Romanian campaign (1916)

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Romanian campaign (1916)
Part of the Romanian campaign of World War I
Falkenhayn's cavalry entering Bucharest on 6 December 1916
Date 27 August 1916 – 10 January 1917 Location Romania Result Central Powers victory Territorial changes Central Powers' occupation of Wallachia (including the capital Bucharest) and Dobruja
Belligerents
Romania Russian Empire	Germany  Austria-Hungary  Bulgaria  Ottoman Empire
Commanders and leaders
Ioan Culcer Alexandru Averescu Mihail Aslan Constantin Prezan Grigore Crăiniceanu Andrei Zayonchkovski	Erich von Falkenhayn August von Mackensen A. A. von Straussenburg Stefan Toshev Mustafa Hilmi Pasha
Strength
1916:[1]: p. 254  658,088[2] 50,000 1917:[3] 400,000 1,000,000	750,000[1]: p. 254  143,049 (1916)[4]: p. 792  20,000 (1916)[4]: p. 283
Casualties and losses
535,706+ all casualties[5] Unknown	47,000+ casualties Unknown Unknown

After a series of quick tactical victories on the numerically overpowered Austro-Hungarian forces in Transylvania, in the autumn of 1916, the Romanian Army suffered a series of devastating defeats, which forced the Romanian military and administration to withdraw to Western Moldavia, allowing the Central Powers to occupy two thirds of the national territory, including the state capital, Bucharest.

The main causes of the Romanian Army’s defeat by the numerically inferior German and Austro-Hungarian forces in the campaign of 1916 were the major political interferences in the act of military supervision, the incompetence, the imposture and the cowardice of a significant part of the military echelon of conduct, as well as the lack of an adequate training and troops’ equipment for that specific type of war.