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Updated: June 19, 2025
A Roumanian army corps, menacing Turkey's northwestern frontier during her struggle with the Balkan Allies, would certainly have seen the occupation of Constantinople by the allied forces. But those army corps were withheld through Austro-German influence and pressure on Roumania.
The month of December saw the end of the Austro-German and Bulgarian drives through Serbia. By the end of the year the remnants of the Serbian army had been driven across the frontiers and some 50,000 of them found refuge in January on the Greek island of Corfu, which was seized by the Allies for that purpose.
The policy of espousing Austria's quarrels, the development of the Austro-German Alliance into a pooling of interests in all spheres, was "the best way of producing war." The Balkan policy of conquest and strangulation "was not the German policy, but that of the Austrian Imperial House."
The Rumanians retorted that the Austro-German armies had systematically looted Rumania during their three years of occupation and that they were only taking back what belonged to them.
So far as concerned means of communication, matters were nearly equal, but geographical advantage lay with the Russians, as the way from Galicia to Hungary is by far an easier one than vice versa. This force was consequently beyond the zone of the Austro-German offensive, but, as events proved, it had not been overlooked, for it was here that the heaviest blow was finally to fall.
With its front established in a straight line from just south of Riga on the north, to the Rumanian frontier on the south, the Austro-German army decided to abandon the offensive for the time being and be content with holding that front; and devote its energies to the Serbian and French theatres of war.
In preceding chapters we have learned of the successful onslaught which the Russians made against the Austro-German lines during the months of June and July, 1916. Along the entire southern part of the eastern front from the southern base of the Pinsk salient down to the Austro-Russo-Rumanian border the troops of the Central Powers had been pushed back many miles.
The Austrians and the Germans had driven the Russians back from the Carpathians and had retaken Przemysl and Lemberg. In fact, the situation of the Austro-German armies had now become so favorable that it was possible for the Teutonic allies to make proposals to the Balkan States with a fair chance of being listened to.
Besides holding his own, Dmitrieff had on several occasions been able to assist Brussilov on his left. Until the big German drive commenced they had only been opposed to three Austro-German army corps and a Prussian division; now there were twelve corps on their front, supplied with enormous resources of artillery, shells, and cavalry.
Moreover, they had drained the civilian population of every male person strong enough to carry a gun. At this time, when the fourth invasion began threatening, their army mustered fully 310,000 men, slightly more than the Austro-German.
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