STEPAN STEPANOVIĆ – STEPA – One of Serbia’s greatest Military Commanders

12/03/2014

STEPAN STEPANOVIĆ – STEPA (11 March [O.S. 28 February] 1856 – 29 April 1929) was a Serbian military commander who fought in the Serbo-Turkish Wars, the Serbo-Bulgarian War, the First Balkan War, the Second Balkan War and World War I. Having joined the Serbian military in 1874, he fought against the forces of the Ottoman Empire in 1876. Over the following years, he climbed up the ranks of the Serbian Army and fought against Bulgarian forces in 1885. He was the Serbian Minister of Defense twice. During this period, in the organizational, professional, financial, and moral sense, the Serbian army was well prepared for the upcoming wars. In the First Balkan War (1912-1913) Stepa Stepanović commanded the Second Army. During the Second Balkan War, the army under the command of Stepa Stepanović selflessly defended the Nišava zone with a fortified camp in Pirot. When the First World War broke out, as a representative of the at the time absent Chief of the General Staff of the Serbian army Radomir Putnik, Stepanović was in charge of the mobilization and concentration of the Serbian army. After Putnik returned to the country, Stepanović again took over as commander of the Second Army, and with its main forces he carried out a march-maneuver over Koceljeva and Tekeriš. In a night attack on the eastern slopes of the Cer Mountain, he defeated the 21st Division of the Austro-Hungarian 8th Corps. For the Serbian victory over the Central Powers in the Battle of Cer, he was promoted to the rank of Voyvoda (Field marshal) on 20 August 1914. In the Battle of Kolubara (from 16 November to 15 December 1914), the Second Army first stopped the enemy attack on the right bank of the Kolubara river, and then participated in the maneuver of Voyvoda Radomir Putnik and General Živojin Mišić, which led to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Balkan Army. During the Austrian invasion of Serbia in the autumn of 1915, Stepanović’s army, together with the Timok army, foiled an attempt of the Bulgarian First Army to penetrate through the Nišava zone and attack the main forces of the Serbian army deployed on the northern front, and thus greatly contributed to the decline of the Austro-Hungarian plans for the rapid destruction of the Serbian army. Although he had a significant role in the reorganization of the Serbian army on the Greek island of Corfu and its first successes in the front near Gorničevo, at Kajmakchalan and around Bitola, the greatest success is related to the breakthrough of the Salonika front and Bulgarian capitulation. Stepа Stepanović is one of the greatest military commanders of the First World War and the Serbian military history.

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