A German Zeppelin visits Sofia, capital of Bulgaria on November 10, 1915. Less than a month earlier Bulgaria had joined the Central Powers.

Balkan Kriegsschauplatz. 10. Nov. 1915: Der Zeppelinbesuch in Sofia. Balkan theater of war, November 10, 1915. The Zeppelin visit in Sofia.

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Monday, September 30, 1918

". . . . General Franchet d'Esperey's ramshackle coalition of French and British and Italians and Greeks and Serbs and Albanians defeated the Bulgarian Army in the Balkans. Communist orators started haranguing mobs in front of the royal palace in Sofia and gave the selfstyled Czar Ferdinand such a fright that on September 30 he concluded an armistice on terms of unconditional surrender. The Allies couldn't move in soon enough to protect him from a Red uprising. What was left of Mackensen's army had to retreat in a hurry across the Danube, leaving behind great quantities of rolling stock and the imperial hopes for a Berlin to Baghdad railroad and all that it implied.

Pro-Allied politicians took over in Bulgaria and a few days later Ferdinand abdicated in favor of his son. The loss of Bulgaria meant that communications between Germany and Turkey were cut off. Food riots and seditious strikes in Prague and Budapest disrupted the Hapsburg empire. Separatist movements came out into the open. In Vienna the Emperor Charles' government hung by a thread."

Quotation Context

French General Louis Franchet d'Esperey commanded Allied forces — French, British, Italian, Greek, and Serbian — on the Balkan Front, where for two years the Bulgarians had kept the Allied forces bottled up. In the two weeks between the opening of d'Esperey's offensive into Serbia on September 15 and the end of the month, the defenders collapsed, the Bulgarian home front rose up, and a new Bulgarian government signed an armistice. The liberation of Serbia would position Allied armies across the Danube River from the plains of Hungary and its capital of Budapest, and cut the rail line to Turkey, isolating another of Germany's allies. Sofia was, and remains, the Bulgarian capital; Ferdinand was the country's ruler. German Field Marshal August von Mackensen had been victorious on the Russian Front and in the conquests of Serbia and Romania. Charles was Emperor of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary and Austria-Hungary was breaking apart

Source

Mr. Wilson's War by John Dos Passos, pp. 412–413, copyright © 1962, 2013 by John Dos Passos, publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

Tags

1918-09-30, 1918, September, armistice, Bulgaria, Sofia, Ferdinand, Franchet d'Esperey, Mackensen, von Mackensen