Bulgarian Losses

[phil andrade]

Bulgarian casualties were heavy. One hundred thousand dead - or thereabouts - and, in contrast with Serbian and Romanian experience, it was combat rather than disease that accounted for the great majority.

Bearing in mind the relatively low total of battle casualties suffered by British, French and Italian contingents deployed against the Bulgarians - and I acknowlege that there were episodes when individual British units did take severe punishment - I would like to find out where and when the preponderant numbers of these Bulgarian casualties were sustained.

Am I right in assuming that the Serbs and Romanians inflicted this damage ?

Information and opinion would be appreciated.

Phil (PJA)

[Gardenerbill]

Phil,

In Charles Packer's book 'Return to Salonika' he describes the British actions of September 1916 in the Struma Valley when the villages of Karajakoi Bala, Karajakoi Zir and Yenikoi were taken with British casualties (killed wounded or missing) of around 1200 and goes on to say that the Bulgarians attempts to retake these villages cost 1300 dead so the total casualty figure would perhaps of been double that, if this not untypical then it would account for the high Bulgarian casualty figures you describe.

Mark.

[phil andrade]

Thank you, Mark. That certainly reflects the fact that in those episodes of high intensity combat in Salonika the Bulgarians took disproportionate casualties. Their aggregate losses, however, were far too high to be attributed to that front. Something in the order of a quarter of a million Bulgarians were battle casualties, about one third of them fatal. And this, it must be stressed, does not allow for the additional loss from disease and hardship. Where, I wonder, and when, and against whom, were the majority of those casualties sustained ?

Phil (PJA)

[xristar]

Bulgarian casualties were heavy. One hundred thousand dead - or thereabouts - and, in contrast with Serbian and Romanian experience, it was combat rather than disease that accounted for the great majority.

Bearing in mind the relatively low total of battle casualties suffered by British, French and Italian contingents deployed against the Bulgarians - and I acknowlege that there were episodes when individual British units did take severe punishment - I would like to find out where and when the preponderant numbers of these Bulgarian casualties were sustained.

Am I right in assuming that the Serbs and Romanians inflicted this damage ?

Information and opinion would be appreciated.

Phil (PJA)

I don't have an analytical breakdown of Bulgarian casualties, but its clear that when you have a ratio of 100,000 dead to 150,000 wounded, a great many of the dead are non combat casualties. I did a little googling and saw that most sources give a figure of about 87,000 dead of all causes, and 27,000 missing or prisoner. We can speculate that the figure of 100,000 dead came from separating the prisoners from the missing/presumed dead. More or less all sources agree on little more than 150,000 wounded.

Unless you actually have more precise numbers to work with, I think we can assume some 50,000 combat related deaths for a convenient total of 200,000 battle casualties.

Now, wikipedia gives 37,000 Bulgarian casualties in 1915 against the Serbs and Entente. I couldn't find a complete figure for the Romanian campaign, but only in the first three weeks the attacking Bulgarian Third army suffered 23,405 casualties. During the Romanian counteroffensive there were some 7,348 casualties, but over half from the attached Ottoman Corps, while during the next offensive the Bulgarians suffered some 11,575 casualties, (plus 5,432 Ottoman). There was additional fighting in others sectors, as well as a Russian offensive that was repulsed, but no casulaties are given. It appears that the Romanian campaign cost more than the Serbian one, even though the Bulgarian commitment of troops was lesser.

In conclusion it appears that Bulgaria suffered some 37,000 casulaties in the Serbian campaign and 40,000 or more in the Romanian campaign, leaving about 120,000 for the Macedonian front.

The Entente battle casualties are somewhat confusing matter, because it is not always clear what is included in each category particularly the dead. But there is plenty of data available. This is what I calculate as battle casualties (roughly):

French: 38,500

Serbs: 32,100

Greeks: 27,000 (estimate; there's a good chance they were higher, perhaps 30,000)

British: 24,000

Italians: 6,800 (possibly non combat deaths are included)

Russians: ?? (perhaps 1,000 or so)

Albanians: ?? (probably negligible)

Total: ~130,000

[phil andrade]

Many thanks, rohala. Clearly I had underestimated the intensity and scale of the fighting on the Macedonian Front.

A Wiki article cites the 87,000 dead, and attributes 62,000 of these to combat ( 48,000+ killed/died of wounds; 13,000+ missing presumed killed), but, apparently, this does not allow for the fighting in the final months of the Macedonian retreat. There was also a big mutiny at the end in which three thousand Bulgarian soldiers were said to have been killed.

I am still surprised at the scale of the Bulgarian effort. One estimate is that 92.6% of all males in the 20-46 age group in 1915 were mobilised : more than one million men. I wonder how far this reflects the readiness for warfare that had been instilled by the Balkan Wars a couple of years earlier.

Edit : judging by Turkish casualties at Gallipoli where the proportion of killed/ died of wounds to wounded reached about 1 to 1.5 ( 66,000 killed; 100,000 wounded) it might be that 150,000 Bulgarian wounded allows for battle deaths significantly higher than the 62,000 I cited above. But that is based on an assumption that Bulgarian combat experiences and medical facilities were similar to those of the Ottomans.

Phil (PJA)

[phil andrade]

These Bulgarian losses provide some kind of key to understanding the bewildering statistics of the Great War in the Balkans.

Consider Romania and Serbia : each suffering military fatalites in the order of one quarter or one third of a million. In both cases the number reported wounded is much lower, in the order of 120,000 or so. Clearly, these are armies ravaged by typhus and afflicted by hardships that carried away many more than direct enemy action. There is still much disparity in the reports, suggesting that scores or even hundreds of thousands disappeared from the radar, and that their fate was assumed to be fatal rather than verified as such.

At least the Bulgarian figures, despite significant variation, indicate a number of dead that bears a more "normal" ratio to the number recorded as wounded.

Judging by figures available for the fighting between the Serbs and the Austro- Hungairians in the firsr months of the war, it's apparent that the Serbs were able to do more than hold their own on the battlefield ; in the aggregate, however, their reputed figure of well over 300,000 deaths implies catastrophic mortality, far beyond that suffered by their enemies, and indicates that the typhus and hardships of the retreat were the preponderant cause of death. Presumably, the same applies to the Romanians.

I have seen estimates that suggest that fewer than sixty five thousand Serbian soldiers were actually killed in battle . if the same sort of ratio applies to the Romanians, then the experience of battle seems to be more in harmony with that of the Bulgarians.

Phil (PJA)

[Jasta72s]

I don´t know if this is of any use to you but think the offical statistic works for Bulgaria this way:

48,917 killed in action

13,198 died on wounds

888 killed by accidents

24,497 died of sicknesses

Total: 87,500 dead [of a total of 266,919 known military casualties incl. POW of 1.2 Mio mobilized]

Furthermore we have 27,029 POW and missing - it was common method to assume 50% POW and 50% dead (must have been died in combat too or died in captivity.)

So, we get ca. 13,500 other dead.

Total: ca. 101.000 dead

Another 152,390 were wounded (often added to make a total of 254,000 casualties).

Unanswered are questions concerning late lethal casualties in very late fights and infights (rebellion/revolution).

However, the latter could also hide under ca. 100,000 "civilian dead".

[phil andrade]

Yes, thank you, Jasta72, that is useful.

That Balkan fighting might well have taken the lives of a million soldiers .... a hundred thousand Bulgars, six hundred thousand - or more - Serbs and Romanians, scores of thousands of Austro- Hungarians, thousands of Germans and Turks, and then the British, French, Greeks and Italians, too. I mustn't forget the Montenegrins and the Russians, A truly cosmopolitan affair : rather like Italy 1943-45 !

It differed from the other European fronts in so far as disease killed more than combat ; but the figthing was obviously extremely fierce and the ancient blood feud aspects probably lent it an added viciousness.

Phil (PJA)

[xristar]

Thanks Jasta72s.

PJA, I am suspicious with such high Serbian figures. I believe they include all the captured as missing, and all missing then got added to the dead. I remember seeing somewhere a figure of 130,000 dead which seems realistic.

[phil andrade]

Yes, rohala, that does look like a suspiciously high figure for Serbia, but it comes from an authentic official source .

I'm sure that threre is a thread on the froum about this.

I would agree : 130,000 seems more plausible; with about half of them from combat.

The official Romanian figure of 335,000 also seems too high.

In a sense, this is why I feel the Bulgarian losses are pertinent as a means of assesing the nature of the Balkan fighting. A figure of roughly one hundred thousand is accepted ; it looks feasible ; and it contains within it somewhere between two thirds and three quarters who were killed in battle. By focusing on the Bulgarian figures, we might get a better reckoning of what the Serbian experience amounted to.

Edit : the populations of Bulgaria and Serbia were roughly the same : around five million. Bulgaria mobilised more than ninety per cent of its male population of military age. How much more extreme was the ordeal of Serbia ?

Phil (PJA)

[xristar]

Edit : the populations of Bulgaria and Serbia were roughly the same : around five million. Bulgaria mobilised more than ninety per cent of its male population of military age. How much more extreme was the ordeal of Serbia ?

Phil (PJA)

The populations of Serbia and Bulgaria are not directly comparable. serbia had some 2.9 million inhabitants in 1912, but increased her population during the Blakan Wars to 4.5 or so millions. There people were to a large degree non-Serbs, and in any case they were untrained as sodliers. The Serbian system was to divide the land into military disricts, each of whcih had one active and mobilized one reserve division. Old Serbia had 6 districs, for 6+6 infantry divisions. The new lands were divided into 4 districts, but due to lack of trained reservists, they provided a single division, the so-called "Mixed" division.

The same was true for Bulgaria too, but to a much lesser degree. Bulgaria already had over 4 million in 1912, and increased her population by a few hundred thousands.

As such Serbia mobilized some 700,000 in all, with 500,000 being its peak strength, while Bulgaria mobilized over 1 million, with its initial mobilization being over 800,000 men. In any case, Serbia had fewer than 300 battalions at her maximum (I think 250-280 or so), whereas Bulgaria had more than 350, perhaps as many as 400.

The total manpower mobilzied was high as percentage of total population but comparable to France and perhpas Britain. The difference is mostly that the Balkan states, particularly Bulgaria and Serbia (not Greece or Turkey), mobilized a very large number from the onset.

[phil andrade]

Serbia mobilized some 700,000 in all,

First rate information, rohala, thank you.

The implication here is that - if the high estimates of Serbian dead is correct - half the men who donned uniform perished.

That's hard to believe.

One quarter ? Yes : that's plausible , in my opinion.

But this was an extreme ordeal...huge battles against the Austrians, a crushing onslaught by the Germans, Austrians and Bulgarians in later 1915, and, above all, that ghastly retreat. Thousands of those who got out of the Albanian mountains were so ill that they died and were buried at sea off Corfu. Lord knows how many were left dead or dying en route.

Phil (PJA)

[beograd]

 

kind regards

Beograd