The History Book Club discussion

This is a thread which discusses the Battle of Kolubara.

This is a book which deals with World War I.

by John Keegan

The Battle of Kolubara (3–9 December 1914) was a major victory of Serbia over the invading Austro-Hungarian armies during World War I. The invaders were routed, and driven back across the Serbian border.

Source: Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_o...

The Emperor Franz Joseph was not happy about the humiliation of the Austro-Hungarian army at the Battle of Kolubara. He relieved one of his best generals, Oskar Potionek of command of the defeated 6th Army.

Can you tell us more about the general or are there any books about this particular battle. This sounds like a big humiliation.

I couldn't find much at all. Some of the battles have not been recorded in book form. An article mentioned the general above and I found his picture but nothing much else.

Now, if I know Jerome, he will find one but I came up empty!

Lol, I've already looked several times, Jill, sorry to disappoint.

Uh oh, you are slipping, Jerome!!!

There is actually a fair amount of info out there - web articles, news articles, photos, write-ups, etc.


The Battle of Kolubara was the second major victory of Serbia over Austria-Hungary in World War I. Heavily outnumbered Serbian Army launched a successful counteroffensive when the world expected its capitulation and once again managed to repulse the Austro-Hungarian invasion.

The Serbian Army found itself in a difficult position after the failed offensive in the Austro-Hungarian region of Syrmia in September 1914. The Austro-Hungarian Field Marshal Oskar Potiorek launched an attack in the west and forced the Serbian Army to retreat to the right bank of the Kolubara River by November 16. Meanwhile, General Živojin Mišić replaced the wounded Petar Bojović as the commander of the Serbian First Army.

Faced with lack of artillery munition and the approaching well equipped Austro-Hungarian Balkan Army Group numbering about 450,000 men, General Mišić proposed a withdrawal in order to win some time and reorganize his forces numbering about 250,000 men. The Chief of the Serbian General Staff, Radomir Putnik hesitated with the approval of Mišić’s plan because the withdrawal would leave Belgrade undefended. But in the end, Putnik accepted the plan and ordered retreat on November 29.

Potirek advanced with the Fifth Army to Belgrade and captured the city on December 2 but he had dangerously overstretched his forces. The Serbs meanwhile received artillery munition and Field Marshal Putnik ordered a counterattack on December 3. The Austro-Hungarian Sixth Army, surprised by the counterattack was forced to retreat to the left bank of the Kolubara River by December 6. On December 9, the Serbian Army crossed the Kolubara River and pushed the Austro-Hungarian forces out of Serbia by December 15.

The Austro-Hungarians lost about one half of the Balkan Army Group, while Field Marshal Potiorek was retired and replaced by Archduke Eugen of Austria. General Mišić, on the other hand, was promoted to Vojvoda (Field Marshal) but Serbia suffered heavy casualties as well - about 170,000 Serbs were killed, wounded or captured and was not able to take advantage of its victory in the Battle of Kolubara.

By October 1915, the Central Powers managed to gain Bulgaria on their side and the German Field Marshal August von Mackensen launched a coordinated attack on Serbia. The Serbian Army, unable to withstand the attack of combined German and Austro-Hungarian forces in the north and Bulgarian invasion in the east retreated via Montenegro and Albania to the Greek islands where it reorganized and joined the Macedonian Front in spring 1916. Field Marshal Putnik who retreated with his army died in France in 1917.

Source: http://www.heeve.com/modern-history/b...

The Battle of Kolubara

The Battle of Kolubara[a] was fought between Austria-Hungary and Serbia in November and December 1914, during the Serbian Campaign of World War I. It commenced on 16 November, when the Austro-Hungarians under command of Oskar Potiorek reached the Kolubara River during their third invasion of Serbia that year, having captured the strategic town of Valjevo and forced the Serbian Army to undertake a series of retreats. The Serbs withdrew from their capital, Belgrade, on 29 and 30 November, and it quickly fell into the hands of the Austro-Hungarians. On 2 December, the Serbian Army launched a surprise counterattack all along the front. Valjevo and Užice were retaken by the Serbs on 8 December and the Austro-Hungarians retreated to Belgrade, which 5th Army commander Liborius Ritter von Frank deemed to be untenable. The Austro-Hungarians abandoned the city between 14 and 15 December and retreated back into Austria-Hungary, allowing the Serbs to retake their capital the following day.

Both the Austro-Hungarians and the Serbs suffered heavy casualties, with more than 20,000 dead on each side. The defeat humiliated Austria-Hungary, which had hoped to occupy Serbia by the end of 1914. On 22 December, Potiorek and von Frank were relieved of their respective commands, and the 5th and 6th armies were merged into a single 5th Army of 95,000 men.


Serbian soldiers marching through the countryside

Source: Wikipedia

This website, with pictures of Serbian military leaders, discusses the "Miracle of Kolubara".

http://www.heroesofserbia.com/2011/12...

The Battle of Kolubara was one of the first engagements between the Serbs and the Austro-Hungarian armies and the fighting was fierce. Serbia humiliated the A-H, but not before terrible atrocities occurred.

Report Upon the Atrocities Committed by the Austro-Hungarian Army During the First Invasion of Serbia

(no image)Report Upon the Atrocities Committed by the Austro-Hungarian Army During the First Invasion of Serbia by Rodolphe Archibald Reiss

Synopsis:

There is no GR blurb for this book but it appears that the title is self-explanatory.

This memorial site to the military heroes of Serbia provides some interesting information about the Battle of Kolubara, complete with pictures of the commanding generals. (Source: Heroesofserbia)

http://www.heroesofserbia.com/2011/12...

Very interesting. I must admit this is a theatre of war I am not very familiar with.

Neither am I, Betsy since we learn a lot more about the Western Front; and there doesn't seem to be a lot out there in the way of books dedicated to this particular battle.........but some good sites to visit to learn more.

Serbia's moment of glory as they defeated the Austro-Hungarians at the battle of Kolubara.

Serbia's Great War: 1914-1918

by Andrej Mitrović (no photo)

Synopsis:

Mitrovic's volume fills the gap in Balkan history by presenting an in-depth look at Serbia and its role in WWI. Serbia did play a key role at the start of the conflict but British and American historians have paid little attention to the topic. As Mark Cornwall writes in his introduction, The Serbian experience is in fact of major significance for three notable reasons. First, in the interlocking development of the wartime continent, Serbia's plight is part of a European jigsaw that cannot be omitted if the whole is to be better understood. At the same time, it serves as a valuable case study of the war in microcosm. It contains all the ingredients of the conflict experienced elsewhere—appalling suffering, legendary sacrifice, war aims, political-military tensions, socio-economic and political upheaval—and some more peculiar to itself, such as mass migration, exile, guerrilla resistance, and the trauma of three years of foreign occupation. Secondly, the First World War was crucial as a stage in the construction of Serbian national mythology in the twentieth century. It enabled many Serbs to envisage themselves as a martyred people, their blood constantly spilled for the greater good. Out of the wartime Serbian 'Golgotha' (a favorite phrase from the Great War!), there finally emerged the dream of a South Slav or Yugoslav state with the Serbian kingdom at its core. It was a national trauma and sacrifice which nationalist Serbs might easily see as being repeated later in the century, in the wars of the 1940s and the 1990s. Thirdly, the Serbian story has a particular resonance for a British reader because of British participation in that trauma. At the time the British role in aiding or propagating or even betraying the Serbian cause was well publicized across Britain. Since then it has been a rather neglected subject, a sign of the amnesia, which can so easily creep into a reductionist official "national memory."

This map helps to pinpoint the area where the battle took place.



(Source: Wikimedia)

The Serbs defeated Austria-Hungary handily at the battle of Kolubara but what was the role of Serbia during WWI and were they at fault for starting it? This short description of a new documentary give us some insight into that question.

"The Hero of 1914" is the title of a new Serbian documentary by author and journalist Filip Svarm. It is not about Gavrilo Princip or the top politicians and officers of the time. The "hero" is embodied by Serbia's farmers, who made up close to 80 percent of the Serbian army. According to Svarm, the film is an attempt to put the "ordinary man" in the limelight, the Serbian farmer whose priority it was to protect his family, his property and his way of life.

A quarter of Serbia's 4.5 million residents died in World War I. Most perished in combat, while 400,000 others died of typhoid, cold or hunger. German, Bulgarian and Austro-Hungarian occupying forces executed around 60,000 Serbian civilians. This is one of the reasons why, according to Svarm, it is "unreasonable" to hold Serbia responsible. "Serbia was a victim of war - a testing ground for the power struggles between the great powers," he said.

Many Serbians still see their country as a kind of eternal victim, a target of "Germanic hatred" that manifested itself later in the Second World War and the Yugoslav Wars and continues today. This view was recently illustrated by the "Vreme" magazine, which published a previously unreleased photo of Adolf Hitler gazing at a present he received for his 52nd birthday in 1941. It was a commemorative plate, confiscated by the Wehrmacht in Sarajevo, bearing the inscription, "On this historic square, Gavrilo Princip proclaimed freedom."

(Source: DW.com)

There is a short trailer of the documentary but it is in Serbian so I did not include it here. It can be found on Youtube.

Serbia and the Balkan Front, 1914: The Outbreak of the Great War

by James Lyon

Synopsis:

Serbia and the Balkan Front, 1914 is the first history of the Great War to address in-depth the crucial events of 1914 as they played out on the Balkan Front. James Lyon demonstrates how blame for the war's outbreak can be placed squarely on Austria-Hungary's expansionist plans and internal political tensions, Serbian nationalism, South Slav aspirations, the unresolved Eastern Question, and a political assassination sponsored by renegade elements within Serbia's security services. In doing so, he portrays the background and events of the Sarajevo Assassination and the subsequent military campaigns and diplomacy on the Balkan Front during 1914.

The book details the first battle of the First World War, the first Allied victory and the massive military humiliations Austria-Hungary suffered at the hands of tiny Serbia, while discussing the oversized strategic role Serbia played for the Allies during 1914. Lyon challenges existing historiography that contends the Habsburg Army was ill-prepared for war and shows that the Dual Monarchy was in fact superior in manpower and technology to the Serbian Army, thus laying blame on Austria-Hungary's military leadership rather than on its state of readiness.

Based on archival sources from Belgrade, Sarajevo and Vienna and using never-before-seen material to discuss secret negotiations between Turkey and Belgrade to carve up Albania, Serbia's desertion epidemic, its near-surrender to Austria-Hungary in November 1914, and how Serbia became the first belligerent to openly proclaim its war aims, Serbia and the Balkan Front, 1914 enriches our understanding of the outbreak of the war and Serbia's role in modern Europe. It is of great importance to students and scholars of the history of the First World War as well as military, diplomatic and modern European history.

About the Author:

James Lyon is an accidental Balkanologist, who has studied the Balkans for over thirty-four years. He received a Ph.D. in Modern Balkan History at the University of California, Los Angeles (dissertation: The Forgotten Ally: Serbia and the Balkan Front, 1914), an M.A. in International Relations from Brigham Young University (thesis: Yugoslavia’s Post-World War Two Economic Development), and a B.A. in Russian Language and Literature from Brigham Young University. Dr. Lyon directed Balkan projects for the International Crisis Group for ten years: an accomplished analyst, he has written three books, many scholarly articles, dozens of published reports, numerous Op/Eds, and has testified before the US Congress and parliamentary panels of EU member states. He has twenty years experience in conflict/post-conflict areas of the Balkans, worked on EU and USAID projects and with the Office of the High Representative, as well as in the private sector.

He founded the Foundation for the Preservation of Historical Heritage, which is devoted to digitizing archives in Bosnia and Herzegovina. www.fphh.org He is also an Associate Researcher with the University of Graz in Austria.

He has spent the better part of 20 years living in the lands of the former Yugoslavia, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia, and has worked in Macedonia and Kosovo. He has traveled widely, from Africa to Latin America to the Middle East, and throughout Europe. He currently lives in Belgrade and bounces back and forth to Sarajevo.