Bombardment of Belgrade (1914)

The Bombardment of Belgrade was an attack carried out by Austria-Hungary on the Serbian capital during the night of 28–29 July 1914. It is considered the first military action of World War I.

Bombardment of Belgrade (1914)
Part of the Serbian campaign (1914) of World War I
Shelling of Belgrade in the night of 28 and 29 July 1914 (German illustration, 1914)
Date 28–29 July 1914 Location Belgrade, Kingdom of Serbia Result Minor damage and light casualties
Belligerents
Austria-Hungary	Serbia
Commanders and leaders
Emil Baumgartner Friedrich Grund	Vojislav Tankosić
Units involved
Austro-Hungarian Army 14th Infantry Brigade Austro-Hungarian Navy Danube Flotilla SMS Temes SMS Bodrog SMS Szamos	Serbian Army 18th Infantry Company Other units Chetnik formations Serbian border guards
[1]

The bombardment started hours after the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on Serbia.^[2] Three warships of the Austrian Danube Flotilla opened fire on the Serbian capital, followed in the early morning by Habsburg artillery from the town of Semlin (Zemun) across the Sava. The sporadic shelling caused widespread damage and marked the opening of the first Serbian campaign. Upon hearing the news, Tsar Nicholas II's government ordered general mobilisation of the Imperial Russian Army. The bombardment was followed, on 12 August, by the Habsburg Balkanstreitkräfte invasion of Serbia.

Background

Following the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, on 23 June 1914, the Austrian government alleging official Serb involvement, issued an ultimatum which expired on 25 July.^[3] Serbia responded within the time limit but Vienna rejecting negotiation, declared the Serb response unsatisfactory, severed diplomatic relations with Serbia and ordered military mobilisation.^[4]

Prelude

SMS Bodrog one of the three monitors that bombarded Belgrade.

A major weakness of Serbia was the location of its capital Belgrade, at the confluence of the Danube and the River Sava, immediately across from Austria-Hungary. In mid July, Austria's Danube Flotilla, a naval group of the Imperial and Royal Navy based upstream at Semlin (Zemun), received orders to prepare itself for combat. The flotilla was to be used as artillery support of the Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces.^[5] Around the same time, an Austrian monitor group was sent from Budapest and the deployment of gunboats, tugboats and patrol boats on the Danube started. The Sava monitor group (SMS Maros, SMS Leitha, hospital ship Traisen and the tug Traun), part of the Danube Flotilla but subordinate to the commander of the 7th Infantry Division, was sent to Brčko in northeastern Bosnia. The task of the flotilla was to prepare the crossing of troops on the Sava and the Danube.^[6]

On 25 July a royal proclamation ordered the mobilisation of the Serbian Army, the call-up was rapid and efficient, as it had been executed several times in the preceding years, the Serbian government moved to Niš and the evacuation of Belgrade started.^[7] The Serbian Danube Division was in charge of defending Belgrade but had yet to be deployed to the north of the city, no artillery or machine guns were in place to defend against a gunboat attack. A group of gendarmes, a Chetnik detachment under Vojislav Tankosić and a company from the 18th Infantry Regiment were the only units defending the Serbian capital.^[1]

On the afternoon of 28 July the declaration of war was communicated to the Austro-Hungarian High Command (AOK) and a telegram was sent to the Serbian government in Niš.^[8] A meeting organised by the commander of the 14th Infantry Brigade, Colonel Emil von Baumgartner, took place that evening. It was decided that a few minutes after midnight, three river monitors were to depart and secure the bridges over the Sava between Semlin to Belgrade.^[8]

Bombardment of Belgrade

Around midnight three Austrian tugs pulling barges loaded with infantry and escorted by a monitor, headed towards Donji Grad, the Serbian lower fortress. After coming under intense fire from a detachment of Serbian irregulars, the tugs and their barge gave up the landing attempt and headed upriver towards the railway bridge instead.^[9][1] Near 1 am, having anticipated that the Austro-Hungarians would attempt to cross the railway bridge that linked their country with the Hapsburg Empire, a detachment of Chetniks belonging to Major Tankosić's unit, dynamited the bridge over the Sava, while the monitors of the 1st Group were still manoeuvring.^[8]

A Škoda 305 mm mortar used by the Austro-Hungarian army to fire on Belgrade across the Sava

At 2 am, two river monitors, SMS Bodrog and SMS Számos joined SMS Temes at a distance of 3.5 kilometres (2.2 mi) from Belgrade, opposite the Great War Island, at the confluence of the Danube and the Sava. The monitor group was under the command of frigate captain Friedrich Grund.^[10] The gunboats started firing 12-cm fused shells onto the Serbian side.^[11] Lacking the heavy artillery to respond the Serbs were unable to pierce the sides of the heavily armoured river boats.^[12] Once the monitors stopped firing to assess their impact, the Serbs started shooting at the river flotilla ships from the walls of Belgrade Fortress and from Great War Island. The monitors fired shrapnel in response then moved closer to the Belgrade Fortress, opening fire again with 12-cm fused shells, aiming for the radio station located in Kalemegdan Park and the neighbourhood of Topčidersko Brdo.^[8]

At 5 am Habsburg artillery located in Bežanija and Semlin, Austria-Hungary's eastern outpost across the Sava (today part of Belgrade), opened fire on the city and the Kalemegdan using Krupp Howitzer and Skoda 305 mm mortars.^[13]

By 6 am on the morning of 29 July, a shell hit a building across Grčka Kraljica with no casualties reported,^[14] more shells came and a secondary school, hotels, banks and a factory were reportedly hit. Shells continue to fall on Belgrade and Kalemegdan throughout the day hitting scores of buildings.^[1] The bombardment continued without a break for eight more days, hitting churches, schools, museums, hospitals, and other civilian targets in clear violation of Article 27 of the Hague Convention of which Austria-Hungary was a signatory.^[1]

Casualties

Damaged building next to the Hotel Moskva

The reported casualties of the bombardment was Dušan Ðonović, a student and a member of Jovan Babunski’s Četnik group, and for the Austro-Hungarian's side Karl Eberling, the captain of the first tug and Mikhail Gemsberger his helmsman. As Eberling's tug ran aground panicked soldiers swam back to the shore or drowned.^[1]

Aftermath

On 29 July the Russian Government officially announced to Berlin that it had mobilised four military districts, on 30 July general mobilisation was ordered. On 31 July a state of imminent war was proclaimed in Germany and the mechanism of mobilisation and counter-mobilisation started. Constant shelling on Serbia's border towns and cities continued until the second week of August. On 12 August the Habsburg 5th Army’s VIII and XIII Corps supported by the 2nd Army’s IV Corps, all part of the Balkanstreitkräfte, crossed the Drina river from Bosnia and the first invasion of Serbia started.^[13]

References

1. Lyon, J. (2015). Serbia and the Balkan Front, 1914: The Outbreak of the Great War. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1-4725-8003-0.
2. "The Unknown Daring Midnight Raid That Started World War One". 28 July 2016. Retrieved 11 Jan 2022.
3. Gordon Martel, The Origins of the First World War, Pearson Longman, Harlow, 2003, p. xii
4. Tunstall, G.A. (2021). The Austro-Hungarian Army and the First World War. Armies of the Great War. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-00-904391-5.
5. Halpern, P. (2012). A Naval History of World War I. Naval Institute Press. p. 381. ISBN 978-1-61251-172-6.
6. Wulff, O.R.; Sokol, H.H. (1934). Die Österreichisch-ungarische Donauflottille Im Weltkriege, 1914–18.
7. Mitrović, A. (2007). Serbia's Great War, 1914–1918. Central European studies. Purdue University Press. ISBN 978-1-55753-476-7.
8. Rauchensteiner, M.; Güttel-Bellert, A.; Kay, A.J. (2014). The First World War: and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914–1918. Böhlau Wien. pp. 142–143. ISBN 978-3-205-79370-0.
9. Churchill, M.R. (2016). The Story of the Great War, Volume 2: The World War. VM eBooks. p. 278.
10. Schumacher, H. (2018). Die k. u. k. Donauflottille im Ersten Weltkrieg: Karl Wettstein, Offizier und Schiffsreeder (in German). Böhlau Wien. ISBN 978-3-205-20121-2.
11. Sondhaus, L. (1994). The Naval Policy of Austria-Hungary, 1867–1918: Navalism, Industrial Development, and the Politics of Dualism. Purdue University Press. ISBN 978-1-55753-034-9.
12. Fryer, C. (1997). The Destruction of Serbia in 1915. East European monographs. East European Monographs. ISBN 978-0-88033-385-6.
13. Marble, S. (2016). "The Guns Of July". King of Battle: Artillery in World War I. History of Warfare. Brill. pp. 231–232. ISBN 978-90-04-30728-5.
14. "Living in Belgrade in the Early Days of the Great War". Retrieved 11 Jan 2022.