Germany Wins Temporary Domination of the Near East
Allied military successes in Turkey were not looked upon with equanimity in Germany. There was a realization in Berlin, as well as London and Paris and Petrograd, that the stakes of the war were as much imperial as Continental. Nothing had as yet occurred which had lessened the importance of establishing an economically self-sufficient Middle European bloc of nations. In the event that the German oversea colonies could not be recovered, Asiatic Turkey—because of its favorable geographical position, its natural resources, and its potentialities as a market—would be almost indispensable in the German imperial scheme of things. As Paul Rohrbach wrote in Das grössere Deutschland in August, 1915, “After a year of war almost everybody in Germany is of the opinion that victory or defeat—at least political victory or defeat—depends upon the preservation of Turkey and the maintenance of our communications with her.”
The dogged defence of the Dardanelles had convinced Germany that, granted proper support, Turkey could be depended upon to give a good account of herself. The problem was one of supplementing Ottoman man power with Teutonic military genius, technical skill, and organizing ability. The enlistment of Bulgaria and the obliteration of Serbia made possible more active German assistance to Turkey, and during the latter months of 1915 and the early months of 1916 strenuous efforts were made to bring the Turkish military machine to a high point of efficiency. Large numbers of German staff officers were despatched to Mesopotamia, Syria, and Anatolia, and Turkish officers were brought to the French and Russian fronts to learn the methods of modern warfare. The Prussian system of military service was adopted throughout the Ottoman Empire, and exemptions were reduced to a minimum. Liberal credits were established with German banks for the purchase of supplies for the new levies of troops. Field Marshal von der Goltz was sent to Mesopotamia as commander-in-chief of the Turkish troops in that region.[17]
Perhaps the chief handicap of the Turks in all their campaigns was inadequate means of transportation. The Ottoman armies operating in the vicinity of Gaza and of Bagdad were dependent upon lines of communication more than twelve hundred miles long; and had the Bagdad Railway been non-existent, it is doubtful if any military operations at all could have been conducted in those regions. But the Bagdad Railway was uncompleted. Troops and supplies being despatched from or to Anatolia had to be transported across the Taurus and Amanus mountains by mule-back, wagon, or automobile, and then reloaded on cars south or north of the unfinished tunnels. To remedy these deficiencies, herculean efforts were made by Germans and Turks during 1915 to improve the service on existing lines and to hurry the completion of the Bagdad Railway. Locomotives and other rolling stock were shipped to Turkey, and German railway experts coöperated with the military authorities in utilizing transportation facilities to the best advantage. In September, 1915, the Bagtché tunnel was pierced; and although through service to Aleppo was not inaugurated until October, 1918, a temporary narrow-gauge line was used, during the interim, to transport troops and matériel through the tunnel. Commenting on the importance of the Bagtché tunnel, the American Consul General at Constantinople wrote: “With its completion the most serious difficulties connected with the construction of the Bagdad Railway have been overcome, and the work of connecting up many of the isolated stretches of track may be expected to be completed with reasonable rapidity. In spite of delays occasioned by the war, this most important undertaking in railway construction in Turkey has passed the problematical stage and is now certain to become an accomplished fact in the near future.”[18]
The effects of German assistance to Turkey soon made themselves apparent. Field Marshal von der Goltz, commanding a reënforced and reinvigorated Ottoman army, supported by German artillery, compelled General Townshend to abandon hope of occupying Bagdad and to fall back toward Basra. By December 5, 1915, Townshend’s army was besieged in Kut-el-Amara; and although the Turks failed to take the town by storm, they did not fail to beat off every Russian and British force sent to the relief of the beleaguered troops. About the same time, December 10, evacuation of the Dardanelles was begun, and the last of the British troops were withdrawn during the first week of January, 1916. On April 29, Townshend’s famished garrison surrendered. Shortly thereafter the offensive of the Grand Duke Nicholas in Turkish Armenia was brought to a standstill. During July and August a second Ottoman attack was launched against the Suez Canal; and although it was unsuccessful, the expedition reminded the British that Egypt was by no means immune from danger. By the end of the year 1916 Turkey, with German assistance, had completely cleared her soil of enemy troops, except for a retreating Russian army in northern Anatolia and a defeated British expedition at the head of the Persian Gulf.[19]
As for Germany, she “was unopposed in her mastery of that whole vast region of southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia which goes by the name of the Near East.... She now enjoyed uninterrupted and unmenaced communication and commerce with Constantinople not only, but far away, over the great arteries of Asiatic Turkey [the Bagdad and Hedjaz railways], with Damascus, Jerusalem, and Mecca, and with Bagdad likewise.... If military exploits had been as conclusive as they had been spectacular, Germany would have won the Great War in 1916 and imposed a Pax Germanica upon the world.... With the adherence of Turkey and Bulgaria to the Teutonic Alliance, and the triumphs of those states, a Germanized Mittel-Europa could be said to stretch from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf, from the Baltic to the Red Sea, from Lithuania and Ukrainia to Picardy and Champagne. It was the greatest achievement in empire-building on the continent of Europe since the days of Napoleon Bonaparte.”[20]
If Germany had been alarmed during the summer of 1915 at the prospect that she might lose her preponderant position in Turkey, the world was now alarmed at the prospect that she might maintain that position. Nor was that alarm easily dispelled, for the Bagdad Railway and the power and prestige it gave Germany in the Near East were pointed to by statesmen as additional evidence of the manner in which the Kaiser and his cohorts had plotted in secret against the peace of an unsuspecting and unprepared world. In fact, the Bagdad Railway came to be considered one of the fundamental causes of the war, as well as one of the chief prizes for which the war was being fought. President Wilson, for example, in his Flag Day speech, June 14, 1917, stated the case in the following terms:[21]
“The rulers of Germany ... were glad to go forward unmolested, filling the thrones of Balkan states with German princes, putting German officers at the service of Turkey to drill her armies and make interest with her government, developing plans of sedition and rebellion in India and Egypt, setting their fires in Persia. The demands made by Austria upon Serbia were a mere single step in a plan which compassed Europe and Asia, from Berlin to Bagdad....
“The plan was to throw a broad belt of German military power and political control across the very centre of Europe and beyond the Mediterranean into the heart of Asia; and Austria-Hungary was to be as much their tool and pawn as Serbia or Bulgaria or Turkey or the ponderous states of the East.... The dream had its heart at Berlin. It could have had a heart nowhere else!...
“And they have actually carried the greater part of that amazing plan into execution.... The so-called Central Powers are in fact but a single Power. Serbia is at its mercy, should its hands be but for a moment freed. Bulgaria has consented to its will, and Roumania is overrun. The Turkish armies, which Germans trained, are serving Germany, certainly not themselves, and the guns of German warships lying in the harbor at Constantinople remind Turkish statesmen every day that they have no choice but to take their orders from Berlin. From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is spread!”
As late as November 12, 1917, after some spectacular victories by the Allies in Mesopotamia and Syria, President Wilson made it plain that no peace was possible which did not destroy German military power in the Near East. Addressing the American Federation of Labor, at Buffalo, N. Y., he said:[22]
“Look at the map of Europe now. Germany, in thrusting upon us again and again the discussion of peace, talks about what? Talks about Belgium—talks about Alsace-Lorraine. Well, these are deeply interesting subjects to us and to them, but they are not talking about the heart of the matter. Take the map and look at it. Germany has absolute control of Austria-Hungary, practical control of the Balkan States, control of Turkey, control of Asia Minor. I saw a map the other day in which the whole thing was printed in appropriate black, and the black stretched all the way from Hamburg to Bagdad—the bulk of the German power inserted into the heart of the world. If she can keep that, she has kept all that her dreams contemplated when the war began. If she can keep that, her power can disturb the world as long as she keeps it, always provided ... the present influences that control the German Government continue to control it.”
In the light of all the facts, this diagnosis of the situation is incomplete, to say the least. Had President Wilson been cognizant of the contemporaneous counter-activities of the Allied Powers, he might not have been prepared to offer so simple an explanation of a many-sided problem. For it was not German imperialism alone which menaced the peace of the Near East and of the world, but all imperialism.