Map showing the territorial gains (darker shades) of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece, primarily at the expense of Turkey, agreed in the Treaty of Bucharest following the Second Balkan War. Despite its gains, Bulgaria also lost territory to both Romania and Turkey.
The Balkan States According to the Treaty of Bucharest; Acquisitions of New Territory shown by darker shades
"Commanded by Field Marshall Mackensen, who had proved himself one of the most capable German commanders in the war, the troops involved in the entire operation numbered, according to some estimates, 800,000 men. They had modern equipment and air cover. On 6 October the combined German and Austrian armies attacked with a powerful artillery barrage, and the first small groups were sent across the Danube and Sava. The main operation of forcing those rivers took place the next day. Serbia, for its part, was able to counter with 300,000 troops at the most, and these were mostly either newly mobilized or order soldiers drawn from the approximately 1,000-kilometre front and deployed all over to await attacks from the north, west, and east."
Serbia had defeated three Austro-Hungarian invasions in 1914, with heavy casualties on both sides, 163,000 of them Serbian. In the winter of 1914-1915, and in the absence of further attacks, the country suffered epidemics of spotted typhus, dysentery, and cholera, which killed an estimated 100,000 civilians, 35,000 soldiers, and 30,000 prisoners of war. Britain and France were able to supply Serbia with some medical and military supplies, and also supply Russia, through ally Montenegro on the Adriatic coast. Both Serbia and Russia were in desperate need. Since May 2, 1915, German General August von Mackensen had driven the Russians back hundreds of miles, and destroyed, for a time, their offensive capability in the joint German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive. With Russia quiescent, German Commander-in-Chief Erich von Falkenhayn turned on Serbia. With Bulgaria about to enter the war on the side of the Central Powers, the defeat of Serbia would cut off a primary communication route between Russia and its allies, and would connect Germany and Turkey with a rail line from Berlin to Constantinople.
Serbia's Great War 1914-1918 by Andrej Mitrovic, pp. 144, 145, copyright © Andrej Mitrovic, 2007, publisher: Purdue University Press, publication date: 2007
1915-10-06, 1915, October
