Nikola Zhekov

During the First Balkan War, Colonel Zhekov served as chief of staff of the 2nd Army which was tasked with the initial siege and latter the storming of the important fortress of Edirne.He contracted an illness which prevented him from taking part in the Second Balkan War and after it was assigned commander of the Bulgarian forces in Western Thrace.

In 1913-1914 Zhekov was also part of a Bulgarian diplomatic mission to Istanbul, which was involved in negotiating a military convention between Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire. After that he served as Deputy Chief of Staff of the Bulgarian Army and commander of the 8th "Tundzha" division. In August 1915 he was promoted to major general and appointed Minister of War.

Lt. Gen. Zhekov as commander-in-chief

After his experience of the Balkan Wars Tsar Ferdinand refused to take command of the Bulgarian Army as Commander-in-Chief and personally favored Nikola Zhekov for the post, which he assumed on 24 September 1915. Zhekov was a proponent for the military intervention of Bulgaria in the war on the side of the Central Powers and led the Bulgarian Army until the end of the war.

Attached to Mackensen's Army Group, the Bulgarian First Army liaised with the Germany and Austria-Hungary in crushing the Serbian army at home while the Bulgarian Second Army, which remained under direct Bulgarian control, seized Macedonia and defeated the Entente relief effort. Under Mackensen's command, the Bulgarian Army also participated in the militarily highly successful Romanian Campaign.

Separately, Zhekov managed in throwing back the Allied offensives in Salonika in the autumn of 1916 and the spring of 1917 at the Battles of Florina and Lake Prespa. Zhekov's forces also participated in the successful attack against the port of Kavalla in August–September 1916. On 6 October 1916 he was promoted to lieutenant general. In the summer of 1918 he became ill and on 8 September was forced to go to Vienna for medical treatment, leaving the command of the army to the deputy commander-in-chief general Georgi Todorov. It was during this critical time when an Entente offensive in Macedonia managed to break the Bulgarian lines at Dobro Pole and lead to the capitulation of Bulgaria. On 4 November 1918 lieutenant general Nikola Zhekov was discharged from the active army and went into the reserve.

After the war Zhekov chose to flee into exile in Germany. He returned in 1921 to defend his reputation and was sentenced to ten years imprisonment by Stamboliyski's BANU government but was granted pardon after the 1923 coup d'etat and was released in 1924.

In the years after that Zhekov read lectures in the Military Academy and wrote several books regarding the military science and his memoirs. On 6 May 1936 he was promoted to general of the infantry, which was the highest rank in the Bulgarian Army.

Zhekov was one of the prominent figures of Bulgarian interwar nationalism. Thus he was a honorary leader of the Union of Bulgarian National Legions at one point.

During World War II General Zhekov established a friendly relationship with Adolf Hitler and following the defeat of France in 1940 he was invited by the Führer to visit Paris as his guest. After the communist 1944 coup d'etat General Zhekov, fearing political persecutions, decided to immigrate to Germany. On 1 February 1945 he was sentenced to death by the People's Court established by the government of the Fatherland Front. However, his whereabouts were unknown to the government and the sentence couldn't be carried out.

Zhekov died on 1 November 1949 in the Bavarian town of Füssen. After the fall of communism in Bulgaria, on 7 November 1992 his remains were returned to country and were laid to rest in the Military Mausoleum in Sofia. A street in Sofia is named after him.