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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2017
The United States and bulgaria stood in opposing camps during World War I. Although at war with each other's allies, they nevertheless maintained normal diplomatic relations throughout the hostilities. The explanation of this anomaly lies in the fact that both countries were guided by expediency rather than principle in formulating their mutual policies. While the Bulgarian leaders hoped by maintaining relations with the United States and appealing to Wilsonian principles to insure Bulgaria against the consequences of a possible defeat, the American policy-makers viewed Bulgaria as the weakest link in the chain of Germany's allies whose removal from the Central Alliance might expedite victory.
When, on February 3, 1917, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, President Woodrow Wilson was already formulating his famous political strategy of trying to drive a wedge between the German people and the German Government by expressing continued friendship for the former and deep hostility to the latter.
1 Baker, Ray Stannard and Dodd, William E., eds., The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, The New Democracy (2 vols., New York, 1926), II, 422–26.Google Scholar
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3 Ibid., pp. 40–41, see also this author's article “The United States and the Dissolution of Austria-Hungary,” Journal of Central European Affairs, X (October, 1950), pp. 256–70.Google Scholar
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5 Article 2 of the German-Bulgarian alliance treaty of September 6, 1915, provided that Bulgaria should come to the aid of Germany only if the latter were attacked by a “neighboring” state of Bulgaria. See text, Kratchounov, K., La Politique extérieur de la Bulgarie, 1880–1920 (Sofia, 1932), p. 67.Google Scholar
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9 War Memoirs of Robert Lansing (Indianapolis, 1935), pp. 257-58.
10 Foreign Relations, 1917, Supp. 2, I, 282, The Lansing Diaries (Division of Manuscripts, Library of Congress), entry for November 5, 1917.
11 On November 20, 1917, Lansing sent Wilson a memorandum on the “Unfriendly Acts of Austria-Hungary,” prepared by the Counsellor of the Department of State Woolsey. “We have not a very strong case against Austria,” commented Lansing in the covering letter of this indictment of Austria, see Lansing to Wilson, November 20, 1917, and enclosures, The Wilson Papers (Division of Manuscripts, Library of Congress). No corresponding indictments of Turkey and Bulgaria were drawn up, but evidence that President Wilson determined to recommend war on them as well as on Austria may be found in the draft of his address of December 4,1917, written by himself, where the crucial passage dealing with the recommendation of war reads: “I … recommend that the Congress immediately declare the United States in a state of war with Austria-Hungary, with Turkey, and with Bulgaria.” See “Early drafts and notes re address to Congress, delivered December 4, 1917,” ibid.
12 Hall, William W., Puritans in the Balkans, The American Board Mission in Bidgaria, 1878–1918 (Sofia, 1938), p. 258 Google Scholar; see also Cleveland H. Dodge to President Wilson, December 2, 1917, The Wilson Papers. Representatives of the Presbyterian Board and of the Armenian and Syrian Relief agencies as well as the former Ambassadors to Turkey, H. Morgenthau and A. Elkus, held conferences with Dodge for the same purpose.
13 Hall, , op. cit., pp. 258–59Google Scholar, see also extracts from Barton's and Peet's memoranda to the Department of State, Foreign Relations, 1911, Supp. 2, I, 448–54.
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17 Ferdo Šišić, ed., Dokumenti o Postanku Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca, 1914-1919 (Zagreb, 1920), No. 64.
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19 Ibid., pp. 476–77.
20 The New York Times, December 5, 1917.
21 Baker, , Woodroiu Wilson, Life and Letters, VII, 392–93.Google Scholar
22 Foreign Relations, 1917, Supp. 2, I, 448–54.
23 Hall, , op. cit., p. 259.Google Scholar
24 Charles Seymour, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House (4 vols., Boston, New York, 1926-1928), III, 285–86.
25 Baker, and Dodd, , eds., War and Peace, I, 155–62.Google Scholar
26 Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson and the World Settlement (3 vols., New York, 1922-1923), III, No. 2; Foreign Relations, 1919, The Paris Peace Conference (13 vols., Washington, 1942–1947), I, 41–53.
27 The Wilson Papers.
28 Thus the members of the Inquiry refused to sanction France's claim to Alsace-Lorraine, or rather, to be exact, Mezes and Lippmann did, while Miller filed a special memorandum urging its acceptance as an American war aim. As for Italy's claims on Austrian territory, the members of the Inquiry proposed to discard the secret Treaty of London of April 26, 1915, and substitute a settlement based on “a just balance of defensive and nationalist considerations” (see this author's study, “The United States and the Origins of the Adriatic Question, 1918,” Florida State University Studies, No. 4, 1951, 45–60). As for the Rumanian and Serbian claims on Austria, stipulated in the secret Treaty of Bucharest of August 17, 1916, and in the Declaration of Korfu of July 20, 1917, respectively, these were to be completely ignored.
29 Although the members of the Inquiry thought it “obviously unwise” to draw the exact boundaries of the Balkan states at the time, nevertheless, in the “Explanation and Summary” they urged the following “broad considerations” on the President: 1) That the area annexed by Rumania in the Dobrudja is almost wholly Bulgarian in character, and should be returned. 2) That the boundary between Bulgaria and Turkey should be based on the principle of the Enos-Midia line, with certain topographic and ethnic improvements. 3) That the southern boundary of Bulgaria should be the Aegean coast from Enos to the Gulf of Orfano, and should leave the mouth of the Struma in Bulgarian territory. 4) That the best access to the sea for Serbia is through Saloniki. While it is desirable … that Albania should be partitioned, and that Serbia should secure the port of Durazzo, this will not in itself supply her with adequate access to the sea. The Vardar valley is the most direct route supplied by nature between Serbia and the Aegean…. The inhabitants of the string of Macedonian basins from the Vardar head to the Vistritza should form one group.
In view of the cosmopolitan character of Saloniki, and in view of the Bulgarian sympathies of much of the population of the Macedonian hinterland, the wisest disposition of Saloniki would probably be a mild form of international administration in the interest of Serbian commerce. This settlement would leave the Bulgarians of Macedonia largely in Serbian control. There should therefore be an international guarantee of their religious and cultural autonomy, this guarantee to be enforced by the international administration stationed at Saloniki. 5) That an independent Albania is almost certainly an undesirable political entity, and that the territory should be partitioned [between Serbia and Greece].
30 When President Wilson drafted his Balkan statement, he requested Edward House to find out the advance opinion about it of Dr. Milenko Vesnic, the Serbian Minister in Paris, then in Washington at the head of a Serbian War Mission. Although the President's statement contained none of the openly Bulgarophile suggestions of the Inquiry, Vesnic rejected it vehemently on the grounds that: 1) it postulated the continued existence of Austria-Hungary, 2) Serbia opposed any revision of the Treaty of Bucharest, and 3) peace negotiations were premature. Seymour, , op. cit. Ill, 334–35.Google Scholar
31 Constantine Stephanove, The Bulgarians and Anglo-Saxondom (Bern, 1019), p. 362.Google Scholar
32 For a penetrating study of the impact of the Fourteen Points on the German Social Democracy, to which they were largely addressed, see Snell, John L., “Wilson's Peace Program and German Socialism, January-March, 1918,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXXVIII (September, 1051), pp. 187–214.Google Scholar
33 Foreign Relations, 1918, Supp. 1 (2 vols., Washington, 1933), I, 3.
34 Foreign Relations, 1918, Supp. 2, I, 514.
35 Foreign Relations, 1918, Supp. 1, I, 5.
36 George D. Herron, a Congregationalist minister by training and a self-styled Socialist by conviction, had been Professor of Applied Christianity at Grinnell College, Iowa, until he took up residence in Europe in 1901. After America's entry into the war, although he had never met the President, he became an enthusiastic apostle of Wilsonian idealism and performed various services for the Legation at Bern in an unofficial capacity. See Wilson, Hugh R., Diplomat between Wars (New York, 1941), pp. 20–21 Google Scholar and Mitchell Pirie Briggs, George D. Herron and the European Settlement (Stanford, 1932), pp. 28–34. Teodor K. Sipkov, on the other hand, was a wealthy exporter of the “attar of roses,” an ingredient of perfumes, produced at Kazanlik, Bulgaria. He had received an American education at Robert College and had been a member of the Sobranje.
37 George D. Herron to Hugh R. Wilson, January 24, 1918, enclosed in the latter's dispatch to Secretary of State Lansing, January 28, 1918, Files of the Department of State (National Archives).
38 Foreign Relations, 1918, Supp. 1, I, 65–67.
39 President Wilson to Secretary of State Lansing, February 4, 1918, The Wilson Papers.
40 President Wilson to Secretary of State Lansing, February 18, 1918, ibid.
41 On November 10, 1917, when the Bolshevik Revolution forced a debate on the Bulgarian war aims in the Sobranje, Radoslavov defined them in this manner:
“Our war aims are fixed: we want the unification of the Bulgarian nation … in boundaries which are exactly fixed; we want the annullment of the treaty of Bucharest; a correction of our frontier with Serbia, including in the territory of Bulgaria all of those lands which are populated by Bulgarians, all along the Morava River to the Danube; we want Macedonia with that part which by the treaty of Bucharest was cut off from Bulgaria.
”… We have historic rights over the whole of Dobrudja, which by the treaty of Berlin was given to Roumania by the Russians as a compensation for Bessarabia. Now, Bulgaria wants all of it returned….
”…We are not worried by the formula ‘without annexation and without indemnity.’ Our formula is, the unification of the Bulgarian nation.” Foreign Relations, 1918, Supp. 2,1, 477–78.
42 For his outspoken criticism of the policy of Tsar Ferdinand Stambuliskij was arrested, tried for lèse-majesté, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
43 Foreign Relations, 1918, Supp. 1, I, 82-105.
44 Ibid., pp. 147–49.
45 Ibid., p. 187.
46 Teodor K. Šipkov to Charles R. Crane, September 23, 1919, enclosed in Hugh R. Wilson's letter to Sheldon Whitehouse, Chief of the Near Eastern Division, December 26, 1919. When Sipkov's letter was submitted to Herron for comment, he denied its accuracy: “I felt obliged to protest to the Bulgarian peace delegation … against some of the terms which Mr. Shipkov had used in his report of his conversations with me. I felt obliged to say … that Mr. Shipkov was using terms which did not belong to such conversations, and attaching to them an importance and diplomatic or official status which was entirely without warrant.” George D. Herron to Hugh R. Wilson, December 8, 1919, enclosed in same, Files of the Department of State.
47 Baker, and Dodd, , War and Peace, I, 198–202.Google Scholar
48 Congressional Record, Sixty-fifth Congress, Second Session, LVI:6 (April 23, 1918), 5472-78.
49 The Serbian Minister Mihajlovic to Secretary of State Lansing, April 23, 1918, Files of the Department of State. On April 24, 1918, Edward House noted in his diary: “The Greek Minister called…. He believes we should declare war against Bulgaria…. The Italian Ambassador … also presented the Bulgarian menace, as he saw it. I can see the earmarks of a deliberate drive in this direction… .” The Diary of Edward M. House (Yale University Library).
50 Secretary of State Lansing to President Wilson, April 24, 1918, The Wilson Papers.
51 Memorandum “Conference with Committee on foreign relations on declaring war on Turkey and Bulgaria,” May 2, 1918, The Lansing Papers (Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress).
52 Foreign Relations, The Lansing Papers, 1914–1920 (2 vols., Washington, 1939–1940), II, 121–22; also Foreign Relations, 1918, Supp. 1, I, 222.
53 Ibid., pp. 232–33; The Lansing Papers, II, 128–29.
54 Ibid., pp. 124–26; Foreign Relations, 1918, Supp. 1, I, 227–28.
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56 The Lansing Diaries, May 10, 1918.
57 The House Diaries, May 19, 1918.
58 The northern half of Dobrudja adjoining the mouths of the Danube was to remain under a condominium of the Central Powers, which in practice meant under German control; see Seton-Watson, Robert W., A History of the Roumanians (Cambridge, 1934), pp. 513–18.Google Scholar
59 Foreign Relations, 1918, Supp. 1, I, 266–67; see also cable of Foreign Secretary Balfour to Sir William Wiseman (for Edward House), June 14, 1918, The Edward M. House Papers (Yale University Library).
60 Baker, Woodroiv Wilson, Life and Letters, VIII, 220.
61 Foreign Relations, 1918, Supp. 2, I, 263-64; the name of Davidov, omitted in the reprint of the telegram, was supplied by the author from its original in the Files of the Department of State.
62 Ibid., p. 267.
63 Sir Eric Drummond to Sir William Wiseman, June 29, 1918, and Foreign Secretary Balfour to Lord Reading, July 11, 1918, The House Papers.
64 Stanev, N., Naj-nova istoria na B'lgaria, 1878–1918 (2 vols., Sofia, 1925), II, 392.Google Scholar
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66 Sir Eric Drummond to Sir William Wiseman, June 29, July 26 and 27, 1918, The House Papers.
67 The House Diaries, August 17, 1918; Sir William Wiseman to Sir Eric Drummond, August 27, 1918, The House Papers.
68 The House Diaries, August 29 and September 15, 1918.
69 Sir Eric Drummond to Sir William Wiseman, September 12, 1918, and Foreign Secretary Balfour to Sir William Wiseman, September 17, 1918; see also Sir William Wiseman to Sir Eric Drummond, September 14, 1918, The House Papers.
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79 The House Diaries, September 27, 1918.
80 Panaretov was no doubt aware of them but was completely cut off from his Government. The Department of State to silence T. Roosevelt and others, who accused the Minister of being a German spy, had denied him from the first the right to communicate with Sofia.
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82 Ibid., p. 158; Foreign Relations, 1918, Supp. 1, I, 334.
83 The Armistice Convention provided for: i) evacuation by the Bulgarian troops of Greek and Serbian territory to the boundaries of the Treaty of Bucharest of August 10, 1913, 2) demobilization of the Bulgarian Army, 3) surrender of arms, and 4) withdrawal of German and Austrian troops from Bulgaria. Secret Articles of the Convention provided that: 1) Allied troops could occupy certain points within Bulgaria, and 2) use Bulgarian communications. See text, Kratchounov, , op. cit., p. 87,Google Scholar also Paris Peace Conference, II, 241–42.
84 The Acting Secretary of War Benedict Crowell to Secretary of State Lansing, October 5, 1918, Files of the Department of State.
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87 Ibid., XI, 304, 339.
