The conception of this further programme was spread over (1) the period during which Germany's aspirations were limited to the inheritance of Turkey's possessions in Asia; and (2) the period when such inheritance began to be regarded as a means to the realisation of still greater aims in the domain of Weltpolitik.
For more than half a century Asiatic Turkey has been looked upon as Germany's Land of Promise. Anatolia was thought a most desirable territory for her surplus population. The development, under German influence, of that territory as a whole—especially with a revival of the Babylonian system of irrigation—was considered to offer vast possibilities of commercial prosperity. Wheat, cotton and tobacco, especially, might be raised in prodigious quantities, and there was the prospect, also, of a petroleum industry rivalling that of Baku itself. Turkey was a decadent nation, and as soon as "the Sick Man" succumbed to his apparently inevitable fate—or even before, should circumstances permit—Germany was ready to step into his shoes.
That these aspirations had, indeed, long been cherished is a fact capable of ready proof.
In 1848 Wilhelm Roscher, the leading expounder of the historical school of political economy in Germany, selected Asia Minor as Germany's share in the Turkish spoils, whenever the division thereof should take place; and Johann Karl Robertus (1805-1875), the founder of the so-called scientific socialism in Germany, expressed the hope that he would live long enough to see Turkey fall into the hands of Germany, and, also, to see German soldiers on the shores of the Bosporus.
Coming to a more recent period, we find that Dr. Aloys Sprenger, the German orientalist, published, in 1886, a pamphlet on "Babylonia, the richest land in the past, and the most promising field for colonisation in the present,"[75] in which, after dealing with the history, physical conditions and resources of Babylonia, he predicted that, before the end of the century, not only Babylonia but Assyria, which was inseparable from it, would, if not formally annexed, at least come under the control of some European Power. Assyria and Syria, he declared, were even better adapted for colonisation than Babylonia. He continued:—
The Orient is the only territory on earth which has not yet been taken possession of by some aspiring nation. It offers the finest opportunities for colonisation, and if Germany, taking care not to let the opportunity slip, should act before the Cossacks come along, she would, in the division of the world, get the best share.... The German Kaiser, as soon as a few hundred thousand armed German colonists bring these promising fields into cultivation, will have in his hand the fate of Asia Minor, and he can—and will—then become the Protector of Peace for the whole of Asia.
Dr. Karl Kaerger, traveller and economist, lamented, in his "Kleinasien; ein deutsches Kolonisationsfeld" (Berlin, 1892), the enormous loss sustained by Germany in the migration of so many of her people and of so much capital to Anglo-Saxon lands; but there were, he affirmed, only two countries to which German settlers could go with any hope of retaining alike their nationality and their commercial relations with the Mutterland. Those countries were—Africa and Asia Minor. He had been especially impressed, during the course of his travels, by the prospects and possibilities of Anatolia, and he recommended the establishment there of large German companies which would organise schemes of colonisation and land cultivation on a large scale. The colonies so established should be self-governing, free from all taxation for ten years, have the right of duty-free importation of necessaries, and enjoy various other privileges, while Turkey, in return for the concessions she thus made to the settlers, would be assured "the protection of Germany against attack." Not only hundreds of thousands, but millions, of colonists could find a second home on those wide expanses. Germany herself would gain a dual advantage—an economical one, and a political one. Concerning the latter, Dr. Kaerger observed:—
If the German Empire, while maintaining her friendship with Austria and Italy—which, under all circumstances, the political situation in Europe undoubtedly requires—can direct the stream of her emigration to the fertile territories of Turkey, and if she can conclude with that country a closer customs convention, then the entire economic, and with it, also, the political future of Germany will rest on a broader and a firmer basis than if the present streams of hundreds of thousands of her people, and millions of capital, continue to pass in increasing proportions, year by year, to countries which are economically hostile to us.