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Dying over a dog: Romania declares war on Bulgaria in 1914

Y

Yokai Man

Well-known member
During July 1914,while WW1 was about to start,at the border with Cadrilater,a Bulgarian border guard shot the Romanian border guard's dog. The border posts were facing each other, separated by a strip of land. After swearing profusely, the soldiers of the two countries retreated into the shadows. The Bulgarian border guard who had killed the dog did not feel satisfied and opened fire on the Romanian picket, breaking several windows. At this moment, the Romanian border guards decided that this was no longer possible and seized the weapons. They killed all five Bulgarian border guards.

The events above have been described with pathos in the press of the time,newspapers have dedicated large special editions to them,and numerous Romanian politicians have come together to consider whether Bulgaria should be invaded. The start of the First World War stopped this from happening,due to both goverments considering it to be more of a priority.

But what if WW1 didn't start in 1914,either due to Franz Ferdinard not getting shot or cooler heads prevailing? What if Romania does declare war on Bulgaria that year? Does it end Bulgaria being a military threat for Romania or will the same thing that happened OTL happen here as well,with Bulgaria being more angry and resentful to Romania? And would the Great Powers intervene in any way or will they remain neutral like in the Second Balkan War?
 
Thande said:
It would definitely be a good irony, at least for a TLIAD, if Franz Ferdinand's death was avoided only for WW1 to start over some other thing in the Balkans at the same time. Would probably be a good one for a time travel story as opposed to pure AH.
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It should be pointed out though that a Central Powers Romania was never gonna happen,since the goverment and most of the population was pro Entente and incredibly Francophile (seriously,it cannot be stated how much Romania loved France til,like,2010 when Sarkozy and later Valls made almost everyone around here loathe France,to the point where some people were actually cheering that the Charlie Hebdo attacks happened).

The only Germanophiles/supporters of the Central Powers were Carol and some conservative intellectuals and socialist activists. It nearly started a constitutional crisis,with many demanding Carol to abdicate if he didn't support Romania joining the Entente Powers.
 
There was also the potential just before Franz Ferdinand's assassination for a marriage between Czar Nicholas II's eldest daughter Olga (born 1895) and Carol I's great-nephew and second-in-line for the throne, Prince Carol (born 1893), later King Carol II, son of Prince Ferdinand and his wife Marie (daughter of Queen Victoria's second son Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and Prince of Coburg, and of Nicholas II's aunt Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna). This was touted on the Romanovs' state visit by sea to the Romanian royals at Constanza in June 1914, but neither of the youngsters was keen on it and Carol already had a slightly raffish reputation which put the sheltered Olga and her mother Czarina Alexandra off. The main backer of the idea was Carol's mother Marie, as an English princess (and a favourite of her cousin, the then King George V, who was supposed to have been interested in marrying her at one point), to cement the Anglo-Russian alliance and lure Romania into it, sidelining Germanophile King Carol (from the senior line of the Hohenzollerns in Germany though since 1866 ruling Romania; the junior line of Hohenzollerns ruled the German Empire/ Prussia) and his wife Queen Elizabeth (German as well) who wanted to keep the second-in-line for a German princess. Carol I's heir, his nephew and Marie's husband Ferdinand,was an amiable nonentity who was supposed to be under her thumb and to be pro-English/ Russian - hence the idea of putting him on the throne in his uncle's place when the War started to keep Romania pro-Allies. Carol I was 75 in 1914 and died soon after the War started.

The match was abandoned as the planned bride and groom were not impressed with each other; but if it had gone ahead and been carried out without waiting for the war to end it would have presented interesting historical butterflies as then Olga would have left Russia pre-1917 and not been in custody with her family after the Revolution or ended up in the cellar at Ekaterinburg.(One theory has it that the killings were a fake or not of all the family, see Summers and Mangold's 1976 book 'The File on the Czar',but the discovery and DNA testing of the bones in the forest near Ekaterinburg makes that unlikely barring a major 'cover-up'/ plot.) Olga was not in line for the Russian throne as the then current inheritance laws, which Nicholas II refused to change even when he only had four daughters pre-1904, said that only males could be Czar; but she would have been left alive and if she had had children they would have had the same sort of claim on the defunct Russian throne as the late 'pretender' Grand Duke Vladimir (d 1992)'s daughter Maria and her son now have. Also, Olga could have claimed the Czar's alleged money in banks in the West (however much that was; it's disputed) as an undoubted Romanov, in a far better legal position than the 'Anastasia' claimants eg 'Anna Anderson' - and the latter would have been of less importance to a century of conspiracy theorists if her elder sister was undisputably alive.

With Olga as potentially Queen of Romania from 1930 as Carol II's consort rather than the OTL estranged wife of Carol, Helen of Greece, who Carol had abandoned for Madame Lupescu, it also poses questions as to the whole arc of inter-War Royal Family feuds in the country. Carol would have been married not single in the early 1920s so he would not have been free to marry a 'commoner', which he did in real life to have it cancelled as illegal by his father - after which he was nudged into marrying the more respectable and royal Helen and had a son, later King Michael (r 1927-30, 1940-7).Would Carol have dared to jilt a Romanov bride as he did Helen, had a large and important contingent of Russian exiles been at the Romanian court living off Olga's money in the 1920s? Would he have had to stay with her and so became King in 1927, or would a stronger regency for his and Olga's son (an equivalent of Michael) , led by the apparently sensible and strong-willed Olga plus assorted exiled Russian officers, have kept him out of the country in 1930 so he could not take his throne back? Would this have averted a Royal policy of playing off one party against another by Carol II that weakened democracy and undermined the main anti-Nazi and anti-Iron Guard parties, eg Maniu and the Peasant P, and avoided instability, a royal dictatorship, a lack of respect for the King and his mistress , and the chaos of 1940? If there was no World War One and a Carol II - Olga match, then that would logically have bolstered the pro-Russia/ Britain/France tilt of Romania once Ferdinand came to the throne later in 1914 , whether it was Carol II or his son on the throne after F died in 1927.

The best introduction to Romanian political and cultural society in the capital in the late 1930s is the fictionalised version by novelist Olivia Manning, then the wife of a junior British Council lecturer there, in the 'Balkan Trilogy' , which I read as a teenager ; this makes the Francophilia of Bucharest society pre-1940 apparent. Also Queen Marie wrote memoirs and appeared in newspaper articles in the 1930s - and there are even apparent echoes of 1930s Romania in some children's adventure stories by Enid Blyton, eg 'The Secret of Killimooin'.
 
heraclius said:
There was also the potential just before Franz Ferdinand's assassination for a marriage between Czar Nicholas II's eldest daughter Olga (born 1895) and Carol I's great-nephew and second-in-line for the throne, Prince Carol (born 1893), later King Carol II, son of Prince Ferdinand and his wife Marie (daughter of Queen Victoria's second son Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and Prince of Coburg, and of Nicholas II's aunt Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna). This was touted on the Romanovs' state visit by sea to the Romanian royals at Constanza in June 1914, but neither of the youngsters was keen on it and Carol already had a slightly raffish reputation which put the sheltered Olga and her mother Czarina Alexandra off. The main backer of the idea was Carol's mother Marie, as an English princess (and a favourite of her cousin, the then King George V, who was supposed to have been interested in marrying her at one point), to cement the Anglo-Russian alliance and lure Romania into it, sidelining Germanophile King Carol (from the senior line of the Hohenzollerns in Germany though since 1866 ruling Romania; the junior line of Hohenzollerns ruled the German Empire/ Prussia) and his wife Queen Elizabeth (German as well) who wanted to keep the second-in-line for a German princess. Carol I's heir, his nephew and Marie's husband Ferdinand,was an amiable nonentity who was supposed to be under her thumb and to be pro-English/ Russian - hence the idea of putting him on the throne in his uncle's place when the War started to keep Romania pro-Allies. Carol I was 75 in 1914 and died soon after the War started.

The match was abandoned as the planned bride and groom were not impressed with each other; but if it had gone ahead and been carried out without waiting for the war to end it would have presented interesting historical butterflies as then Olga would have left Russia pre-1917 and not been in custody with her family after the Revolution or ended up in the cellar at Ekaterinburg.(One theory has it that the killings were a fake or not of all the family, see Summers and Mangold's 1976 book 'The File on the Czar',but the discovery and DNA testing of the bones in the forest near Ekaterinburg makes that unlikely barring a major 'cover-up'/ plot.) Olga was not in line for the Russian throne as the then current inheritance laws, which Nicholas II refused to change even when he only had four daughters pre-1904, said that only males could be Czar; but she would have been left alive and if she had had children they would have had the same sort of claim on the defunct Russian throne as the late 'pretender' Grand Duke Vladimir (d 1992)'s daughter Maria and her son now have. Also, Olga could have claimed the Czar's alleged money in banks in the West (however much that was; it's disputed) as an undoubted Romanov, in a far better legal position than the 'Anastasia' claimants eg 'Anna Anderson' - and the latter would have been of less importance to a century of conspiracy theorists if her elder sister was undisputably alive.

With Olga as potentially Queen of Romania from 1930 as Carol II's consort rather than the OTL estranged wife of Carol, Helen of Greece, who Carol had abandoned for Madame Lupescu, it also poses questions as to the whole arc of inter-War Royal Family feuds in the country. Carol would have been married not single in the early 1920s so he would not have been free to marry a 'commoner', which he did in real life to have it cancelled as illegal by his father - after which he was nudged into marrying the more respectable and royal Helen and had a son, later King Michael (r 1927-30, 1940-7).Would Carol have dared to jilt a Romanov bride as he did Helen, had a large and important contingent of Russian exiles been at the Romanian court living off Olga's money in the 1920s? Would he have had to stay with her and so became King in 1927, or would a stronger regency for his and Olga's son (an equivalent of Michael) , led by the apparently sensible and strong-willed Olga plus assorted exiled Russian officers, have kept him out of the country in 1930 so he could not take his throne back? Would this have averted a Royal policy of playing off one party against another by Carol II that weakened democracy and undermined the main anti-Nazi and anti-Iron Guard parties, eg Maniu and the Peasant P, and avoided instability, a royal dictatorship, a lack of respect for the King and his mistress , and the chaos of 1940? If there was no World War One and a Carol II - Olga match, then that would logically have bolstered the pro-Russia/ Britain/France tilt of Romania once Ferdinand came to the throne later in 1914 , whether it was Carol II or his son on the throne after F died in 1927.

The best introduction to Romanian political and cultural society in the capital in the late 1930s is the fictionalised version by novelist Olivia Manning, then the wife of a junior British Council lecturer there, in the 'Balkan Trilogy' , which I read as a teenager ; this makes the Francophilia of Bucharest society pre-1940 apparent. Also Queen Marie wrote memoirs and appeared in newspaper articles in the 1930s - and there are even apparent echoes of 1930s Romania in some children's adventure stories by Enid Blyton, eg 'The Secret of Killimooin'.
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You must take in account however that Carol II was incredibly impulsive and liked being a playboy. He drank and smoke heavily,had numerous affairs and more or less knew intimately almost every prostitute in interwar Bucharest,and above all else wanted to do things his way,no matter the cost. A large Russian exile nobleman community wouldn't have stopped him from trying to divorce Olga and live with whomever was his main mistress at the time (again,he had a lot of mistresses).

It would create a different constitutional crisis from that time but make no mistake,Carol will still do whatever he wants,no matter the cost. He was a loose cannon who only cared about the rules when it suited him. Olga isn't gonna stop him. Only be unhappy with him.
 
Bulgaria might have won. They are generally regarded as fairly decently led for a WW1 Balkan Army whereas the Romanians had a very undistinguished performance in WW1 and basically only managed to invade Hungary after the Austrian Empire collapsed. Unless Greece and Serbia had dogpiled in, in which case you have your POD for either WW1 version 2.0 or the Fourth Balkan War.
 
Yokai Man said:
The only Germanophiles/supporters of the Central Powers were Carol and some conservative intellectuals and socialist activists. It nearly started a constitutional crisis,with many demanding Carol to abdicate if he didn't support Romania joining the Entente Powers.
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I’m curious why the socialists were pro-CP - was it largely anti-Tsarist sentiment?
 
Yokai Man said:
The events above have been described with pathos in the press of the time,newspapers have dedicated large special editions to them,and numerous Romanian politicians have come together to consider whether Bulgaria should be invaded.
Click to expand...
Why was it more the Romanians talking about declaring war on Bulgaria than the Bulgarians talking about declaring war on Romania at this time?
After all, it was the Bulgarians who took the higher, and human, casualty count. Looking at the scoreboard, it looks like the incident ended with 5 dead Bulgarian men on one side and one dead Romanian dog and several Romanian broken windows on the other side.
 
raharris1973 said:
Why was it more the Romanians talking about declaring war on Bulgaria than the Bulgarians talking about declaring war on Romania at this time?
After all, it was the Bulgarians who took the higher, and human, casualty count. Looking at the scoreboard, it looks like the incident ended with 5 dead Bulgarian men on one side and one dead Romanian dog and several Romanian broken windows on the other side.
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I don’t know. I don’t have access to Bulgarian media of the time.
 
Yokai Man said:
But what if WW1 didn't start in 1914,either due to Franz Ferdinard not getting shot or cooler heads prevailing? What if Romania does declare war on Bulgaria that year? Does it end Bulgaria being a military threat for Romania or will the same thing that happened OTL happen here as well,with Bulgaria being more angry and resentful to Romania? And would the Great Powers intervene in any way or will they remain neutral like in the Second Balkan War?
Click to expand...

OK - so what we need to have happen is Franz Ferdinand survives his visit to Sarajevo on St. Vitus Day 'For Want of a Sandwich' style. Or he is smart enough to avoid Bosnia on St. Vitus Day. Or better yet, to keep Austria-Hungary as similar as possible to OTL, he does not get assassinated in Sarajevo on St. Vitus day, but on drive in the hilly roads of Bosnia or Croatia soon after his visit, his driver loses control over the car and he perishes in a car accident. It is ruled accidental however, with no foul play suspected.

In any case this divergence or divergences all happen by the end of June or early July. And they *don't* butterfly away this lethal incident with the borderguards in Romania and Bulgaria later on in July.

Romanians are angry about this incident started by the Bulgarians, the Bulgarians are angry about the murder/lynching of their guards after they were disarmed. The Romanians decide to go to war with Bulgaria.

What do the Romanians want? The Romanians actually have about as much land, even more, than they want from the Bulgarians, and probably don't want to acquire more land with more Bulgarian and Turkish speakers. But maybe they are figuring the incident is a symptom of Bulgarian vengefulness and aggressive attitude that needs to be slapped down hard before it worsens or Bulgaria recovers anymore from its 1913 defeat, so Bulgaria needs a good kick to stay down. And maybe Romania can force an indemnity from Bulgaria and dismantle some fortresses. Maybe the Romanians assume their 2nd Balkan War allies will be happy to jump in.

If Bucharest DoWs Bulgaria, and invites Constantinople, Athens, and Belgrade to join in the beat down, I don't think Constantinople would be that interested. They were more concerned with Greece on the Aegean, and were nearing an alliance with the Bulgarians.

Athens was more worried about losing their naval advantage with the arrival of the Ottoman dreadnought, and was contemplating attack on the Ottoman fleet and Constantinople to force mediation to ratify its ownership of occupied Aegean islands. Bucharest could try to sell the Greeks on the opportunity to annex Bulgaria's Aegean coast, but that wasn't Athens' priority at this point. Athens' hope vis-a-vis Bulgaria was that it *not* side with Turkey and that it possibly side with Greece to strengthen Greece's odds.

Serbia probably had all it wanted from Bulgaria in terms of control over Vardar Macedonia and a favorable border. Serbia's prime concern was protecting itself from Austria-Hungary, unifying with Montenegro, and undermining Austro-Hungarian control of Bosnia and other South Slavic lands.

Now Bulgaria won't exactly have many champions either, especially not from Romania. In Austria-Hungary, I suspect the Magyars would have their usual schizophrenia about things - they wouldn't want the Romanians to win or be strengthened, indeed they'd prefer them to be crushed, because of their claims on Hungarian Transylvania. But at the same time, the Magyars wouldn't want to absorb any territory with ethnic Romanians on it. Their ideal fantasy solution would be if the Black Sea just flooded Wallachia and Moldavia. Magyars would sympathize with Bulgaria and probably so would Conrad, who would advocate war on Romania to save Bulgaria, despite the Romanian alliance. If alive, Franz Ferdinand would be against the idea of war. Others in Austria might sympathize with Bulgaria, but would see Serbia as a higher priority threat and still find it impossible to see Romania as an enemy because of the remaining formal secret alliance with the Romanian King.

The Germans, still hopeful about alignment with Romania, would probably be against any action against Romania on behalf of Bulgaria.

I don't think that Russia would act like a protective big Slavic brother on Bulgaria's behalf and move against Romania to protect Bulgaria, given the number of recent and historic disputes with Tsar Ferdinand

Turkey may see utility for Bulgaria as an ally against Greece in an impending conflict, but has no use for a conflict with Romania.

So, for the moment, if Romania is proceeding to attack Bulgaria, things seems set to leave it a one-on-one war, until additional developments, on the battlefield or off, press other powers to intervene.

Am I personally missing a motive for Austria-Hungary, possibly with German support, to join in on Romania's side *against* Bulgaria, honoring the secret alliance with King Carol? That seems pretty wild and out there to me.

Personally, I could imagine the Russians intervening on the Romanian side against Bulgaria, with the idea of splitting the occupation so that Romania occupies the north and west, and Russia reestablishes the principality of Eastern Rumelia in an occupation zone covering southern and eastern Bulgaria. This would wrap Russian military control around Turkish Thrace and the straits, establish a shore base on the Aegean, and permanently block any prospective Bulgarian or Greek landward routes of advance to Constantinople, while putting Russia in a position to make such an advance at a convenient later time.

Of course I don't see that as especially likely, just a wildcard more dictated by the rule of cool.

What does anybody else see happening if Romania makes a move and there is a one-on-one fight, or if some other powers cannot keep their hands off the situation?
 
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