Abstract
With the focus of First World War historiography dominated by the western front, Thomas Schmutz turns his attention to the maligned German-Ottoman war alliance and the Ottoman-Russian front. In 1917, the Russian revolutions effectively removed the Ottoman empire’s rival in the Caucasus, altering the Ottoman government’s ambitions and complicating its relationship with its wartime allies, Germany and Austria-Hungary. While there appeared to be an opportunity for both Germany and the Ottomans to expand their spheres of influence in the Middle East, dreams of new imperial greatness turned into rivalry and deadlock. While the Ottomans aimed at establishing a Pan-Turanian empire in the Caucasus, Germany feared the uncontrolled expansion of its war partner and the effects of violence against Armenians and other ethnic minorities.
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Notes
- 1.
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, The First World War in the Middle East (London: Hurst & Company, 2014), 69; Jörn Leonhard, Die Büchse der Pandora. Geschichte des Ersten Weltkrieges (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2014), 674–77.
- 2.
Michael A. Reynolds, Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires 1908–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 167–71; Sean McMeekin, The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908–1923 (London: Allen Lane, 2015), 315–34.
- 3.
Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East (New York: Perseus Books, 2015), 105–8; Reynolds, Shattering Empires, 142–48.
- 4.
Donald Bloxham and Hans-Lukas Kieser, ‘Genocide,’ in The Cambridge History of the First World War. Volume I, Global War, ed. Jay Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 585–614; Davide Rodogno, Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in The Ottoman Empire 1815–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 194–204; Hans-Lukas Kieser, ‘The Ottoman Road to Total War (1913–15),’ in World War I and the End of the Ottomans. From the Balkan Wars to the Armenian Genocide, ed. Hans-Lukas Kieser et al. (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2015), 29–53; Mustafa Aksakal, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 137–38.
- 5.
Annette Becker, ‘Captive Civilians,’ in The Cambridge History of the First World War. Volume III, Civil Society, ed. Jay Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 269: ‘In Russia alone, a minimum of 5.5 million civilians were displaced far from their homes between 1914 and 1917, often with internment that might be temporary or prolonged.’; Firouzeh Mostashari, ‘Colonial Dilemmas: Russian Policies in the Muslim Caucasus,’in Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversions, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia, ed. Robert P. Geraci and Michael Khodarkovsky (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 229–35.
- 6.
Eric Lohr and Ug˘ur Ümit Üngör, ‘Economic Nationalism, Confiscation, and Genocide: A Comparison of the Ottoman and Russian Empires during World War I,’ in Journal of Modern European History, 12, no. 4 (2014): 500–522; Mustafa Aksakal, ‘The Ottoman Empire,’ in The Cambridge History of the First World War. Volume I, Global War, ed. Jay Winter, 459–478. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
- 7.
Erik Jan Zürcher, The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk`s Turkey (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 174–76; Reynolds, Shattering Empires, 170–173.
- 8.
Rob Johnson, The Great War and the Middle East: A Strategic Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 163–65.
- 9.
Ulrichsen, First World War, 33–41; Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans, 349–351; Johnson, Middle East, 199–203.
- 10.
Johnson, Middle East, 216–35.
- 11.
Djemal was one of the three powerful Young Turk leaders, which came to power in January 1913 as part of a coup. During the First World War, he was administrating the Ottoman Syrian territories. He mistrusted the loyalty of Arab leaders towards the Ottoman masters even before the revolt in 1916. Furthermore, he was reluctant to accept the idea of Zionism. The rule of terror by the Syrian ‘governor’ Djemal Pasha even pushed, as it could be argued, the Arab tribes and the Jews of Palestine onto the side of the enemy.
- 12.
Reynolds, Shattering Empires, 170; Johnson, Middle East, 229.
- 13.
Thomas Benner, Die Strahlen der Krone. Die religiöse Dimension des Kaisertums Wilhelm II. vor dem Hintergrund der Orientreise 1898 (Marburg: Tectum-Verlag, 2001), 313–40.
- 14.
Political Archive of the German Foreign Department (Auswärtiges Amt): AA (M) R 14080–14081 (7100); Malte Fuhrmann, Der Traum vom deutschen Orient. Zwei deutsche Kolonien im Osmanischen Reich 1851–1918 (Frankfurt: Campus-Verlag, 2006), 47–51; Leonhard, Büchse der Pandora, 926.
- 15.
Hans Werner Neulen, Feldgrau in Jerusalem: das Levantekorps des kaiserlichen Deutschland (Munich: Universitas Verlag, 2002), 24–25; Carl Alexander Krethlow. Generalfeldmarschall Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz Pascha—eine Biographie (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2012), 416–51.
- 16.
Neulen, Feldgrau in Jerusalem, 125–37.
- 17.
David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2009), 209.
- 18.
Ulrichsen, First World War, 71: ‘The (British) Government of India began to panic following the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk … British military leaders in India expressed their alarm at the possibility of an imminent Turkish-German invasion of Afghanistan.’
- 19.
Martina Berli, ‘The Zionist Leaders’ Fear: Perception of, Comparison with, and Reactions to the Armenian Genocide,’ in Journal of Levantine Studies 5, no. 2 (2015): 87–111. Isaiah Friedman. Germany—Turkey—Zionism. 1897–1918 (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1988).
- 20.
Ulrichsen, First World War, 161–62; Fromkin, Peace to End All Peace, 298.
- 21.
Neulen, Feldgrau in Jerusalem, 30–54.
- 22.
The German contribution consisted of the command and advisors in the officer corps, German guns on the coast and support with former German naval ships. The war experience at Gallipoli nourished nationalistic tales of heroism in the Turkish, Australian and New Zealand post-war societies. The German role and presence there was often neglected.
- 23.
The German diplomats discussed at length the chaotic situation in the Russian-Ottoman borderlands in the months before the war. There was limited access to information on this region and a lack of overview of the Kurdish tribes and Armenian villages. German interest laid on Cilicia instead, see: AA (M) R 14078–14081; Eric D. Weitz, ‘Germany and the Ottoman Borderlands: The Entwining of Imperial Aspirations, Revolution, and Ethnic Violence,’ in Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Prussian, and Ottoman Borderlands, eds Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 152–69.
- 24.
Ulrich Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1918 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 171–78.
- 25.
Ryan Gingeras. Fall of the Sultanate: The Great War and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1922 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 244–45; Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 171–78.
- 26.
AA (M) R 13803–13805.
- 27.
Johnson, Middle East, 228; Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 170–91.
- 28.
Johnson, Middle East, 216–18.
- 29.
Reynolds, Shattering Empires, 171–73.
- 30.
AA (M) R 13261.
- 31.
AA (M) R 13804–2, Report from Bernstorff to Foreign Department, 20.06.1918, with the following citation from Liman von Sanders: ‘Zum weiteren bin ich als Chef der deutschen Militär-Mission auf Grund mir durch den Vertrag der Militär-Mission zustehenden Rechte und des durch den Bündnisvertrag vom 2.August 1914 besonders zustehenden Rechts der influence effective verpflichtet, darauf hinzuweisen, dass der jetzige Zustand der türkischen Armee weitgehende Operationen, wie sie in Transkaukasien, soweit ich unterrichtet bin, geplant sein sollen, keinesfalls gestattet.’
- 32.
Liman von Sanders, Five Years in Turkey (Uckfield: The Naval & Military Press, 2015), 257: ‘According to my view we already had too many fronts. It will hardly ever be advisable for one inferior in numbers to force a much superior opponent to form some new front. The urgent need of troops on the hard pushed battle front of Palestine should have disposed of this idea. At any rate it stands beyond doubt that, on account of the operations referred to, sufficient troops were not ordered by Turkish headquarters to Palestine’.
- 33.
Johnson, Middle East, 190–91; Neulen, Feldgrau in Jerusalem, 30–54.
- 34.
AA (M) R 13804–2, 27–28, Bernstorff to AA, 15.06.1918.
- 35.
AA (M) R 13804, 44–45, Bernstorff to AA, 20.06.1918; AA (M) R 13804, 77–78. Bernstorff to Bethmann von Hollweg, Pera, 30.07.1918.
- 36.
German ambassador Wangenheim reflected on Armenian demands for protection in spring 1915 and formulated that the Germans would not have the ‘nobile officium’ (honorful duty) to protect the Ottoman Christians. This term was used in the discourse about protection of co-religious groups. Wangenheim pointed out that this role was already taken by Great Britian and also Russia. However, at that point, he did not realize the scale of the violence used against Armenians and only later that year understood that the Young Turk used ‘deportation’ as a code word for annihilation (AA (M) R 14085:7116). After the summer 1915, all German diplomats and military officers knew about the genocide. Some of them believed in the Turkish conspiracy theory of an internal pro-Russian fifth column. Berlin oppressed critical opinions and messages from German witnesses and made it clear that the ‘Armenian affair’ will not influence the war partnership with the Ottomans. The censorship inside the German Reich made the discussion about the mass violence inside the aligned Ottoman Empire difficult, but not impossible. The reports about the atrocities became a media event on the side of the Entente powers and the neutral United States of America. At a time when ‘genocide’ was not yet a coined and used term, the Entente powers declared the unprecedented violence against civilians as ‘crimes against humanity’ and demanded the persecution of the perpetrators.
- 37.
Zürcher, Young Turk Legacy, 110–23; Tessa Hofmann, Annäherung an Armenien. Geschichte und Gegenwart (Munich: Beck 2006), 93.
- 38.
AA (M) R 13804, Bernstoff to the Foreign Department (AA), 15.06.1918.
- 39.
AA (M) R 13804, Bernstorff to the Foreign Department (AA), August 1918, 21; Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 175–82.
- 40.
AA (M) R 13804–2, Bernstorff to the Foreign Department (AA), 05.08.1918, 92–96: ’[…] werden sie bei der im Kaukasus-Gebiet bestehenden vollkommenen Anarchie leicht einen Vorwand finden, um mit den Armeniern weiter zu kämpfen und ihr Versprechen nicht zu halten. Darüber lässt letztes Telegramm Enver Paschas an Feldmarschall von Hindenburg keinen Zweifel […] dass die Türken den Armeniern gegenüber gar keinen guten Willen haben. […] Es ist m.E. eine Utopie, wenn von Tiflis aus Garantien von den Türken für die Armenier verlangt werden. Wo auf niedriger Kulturstufe Rassenhass vorhanden ist, kann es keine Garantien geben. Wer in der Majorität ist, schlägt die Minorität tot. […] Ausserdem ist es den Türken durchaus erwünscht, wenn eine halbe Million Armenier umkommen.’.
- 41.
AA (M) R 13804, 21, 85; Jürgen Gottschlich, Beihilfe zum Völkermord. Deutschlands Rolle bei der Vernichtung der Armenier (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2015), 115–36.
- 42.
State Archive in Vienna (Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv), PA XII, Box 209; Neulen, Feldgrau in Jerusalem, 144–51; Wolfdieter Bihl, Der Erste Weltkrieg, 1914–1918. Chronik—Daten—Fakten (Wien/Köln/Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2010), 276.
- 43.
Johnson, Middle East, 235–40; Bihl, Erste Weltkrieg, 276–77.
- 44.
Bihl, Erste Weltkrieg, 276–78.
- 45.
Gingeras, Fall of the Sultanate, 247.
- 46.
AA (M) R 13804–13805.
- 47.
A term referring to the famous Nibelungenlied—an epic poem in Middle High German from the 13th century. The term expresses the highest form of trust and allegiance—a bond beyond death and defeat, absolute and often fatal.
- 48.
AA (M) R 13804–2, Bernstorff to AA, Constantinople, 20.06.1918, 44–45.
- 49.
The Ottoman troops did not retreat from their positions in the Caucasus until early spring 1919.
- 50.
Zürcher, Young Turk Legacy, 211–23.
- 51.
The 1910s frame the important stages of the decline of the Ottoman empire. The term Ottoman Cataclysm can be used to describe the cataclysmic—and irreversible—transformation of the Ottoman territory in the Near and Middle East in the years 1912 to 1922. The last period of the Ottoman empire starts with the Balkan Wars and the loss of almost all European territories and ends with the foundation of modern Turkey in 1923. The empire lost not only territories and influence, but millions of its citizens due to total war and the Armenian Genocide. See: Kieser, ‘Ottoman Road to Total War,’ 29–53.
- 52.
James L. Gelvin, The Modern Middle East: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 182.
- 53.
Reynolds, Shattering Empires, 252–67.
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Schmutz, T. (2018). The German-Ottoman Alliance, the Caucasus, and the Impact of the Russian Revolutions of 1917. In: Abbenhuis, M., Atkinson, N., Baird, K., Romano, G. (eds) The Myriad Legacies of 1917. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73685-3_9
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