provisions were made in case of a (officially declared) Romanian intervention or an Ottoman counterattack, strangely assuming that Russia would assure that no attack would come from those directions, even though on 9 June Russia had angrily repudiated its Bulgarian alliance and shifted its diplomacy towards Romania (Russia already had named Romania's King Carol an honorary Russian Field Marshal, as a clear warning in shifting its policy towards Sofia in December 1912). The plan was for a concentrated attack against the Serbian army across the Vardar plain to neutralize it and to capture north Macedonia, together with a less concentrated one against the Greek Army near Thessaloniki, which had approximately half the size of the Serbian in order to capture the city and south Macedonia. The Bulgarian high command was not sure whether their forces were enough to defeat the Greek Army, but they thought them enough for defending the south front as a worst case scenario, until the arrival of additional forces after defeating the Serbian Army to the north.