The Romanian invasion proved too much for the kaiser, who sacked von Falkenhayn, replacing him with Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) and Lieutenant General Erich Ludendorff (1865–1937). After taking over the headquarters of the German High Command at Pless in Silesia on 29 August 1916, Hindenburg sent Ludendorff to the Austrian army headquarters at nearby Teschen to discuss the situation with the Austrian chief of staff, General Conrad von Hötzendorf.
Ludendorff discovered that von Falkenhayn had been at Teschen the day before, going over the crisis with Conrad, reviewing the plans they had made in July. Both chiefs had decided that Arz would have to hold on as best he could in Transylvania until reinforcements arrived. Meanwhile, along the Bulgarian border von Mackensen’s small German-Bulgarian force would stage a feint, threatening Bucharest – which would slow or even stop the Romanian advance in Hungary. Allegedly the two left the decision of where to attack, toward Bucharest or the Dobrogea, with von Mackensen.1 Ludendorff had already decided that the first priority of the new OHL was to establish its authority by regaining the initiative on the Eastern Front, so he was not adverse to taking bold action. Conrad wanted to minimize losses in Transylvania by having von Mackensen cross the Danube and advance at once on Bucharest. Ludendorff instead convinced him that von Mackensen’s army was too weak to head for the enemy capital. Ludendorff argued that if the marshal marched east into the Dobrogea region, the Central Powers could accomplish the same goal – namely, forcing the Romanians to withdraw troops from Transylvania to stop him, which would buy time for the OHL and AOK to send forces to that beleaguered area.2 Reluctantly, Conrad agreed, and von Mackensen received orders to head into the Dobrogea. At the moment, however, stopping the Romanians in Transylvania had top priority, and with the Austrian 1st Army already in the region, it was given that mission. Conrad and Ludendorff agreed to assemble a second army to pursue the Romanians back over the Transylvanian Alps toward Bucharest. The Germans indicated they would provide the army headquarters for this mission.3
Ludendorff returned to Pless, and he and von Hindenburg convinced the kaiser to take the momentous step of ending the Verdun offensive, ultimately freeing units that could be sent elsewhere. The Central Powers had simply run out of divisions. Every army commander clamored for more, but the advance of the Romanians into Transylvania threatened to turn the entire flank of the Eastern Front, so halting them came first. Von Hindenburg did not exaggerate when he said that the Central Powers found themselves nearly defenseless against this latest enemy.4 Romania’s entry into the war threatened to rupture the Southeast Front and bring down the house of cards that comprised the Central Powers. “If the Romanians’ advance were not stopped,” wrote Ludendorff, “the way into the heart of Hungary and our lines of communication with the Balkan Peninsula would be [open]. That would mean our defeat.”5 Closing his eyes to the dangers on the other fronts, Ludendorff started moving German divisions and headquarters to Transylvania. He later admitted that his ignorance of the circumstances in the west permitted this step; had he known the complete picture there, he would never have mustered the courage.6
First came orders moving several divisions, then two corps headquarters received the word to depart for the Romanian theater. The search for an army headquarters to send to Transylvania took a week longer. Part of the reason for the delay was the absence of both von Hindenburg and Ludendorff from the OHL. The two had left Pless on 5 September for a quick visit to the Western Front, returning four days later. While traveling, Ludendorff discovered that he had only one army headquarters available – the one in Slomin that had been under the command of Prince Leopold of Bavaria (1846–1930). The prince had just left, taking von Hindenburg’s place as commander in chief in the east. On 6th September, the kaiser had renamed Army Group Prince Leopold the 9th German Army and assigned von Falkenhayn to command it, apparently without checking with von Hindenburg or Ludendorff.7 Following his dismissal in August, von Falkenhayn had asked to be assigned to the front, securing a perfunctory nod of agreement from the kaiser. The former chief of staff had expected to be retired in ignominy, but to his surprise, Wilhelm II lived up to his word and notified von Falkenhayn of the appointment on the 6th. The 9th Army headquarters was ordered to move to Grodno, in northeast Poland.
Sending that headquarters to Romania posed a problem. The new team at the OHL and von Falkenhayn were enemies. For two years von Hindenburg and Ludendorff had undermined von Falkenhayn’s authority at every opportunity and had finally engineered his downfall.8 In addition, the operations in Romania were going to be mounted from Austrian territory in concert with that country’s forces, and, if anything, relations between Conrad and von Falkenhayn were worse. Finally, the two armies earmarked for Transylvania, the Austrian 1st and German 9th, would come under the direction of the senior headquarters in the region, Army Group Archduke Karl, providing another source of friction.
Von Falkenhayn had encouraged the formation of this army group in a less than subtle attempt to take control over the faltering Austrians. Following horrendous losses in the fall of 1914, the Austrians never seemed to recover their confidence. As the war progressed, the Germans found themselves coming to the rescue of their ally with increasing and annoying frequency. German assistance took the form of stiffening their partners, which at first meant assigning German units to Austrian headquarters and vice versa, then interspersing German armies with Austrian ones along the front. Attaching German officers to the staffs at the major Austrian headquarters came next, but the abysmal Austrian performance in the summer of 1916 demonstrated the futility of that effort. Von Falkenhayn took advantage of the crisis to extend Germany’s control over the entire front except the extreme southeast corner – the Carpathian region. Conrad had strenuously resisted the German takeover, arguing its incompatibility with Austria’s independence and pride, and he had drawn a line, insisting that the Dual Monarchy remain in control of the Southeast Front. To placate him while still pursuing his goal of bringing the Austrians under German authority, von Falkenhayn had encouraged the Austrians to organize their forces in the southeast area under the control of an army group led by Archduke Karl (1887–1922), the heir to the throne. Karl had served in the army before the war, and when it began he was immediately promoted to brigadier general and given a ceremonial position at AOK.9 He later received command of a corps in the largely defensive effort in Italy, acquitting himself well. Von Falkenhayn proposed that the twenty-nine-year-old Archduke Karl exercise control over the German South Army and 7th Austrian Army, operating in Galicia. In mid-July, the 3rd Austrian Army, coming from the Italian Front, was assigned to Karl as well. The archduke’s headquarters would be more than just an army; it would control the Southeast Front in Galicia.10
The arrangement permitted Conrad to save face since an Austrian exercised command, but von Falkenhayn tried to ensure German control by appointing one of his favorite generals as the chief of staff of the army group.11 Von Falkenhayn’s appointee, the autocratic Brigadier General Hans von Seeckt (1866–1936), was universally disliked by the Austrians, and he and Archduke Karl soon fell out, straining relations between the two allies even further. Muddying the situation, von Seeckt had correctly gauged the direction of the wind and had turned against his mentor, aligning himself with Ludendorff. The assignment of the 9th Army to Romania meant that von Falkenhayn, once the superior to von Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Archduke Karl, and von Seeckt and Conrad’s equal, would become their subordinate. That all of these senior officers disliked the discredited former chief of staff did not bode well for a smooth campaign.
On 11 September, after discussing the sensitive nomination with von Seeckt, Ludendorff offered the 9th Army to Conrad as the nucleus of an offensive force to be formed in southwest Transylvania. The Austrian accepted.12 Two days later, Conrad told Arz that the 9th Army was coming to Siebenbürgen.13
At Teschen on 30 and 31 August, the Germans and Austrians had agreed that a rapid counterattack was what was needed in Romania. The bleeding in Transylvania required immediate action, but the crisis had also opened the entire southeast region to military operations, and both Conrad and Ludendorff immediately recognized an opportunity to bring about far-reaching effects, possibly rolling up the entire Russian southwest flank. Nonetheless, deploying units to Transylvania, even from the nearby Galician Front, would take some time, so von Mackensen had received the go-ahead to attack immediately in the Dobrogea region in the hope of getting the Romanians to respond there at the expense of their effort in the north.
When Ludendorff returned to his own headquarters, however, cold reality hit him. Germany had no divisions to send to Transylvania. The strain at Verdun and along the Somme meant that “not a single man more could be spared from the Western Front,” and the seeming inability of Army Group Archduke Karl’s 7th Army to staunch a Russian offensive just to the north in Galicia threatened everything. If the Austrians could not hold there, an effort against Romania could not be launched. An angry Ludendorff found himself forced to divert divisions he had intended for Romania to Galicia “with a heavy heart,” and “bitter feelings … surged up within me against the Austrian Army.”14 The three divisions he had scraped together went to General Eduard Böhm-Ermolli’s (1856–1941) 2nd Austrian Army and Archduke Karl’s Army Group instead of Transylvania.
Before leaving on 5 September for a visit to the beleaguered Western Front with von Hindenburg to assess the crisis there, Ludendorff managed to find a few units and headquarters to send to Transylvania. The I and XXXIX Reserve Corps headquarters were ordered from the relatively quiet Baltic–northeast area to Hungary. Ludendorff also ordered to Siebenbürgen the 187th Infantry Division from Alsace, the 89th Infantry Division from Galicia, and the 3rd Cavalry Division from Russia. Conrad sent the Austro-Hungarian 1st Cavalry Division, the 1st Landsturm Reserve Hussar Brigade, the Honved 39th Infantry Division, and four battalions of the 210th Infantry Brigade to the region.15
The two corps headquarters were small organizations and moved immediately. Both commanders had long ago proven themselves to the von Hindenburg-Ludendorff team. Hermannn von Staabs (1859–1940)16 had enjoyed a distinguished career in the general staff, serving as director of the vital railway section from 1903 to 1906, and he had returned to the War Ministry in 1910 as director of army administration. His attention to detail and superior administrative talents led to his ennoblement in 1913, an accelerated distinction for a brigadier general. The war allowed him to show his mettle as a troop commander, and he had led the 17th Infantry Division in the Tannenberg Campaign and in northern Russia. In July 1916 he had taken charge of the XXXIX Reserve Corps at Dünaberg, in Latvia. En route to Siebenbürgen he stopped at Pless, where von Hindenburg told him his corps would have to take charge of the units in southern Transylvania under Arz, with the mission of thwarting the Romanian invasion until reinforcements could arrive and decisive action could begin.17
Major General Kurt von Morgen of the I Reserve Corps likewise stopped by Pless on his way to Transylvania. Looking every bit the arrogant Prussian general, with thick black hair combed en brosse; a snarl on his face; and his hand on his belt, opening his general’s greatcoat to reveal its distinctive red lining,18 von Morgen fought hard, but he was a difficult and quarrelsome subordinate. A brilliant officer, his career would have certainly progressed further had he not been so contentious. Born a commoner in 1858, he became a lieutenant in 1878 and went to Cameroon in the 1880s. Wounded three times and decorated, he then spent several years in Constantinople as a military attaché. Somehow he managed to accompany Horatio Kitchener during the British campaign in the Sudan to subdue the Mahdi, which led on his return to an appointment to the general staff in Berlin – a rare honor for someone who had not attended the War Academy. Von Morgen’s exploits in Africa and Asia were well-known, and the kaiser raised him to the nobility in 1904 as a mere battalion commander, an extraordinary recognition. He handled the 3rd Reserve Division with distinction in the Tannenberg Campaign, but a month later he electrified the OHL when he sent in a memorandum announcing that he had no confidence in the leadership of the newly appointed 8th Army commander, General Hermann von Francois (1856–1933). To criticize a senior officer openly was unheard-of. Only Francois’s reputation as an even more difficult subordinate saved von Morgen. Ludendorff, well aware of von Francois’s shortcomings, arranged von Morgen’s appointment as commander of the I Reserve Corps a week later, a position normally held by a lieutenant general. At the time, von Morgen was the junior major general in the Prussian army.
When von Morgen arrived in Pless on 30 August, Ludendorff gave him a briefing on the situation in Siebenbürgen, along with instructions to report to Conrad at Teschen. The next day, von Morgen went to Teschen, where the Austrian generalissimo provided a rundown on the situation in Transylvania. The Central Powers commander in chief in Siebenbürgen, said Conrad, was Arz. Two combat groups would be formed under Arz: the southern was to go to von Staabs; the northern to von Morgen. Conrad indicated that von Morgen would have but two weak Austro-Hungarian divisions responsible for a line from Fagaras to the Calimani Mountains, a front of some 110 miles.19
Conrad then railed at the treachery of the Romanians, who, like thieves, had walked through an open door in Siebenbürgen. “I never trusted that bunch of crooks,” the Austrian general grumbled.20 When von Morgen tactlessly observed that it might have been better had the door been kept closed, Conrad blamed the diplomats whose insistence up to the very last moment that there would be no war had left the Central Powers flat-footed in Transylvania.21
After calling on Conrad, von Morgen next saw the commander of the Austro-Hungarian army, Archduke Friedrich (1856–1936), a jovial, likable man who owed his position not only to his birth but also to his self-control in allowing full freedom to his chief of staff. Emperor Franz Josef was the commander in chief according to the constitution, but he was too old to take the field or exercise active command, and he passed the position to Archduke Friedrich. The latter knew his limits and let Conrad exercise control. Von Cramon said of Archduke Friedrich: “He was not a master of war, but he was a brave soldier. He did the best he could in the position he was assigned by Franz Josef. He did not try to reach for things that were beyond his grasp.”22 Von Morgen then traveled to Budapest, arriving 1 September. He went to the Nobles’ Club for dinner, meeting many leading Magyar personalities whose open antagonism to Austria ran deep. Statements that Hungary would be politically and militarily betrayed by Austria shocked the Prussian, and he left Budapest convinced that the current structure of Austria-Hungary would not survive.23 He arrived in Transylvania on 3 September and joined his counterpart, von Staabs. Although both had served in the east since the beginning of the war, neither had worked with Austrian troops, and they were in for a shock.
Arz’s 1st Army consisted of major units from both Austria-Hungary and Germany. These units presented a bewildering array that belied a unity implied by the term empire. The armed forces of both states reflected historical compromises that, in Austria’s case, led the Habsburg monarchy to field three separate army components when the war started; the German Empire sent four. Within each empire a high command, the AOK in Austria and OHL in Germany – formed from the peacetime general staff and augmented by key logistical sections from the War Ministry – directed operations, but behind that facade, the overburdened war ministries from each component wrestled with staffing, feeding, and equipping armies on a scale unprecedented in history.
A concession to growing nationalism, the Compromise of 1867 created the Dual Monarchy, with the Empire of Austria largely centered on Austria and Bohemia-Moravia, and the Kingdom of St. Stephen (Hungary) on Hungary and Croatia. They were virtually independent states, sharing only the Habsburg family dynasty and three common government ministries: diplomatic representation, defense, and a treasury to support the common expenses. The imperial-royal (Austria being an empire and Bohemia a kingdom) government was located in Vienna, where German was the dominant language of government and commerce. This area included Austria itself, Bohemia, Moravia, the South Tyrol, Trieste, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Galicia, and the Bucovina. To the east, the royal government (Hungary being a kingdom) exercised authority from Budapest over Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, the Banat of Temesvar, and Transylvania. The Magyar language ruled.24
The two halves of the empire zealously guarded their prerogatives, and they kept the combined government in check by controlling the number of recruits and the level of financing for the combined army, along with maintaining their own separate component forces as additional checks and balances. Austria-Hungary thus had three army components: the common or k.u.k. army, the Austrian Landwehr, and the Hungarian Honved. The latter two were not inferior services and were generally equal in terms of combat capability to like-size units of the common army, although the latter was much larger. The two national forces often received newer equipment because their parliaments were more willing to fund them than the common army. Common army units were called infantry troop divisions or cavalry troop divisions, while the Austrian units were termed Landwehr infantry divisions or Landwehr cavalry divisions, and the Hungarian counterparts, similarly, were Honved infantry or Honved cavalry divisions. Both national component forces had reserves (Landsturm), which were called to the colors in 1914, but by late 1916 the distinctions between the common army, the Landwehr, the Honved, and their reserves had lost much of their meaning, although the terminology used to identify units remained. Operationally, all three forces fell under the control of the AOK and its major subordinate units, the numbered field armies and army corps headquarters.
Prior to mobilization, army corps headquarters, of which there were sixteen, conducted training ranging from the annual intake of recruits to entire regiments under the supervision of inspectorates (for the infantry, cavalry, artillery, and so forth) subordinate to the War Ministry. The general staff prepared for mobilization and led and conducted the annual fall maneuver exercise, normally pitting one corps against another.
Universal male conscription provided recruits for the army with a twelve-year obligation. A lottery system determined who actually served. Those with the lowest lottery numbers served for three years in the common army, then an additional seven years in reserve status, spending the last two years of their obligation in the Honved or Landwehr. Those drawing mid-level lottery numbers served two years of active service and ten of reserve duty in one of the national component armies – that is, the Landwehr or Honved. The lucky ones drawing the highest lottery numbers did not serve at all, because the actual number of recruits inducted into military service was limited by budgetary constraints. Those not called to service remained on the books in the category of Landsturm, males between the ages of nineteen and forty-two who had not served but had an obligation to do so if called. During the war, the Landsturm eligibility expanded from ages eighteen to fifty, with military retirees and people discharged short of a complete enlistment liable to be called back up to age sixty.25
The infantry division was the basic building block of all European armies, and although divisions differed slightly from army to army, the differences were minor. The infantry division of two brigades – each with two regiments of four battalions, plus artillery and cavalry – some 15,000 officers and men in all, constituted the basic combat formation of all three Austrian army components. By 1916, however, crippling losses, especially at the noncommissioned and junior officer level, coupled with the transfer of some of the experienced officers and noncommissioned officers to newly raised units and the strain and wear of two years of war, was all too visible. Most divisions were operating with fewer than 10,000 men.
Although divisions were important to the generals, the average soldier lived solely within his regiment. Regiments of all components had defined regions from which their recruits came. In the common army and Landwehr, most officers were of Germanic origin and used that language, while in the Honved, ethnic Magyars and their language dominated. At levels lower than divisions, linguistic and ethnic anarchy ruled. The Habsburg monarchy made an effort to keep regiments segregated by nationality and, to the extent possible, led by officers and noncommissioned officers who had the same origins as, or at least knew the language of, their soldiers. The effort had not entirely succeeded, however, largely because military service was not welcomed by most of the population, and the war only exacerbated this phenomenon. Consequently, Austrians made up 75 percent of career or professional officers and 50 percent of the reserve officer corps, although overall, Austrians constituted only 25 percent of the empire’s inhabitants.26 Officers usually made an effort to learn the language of their troops, and the soldiers were in turn expected to assimilate the so-called command language, several hundred words of German that made up key phrases. Vienna understood well the concept of ethnic solidarity, and, again to the extent possible, regiments were stationed in the towns and cities of their ethnic recruiting area. During the war, a conscious effort was made to avoid pitting national or linguistic groups against their counterparts on the other side – for example, having the empire’s Slavs fight Russians or Serbs. But military exigencies did not always permit this luxury.27
Most military leaders before 1914 believed that the next war would not last a long time, but they understood the horrific lethality of improved small arms and, to a lesser degree, machine guns and artillery. Replacements for troops would certainly be needed. The structure of the continental armies used as trained reserves soldiers who had completed their active service commitment, and those who had not yet served were kept track of and could be called up. Most generals believed that losses would be replaced from the trained reserves of older men who had completed their service. Indeed, that is what happened initially, but as time wore on and the casualties mounted, replacements in ever-increasing numbers had to be drawn from the men who had never before been called to service, as well as the younger men coming of age during the war. Replacements for casualties came from the peacetime recruiting regions allocated to the divisions and regiments. Each major unit kept a recruit training detachment in its home region to train volunteers and recruits conscripted by the local authorities. In peacetime, recruits usually entered the service all on the same day, but that did not work in war. In Austria, the War Ministry accepted volunteers when they joined and conscripted the others as needed, which soon became monthly. The unit recruit detachment in the hinterland, supposedly composed of an experienced officer and noncommissioned officers, trained the new soldiers and brought them to the front to their parent units in what were called march battalions or march brigades.28
On paper the system looked feasible, but in reality it had major shortcomings. The terrific losses meant that veteran officers and soldiers could not be spared for training. At best, convalescing officers and soldiers might be sent to the hinterland, but more often than not, the trainers became those sent to the rear for various forms of incompetence.29 In theory, recruits destined for the infantry were to receive a minimum of six weeks training at the home station, while eight weeks of training was allocated for technical units.30 More often than not, the pleas from desperate commanders at the front led to the dispatch of many march units long before their training was complete. Accordingly, the recruits often arrived at the front untrained and worn out by an arduous journey, necessitating further training – which was harder to accomplish at the front than in the rear and wreaked havoc with the conduct of active operations. Worse, the exigencies of war caused many of the arriving march units to be given an operational unit designation31 and sent into the trenches, where their losses were predictably higher than veteran units. The AOK recognized that this practice only worsened matters in the long run and took steps to prevent it, insisting that senior officers personally take charge of training along the front for their march battalions. Still, if an enemy breakthrough occurred or threatened, the principle of necessité fait loi usually sabotaged the best intentions of all but the most determined army commanders.32
Ethnically divided, undermanned, and poorly trained, Austro-Hungarian units also suffered from indifferent leadership. Although most of the Austrian senior leaders enjoyed training and careers similar to those of their German allies, they simply did not perform as well. The dreadful casualties of the botched 1914 campaigns that annihilated the army’s junior and noncommissioned officers led to the relief of only two senior commanders, but unlike the other major powers, the Austrians never recovered their nerve.
The decay began with Conrad, who grew increasingly remote and despondent as the war wore on. Why this happened is not clear, but perhaps the loss of his favorite son in Galicia in 1914 and the serious wounding of another son affected his spirit. The observant von Cramon thought that Conrad suffered from growing senility. He had become an old man in the war, as revealed by his photographs. Never gregarious, he became completely reclusive. He walked alone a great deal, arrived late for meals, ate fast, and did not remain for conversation. He drank little and did not smoke. There were no after-dinner discussions. The headquarters dining room, noted von Cramon, was so small that the buttons on the backs of the uniform coats wore ruts in the walls. When Conrad married Virginia von Reininghaus in late 1915, he arranged for her to move to Teschen. Once his wife was in residence at the AOK, Conrad rarely appeared before 11 AM and usually disappeared soon after 8 PM. Of course, other officers in the headquarters quickly followed suit. Having wives in the headquarters proved a disaster. When decisions were needed in crises, the officers were out with the women and could not be found. “It was,” wrote von Cramon in 1924, “as if the war did not exist!”33
But the war did exist. In the beginning, the AOK intervened too much in operations at lower levels. Once it got over this, it went too far in the other direction and gave commanders too much freedom of action, especially when they did not deliver. The headquarters permitted unsuccessful operations to continue, satisfied with getting reports but not stepping in to alleviate failures. Correspondence between the AOK and leaders at the front often failed to convey the facts or seriousness of many situations. The Austrians wanted dutiful subordinates rather than loyal helpers. Austrian generals knew what their army was supposed to look like, but in reality they hardly knew the instrument they led. To the AOK, the process seemed more important than the results.
Such an attitude was remarkable given Conrad’s history. During his entire career, he had enjoyed a reputation as a results man, not one who favored form and formalism over achievement. He delegated authority freely. He had little use for tradition and was known for his indifference to pomp and ceremony, even having tried to eliminate regimental bands and then drill and ceremonies. His home had been a meeting place for officers of all levels when he served as a unit commander; as an instructor at the War Academy, he had encouraged open debate and never offered official, school-sanctioned solutions. Of the hundred students under his tutelage there, fifty-one became general officers and another nine colonels. In his years commanding units up to the division level, he had acquired an enviable reputation as a technological innovator whose concern for the welfare and morale of his soldiers had created a veritable legion of loyal followers throughout the army.34
During the war, he performed an abrupt volte-face, accepting reverses with an attitude of what happens, happens, and he was glad when things were not worse. He issued standing orders that he was not to be spoken to or to disturbed, on duty or off, which certainly kept him isolated. The German liaison officer, von Cramon, said he had to put aside the knowledge that he was not welcome when he had to interrupt the great man, so one can imagine the trepidation of lower-ranking officers from Conrad’s own forces. Such behavior left him out of touch with events, and he became a man who focused on what he thought was possible rather than on what was realistic or needed to be accomplished, an attitude he certainly fostered in other ways as well. In his three years as chief of staff, he made only three visits to the front, and he rarely talked to his subordinate generals.35 Consequently, he had no conception of what things were like for the average soldier with respect to food, clothing, and conditions overall. Cloistered and opinionated, he let his prejudices guide him. His rage at Italy for betraying the Triple Alliance in 1915 blinded him to other dangers. He allowed his desire for revenge to define him, leaving him to overlook Brusilov’s build-up at Luck, in the spring of 1916. He was warned, said von Cramon, but he ignored it.36
If Conrad knew little or nothing about true conditions because he rarely visited the front, the corollary was that the rank and file along the front knew nothing of him. Von Seeckt explained to von Falkenhayn in July 1916 that “for the [Austro-Hungarian] army, the High Command is a vague notion. It has no presence or influence…. General orders from Teschen don’t carry any weight anymore.” The appalled Germans thought long and hard about seeking his dismissal. Von Falkenhayn and von Cramon had several conversations about this unpleasant topic, but all their talk foundered on two implacable facts. First, noted von Cramon, in Austria Conrad was a god. Second, no other Austrian general appeared suited to take his place.37
In any event, Conrad’s distancing himself from the front encouraged similar behavior among other top leaders. Senior officers from the army headquarters rarely visited the front, as reflected by casualty figures. In the first four months of the war, thirty-nine colonels or generals fell in action, yet in the next thirty-five months, only thirty-one colonels and generals died.38 Success went unrewarded; failure went unpunished.
One Austrian unknowingly summarized the situation when describing one of his failed commanders as smart and cultured, but lacking in energy.39 Undermined by mediocrity at the very top and stunned by high losses, Austria’s leadership never caught its breath, and the passivity of some of its leaders crippled operations on the Eastern Front. Only in Italy did the Austrians consistently perform well, but against Russia and Serbia, they were found wanting and timid. As von Seeckt noted in a letter to his wife in June 1916, “it is so annoying that they [the Austrians] have lost their nerve vis-à-vis the Russians.”40
The image of the Austro-Hungarian soldier in World War I is “good soldier Schweik,” the simpleton soldier trying to survive with the least possible exertion of effort. The story of Schweik reads well, but reality is more complex. The Austro-Hungarian forces had problems, not the least of which were an inefficient government and the divisive tension of nationalism in a war in which that corrosive force grew steadily from day one, stoked by the Entente and threatening the cohesion of the multinational empire in which there were fourteen major ethnic groups. Troops from several of the minorities deserted to their counterparts on the side of the Entente. Undoubtedly some men went over to the other side motivated by national feelings, but war-weariness and hunger also moved many. On account of the Allied naval blockade and mismanagement of the food supply, the average Dual Monarchy soldier in 1918 weighed barely over 125 pounds. Morale was poor. The divide between officers and men was great, exacerbated by linguistic differences. The Germans were openly contemptuous of “Comrade Shoe-Laces,” a reference to the Austrian boots that were ankle-length and laced, in comparison to the German knee-high and lace-less boots. Von Seeckt echoed Ludendorff when writing his wife in 1917 and telling her that Germany would be better off without Austria.41
Balancing that negative image is the fact that Austrian soldiers remained in the conflict on all fronts until the end,42 unlike the ostensibly better prepared Russian army, which collapsed and broke in 1917. With inspired leadership, as on the Italian Front, the Austro-Hungarian soldier could hold his own even when vastly outnumbered. The great mutiny of 1917 that crippled the French army had no counterpart in Austria-Hungary. The dreadful conditions in the trenches and the dwindling food supply seem to be ingredients that inexorably lead to mutiny, but in all of the warring armies, the bulk of the rank and file came from the countryside – where exhausting work, hard conditions, sudden death, and privation were the norm. In theory, the soldiers Conrad had to fight off the Romanians were for the most part no better nor worse than those they faced, but in reality the tired and demoralized Austrians were vastly outnumbered in 1916 by the fresh, if untested, Romanians and the worn, but experienced, Russians.
The German units presented as bewildering an array of names and components as did the Dual Monarchy’s army. The constitution of the German Empire allowed Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg to maintain separate, national contingents. The proportion of soldiers from each component army was set by law: Prussia had the largest army (78 percent of the whole), as befit the state where two-thirds of the empire’s subjects lived and that provided the ruling dynasty, the Hohenzollerns. Prussia had swallowed the establishments of smaller states – the several Hesses, Hanover, Mecklenburg, and so on – although some regiments carried the names and colors of illustrious regiments once in their service. Bavaria had three army corps, a force large enough (11 percent of the whole) to merit its own general staff corps. Saxony provided an army corps (7 percent) and Württemberg several regiments (4 percent). Except for the imperial Guard Corps, which could recruit soldiers from anywhere in Prussia, regiments and divisions had their own geographical area from which to draw replacements.
In addition to the four national component armies, there were Reserve, Ersatz, Landwehr and Landsturm units in each, representing various types of reserve formations called to the colors at different stages of the war. Like Austria, Germany relied on universal male conscription to fill the ranks of the armies of its states. Prospective recruits were called to military service at age twenty for two years of active service, and, again as in Austria, budget considerations meant that not all of them served. In fact, the Germans drafted far fewer men into service as a percentage of the population than did France. Recruit depots used physical examinations to select the best specimens, and those who did not serve were placed in the Ersatz, were liable to be called up for duty in war, and were required to attend some minimal training two or three times a year, a duty that likewise often fell victim to budgetary vicissitudes. Those actually conscripted served two years of active duty, then five in the Reserve (which had annual training obligations), then eleven in the Landwehr (which was typically service on paper only), followed by enrollment in the Landsturm until they reached age forty-five.43 When the war came, casualties and expansion quickly emptied the pool of Ersatz, Reserve, Landwehr, and Landsturm soldiers, and conscription and voluntary enlistments were employed to fill the ranks. By the summer of 1916 the designations with respect to reserve or regular units had little meaning, as all the units had seen considerable combat, and commanders were moved from one to another irrespective of the type of unit.
Regiments drew replacements from a specified territory, which meant that the new soldier fell in with comrades whose region and dialect matched his own. Specialized training units did not exist; new soldiers entered the army annually in October, reporting directly to the regiment in which they would serve for the next two years. Unit commanders at all levels had responsibility for training their men. This meant that regimental officers had a vested interest in the outcome, as the men they trained would be the ones they would fight with. It also meant that the recruits came to know their leaders very well. Each of the branches of the service prescribed the basics but left it to unit commanders to conduct the training under the supervision of higher commanders. By all accounts, training was intense in order to maximize the time available in the two-year term of service.44
During the war, regiment commanders could no longer train replacements, who continued to come from the same territorial areas and received training at recruit depots operated by officers and noncommissioned officers detailed from the line units to which the replacements were assigned. The Germans took pains, however, to ensure that drafts of new men received field training with their units once they did arrive at the front before going into battle.45 New techniques and methods of fighting, such as the elastic defense adopted in 1917 or the infiltration tactics of the following year, necessitated training in the field. In such cases the OHL established special schools for training cadres, who returned to their original units to pass on the instruction.
Although each of the four national components raised, equipped, trained, and administered its own army, all came under the operational authority of the Prussian Great General Staff. To a degree the Prussian army served as the model for those of the other three components, ensuring an organizational and tactical homogeneity in most aspects of the German forces. In turn, this uniformity permitted the flexibility in assigning units that characterized the German approach to war. Headquarters routinely assembled and disassembled units by taking battalions and regiments from parent units and cross-attaching these to others when such arrangements facilitated the mission. Ad hoc formations proliferated. It was common to see a German division in an Austrian army corps, a Bavarian regiment fighting in a Prussian infantry division, or a Württemberg artillery battery supporting a Saxon assault.
By the summer of 1916, the Germans routinely used army group headquarters to provide control over large sections of the front. Below army groups were numbered armies, then army corps, and finally divisions. The Prussians also created what they called General Commands, which were the equivalent of an army corps headquarters staff but had no units permanently assigned to them, and they had similar division headquarters staffs without subordinate units, allowing them to send these senior level headquarters to places where situations demanded additional control. Finally, a dizzying number of formations bore the name of the commander or a region – for example, Army Group Gallwitz, Army Group Woyrisch, the Beskiden Corps, the Carpathian Corps, the Alpine Corps, and the German South Army.
What was uniform in the German armed forces was the organization of the infantry division – the basic fighting element – for battle. Converted in 1915 from a square division of two brigades of two regiments, the German infantry division in 1916 was triangular, with but one brigade and three regiments, each with three battalions. Within the regiment, the battalion commander initially in contact with the enemy usually directed the fighting, with the regimental commander and staff responsible for ammunition supply, the evacuation of wounded, and the critical forwarding of reserves at the decisive moment. At the next key level, the division, the brigade headquarters often fought the battle, freeing the division commander to direct artillery and the reinforcements to the best use. Each division had an artillery regiment. The size of the division fluctuated greatly depending on replacements and the level of combat, but as a rule, divisions usually had about 9,000 officers and soldiers.46 The Germans frequently assigned regiments and even battalions to different headquarters when necessary for a specific mission.
The Germans were largely immune to the ethnicity issues that the Austrians faced. The incorporation of Alsace-Lorraine into the German empire in 1871 had created a French minority that did not assimilate but at the same time was not given the autonomy enjoyed by some of the major ethnic groups in Austria-Hungary. During the war, the regiments from Alsace-Lorraine performed gallantly and without hesitation in the service of Germany. The 42nd Infantry Division, from Alsace, fought extremely well on both fronts and was viewed as a top-notch division. The eastern part of Germany, principally Silesia and Posen, contained pockets of Poles who had moved there for economic reasons. Although they enjoyed political representation in the Reichstag, their interests and influence were localized and limited. In essence, the German armed forces enjoyed a much greater ethnic and cultural homogeneity than the Habsburg armed forces. On the occasions when Germans from one state harassed those from another, the rivalry was more often good-natured than malevolent.
Along with the other major nations, Germany had entered the war in 1914 certain it would be relatively short one. The failure of the Marne Campaign had led to a war of attrition, a war for which Germany was both not prepared and at a huge disadvantage. Nonetheless, by the time of the Romanian Campaign, the Germans had largely fought the armies of the other three major powers to a standstill, all the while supporting her faltering allies, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. What the Austrians lacked in skill and confidence, their German allies had in abundance. At this stage of the war, the German units were the best trained.
The Romanian halt at the end of August both mystified and pleasantly surprised the German and Austrian headquarters. All the combatants had learned by the end of 1914 that after taking an objective, the exhausted attackers wanted only to rest. Their officers also knew that an enemy artillery bombardment would soon arrive, to be followed inevitably by a counterattack, and they immediately started to dig in. Both phenomena effectively strangled any impetus to continue the assault. Overcoming this inertia took almost superhuman effort. Meanwhile, the enemy busily brought up reinforcements and materiel and constructed new trenches, which guaranteed that when the attack finally resumed, it amounted to starting all over again. Hard-earned experience provided the antidote: once begun, an attack had to be pursued until the supply of men or ammunition was exhausted. This experience, of course, was what the Romanians lacked, and their soldiers settled where their orders had initially dictated. Having accomplished their mission of crossing the mountains, the covering forces dug in and awaited the arrival and reassembly of the main units mobilizing on the opposite side of the mountains in Romania.47 The Austrians and Germans could scarcely believe their luck.
Of course, some of the Romanian generals understood that waiting for their forces to regroup would squander the opportunity they had to advance while the enemy was weak, confused, and disorganized. The argument in favor of pressing on precipitated the first war council of senior leaders at Army General Headquarters at Peris on 2 September. On account of their success so far, Generals Prezan and Culcer urged continuing the advance without waiting for the troops that were mobilizing and had yet to cross the mountains and reassemble in combat formations. Maintaining momentum should have priority. The units still in Romania could catch up later. General Averescu led the opposition and advocated sticking to the schedule of Plan Z, which had allocated twelve days to cross the mountains and assemble the armies before advancing to central Transylvania. Changing a complex plan in the middle of its execution, he said, would lead to confusion. He argued that it would be a great mistake to begin operations before organizing the units. His own army, he added, was stretched along a thin line and was not capable of defending itself in any depth if attacked.48 Those in favor of continuing the advance carried the day.
The Romanian armies in Hungary resumed their advance. General Headquarters instructed Culcer to move additional units across the border into the basins south of the 1st Army’s covering forces,49 and, as the various headquarters arrived, the units began to take on a more battle-ready appearance. The bulk of Culcer’s army assembled near Petrosani. His forces there consisted of the I Army Corps (2nd and 11th Divisions) and the 12th Division, which he began to move into the Merisor Valley between the Petrosani Basin and Hateg. His mission was to prevent the Austrians from forming a line of defense along the lower Mures River, as well as to prevent them from receiving any relief from Caranszebes, in the Banat.
The critical railroad from Hungary into Transylvania ran along the Mures River, a mere twenty miles from 1st Army’s forward units. Cutting or blocking that line would have had immediate and far-reaching consequences. Culcer never made either task a specific mission for his units. His forces never left the Merisor Valley. They inched northwest along the valley until they ran into the Austrian defenders and, coming from Hateg, the first of the arriving German units, a regiment from the 187th Division. Culcer justified the lack of action by citing the necessity of having to protect his army from a possible flank attack emanating from Caranszebes, in Hungary, to his west. Another of the 187th’s regiments had already started to disembark there, but it hardly posed a threat to the nearby Romanians, three divisions strong.50
Culcer could not offer even that flimsy excuse for failing to advancing past Sibiu to the Mures River line. His own I Corps in the Merisor Valley protected the left flank of the Olt-Lotru forces, while Averescu’s 2nd Army was on his right flank. The Olt-Lotru force had already bested Colonel Barwick’s Sibiu defenders and a division of Honved reinforcements. Instead of pursuing his foe, Culcer wasted time combining the Olt and Lotru Groups into the 23rd Division, commanded by General Castris. That general waited for the arrival of the 13th Division, while directing his units on 31 August to dig in, establishing elaborate defense lines with three successive positions just south of Sibiu.51 After the war council on 2 September, Culcer instructed Castris to conduct reconnaissance to the north and across the Mures River.52 Instead, both divisions set to work improving their positions. Neither sent as much as a single patrol north. Across the valley and north of Sibiu, the Austrians, unmolested by their opponents, also dug in.
To Culcer’s east, both Generals Averescu and Prezan rekindled their drives. The 2nd Army acted lethargically. After basking in the glory of taking Brasov, Averescu did little other than to move units from Romania across the border into the Brasov Basin.53 Over the next few days, the Romanian 3rd Division inched west along the Olt River in the direction of Fagaras, getting as far as Sercaia-Sanca and Vechi-Persani (Persany).54 At this point, Averescu did not plan to link up with 1st Army to his west. His dispatching the 3rd Division in that direction appears to have been a matter of routinely securing his flank by placing a unit as a “screen” between the main body of his forces and the enemy. Averescu’s main axis of advance ran north to Feldiora, then northwest toward the valleys of the two Tarnava rivers and the city of Sighisoara (Segesvar). The 4th Division occupied Feldioara in the middle of the sector on 30 August, heading for Rupea (Köhalom), some twenty miles distant, where the Szekeler 82nd Infantry had regrouped. The regiment had established a hasty defense line on the Olt River at Homorod, a few miles east of Rupea where General Anton Goldbach had located the command post for his 71st Division. Finally, Averescu sent the 6th Division to Sf. Gheorghe in the Upper Olt River Valley, securing his right flank, by taking that city on 6 September.55
Prezan’s North Army also resumed its westward drive. The army crossed the Olt River on 7 September and began to push over the inner mountain belt into the heart of Transylvania. The 7th Division, which had come through the Uz and Gyimes Passes and concentrated its forces east of Miercurea Ciuc, pushed aside Colonel Zoltan Szabo’s 19th Honved Brigade, heading into the Harghita Mountains toward Odorheiu Secuiesc.56 To the north, the 14th Division shouldered aside Colonel Kornelius Bernatzky’s 16th Honved Brigade at Gheorgheni, crossed the Olt, and began moving through the Gurghiu Mountains, reaching the eastern edges of the salt-mining town of Praid on 11 September. On the northern flank of Prezan’s army, the 22nd Brigade (14th Division) finally emerged from the Giurgeu Mountains and began a slow advance along both sides of the Mures River toward Toplita.57
The northern area fell under the responsibility of von Morgen’s I Reserve Corps. Von Morgen had just arrived from northern Russia and was struggling to get his headquarters set up,58 so the 1st Army took the lead in maintaining contact with the 7th Army to the north. The juncture between the two armies was ill-defined, located somewhere between the Bistrita-Bargau (Borgo) and Mures Rivers. The two flowed parallel to one another in an east-west direction at the northernmost edge of Siebenbürgen. The sparsely inhabited Calimani Mountains separated the river valleys, presenting a formidable barrier on average fifteen miles wide. The crest of the mountains exceeded 6,600 feet in many places and extended fifty miles. In the Mures Valley the Austrians had a brigade from the weak 61st Infantry Division, but in the Calimani Mountains, which formed the north side of the valley, there was only Major Ziegler’s battalion of gendarmes.
The AOK feared that the Russians could break into northern Transylvania via the Tihuta (Borgo) Pass,59 pushing the 7th Army to the northwest, away from central Transylvania and the 1st Army, and leaving central Transylvania vulnerable. Recognizing this threat, in every directive the AOK gave to Arz, it stressed the importance of maintaining contact with the 7th Army.
One has to question the Austrian focus on this region. For the two Austrian armies, maintaining contact with one another was vital, but the Calimani Mountains were not the region to worry about. The area had no roads worthy of note. The Romanians were not going to cross or go through the Calimani Mountains with any units other than the smallest ones. The highway in northern Siebenbürgen from Toplita to Reghin along the Mures River could handle an army corps, as could the road from Campulung to Bistrita, but the Calimani Mountains between these two avenues into Transylvania blocked any lateral movement. The vulnerable juncture between the two Austrian armies lay near the town of Deda, at the far western end of the Calimani Mountains.
Arz recognized that threat, but he could not ignore the concern the AOK had expressed about the appearance of the Romanians in the Calimani Mountains.60 He sent the VII Battalion of the 73rd Infantry Regiment – a march battalion consisting of four companies, Nos. 25–28, as well as Machine Gun Detachment XI, with four guns. The new battalion arrived from Prague on 10 September at Lechinta, the headquarters of the new 72nd Infantry Division, commanded by Major General Georg Hefelle von Nagykarolyfalva (1859–?). The crisis in the Calimani Mountains caused by the Romanian advance to Lunca Bradului (Palota) in the Mures Valley saw the unit reembark the following day for Prundu Bargalui, where it came under the temporary control of the 73rd Honved Brigade, I Army Corps, of the adjacent 7th Army. The 73rd Brigade attached the 6/9 Mountain Artillery Battery to the VII Battalion of the 73rd Infantry Regiment and gave its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Sander, orders to march to Bistricioara to back up Ziegler’s gendarmes in nearby Pietrosul. Sander’s untested battalion, along with the gendarmes, had the responsibility for keeping the Romanians out of the Calimani Mountains, the south wall protecting the Bistrita Valley.61
On 14 September the VII Battalion made the climb from Prundu Bargalui to Bistricioara, at 6,600 feet, where a prepared position awaited the unit. When the soldiers arrived late at night, they discovered that their “prepared” site consisted of a simple barbed wire entanglement and a machine-gun nest. Sander also came across Ziegler’s gendarmes in the same location; the Romanians had already driven them from Pietrosul. Ordered to retake that village, the VII attacked with the gendarmes on 17 September. The Austrians initially made good progress toward Pietrosul, routing the enemy from several defense lines – until the 27th Company, thinking the route was clear, walked into an enemy position only to find it filled. That mistake left forty-four Austrians headed for prison camp. Night fell, bringing fighting to a halt. Several days of intense fighting followed, with the Austrians driving the Romanians back to the east. Quiet settled over the mountains, but it was not until 9 October that a Honved regiment from the XI Corps arrived to relieve Sander’s task force. Sander’s men buried two enemy officers and ninety-four soldiers. Another forty bodies could be seen at the base of a cliff, and fifty-five prisoners had been taken. The Austrian losses amounted to ten killed, sixty-three wounded, and eighty-two missing.62 When the VII was finally released after a month in the Calimani Mountains, the unit rejoined its parent division, the 72nd, which had advanced into the Gurghui Mountains east of Praid.63
South of the Mures Valley, von Morgen was creating as much of a disturbance with his allies as he was with the enemy. On arriving in Transylvania, this highhanded general had immediately found fault with his Austrian subordinates for failing to provide his headquarters with sufficient information. Then he berated them after receiving casualty reports with a high number of missing soldiers, whom he assumed had deserted. He attributed this to weak leadership. He added that the Austrians offered ineffective resistance because of poorly prepared defensive positions and inadequate training. Finally, he attempted unsuccessfully to relieve one of his brigade commanders, who he said was not up to the responsibilities of his position.64
From Arz’s perspective, the key to holding central Transylvania was holding the city of Praid, at the head of the Greater Tarnava River. At the center of a salt-mining region, Praid marked the end of one of the “Maros-Kokel” line positions (the Austrian term using their names for the two rivers, the Mures and Greater Tarnava), and it controlled the most important pass through the Gurghiu Mountains. On 13 September, the Romanians had driven the Austrian 1st Landsturm Cavalry Brigade from the heights near the town and stood poised to advance.65
Two days later, on the 15th, the 2nd Romanian Army crossed the Olt River under fire in the southern part of the area for which Arz was responsible. The Romanians then attacked on a line from Fagaras to Homorod, threatening to uncover the juncture between von Staabs’s XXXIX Corps and von Morgen’s forces.66 A breakthrough here offered the Romanians the possibility of getting behind von Morgen’s forces and rolling up the 1st Army. It also threatened the assembling of the XXXIX Corps and arriving German forces west of Sibiu, soon to constitute the 9th Army. At the very least, a rupture between the two armies would have prevented the nascent 9th Army from advancing on Sibiu. General Grighore Crainiceanu (1852–1935), who had just taken over the 2nd Romanian Army, was unaware of just how close he was to rupturing the enemy lines, missing the opportunity to smash open the front. He kept his forces plodding northwest without much vigor.
The Central Powers commanders understood the gravity of the situation. The 6th Austrian Cavalry Brigade (in Prussian Major General Count Eberhard Schmettow’s [1861–1935] ad hoc Cavalry Corps) and Goldbach’s 71st Division of von Morgen’s I Reserve Corps responded immediately and counterattacked. Surprised and confused, the Romanians stopped. Crainiceanu’s timidity was reinforced by the fact that the Romanian General Headquarters had stripped his army of half its strength in the middle of the month by sending three divisions to deal with the crisis in the Dobrogea. It took ten days and some stern prodding from the general headquarters at Peris before the 2nd Army began to move northwest again.67 Nonetheless, the juncture between the Austrian 1st and German 9th Armies remained the Central Powers’ Achilles’ heel.
Arz had meanwhile received some reinforcements that relieved the pressure up north. His former VI Corps headquarters had arrived from Russia, with Major General Ludwig von Fabini (1861–1931) in charge. Arz sent the corps to Teaca (Teke), far to the north, where Romanian columns coming through the Gurghiu Mountains could break the contact his forces had with the 7th Army, rolling back the flank of either army. Arz had two divisions operating in that region: the 72nd was at the top of the northern bend in the Mures River, charged with stopping the enemy from advancing while keeping in contact with the Austrian 7th Army to the north; and the 61st Division was at Reghin (Szas Regen), with its units blocking the Gurghiu Mountain passes against any advances coming from the east. These units were now assigned to the VI Corps, as were the 37th and 39th Austrian Landwehr Divisions, which also arrived from the Russian Front.68
With Romania’s entry into the war, the new team at the OHL understood that the German people needed a clear victory to restore confidence and to justify von Falkenhayn’s relief; at the same time, the new leaders knew they had to show that they had not lost their successful touch. When hearing about the Romanian invasion, von Hindenburg had characteristically muttered, “Oh, that’s interesting,”69 and indicated that Germany would simply beat the Romanians. Ludendorff grasped the inadequacy of that response at the critical juncture at which the Central Powers found themselves. He recognized that a spectacular victory was needed, and he planned to deal with Romania in “one great strategic maneuver.”70 To help accomplish that end, Ludendorff resurrected the proposal von Falkenhayn had prepared before his relief to bring the Austrians under German direction as part of a unified Central Powers command structure.71 He sent it to the Austrian leader. Romania’s surprise declaration of war had momentarily silenced Conrad’s protests, but Ludendorff’s proposal reignited his howls. Although von Hindenburg tried to soothe Conrad with a reassuring letter, the essentials of the proposed relationship remained unchanged: Germany would be in charge.72 In the very first directive issued by the new Oberste Kriegsleitung (OKL), the unified Central Powers command, Ludendorff closed his ears to the anguished cries of his army commanders on both fronts who were begging for reinforcements and made his top priorities clear: “Hold on to all our positions along the Western, Eastern, Italian and Macedonian Fronts; [and] deploy any and all available forces for the decisive blow against the Romanians.”73
Although mystified by the hesitation of their adversaries in early September and their resumption of movement at what Ludendorff called a “snail’s pace,” the Austrians and Germans took advantage of the lull to dispatch additional reinforcements. “Every day,” wrote Ludendorff, “was a day gained for us.”74 Conrad ordered brigades of mountain troops from the Italian Front to Siebenbürgen, while Ludendorff dug deeper and ordered the German Alpine Corps from Verdun and the 76th Reserve Division from Riga to Transylvania. Von Staabs’s XXXIX and von Morgen’s I Reserve Corps assumed command over their subordinate units on 8 September. The leading elements of the 187th Infantry Division had arrived on the 4th.75
As Ludendorff began rushing reinforcements to his new front, the Romanians resumed their offensive, timidly prodding the Austrians as they retreated into the interior of Transylvania. Nonetheless, it took time to move the Central Powers divisions from France and northern Russia. The question was simple: could the Romanians advance far enough into the interior of Transylvania that pushing them back might not be possible before winter snows closed the key mountain passes? Ludendorff knew he was racing against time; he had to stop the Romanians and push them back over the mountains before winter shut down operations.
Ludendorff was not a man who left anything to chance when he could avoid it, and he had assessed the situation in Romania correctly. He had no intention of allowing the enemy to pick up the pace inside Transylvania, and he sent von Mackensen far to the south into the Dobrogea region to draw the Romanians’ attention from Transylvania while he rushed reinforcements to that region. The OHL-AOK plan to throw the Romanians out of Transylvania before winter set in rested entirely on the degree to which von Mackensen’s diversion in the Dobrogea succeeded in diverting the enemy advance in Hungary.