On July 22nd, 1917 at town of M\u0103r\u0103\u0219ti, Romania did precisely that – and would punch a 22-mile wide and 12-mile deep hole in the Central Powers’ line.<\/p>\n
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Romanian troops advance – the Romanian offensives of 1917 were the most successful (by territory) of any Entente operation that summer<\/p><\/div>\n
Only months after their entry into the Great War, Romania had lost nearly 1\/3rd of their mobilized forces and more than half of their territory.\u00a0 The nation had lacked the industrial infrastructure to resupply their troops and what little heavy artillery they had was lost during the German\/Austro-Hungarian\/Bulgarian\/Ottoman counteroffensives in the fall of 1916.\u00a0 If not for the presence of one million Russian soldiers, Romania would be driven out of war as fast as she had entered it.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
With surrender or subservience to Entente interests the two most likely courses of action, Romania embarked on an ambitious rebuild of their economy and military.\u00a0 New factories were hastily completed and production quotas at the nation’s few remaining oil wells and coal mines were dramatically increased.\u00a0 New reserve troops were conscripted and trained, armed with the latest French guns and heavy artillery.\u00a0 Within a matter of months in 1917, Romania could now field a force of 700,000 men – the equivalent of two armies – complete with combat engineers, an air force and navy.\u00a0 More importantly, Romania had undergone a crash course in the tactics and strategy of the Great War.\u00a0 1,600 French advisers had arrived to help train the Romanian army in trench warfare, artillery targeting and night combat skills.<\/p>\n
Romania’s changes didn’t end at the front.\u00a0 Land reform had been a major issue even before the nation’s independence from the Ottoman Empire.\u00a0 Land policies passed in 1864 had been haphazardly implemented and resulted in the state and a handful of large estates effectively owning half of Romania’s arable land.\u00a0 Decades later, the large estates had diversified their holdings and no longer leased directly to the peasantry but through intermediaries who spiked rental costs.\u00a0 By the early 20th century, high leases costs and falling grain prices led to peasant riots in 1907 as farmers could no longer afford to live on the very lands they cultivated.\u00a0 10,000 civilians were killed in the resulting uprising.<\/p>\n
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Romanian soldiers inspect their rifles<\/p><\/div>\n
Prime Minister\u00a0Ion Br\u0103tianu, who had led Romania into the war despite the objections of the nation’s conservatives, rapidly passed land reform changes and\u00a0universal suffrage.\u00a0\u00a0Br\u0103tianu’s alliance with King Ferdinand I would give him carte blanche to remodel the Romanian State, so long as it allowed for the execution of the Great Romanian unification policies Ferdinand supported en route to his moniker of “The Unifier.”\u00a0 Political objections to such radical foreign and domestic changes were shelved as the nation’s political opposition acquiesced in the name of the war effort.<\/p>\n
By the summer of 1917, Romania was newly armed and politically unified in the goal of driving the Central Powers out of their country.<\/p>\n
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The Romanians weren’t the only ones who had been using the relative lull in early 1917 to prepare.<\/p>\n
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