Figure 1.--This is a German postcard sent from Bucharest, Romania, during the First World War occupation of Romanaia. A boy is shining the shoes of a German soldier. As often happens, the shoeshines are shoeless. The postcard is captioned 'Bukarester Strassenbild' (Bucharest street scene). They seem to be outside some kind of facility for German soldiers.

The Austrians stiffened with German units occupied most of Romania (Sepember-October 1916) snd held it for the rest of the War. The Romanians with russian help held out in Moldava for a year and a half (May 1918). Romania's declaration of war thus benefited neither the Romanians or the Allies. Onlt the Central Powers benefitted. The Germans were able to exploit Romanian resources. The Allied naval blockade by 1917 was having an increasingly serious impact on the Central Powers, especially industrialized Germany where serious food shortages were beginning to develop. Romanian was an agricultural country and thus control over agricultural harvests were especially welcome. The major German interest in Romania was oil. Germany produced virtually no oil and Austria-Hungary only very limited amounts. One of the reasons that the Germans pursued the Berlin to Bagdad ralway was to gain access to oil. The use of oil was still limited, but growing. The German surface fleet was still coal fired, but they were expeimentng with oil. The Germans had some trucks but relatvely few. Nor did they have tanks, except for some experimental attempts. But the German needed avition fuel for the air war on the Western Front and the U-boats which used petroleum based fuels. The British, however, managed to blow up the infrastructure at Ploesti before the Germans reached it. It took 5 months to repair the damage, but only partially. Production was only a third of what it had been. by the end of the war, the Germans had pumped a million tons of oil. They also seized two million tons of grain from Romanian farmers. Apparently a good bit of the food stuffs seized ent to supporting the Austrin and Grrman troops in Romani. We do not yet have a good fix on that. One historiam reports that the oil and grain were important for Germany in 1918. [Keegan, p. 308.] Before the War, the Germans were held in high esteem. This gradually changed as a result of their harsh behavior. For the most part therewas no real Romanin resistanc to the iccupation. There was passive resistance. The Germans undertook scattered executions (1918). The Germans gradually reduced their occupation force with forces desperatekly needed for more active fronts. This advrsely affected the asbility extract food and other supplies.

Sources

Keegan, John. The First World War (Alfred A. Knopf Press: 1998).

Created: 12:09 AM 9/11/2022
Last updated: 12:09 AM 9/11/2022