Overture to a greater war

The Balkan Wars presaged the First World War in many ways. They involved conscripted armies; they opened with large flanking movements; they featured the use of massed artillery, concentrated machine guns, assaults on entrenched positions and airplanes. Huge military losses ensued. Total casualties in the Balkan Wars numbered over 150,000 dead, with the Bulgarians and Ottomans suffering the greatest losses. Many more soldiers on all sides were wounded or missing. Civilian dead from disease, displacement and deliberate atrocity were numbered in the tens of thousands. Balkan War battlefields at Doiran, Gallipoli and Kosovo again saw fighting during the First World War.

The most important consequence of the Balkan Wars was the erosion of the Russian position in the region. The collapse of the Balkan League and Russia's failure to save Bulgaria during the Second Balkan War caused the government in Sofia to turn to Berlin and Vienna for redress. Bulgaria was more important for Russia strategically than Serbia, if only because of its proximity to Constantinople. After the loss of Bulgaria only Serbia remained as a viable Russian ally in southeastern Europe. When the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia on July 28th, 1914 war in the Balkans entered a new phase. Russia faced exclusion from the Balkans altogether, if Serbia came under Austro-Hungarian domination, and this informed its decision to go to war with the Central Powers in August 1914.

In the First World War the Bulgarians and Ottomans lined up alongside the Central Powers (though by war's end the former enemies were close to renewing hostilities between themselves). The Montenegrins, Serbs and eventually the Romanians joined the Entente. The Greeks split into pro-Central Powers and pro-Entente factions. Only after a prolonged political schism and the forced abdication of King Constantine did Greece officially join the Entente on June 27th, 1917. The Central Powers occupied northern Albania, while the Entente sent troops into the south. Both sides established armed Albanian units. Fighting, outside of Albania, was fairly conventional. The Balkan Front extended from the Adriatic to the Aegean. Established at the end of 1915, it remained fairly stable until an Entente offensive in September 1918 broke through Bulgarian positions at Dobro Pole. The exhausted Bulgarians signed an armistice with the Entente in Salonika on September 29th, bringing to an end six years of fighting in south-eastern Europe.