It is difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the secret treaties with the pronouncements of Allied statesmen regarding the origins and purposes of the Great War. Certainly they were no part of the American program for peace, which promised to “the Turkish portions of the Ottoman Empire a secure sovereignty”; which demanded “a free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined”; and which announced in no uncertain terms that “the day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by” as is also “the day of secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of the world.”[29]
Allied diplomacy was to have its way in the Near East, however, for the goddess of victory finally smiled upon the Allied armies and frowned upon both Turks and Germans. As 1916 had been a year of Turco-German triumphs at the Dardanelles and in Mesopotamia, 1917 brought conspicuous Allied victories along the Tigris and in Syria, and 1918 saw the complete collapse of the Ottoman Empire. On February 24, 1917, General Sir Stanley Maude, in command of reënforced and rejuvenated British forces in Mesopotamia, captured Kut-el-Amara, retrieving the disaster which had befallen Townshend’s army a year before. Deprived of the services of Field Marshal von der Goltz, who died during the Caucasus campaign, the Turks retired in disorder, and on March 11 British troops entered Bagdad—the ancient city which had bulked so large in the German scheme of things in the Near East. Although the capture of Bagdad was not in itself of great strategic importance, its effect on morale in the belligerent countries was considerable. British imperialists were in possession of the ancient capital of the Arabian Caliphs, as well as the chief entrepôt of caravan trade in the Middle East; therefore their prestige with both Arabs and Turks was certain to rise. At home, pictures of British troops in the Bagdad of the Arabian Nights appealed to the imagination of the war-weary, as well as the optimistic, patriot. In the Central Powers, on the other hand, the loss of Bagdad created scepticism as to whether the German dream of “Hamburg to the Persian Gulf” was not now beyond realization. This scepticism became more confirmed when, on April 24, General Maude captured Samarra, northern railhead of the uncompleted Bagdad line in Mesopotamia.[30]
Scepticism would have turned to alarm, however, had Germans been fully aware of the significance of the British advance in the Land of the Two Rivers. For behind the armies of General Maude came civil officials by the hundreds to consolidate the victory and to lay the foundations of permanent occupation. An Irrigation Department was established to deal with the menace of floods, to drain marshes, and to economize in the use of water. An Agricultural Department undertook the cultivation of irrigated lands and conducted elaborate experiments in the growing of cotton—the commodity which means so much in the British imperial system. A railway was constructed from Basra to Bagdad which, when opened to commerce in 1919, became an integral part of the Constantinople-Basra system. There was every indication that the British were in Mesopotamia to stay.[31]
Germans and Turks were sufficiently aroused, however, to take strenuous measures to counteract General Maude’s successes. In April, 1917, Field Marshal von Mackensen, hero of the Balkan and Rumanian campaigns and strong man of the Near East, was sent to Constantinople to confer with Enver Pasha regarding the military situation. It was decided, apparently, that Bagdad must be retaken at all costs, for throughout the summer quantities of rolling stock for the Bagdad Railway were shipped to Turkey, enormous supplies of munitions were accumulated at Haidar Pasha, and a division of picked German troops (including machine-gun and artillery units) made its appearance in Anatolia. Command of all the Turkish armies in Mesopotamia was conferred upon General von Falkenhayn, former German Chief of Staff. Germany was not yet prepared to surrender her sphere of interest in Turkey.
The great expedition against Bagdad, however, had to be abandoned. In the first place, Turkish officers were loath to serve under von Falkenhayn. Turkish nationalism was beginning to assert itself, and German supervision of Ottoman military affairs was resented—Mustapha Kemal Pasha, for example, refused to accept orders from German generals and resigned his commission. Von Falkenhayn himself was disliked because of his dictatorial methods and was held in light esteem because of his responsibility for the disastrous Verdun offensive. Furthermore, many Turks deemed it inadvisable to dissipate energy in a Mesopotamian campaign, the avowed purpose of which was a recovery of German prestige, when all available man power was required for the defence of Syria. Djemal Pasha was so insistent on this point that he received from the Kaiser an “invitation” to visit the Western Front! In the second place, Providence or, perhaps, an Allied spy intervened to thwart the German plans, for a great fire and a series of explosions (September 23–26, 1917) destroyed the entire port and terminal of Haidar Pasha, together with all the munitions and supplies which had been accumulated there by months of patient effort. And finally, the spectacular campaign of Field Marshal Allenby in Palestine, which opened with the capture of Beersheba, on October 31, convinced even von Falkenhayn that an expedition in Mesopotamia, while Aleppo was in danger, would be the height of folly. German energies were thereupon diverted to the defence of the Holy Land.[32]
During the autumn of 1917, Great Britain and France, to assure their possession of the territories assigned them by the Sykes-Picot Treaty, began a Syrian campaign which was not to terminate until Turkey had been put out of the war. Under Field Marshal Sir E. H. H. Allenby, British troops, reënforced by French units and assisted by the rebellious Arabs of the Hedjaz, captured Gaza (November 7), Jaffa (November 16), and Jerusalem (December 9). The triumphal entry of General Allenby into Jerusalem was hailed throughout Christendom as marking the success of a modern crusade to rid Palestine of Ottoman domination forever. Jericho was occupied, February 21, 1918, but Turkish resistance, under Marshal Liman von Sanders, stiffened for a time, and it was not until the autumn that large-scale operations were resumed. On October 1, Damascus was occupied by a combined Arab and British army; a week later Beirut was taken; and on October 25, Aleppo, the most important junction point on the Bagdad Railway, capitulated. Five days afterward, Turkey gave up the hopeless fight by signing the Mudros armistice, terminating hostilities.[33]
Thus ended a Great Adventure for both Turkey and Germany. Germany lost all hope of retaining any economic or political influence in the Ottoman Empire; the dream of Berlin-to-Bagdad became a nightmare. Turkey faced dismemberment. “The Bagdad Railway had proved to be the backbone of Turkish utility and power in the War. Were it not for its existence, the Ottoman resistance in Mesopotamia and in Syria could have been discounted as a practical consideration in the War, and the sending of Turkish reënforcements to the Caucasus would have been even more materially delayed than was in fact the case.”[34] For Turkey, then, the war had come at a most inappropriate time. Had hostilities begun ten years later, after the completion of the Bagdad system, military operations in the Near East might have had an entirely different result. As it was, the Bagdad Railway—and the international complications arising from it—proved to be the ruination of the Ottoman Empire.
To the Victors Belong the Spoils
During 1919, the Allied Governments set about possessing themselves of the spoils which were theirs by virtue of the secret treaties and by right of conquest. In April, Italian troops occupied Adalia and rapidly extended their lines into the interior as far as Konia. In November, French armies replaced the British forces in Syria and Cilicia. Great Britain began the “pacification” of the tribesmen of Mesopotamia and Kurdistan. And in the meantime there was plentiful evidence that German rights in the Near East would be speedily liquidated in the interest of the victorious Powers. For example, on March 26, the Interallied Commission on Ports, Waterways, and Railways announced at Paris the adoption of “a new transportation agreement designed to secure a route to the Orient by railway without passing through the territories of the Central Empires.” Accordingly, a fast train, the “Simplon-Orient Express,” was to be run regularly from Calais to Constantinople via Paris, Lausanne, Milan, Venice, Trieste, Agram, and Vinkovce. Later this service was to be extended into Asiatic Turkey, over the lines of the Anatolian, Bagdad, and Syrian railways. To meet a changed situation one must provide new paths of imperial expansion, and the French press spoke glowingly of the prospect that the slogans “Hamburg to the Persian Gulf” and “Berlin to Bagdad” would be speedily replaced by “Calais to Cairo” and “Bordeaux to Bagdad”![35]
All German rights in the Bagdad Railway and other economic enterprises in the Near East were abrogated by the Treaty of Versailles, signed June 28, 1919. The German Government was obligated to obtain and to turn over to the Reparation Commission “any rights and interests of German nationals in any public utility undertaking or in any concession operating in ... Turkey, Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria” and agreed, as well, “to recognize and accept all arrangements which the Allied and Associated Powers may make with Turkey and Bulgaria with reference to any rights, interests and privileges whatever which might be claimed by Germany or her nationals in Turkey and Bulgaria.”[36]