Romania in WW 1, performance

that was the case on heavily manned front lines like the western front or the italian front.
on the eastern front and the balkans the situation was more fluid.
a defensive position was difficult to overcome only when adequately manned.
however the discrepancies in equipment and combat experience of the central power forces negated any advantage in numbers the romanian army had.

lets not go overboard with that. it's not like the casualties were verdun or somme style, it's not like the commitment was "Michael" style and it's not like Mackensen wasted the cream of the imperial german army in an all-out decesive push.
the main goal of the central powers in the east was to take russia out of the war, which is why Riga was attacked with pretty much the entire available artillery of the eastern front instead of commiting those reserves on other theaters, like Moldavia.

victor I will address all your points by turn:
1-there was alot going on in the world between 1907-1914! WW1 could really have broken out at any time. There were at least half a dozen crises that could have sparked the powderkeg. Romania could have done a better job arming, especially since it was provisionally a German ally and could import German weapons. Not arming from 1908-1914 then blaming equipment deficiencies for poor performance is bush league.
2-Romania could have chosen the moment to enter. It tried to squeeze every last possible concession from the Entente powers. Then blamed the Entente for delaying their entry into the war.
3- WW1 was the king of defensive wars. The side on defense won most of the battles. And numbers of troops dont matter? Dont blame it on weapons because if they could have done a better job in point 1 addressed above. All else being equal I'd rather have more troops than less troops. Especially in a static defensive war like WW1. WW2 was not the same. In WW2 the side on offense almost always won.
4-There was a bulge in the Romania lines that Romania had to defend. But the Carpathians were strong defensive line to North. The Danube to the South and West. And in Western Romania, there are how many rivers running North to South that provided easy, natural defensive obstacles to an attacker? 6 or so? Jiu, Oltul Argesul!
5-I think Romania held about 1/8 of its territory. Most of the vast resources of the country were German held though. The agricultural South and Ploesti!
6-There were very few numerical German resources in Romania. The generalship was good but how many division did the Germans have at most in Romania? 60k/
In terms of importance it was the sixth front for Germany and AH: France, belgium, Russia, Galicia, Italy and then ROMANIA

Hear,hear !21 inf.

nice try, guina

feic is saying this and that. I wonder what achieved HIS country in ww1.

Let's try not turn this into a flame war.

About the failure of the Romanian Army in 1916: the First World War was the first war of this kind, it was a new experience for all countries involved in the conflict. All countries share their part of defeats, but the big players like France, Germany or UK had the power to recover after a sound defead. Romania had not.

Hear,hear is a sign of aproval,i just wanted to say that i agree with you,21.

The Romanian defense budget for 1913-1914 represented 15% of the general budget. By 1916 that grew to 17%. War material was contracted abroad, but only 2% of the heavy war material and munitions ever reached Romania.

You give credit for every little accomplishment make excuses for every significant failure. Every advantage is minimized while every disadvantage is magnified.

You have said "Not arming from 1908-1914 then blaming equipment deficiencies for poor performance is bush league."

I gave you some data that refutes your claim that Romania did not arm, so I did not excuse failure, I pointed out your failure in not knowing that!

If you claim that Romania could have done more to arm before the war, then that's debatable and would fall under a "what if" scenario anyway. Would a massive 30% of the budget allocated for defense in the expectation of a future war suffice? How would that have affected the economy? And so on.

Once Romania saw that the war started, it did contract weapons deliveries, but the fact that the war already started and Western nations prioritized their war production for their war effort, and the realities of geography, led among other things to only a puny 2% of contracted heavy war material and supplies reaching Romania.

Considering the political aims Bratianu had, the military resources needed for such ambitious aims needed to be PARAMOUNT. Romania was either unprepared or oblivious to the parlous task at hand.
In light of how ambitious those political aims were, Romania might have had to fight first rate powers on day 1 of a European war and not 1 and 1/2 powers 24 mos. into a world war and blockade!

Military resources were given importance. Read the previous thread.

Romania was unsufficiently prepared, unexperienced in wars against great powers and aware of the huge task. Others were ill prepared too.

What's your point with all this, apart from your dislike of Romanians being proud of the army in WWI (was there a recent poll or something, where did you get this from anyways?).

EDIT - btw, "feic" is the Romanian pronunciation of "fake".

This post has been edited by Imperialist on January 22, 2008 11:05 pm

everybody was ill prepared for what ww1 turned out to be. it proved once again that the military tend to equip themselves for the pervious war. the reluctance to learn and adjust was formidable and i'm hard pressed to find a general staff that wouldn't fit in that category.

What did A-H empire for as preparation of ww1?
When they started that war, they had to be helped by Germany, cos they stuck in ... Serbia, a small country in comparison with A-H.

Would you call that a performance? Start a fight and then need help?

21inf: you are right about AH! But I dont see Austrians PROUD of their performance! Romanians are prous as if they accomplished anything on the battlefield.
Yet the Austrians had one HUGE disadvantage the Romanians DID NOT HAVE: the AH empire had an army of soldiers from 12 nations in their ranks? Austrians, Hungarians, Slovaks, Czechs, Romanians, Croatians, Italians, Poles!
In a nationalist conflict, what was the true worth of these soldiers? Their performance told the story!
I mean come on. The Romanian army was 100% Romanian no? Ok 5 % gypsy 95% Romanian! Much better in a war of nationalism than the motley crew of the AH army.

Mhmmm... Nice one! So, in your opinion, in Romanian Army in ww2 only fought romanian and gypsy... Wrong! Believe me!

Iulian IAMANDI