The Impact of 1918 on Bulgaria

Abstract

Among the states that participated in World War I, Bulgaria is an interesting case, being the only Slavic and the only small state allied with the Central Powers. In addition, Bulgaria was the first member of the Quadruple Alliance that admitted their defeat with the Armistice of Thessaloniki (16/29 Sep 1918). The armistice signed in the Greek Macedonia capital ended not just Bulgaria’s three years involvement in the Great War, alongside Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, but also a longer period of violent confrontations if we include the two Balkan Wars too (1912-1913). After the implication in these successive conflicts, the small Slavic state had seen significant human and material losses (155,000 deaths on the battlefields, 400,000 wounded, and over 155,000 deaths due to diseases). One in six men aged 20 to 50 lost their lives during the period October 1912 to September 1918. The hereby study deals with the effects of these losses, sufferings and deprivations (doubled by the bitterness of defeat but also by hopes of winning the victor’s benevolence) at different layers: the army, the civilian population, the political life and the diplomacy. The study does not lack references to the “Dobrudjan Issue”, which dominated the Romanian-Bulgarian relations for almost the entire period 1878-1940. The bibliography includes contributions by prestigious specialists in Bulgarian and Balkan history, written or translated in Bulgarian, Romanian, English, French or Italian, completed with Romanian military documents.