Bulgarian occupation of Serbia (World War I)

After the San Stefano Treaty in 1878, Bulgarian leaders aspired for the reconstitution of Greater Bulgaria. Thus the areas of Pomoravlje and Macedonia, became a target of Bulgarian nationalism.[2] Due to the loss at the Second Balkan War in 1913, the Bulgarian Kingdom had to limit their territorial pretenses over the territory of Macedonia. When Serbia was trying to obtain access to the sea in Albania, the Austro-Hungarian diplomacy got more active in order to establish a border between Albania and Montenegro; during the Second Balkan War, Bulgaria renounced the annexation of Serbian Macedonia, which was definitely annexed to Serbia after the Florence Protocol in December of 1913.[3]

The Allies had long pressed Bulgaria to join them but her price was the acquisition of Macedonia, the Allies regarded this as reasonable on ethnic grounds but the proposals had not been agreed in advance with Serbia and Greece, which were strongly opposed to ceding their territory.[lower-alpha 2] The Central Powers, however, were prepared to cede what Bulgaria wanted, Serb and Greek territory.[5] Bulgaria’s traditional aims lay in the Bulgarian-inhabited areas of Macedonia, Dobrudja, and European Turkey, but in 1915 it demanded territory well beyond its ethnographic borders.[6] On 6 September 1915, the Bulgarian government joined the Central Powers after signing a secret treaty of alliance with Germany.[7]

On 6 October 1915 under the overall command of German General August von Mackensen, Austria-Hungary and Germany began the fourth invasion of Serbia since the beginning of the war. On 14 October, the Bulgarian armies moved into Serbian territory joining the ongoing invasion. Bulgaria entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, with the primary goal of regaining territory briefly gained from the Ottoman in 1912-13, then lost to Serbia during the Second Balkan War. The pressure of Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian and German armies in the north, and their massive superiority in numbers and equipment, forced the Serbs to withdrew across northern and central Albania.[8] On 28 November 1915 Army Group Mackensen announced the end of the Serbian campaign, therefore, ending the offensive.[9]

After a six-week campaign, Serbia was almost completely occupied, it was then divided up between the Habsburg Empire and Bulgaria. At the beginning of 1916, regions in the west and north and part of Kosovo were ceded to Austria-Hungary. the Germans decided not to seek occupied territory, despite having played a decisive role in the campaign. As set by the agreement of 6 September, Bulgaria gained the whole of Macedonia and Eastern and Southern Serbia, Austro-Hungary took the rest of Serbia. The Bulgarian divided the territories occupied by its troops into two military general governorates.

Two administrative zones supervised by a military commander were created:

• Military Inspection Area of Morava: The zone for Serbia with its command in Niš, it encompassed the territories of Eastern and Southern Serbia, (as laid down in the secret treaty between Bulgaria and Germany of 6 September 1915), which meant the Južna Morava river valley east of the Morava river, divided into six districts and the Pirot area. Its commander was General Vasil Kutinchev who commanded the invasion of Serbia during the second Balkan War.[17]

• Military Inspection Area of Macedonia: The zone encompassing Macedonia, with its center in Skopje; the greater part of Kosovo - Pristina, Prizren, Gnjilane, Urosevac, Orahovac was also placed in that zone; the Bulgarians intended to include all of Kosovo and even parts of Albania occupied by their troops into that zone, in the spring of 1916, this nearly resulted in armed conflict between Bulgarian and Austrian forces.[18] The commander of the zone was General Petrov.

Guerilla company of the 11th Macedonian Infantry Division composed of IMRO paramilitaries near Gevgelija (1916).

Bulgaria's paramilitary groups who played an immense part in the fighting capabilities of Bulgaria, besides the regular army, were used as auxiliaries to regular armies to provide knowledge of local conditions, they were known as comitadjis, these irregular troops contributed strongly in brutalising the war. The notorious Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) who asserted the "indefeasible right to independence or association with Bulgaria of Macedonia", served as a gendarmerie working hand in glove to ‘Bulgarianize’ the region. During the war the IMRO arose from a clandestine organization into an important factor of the Bulgarian nationalistic policy. On the eve of outbreak of World War I, IMRO paramilitary activity in Serbia aimed to provoke a war with Bulgaria. At that time Serbia implemented in Macedonia a program of forced Serbianization.[19][20] In an incident during 1914, when Bulgaria was still neutral, ca. 2,000 strong IMRO-cheta attacked a railway bridge over the Vardar River, massacring 477 men.[21] In another incident in the same year, the first Macedonian recruits mobilized into the Serbian army demonstratively refused to take the military oath in Kragujevac, and were subjected to repression.[22] As result IMRO set up a secret committee in Veles, which aim was to coordinate the transfer to Bulgaria of thousands of Macedonian deserters by the Serbian army.[23] Later its comitadjis were incorporated into the regular Bulgarian Army and its power grew in significance. The fact that these paramilitary companies joined the Bulgarian Army marked a significant change in the way they were conducting war. At the beginning it formed the 11th Macedonian Infantry Division, and later other units, as for example guerilla companies.[24] Its entrance into the war towards the end of 1915 contributed to the defeat and occupation of Serbia, and the unification of Macedonia with Bulgaria. In Serbia the IMRO activity was identical with the Bulgarian policy, supporting the Bulgarization of the area.[25] At the end of 1915 and the beginning of 1916 several massacres of (sic) Serbomans were conducted in Vardar Macedonia in the areas of Azot, Skopska Crna Gora and Poreče by IMRO-irregulars, aided by the guerrilla companies of the 11th Macedonian Infantry Division.[26][27] The police chief of the Military Inspection Area of Macedonia reported to the interior minister that he cannot deal with the lawlessness of the paramilitaries.[28] In fact 1917 was the turning point when IMRO became the instrument used by the Bulgarian government to gain control over the internal situation in the Pomoravlje and most from the region of Macedonia. At that time the IMRO leaders as general Aleksandar Protogerov headed the Bulgarian occupation troops in Morava region and crushed the uprising in the Toplica district with the help by IMRO irregulars.[29] Their methods caused death of thousand people, destruction of their property, looting and other war crimes committed during the war in the parts of the Kingdom of Serbia under Bulgarian control.[30]

Bulgarian policy in Macedonia and to a lesser extent in occupied Serbia was motivated by what historian Alan Kramer has termed: a ‘dynamic of destruction’ a desire not just to defeat the enemy militarily, but also to erase all traces of its culture, to destroy any evidence that it had, in fact, ever been there at all.[31] Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand declared on the eve of war: "the purpose of my life is the destruction of Serbia".[32] Many Bulgarian troops were sidelined from front line duty to take part in the occupation of Serbia, past animosities led to brutality,[33] the local population was left a choice between Bulgarization or being subject to violence, large scale deportations and the treatment of the residents of the occupation zones came close to genocidal actions.[34] The ‘Documents relatifs aux violations des Conventions de La Haye et du Droit international, commis de 1915–1918 par les Bulgares en Serbie occupée’, a report covering alleged atrocities committed in Serbia, published after the war, stated that ‘anyone unwilling to submit him or herself to the occupiers and become Bulgarian was tortured, raped, interned, and killed in particularly gruesome manners, some of which recorded photographically'.[10]

In addition to those sent to concentration camps, some 30,000 Serbs were sent to Austrian camps or used as forced labour. Factories were plundered of their machinery and a devastating typhus epidemic stalked the land. Thousands died in desperate uprisings, and in some cases, Bulgarian policy was so rigid that it even provoked mutinies among its own soldiers. The Bulgarian soldiers are depicted as simply living off the land without paying any redistribution and also robbing and hitting civilians, whereas the peasants had to work for the occupational authorities without getting any pay, this sometimes included working on defensive positions and carrying ammunition for the Bulgarians which violated the Hague conventions.[35]

Wanting to integrate Serbian territories in the kingdom under Sofia, the Bulgarian occupation forces started implementing a political system of systematic denationalization. Bulgarian units that occupied Serbian territories showed extreme brutality, systematically expelling the non-Bulgarian population in the regions they occupied, they arrested the population and set the rebel villages on fire.[36]

In addition to the numerous cases of rape, Bulgarian forces encouraged the mixed marriage of Serbian women with Bulgarian men and espoused the view that children born to such marriages should be raised as Bulgarians.[37] Additionally, Bulgarian paramilitary forces systematically raped Serbian women.[38] At the same time, middle-class Serbian functionaries were also suppressed: teachers, religious workers, functionaries, and intellectuals were executed by the Bulgarian soldiers who were following strict instructions to treat civilians the same way they treated soldiers.[39] Additionally, there were regular bombardments of Serbian territories by the aviation and Bulgarian artillery which were operating on the Balkan front around the end of 1916.[40] At the same time, there was a prohibition of Serbian culture; Bulgarians systematically looted Serbian monasteries and the toponymy of villages was changed to Bulgarian.[40]

Serbian Vojvoda Kosta Vojinović, one of the leaders of the Toplica insurrection

In February 1917, a large Serbian uprising broke out, in the Bulgarian occupied territories of southern and eastern Serbia. It followed attempts by the Bulgarian army to force draft Serbian men into the Bulgarian army and shoot those who resisted. Serbian guerrilla leaders Kosta Vojinović ‘Kosovac’ and Kosta Milovanović ‘Pecanac, were flown into Serbia from Salonika for the purpose of directing the insurrection. IMRO leader Aleksandar Protogerov came from Macedonia to assist the Bulgarian army with the counter-insurgency operations, which were met with harsh reprisals throughout the country.[41]

On 10 March 1917 Protogerov issued an ultimatum to the chetniks to surrender within five days or face execution. They did not surrender, so Protogerov and his army attacked the civilian population and their villages.[42] About 20,000 Serbs were killed, in the town of Surdulica alone about 2,500 Serbian men were executed, thousands of women and children were interned and others sent to prison. Thirty- six villages near Leskovac were completely depopulated. Families were left without a house or home. More than 80,000 were deported to Bulgaria, in Niš, almost the entire male population, some 4,000 men, was deported. One batch was sent by train to Pirot, the rest had to go on foot.[43]

The reports of the commission in Eastern Macedonia summarized the violations of the Hague Conventions: the massacre of the civilian population, torture, rape, internment, punitive economic expropriation, requisitions, and various taxes, plunder, forced labor, destruction, arson, and other actions aimed at "destroying the Serbian presence in the newly occupied territories".[10]

We can affirm that there is not a single article of the Convention of The Hague or principle of international law that the Bulgarians did not violate

— From the report of the Inter-Allied Commission in Eastern Macedonia, 1919[45]

At the Peace Conference of 1919, the Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on Enforcement of Penalties, a precursor of the United Nations War Crimes Commission, was created. The Commission organized war crimes "against the laws of war and humanity" into thirty-two specific classes including: "massacres, rapes, deportations and internments, tortures and deliberate starvation, forced labour and systematic terrorism". According to the report of the commission, Bulgaria was found responsible for no less than eighteen classes of war crimes.[46]

The majority of the Commission came to the conclusion that the war of 1914-1919 was carried on by the Central Powers and their allies, Turkey and Bulgaria, with barbarian and illegitimate methods, in violation of the laws and customs of war and elementary principles of humanity[47]

— From the report of the Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of War, 29 March 1919[48]

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