David March
World War I: 1911 - 1923, Trying to Put Humpty Dumpty Together Again and Failing
David March | World War I 1911 - 1923, Trying to put Humpty Dumpty Together Again and Failing
- Okay, right, so good evening everyone from London. This is the second lecture I’ve ever given to the Lockdown University. The first one is worth looking at, because, well, I hope it’s worth looking at, because we looked at history, historians and the truth, and that’s a particular interest today, because so much is so contentious nowadays that establishing the truth is a very valuable tool. And we’ve called this programme, this set of lectures, the First World’s War, which you notice, I’ve put it slightly differently from the First World War. Obviously no one realised they were fighting the First World War when the First World War was being fought because it was only when the Second World War happened that we realised the earlier war was a First World War. Most people, I think, emanating probably from the French, regarded that conflict as the Great War. One might even say the First World War was really the Napoleonic War, but this is all about how we call things and what they mean to us. And I’ve called it the First World’s War because I think it’s, you know, almost beyond any dispute that the conflict that we’re looking at was a consequence of rivalries between the first world’s leading European powers of Germany, Russia, primarily, the French and the British. And that configuration resulted from imperialism in Europe, which we’re looking into a little bit today as to their relationship with the declining Ottoman Empire and who was going to get what and how the Ottoman Empire was going to have a future. And talking about this, looking at the last century, it is truly remarkable and not, I think, often talked about that all the major conflicts of the, particularly the late 20th century are conflicts that arise from the periphery of the Ottoman Empire.
And so we can actually talk about the wars of Ottoman succession 1918 to 24, and ongoing indeed. So obviously today issues about Ukraine, Russia, or Israel, Gaza, Palestine, but almost everything else frankly, that’s of major importance to us are actually peripheral events around what was the Ottoman Empire. What’s interesting about the current discussions about the Ukraine and Israel-Palestine is that no one, in my, from what I can tell, no one really links them all together in some way to find some explanation as to what happened in the past, and indeed to provide observations about how they’re similar and how they’re different and about how resolutions are proposed. And so this is an exercise in what I call history and context, which is that everything that you look at historically has to be looked in or at in its context. And so you’ve always got to zoom in to find out what actually happened on a micro level, but you’ve also got to pan out to see what was happening nearby and slightly further to see if what you are looking at means something different if you put it in context. And the reason why I think this is important is because if we look at the Ukrainian Russian situation, there has been a dispute and about history, both history going back a thousand years to the origins of the Russian state, and subsequently the history of Russia and Ukraine, but also recent history as to what happened since 1989. And I think that if one takes that history into account, you will find that the situation is less partisan than is often assumed.
Now, if we look at the Israel-Gaza situation, this is again a situation that has become so polarised largely because people have decided to zoom in and not to look at the context. And so frankly, what one needs to do is to zoom out a bit, I have to say, when we did the last lecture, I talked about a hermeneutics philosopher called Gadamer who said that no historian can claim to be entirely objective. And that we have to understand what is a reasonable shared common approach to history so that we can actually sensibly talk about history other than something that we each make up and want to promote. In the context of Israel and Palestine. I think it is, I think it’s a fair observation that almost everything that gets said about the past, and I have to say this on the part of the anti-Israel position is that they have managed to focus down and zoom in to such a level of narrowness that almost everything in the context of the Israel-Arab conflict has been ignored or is assumed not to be relevant. So the purpose of this course, it does have very relevant, it’s a very relevant exercise in asking us, does Ukraine, for instance, and Israel-Palestine have any similarities? And what is the context of the Ukraine, and what is the context of Palestine-Israel? In which case, I do believe we will find ourselves in a much better position to resolve the, to resolve the situation rather than taking sides. So I’m sorry, I’m just going to get rid of this intervention here. Okay, so just getting onto the period of the First World, the First World’s War, we’ve called it 1911 to 1923. That’s not the normal periodization. The normal periodization from a European perspective, was that the First World War? Sorry, that the 20th century, there’s been a wider perspective here.
The 20th century was probably a short century from 1914 to 1989, and certainly in 1989, people thought that really this was what the 20th century was about. But of course that is because at the end of the First World War, the Soviet Union took shape. And it could be said that although not all conflicts by any means, were put in the freezer. The Soviet Union froze European national conflicts until its collapse in 1989. And one might say it collapsed, because of what had been in the freezer, was no longer in the freezer anymore, and it wanted to get out escaped. So the short 20th century is, it reflects Germany and Russia, but in today’s terms, where we look at things in a global sense, and in a much more contextual way, one could say the long 20th century, I’m suggesting, started in 1875, and is still ongoing. Because if you look at all these major conflicts, 1875 is really the start of the final phase of the Ottoman Empire. And we still have those issues today. It’s a bit like in the English history, they talk about the long 18th century from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, ‘89, until the Reform Act of 1832. And then some people sort of squeeze it a bit because what I’ve just said is very much a liberal, weak view of British history. So periodization for historians is a form of interpretation. If we just go down to the First World War, we always talk about 1914, 1918, which is very much focused on European military history. But if you want to expand it to the reasons for the War, the immediate reasons for the War, and its impact upon not just nations and states, but on individuals or minorities, and on the geopolitical layout, there’s no question that the First World War, I would say, started in 1911 and last until 1923. And we’ll see in this lecture why we say that.
Okay, so let’s just start off with a bit of perspective on the Ottoman Empire, which was described by Tzar Nicholas I in 1853 as the sick man of Europe. It is possible that you talked about the sick man, the Europe bit he might not have referred to. But anyway, the sick man of Europe became a concept, which is very much part of the European imperial view on a culture and a civilization that wasn’t Christian and European, and more and more research has showed that actually the Ottoman Empire. Like any empire would’ve suffered, like any country anywhere in the world suffered its plus points and its negative points, its survived, it flourished. And the new kind of view is that the Ottoman Empire was not as sick as people have suggested. It’s part of the view of a Russian Tzar who very shortly thereafter was going to invade the Crimea and was to initiate 40 years of imperial expansion towards the great goal of taking the city of Constantinople and taking control of the Black Sea. It’s quite clear for me, if you look at the comments and the attitudes of European powers, that there was this what Edward Said referred to as Orientalist and even possibly antisemitic views on the Turkish Empire. And so what we see is great power support for what I call here Christian Nationalisms, which are Greek Catholic, if you’re looking at, well look at the Austrian position, the Greek Catholic, the Russian Orthodox, and the Armenian Christian Nationalisms. And this is an aspect of the Ottoman Empire that has become clearer, which it is the Christian aspect, the Christian nationalist aspect of Europe in this period that lies behind what is a collapse of the Turkish Empire as everyone wants to get in there, as it were.
That’s a cultural thing, and in fact, if you look at Orlando Figes’ work on the Crimean War, which is an excellent book on an area of history that I think was somewhat neglected, it is the Christian nationalist crusader type cultural aspects of Russia in particular, but also of the other European nations that lies behind how the Turkish Empire is attacked and eventually truncated. In terms of economics and finance, we’re going to find out in a minute that Russia, in order to to defend itself does incur debts in particular to the French and the British, and it is the default of the Ottoman Empire in 1875, which we’ll explain in a minute, which really does start the rot, because the Turkish Empire is not in a position to finance whatever it has to do to survive on its own. In terms of other imperial interests, there’s no question that imperialism before the First World War is all about Ottoman Empire. And the reason for that is that the Ottoman Empire is geopolitically rich as an asset as we’ll see from the map. It’s more like a skeleton or even an octopus, possibly, with a main body in a couple of, or a number of offshoots from it. But it is the geopolitical position of the Ottoman Empire, which everyone’s interested in, because if they can take it over, then it will promote, for instance, British interests in India. Then what also gradually becomes part of the picture is that although the Ottoman Empire is rich in the Anatolian parts and the European parts in terms of what we would consider to be a wealthy agricultural country, it is still agricultural, but it is much more like what you’d expect from a European country. But it is actually the assets under the ground, the oil that people become interested in. And for that reason, if you look at Churchill, for instance, the British Navy starts from 1911 to fuel its Navy using oil rather than coal. So was the Ottoman Empire the sick man of Europe?
Well, the answer I think is definitely not, and the obvious question is to ask is if it was the sick man of Europe, then why were people interested in invading it? Were they interested in some form of necrophilia or of taking over an empire that had nothing to offer them? And the answer to that one is clearly not, although, it did become the normal kind of like we had to get involved with the Ottoman Empire, for instance, because of its treatment of its Christian minorities. And of course this was why for instance, Gladstone as we’ll see in a minute, was interested in getting involved with the Bulgarian, so-called Bulgarian massacres by the Turks in, sorry, in, yeah, in 1878. You have a humanitarian liberal view that supports a Christian minority, and this becomes a theme. It’s interesting that Israeli being Jewish, of course, was much more interested in assets and infrastructure rather than taking this high moral tone about minorities in Europe where probably most European countries were involved with minority violence and suppression. Okay, so I’m just going to show you this lovely map. If you are interested in having history outlook, in my book, the best is volume 14 of the Cambridge Modern History series, which is the entire history of, frankly, I think it’s Europe and the world, it is a bit old, it’s, you know, kind of like 20, 30, 40 years old, but it has maps like this that really do capture the picture. And to say that, by the way, you can get it off Amazon for about between about three pounds and 50 pounds, it depends at the time who’s offering a copy. But you can buy these off Amazon.
Just to summarise on the backgrounds of the Ottoman Empire, which starts off in the 14th century in Anatolia, which is what we would nowadays call Turkey. But the major milestones which are the invasion of Europe by the Ottoman Empire with the taking of Constantinople in 1453, which then leads to taking over Hungary and Vienna, the most westward expansion is Malta in 1566, which is at that point that the Turks reached their greatest extent and there is a Battle of Lepanto in, sorry, in 1571, which is the major naval battle that brings Ottoman ambitions to an end in the Mediterranean. Going north Ukraine is a battlefield with the Russians and the Poles, and the Turks take over significant parts of the Pontic Steppes, taking over mainly what’s called the left bank. So at the Western bank of the Dnieper, going up to Podolia, the right bank of the, sorry, that’s the right bank of, sorry, it’s the western part of the Ukraine that becomes taken over by the Turks, and it’s the right hand side that’s taken over by the Russians. Vienna is invested, not for the first time in its history in 1689, and that’s the maximum extent north that the Turks reach. And there is a Russian-Ottoman treaty, which is contested until Catherine the Great comes along and starts a reverse move down south where the Russians and the Ottomans made a temporary truce. Now, so that’s the Turkish Empire or the Ottoman Empire, and as you can see, you can actually, I think, divide it into five bits. The central bit is Anatolia, the European bit is Greece, the Balkans and Central European particular Austria-Hungary. And of course, the reason why the Austro-Hungarian Empire, particularly the Austrian Empire, the Habsburg Empire, is formed in the 16th, 17th century, is that it is a defence against both Protestantism in Europe and against the Ottomans coming up from the South. And it is interesting to see that the Austro-Hungarian itself begins to dissolve once the secularism in Europe makes religion less significant, but also as the Turkish Empire dissolves.
So if you look at this map, we’ve got the European parts of the Turkish Empire, and of course in the north, you’ve got parts of the Ukraine and the Crimea, which are occupied until the late 18th century, particularly in the Ukraine. Then we have Anatolia in the middle, and then added onto that, and they formed the European Turkish sphere and the Turkish proper sphere from our point of view. In 1517, the Middle East is then added on. So we have the Arab Middle East, which is made up of Egypt, the eastern side of the Red Sea, going down to the Hejaz, Mecca, and Medina. And then we have Iraq and the Middle East going down to the Persian Gulf. And as you can see, the reason why people are interested in the Turkish Empire or the Ottoman Empire is because it’s, sorry, geo-politically significant, the richest parts of the empire are the European parts. So out of the 30-odd million people that make up the Ottoman Empire at its maximum extent, 10 million of them are in fact Europeans, and so the Turkish Empire without Europe is about 20 million. That is also the richest part of the empire. So let’s just go on.
So when did the Ottoman Empire begin to fall apart? And the answer is, if by the way you can say that it did fall apart, but it’s kind of final years are from 1875. So just before that, during the Napoleonic war, European powers were beginning, and I’m thinking her, of Britain and France, are beginning to take an interest in the Ottoman Empire, obviously with the French invasion by Napoleon, knowing that it was geopolitically significant. And the British who are running after Napoleon and defeats the French Navy and its army in Egypt, those are the beginnings as with most things of Western European involvement in the Ottoman Empire. The first significant event, actually after the Napoleon period is the Greek independence, which is the first major Christian, western intrusion into the Turkish Empire. And it’s significant, for instance, you know, there’s a London Conference, it’s independence is secured, but it’s only the southern part of Greece, you know, the Peloponnese, certain islands. But that northern Greece above Athens, takes time for it to become independent and part of the Greek Republic. So then we have the Crimean War, which was an attempt by Russia to take over the Crimea, surprisingly enough. And of course Britain and France are involved in order to help the Turks to stop the Russians from doing that. And what’s really significant upon the fact that the Crimean War seems to have caused a series of reforms in Europe. Russia, for instance, the major kick that made it reform itself to free the peasants and to have industrial progress and to have some kind of reform was a Crimean War, which led to the reforms of Alexander II, and Russia does become a significant, in fact, the fastest growing European country in the world by 1900. Britain has reformed because of its appalling performance in the Crimean War, apart of course from its soldiers, where the whole social economic structure, this cultural structure of professions in particular civil service, are considered to be out of date.
So what happens then is that the Ottoman Empire also reforms itself as a result of the Crimean War, and in particular the fact is that they borrow lots of money from British and French banks to which there are attached supervisory requirements by the Western powers to make sure that the loans are going to be paid back. And inevitably this then leads on to, despite the supervision, may I add, Ottoman Bank default in 1875. And one might say that this is the point at which the final phase of the Ottoman Empire unravels Ottoman independence. Now of course, if your interest is in recent European history, the Greek banking experience, and in fact international banking generally, you’ll find that this story of western banks lending to other countries is a familiar experience. So the Ottoman Empire collapses economically, it’s in default and it’s at that point that the Russians move in to the Balkans with the Russo-Turkish War. And that is considered to be the start of Ottoman collapse. If you’ve ever listened to Tchaikovsky’s Marche Slave, which is often performed in the concert halls, you can just get the, you can taste and hear and smell the almost demented military and nationalistic tone that Russia must have been subject to. And at that point, to the Congress of Berlin in 1878 of the Great Powers recognises independence for Romania and Serbia. So as you can imagine from the map, independence is seeping into the Balkan Peninsula and Bulgaria, which actually later on becomes a key part of the story as equal as I believe as Serbia is, becomes semi-independent, and then full independence follow from Bulgaria in 1908.
And you’ll find that a lot of these states in the Balkans go through at least two stages from Turkish control to some form of what’s called suzerainty where they have local home rule, as we would call it in Britain. But it is subject to an international power’s responsibility for the military and foreign relations of that country. This seemed very familiar to those of us in Britain who had a problem with, well, the decolonization of Ireland, and the issues of home rule, which were very important in the 19th century. And then obviously recently the whole issue of the, for instance, the resolution of the Palestine-Israel problem has really been about how do we follow a process of no independence to suzerainty or control for military and policing purposes. And then how do you get to a fully independent state, just looking at this Austria then, because obviously Russia’s involved with the development of independent Slavic Christian states, Greek Orthodox states, Austria occupies Bosnia in 1878, and then it finally annexes in 1908. If one was to ask oneself after that, what is the next major step before the war occurs? This is something historians have really got to grips with, I would say relatively recently, which is the final phase before the war is that Italy, and this is interesting how peripheral states or peripheral events then lead on to major conflagrations is that Italy decides as part of its imperial ambitions in Africa to occupy what is called Cyrenaica and Tripolitania in 1911. And I’ll describe in a minute how that sequence of events then leads to the War. That particular war is of interest. ‘cause it’s considered to be the first time that a European power makes a land grab on parts of the Turkish Empire, but also, and so therefore it’s an imperious war that is parallel to other imperialist wars.
But we also see significant military occurrences such as trench warfare around the major literal cities and the use of air power, both by planes and dirigibles in attacking the towns, and the war itself is fought as a colonial war insofar as you have Italy occupying the main cities and the attacks are being made by tribes from the interior. The reason why this then leads to the First World War is that Italy then sends its Dreadnoughts into the Aegean and ferments unrest in the Balkans that leads to the Balkan Wars of 1912 to '13 as part of Italy’s attempt to weaken the Turkish Empire. As a result of that, the Turks close the Straits and this leads to a drop of 50% of Russia’s exports because the boats can’t get through. I’ve mentioned Italian Dreadnoughts, well, the Italians had Dreadnoughts, Turkish, the Turks realised they didn’t have any, and the British were in Istanbul trying to sell Dreadnoughts to the Turks, which they succeed in doing, but which are not delivered before 1914. And so these Dreadnoughts are, , there’s a contractual dispute, and they are eventually used by Britain. So the Balkan wars of 1912 to '13 are a very interesting example of not being able to predict the future because states such as Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece seek to push the Turks out of the race, and frankly, back to Istanbul and out of Europe, and in fact the Bulgarians do get within six miles of Istanbul as the Russians had done in 1878. And as a consequence of that particular first war, the Turkish presence in Europe is almost completely destroyed and finished.
But then what happens is that the, those Balkan states, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, then particularly Greece and Serbia, they decide that the Bulgarians have taken too much, so there’s a Second Balkan war, which is quite short, at which the Balkan states seek to push back the Bulgarians. And it is that attack upon the Bulgarians that leads to Bulgaria turning from being a Russian, anti-Turkish state to becoming allied to Turkey when the war starts. So this sequence of events from 1911 onwards, which has been traced out in all the recent books on the outbreak of the First World War, is a clear path to increasing tension in the Balkans. And it is literally that there really could, you know, one does wonder could the First World War started or triggered off by some other event in some other country, and the answer is the Sarajevo was the perfect place for the First World War to start because it involved an Austrian archduke turning up to a very contested part of Bosnia on the worst day he could possibly have chosen, which was an anniversary of 700 years of Serbian nationalism following its defeat at the hands of the Turks. One almost wonders whether or not Archduke Ferdinand was deliberately sent to Sarajevo by parts of the Austrian court who didn’t like him very much, because he was looking to recognise the Slavic Balkan nations as a third part of the Austria-Hungarian empire. And also the fact is he was married to a Czech woman who wasn’t a noble. There are, I think that’s a very serious suggestion there worth looking at because the events of Sarjevo in 1914 are truly bizarre. Okay, so well here’s another map that you can look at your leisure, which is designed to show how the northern parts of the Ottoman empire gradually become detached from the Ottoman Empire. And if you look at the details on the map, it’ll tell you when this happened.
Okay, so 1914 European, Europe 1914, what happens in Europe itself is almost a different system. People get the idea that the Europeans were all not just Imperialistically interested in the Ottoman Empire, but were all very nationalistic, and they all wanted to get at each other. But the truth is it’s a bit more sophisticated than that. And the overall view, I think, is that that Europe 1914 had developed a geopolitical system and a military system that was a hair trigger. That means that it only took some possibly insignificant event to lead to a series of behaviours and responses and reactions that led to wider war. It has been suggested that the Europeans didn’t really intend to create the World War that happened, and I think that’s true. I think that the European countries realised at some point fairly early on what a terrible mistake this had been. But there was no mechanism to resolve what had happened in terms of the outbreak of war. What one question that I think does come up is that if you look the late history of the Ottoman Empire, the great powers are always involved in the Balkans and Turkey. From very early on, from the Napoleonic times, but for some reason in 1914, having there having been a Congress for instance, as a result of the Balkan wars in 1912, '13, that no such conference was called in 1914. And I think that is part of the story that still remains unanswered as to why the British didn’t do what you would normally have expected them to do. And that’s an era for study. So there are 42 days from the shooting at Sarajevo to the final declaration of war, and it is like an electric circuit that Austria attacks Serbia, Russia supports Austria, Russia mobilises against Germany. Actually they only wanted to mobilise against Austria, but they found out that it was militarily ill-advised to only mobilise against the Austrians.
So they declare war on both Germany and Austria. Germany then in order to meet its own commitments has to invade France through Belgium. And that itself was also a hair trigger and a mistake, because in fact the Kaiser, who’s the CEO as it were, of Germany at the time, tries to get off the merry-go-round, and not attack France, but attack Russia. But his military say to him, “I’m sorry, we can’t do that. The algorithm of war, the timetables, the military trains have all been set up that we’ve got to deal with France first,” and then of course the invasion of Belgium brings the French response. And then the British have got these rather shadowy commitments to France and are pulled in themselves. Now, this to me, doesn’t seem to me to be an intentional event. A lot of blame about the outbreak of war has been levelled at the Germans. But what overall seems to be the case is that we’re talking here about fear and not enthusiasm. A lot of the accounts of enthusiasm and nationalism for war in 1914 have been exaggerated. It is the fear that the other side will get in first that results in a sudden slide into war. A lot of the planning was poor, people talk about the Schlieffen Plan in Germany, but you know, once the German soldiers got off the trains at the frontier, they had 40 days to march all the way to Paris, and it’s not surprising that once the French and the British had organised themselves, pulled back towards Paris, that the Germans eventually run out of steam and are defeated at the Marne. What is often not talked about, I think, is that this mentality of getting in first, who starts first wins first, is throwback probably to the German wars of the 1860s and 1870. It’s quite clear that people thought it was going to be a short term war, will be back by Christmas, but it all starts to go wrong.
The Russian cavalry invaded east Prussia much quicker than is expected. It’s panic in Germany that they’ve got a defeat France before the Russian Uhlans come into Berlin. Overall, this is a complete imperial disaster of their own making. So what about the Ottomans? I’m going to carry on here by the way till eight o'clock, and then, please send some questions in if you want, which we can deal with afterwards or during the session for about 15 minutes. Is that we’ve talked about the Western Front. The Western Front is really a consequence of the buildup of geopolitical activity relating to the Ottoman Empire. So we all know about the Western Front, that’s the main characterization of the World War. Until the 1970s, the Eastern Front, IE the war between Germany, Austria, and Russia was not known about largely because people, I suppose, couldn’t read Russian. And it took Norman Stone to write a book in 1975 called “The Eastern Front,” which was the first book, a major Wolfson Prize winning book on what Churchill had described as the Forgotten Front. Interesting enough, there has just been a book, published by Nick Lloyd called “The Eastern Front,” which updates that whole exercise of looking at the Eastern Front. But what has not been until recently looked at is what I call the Southern Front, something that Sean McMeekin has looked at in his magnificent book called “The Ottoman Endgame,” and which on the southern front could be described as the War of Ottoman Succession. This is an example where panning out, diving deep, learning your languages, for instance, Norman Stone was a great believer of learning lots of languages.
So he, as a historian, learned I think 13 languages, and he actually taught me German in three months. So I could study Germany 1917 to '23, which was his special subject. This expanding of people’s knowledge and skillsets enable us to look at serious issues in a serious way. Okay, so jumping just slightly ahead, I’ve called this next slide Dinner for Three, very often, if you know a bit about the history of Israel and Palestine, and of Arab world, one talks about the Sykes-Picot Treaty and its support forerunner of the Balfour Declaration. But what often people don’t realise is it’s actually the so off Sazanov-Sykes-Picot treaty, 'cause it was a meeting between the Russians, the French, and the British, and it was a full specification for dismemberment of the Arab, sorry, the Ottoman Empire. And what would’ve happened is that Anatolia was to become the Turkey rump, as one might call it, it had maps showing that Russia was going to take over Constantinople and the Straits, Armenia and to Kurdistan, which makes a lot of sense, 'cause that was really what Russia was intending to achieve going back to the late 18th century. Interestingly enough, on the map that McMeekin provides, the Western Palestine, which is frankly a line through Jerusalem, a north-south Jerusalem axis, the Western Palestine is designated as to be internationally determined, which obviously means that they couldn’t carve up satisfactorily who was going to be in control. The British were to have control of what I call Trans-Jordan, which is both the West and the East Bank. This is to the east of the international area. So Palestine itself was to be carved up between the great powers, that even west of the Jordan, you’ve got two entities or areas. And then on the East Bank, the Trans-Jordan, the East Bank of the Jordan, that is also a British area.
And then we have going down the Euphrates, Tigris and Euphrates, an area called Mesopotamia, which the British are to have total control of the reason being that it was the best connection to British India. Britain was very much concerned about the Muslim world, in particular, the large numbers of Muslims in India, and the British army in Mesopotamia was largely Indian soldiers. Then the French were to be given Syria and something called Cilicia, which is really Lebanon, and an area of what is now Southeastern Turkey. And something that the British later observed. And so did in fact the Turks that first of all these areas called Mesopotamia, Cilicia didn’t exist. They were all made up by the imperial powers. And the second point is that actually the French participation in the Ottoman front was very small. And sometimes the British in negotiating with the Ottomans were asking themselves, why on earth are the French involved in these final arrangements, of which they have very little to that, there was very little participation. Okay, so this is a quick slide on the Southern Front. And the truth is, is the Southern Front was no walkover for the Allies. In fact, it was very slow. Some of it was incredibly disastrous, like the Dardanelles, the move up the Mesopotamian, the Euphrates and the Tigress in Mesopotamia was very slow. Well, in 1915 the Turks invaded Sinai. The British campaign to take the Sinai and to move north of Rafah was incredibly slow. By the time we get to 1917, Gaza is taken over, Jerusalem is taken in December, 1917. And then after that, apart from some activity at Megiddo on the West Bank, nothing really happens apart from an Arab revolt in the South. But nothing really happens on the Ottoman Front for the British because they transfer a lot of their resources to the Western Front.
Syria is invaded in 1918, and then there’s a squabble with Faisal and the French and the British as to who really have got that particular area. So there’s no way that you could actually say the Ottoman Empire was in some way decrepit or ineffective. In fact, it was remarkably effective given that it’s being invaded by the leading geopolitical powers. So just to, the Turks had actually been trained in terms of their military resources by the Germans for decades before. Well, under Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Army had been trained to German European standards, which was pretty much the best spec possible. Certain areas of infrastructure like the Dardanelles, the guns, the placements are all being designed, and built by the Germans. When we come at the end of this programme to look at the post-war invasion by Greece of Turkey, the Turks are able to push back and in the end, eliminate or dissolve all of the various incursions by great powers in taking over what was left of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. So that in 1923, albeit that they had lost European Turkey, and the Middle East, which was handed wholesale to the great powers, but in terms of Turkey itself, it actually had succeeded in stopping the rot. Now what I want to do now is have a quick look at how collapse happened, and I’m not going to go too much into this, but it is interesting recently that people have looked at the Russian Revolution, which used to be marketed as some major event in human history that happened on a particular date or two particular dates in 1917. But in fact the Russian collapse is a long period of time between 1916 and 1924, and one of the leading books on the Civil War makes a very interesting point that the dissolution of society in Russia starts in 1916 in Turkmenistan, when about 300,000 peasants was going to be conscripted into the army and they refused.
Russia suffers from a crisis of coordination and of management. There are food shortages which are significant. And so Russia has, the first change is really i a change of regime from autocracy to representative democracy of some kind. But that fails, largely because they can’t deal with the level of disruption going on. So the second Bolshevik Revolution was a true revolution, but it wasn’t the true revolution that the Bolsheviks expected, because as we all know, Lenin had to be brought back from Zurich, having made some of the most disastrous futurological prognosis that one could find. They had no idea how it was going to happen and when it was going to happen. The point is, is that the 1917 revolution itself is not some big Bolshevik communist revolution. big Bolshevik communist revolution. And what you and I call the Soviets are in fact councils of soldiers, sailors, civilians, and the like who were taking local control of a vast empire that had failed to defend them. And the purpose of the Bolsheviks is eventually to take control of and coordinate these councils and then eliminate the opposition and take over what you might call macro control of the Russian Empire. And of course it’s with Stalin later on that we find that Stalin starts off industrialization and then peasant collectivization in the '30s of a state that simply didn’t meet the Bolshevik assumption that the revolution was going to take place in Central or Western Europe and that Russia would be drawn in on the coattails. Let’s look at German collapse, 'cause a lot of people don’t realise that the German collapse in 1918 was largely the result of a very similar event, which was local initiatives to take over control in what are called Council Republics, the Rat Republic.
Rat meaning the German version of a Soviet, these were civilians, soldiers, who wanted to take control and end the war. We haven’t really got too much time, but you can see that it’s the military collapse in August, September. The British blockade is very significant in that central Europe was starving, and it’s the beginnings of the council republics that bring the Kaiser down. But from a military point of view, the real contribution is, funny enough, is Bulgaria, which started Germany’s collapse 'cause they realised it was the end of the game. And this happened in September of 1918, which we’ll look at in a minute. But most people don’t realise that just as the War started with an event in the Balkans and then led as a contagion throughout the great powers of Europe, the collapse of the War similarly happened suddenly in the same way as Sarajevo, suddenly, which pushed Turkey and Bulgaria into suing for peace. And it is that collapse that forces Ludendorff and the German government to consider the same. So that’s what we’ve just covered. Let’s say at the time of September, 1918, no one would’ve predicted that the first World War was going to finish in the next two months. Most people were planning for war to at least the middle of 1919.
We’ve looked at political collapse in Russia, and then in Germany. There were further reasons why the collapse happened, one of which is now of particular interest, and I don’t think it really has been massively looked at, although there were books on it in 1918, '19, sorry, 2018 and 2019, which is the pandemic that was probably brought over from America and which spread like wildfire, particularly amongst the armies which attacked, in particular the youth, the youthful soldiers who were fit and had been fighting. And it was the massing together of all these people in kitchens and in armies on the Front from infected food, which led to more people dying from the flu than were killed in the War. And there’s no doubt that that is an aspect to be looked at further. So then we also got the US buildup blockade and the political collapse. So what happens on the Southern Front that really is the catalyst for the end of the War. And it is the fact that Bulgaria, which I mentioned earlier, and had a very strange position in the War because the Russians, they’d always been on the Russian side during the collapse of the Balkan-Turkish Empire. But it was because that they had thought that they had been badly treated by the Russians that had led before the war to them becoming allies of Germany. But then when Bulgaria has suffered 266,000 casualties, it now considers that it has been insufficiently rewarded by the Turks. And so they begin to think about getting out of the war.
The big breakthrough then happens, and again this is a contingent event that suddenly happens, but it has been building up, is that there’s an allied breakout from the Macedonian Front in the middle of September that punches a 50 kilometre hole through the Bulgarian defences and gives the Allies the opportunity of capturing Constantinople and Eastern Thrace, and also capturing the Balkans, and frankly the wider areas of central Europe. This is the trigger point that leads Bulgaria to sue for peace, which they do on the 29th September, 1918, and then pushes the Turks into wanting to sue for peace. It looks to me as if the Turks were really quite keen to speak to the British, 'cause of course Britain was the country that had taken over most of the Arab possessions. So the Allies from Greece, from Macedonia, which is a British-French army. They cut the Berlin-Constantinople rail link in October. And at that point, which is early October, the impact, the emotional as it were, the psychological impact upon the German army to this collapse on the Southern Front that actually makes 'em decide that they’ve got to get out, and they try to get the political opposition in to bring peace between Germany and the Allies. So this is just a quick slide just to explain how it is that it was the Salonika Front or the Greek front that starts the rot in its final form. If anyone here can come to Britain, a good place to visit is a place called Sandton in Surrey near the Thames, where a very famous artist called Stanley Spencer, who was in the Greek expeditionary force.
There is a chapel there, I think it’s called Burghclere Chapel. And he did something called Sistine Chapel of the War in the Greek expeditionary force involving daily life, and it is a real, really good place to visit. Now what happens finally, and this is really quite a peculiar explanation, which is that the Admiral commanding the British Navy in the Mediterranean called Calthorpe turns out in Lemnos a board HMS Agamemnon and meets Turkish representatives in order to negotiate what’s called the Ceasefire at Mudros on the 30th October, 1918. And the remarkable thing about this particular agreement is that it was a complete surrender by the Turks on almost all bases or control and transfer to the successful allies. As you can see here, there is nothing strategic or military or any colonial possession of the Turks in the Arab world that is not surrendered to the British. And this, it results in the Treaty of Sevres 1920, which is Turkey’s Versailles, which confirms the terms of the Mudros Ceasefire, including occupation of significant parts of the Turkish mainland by France, Italy, Russia.
And if you look at the map, unfortunately I can’t show you the map on this presentation, not only has Turkey loses its external possessions, but Turkey itself is partitioned a bit like Germany in terms of peripheral areas that are given control over to the Western powers now the Treaty of Sevres leads to a revolution in Turkey, and also encourages the Greeks under Venizelos to invade Turkey, particularly areas around Smyrna and the Western Antonia, the Aegean, which surprisingly enough results in a complete defeat by the Greeks and a reversal of Sevres, such that the Treaty of Lausanne 1923 almost completely reverses all of the incursions provided for by Sevres. And sets up Turkey as a integrated and post-imperial country in charge of its own autonomy. I haven’t read what Woodrow Wilson would’ve thought about this, but I’m sure would’ve thought that this was a good thing. Part of that settlement at Lausanne was the exchange of populations, 1.2 million Greeks in Western Anatolia who were transferred over to Greece and about 400,000 Muslims in Greece and the Balkans who were transferred over to Turkey. There is the end of capitulations, which have been going on for some centuries, where western powers present in or western citizens present in Turkey were actually subject to their own law. So full legal integrity was restored, and you’ve got to look at, perhaps we’ll look at later on why it is that Turkey, once it becomes a modern independent state, manages to establish itself as a real independent state. And it is not plagued by post-imperial problems that the rest of the Ottoman Empire is plagued with. So what is the implications of the Southern Front? Well, first of all, it establishes Christian minorities at risk, and in particular the genocide of Armenia in 1915. That is a very controversial topic, although nowadays I think the level of intentionality by the state does tend to suggest that this was a genocide.
There are counter facts to think about, such as the involvement of Armenian Christian nationalists, their involvement with the Russians and whether or not what happened was an example of what you might call the war between Russia and Turkey in the First World War. The issue of population exchange is extremely important because it is the solution to a lot of the problems of the Ottoman Empire in terms of the different communities that are involved. And there is a famous man called Fridtjof Nansen, who actually was a very famous Arctic and Antarctic explorer. So of course he was the perfect person to deal with the end of the Ottoman Empire. He said that, “To unmix the populations of the Near East will tend to secure the true pacification of the Near East.” So Turkey survives as a viable unitary and Italian state. Turkey has put an end to the imperial invasion that had been going on under the Ottomans for at least a century since the Napoleonic war. What it also did was brought to an end with the end of the Caliphate, which was a Turkish overall control of the Arab world. It was end of the Caliphate. And so that’s why the wars of Ottoman succession are partly a result of the end of a unitary multinational state. Okay, well, and I’ll hand over back to the host, if you’ve got any questions I’m sure we can carry on for another 15 minutes if you want.
[Host] Hi David. There’s some questions in the chat box if you have a look and we’ve probably got about 10 minutes max.
Okay, do you want to just read some of them out?
Q&A and Comments:
Q - [Host] Okay. So where do you place Sykes-Picot pickup?
A - Oh yeah, Sykes-Picot. Where do I place them? Well, the thing that a lot of people say about Sykes-Picot is that, you know, the allies were involved in really looking at war aims and objectives, and how some state was to be carved up after the war, which it was. The interesting about Sykes-Picot is that the maps which I referred to weren’t quite right. They were very rudimentary. And what they show is that the post-war entities that come about. in particular, I’m thinking of Israel Palestine, but also Lebanon, their boundaries bore no relationship to the pre-existing Ottoman structures or vilayets as they were called. Which is why when we come to look at the Israel-Arab conflict appeals to the existence of Palestine, let alone Israel, are based upon inventions by imperial powers. So Sykes-Picot is very interesting, 'cause of course the Russians were also involved. The fact is that they had a civil war, so they dropped out the picture. So that’s my answer. Do you want to come up with another question?
[Host] Yeah, I’m not sure if this is more of a statement, but long 20th century started with Franco-Prussian War, which led in 1914.
Okay, yeah, that’s good. I mean, this whole game about periodizations, longs and shorts is a historians parlour game. But it does have a very useful means. It provides a very useful means of asking ourselves what happened? How do you connect things together? Do we see things in history as interpretations if we use periodizations and dates that aren’t we making assumptions about what happened? So I mean did you say the long or the short 20th century was from the Franco-Prussian war till what, 1918? Is that what they said?
Yeah.
Long 20th century, yeah.
Well that’s a very short 20th century, isn’t it? 1871 to 1918. I mean, to me is a, that’s a description of the second, the German second empire by the Kaiserreich. I think that’s too short myself.
Q - [Host] Okay, so the next question is, couldn’t you classify the Ottoman Empire as an earlier imperial land grab?
A - Yeah, well, if it was, and I have some sympathy with you, and it’s a very good question. The answer is well it was a pretty long one, and it was a pretty effective one. The truth is that until 1918, most republics, sorry, most areas of the world, particularly in Europe and the Middle East, were run by empires. In fact, you could say that European history, starting back with Alexander the Great actually is a series of empires. The concept of a national state is something that is a product of the First World War. So the answer is, well yes, it’s a land grab, but it’s what it’s about. Land grabs are standard, empires are standard national entities or nations are recent. And also these multinational empires were very successful. You only have to look at their cities, and this applies to Austria, Russia, Germany, Turkey, the multinational nature of cities and their centrality to the existence of the empire are what empires are about. And it is very often the destruction of these large empires that leads to the minorities being split up and then victimised by whoever has taken over from the preexisting empire.
[Host] And the next one’s more of a statement from Sandy just saying, I can discuss with Turkish friends as some kind of understanding the events of the First World War. Brilliant, thank you so much.
All right.
The next one.
Thank you very much.
Q - David. So it says, why would the Ottomans come in with the Austrians who had previously taken some of their territories? And then he is added Austria-Hungary.
A - Okay, yes. Well the, yeah, that’s a very good question. Well, the answer is that long before the First World War, the Germans had allied themselves with the Ottomans and have provided them with military support in the army, train them up, and also provided design, and engineering, and construction of in, you know, of military infrastructure, so that the Dardanelles campaign is largely one because of the gun in placements that have been placed there by the Germans. So for the Austrians, they are the link between Germany and Turkey. Their way through what was happening to their empire, sorry, is that actually Germany and Austria and the Ottomans are opposing Russian imperialism. So once Germany and Austria are opposed to the Russians, they will be in with the Turks. So it’s all logical.
Q - [Host] And we’ve probably got time for just one more question, and this one’s from Sharon, which was how did Churchill politically survive the Dardanelles defeat of the British Army by the Turks?
A - Yes, that’s a very good question. The answer is, is that Winston Churchill was a very cunning man. In fact, I would say to you that if you read, for instance, it’s a book called “Churchill and the Bomb” about the Second World War and the British programme for nuclear research and development. He was an amazingly insightful, inventive person. How did he survive? Well, he didn’t survive it insofar as I think he eventually left politics, and became a colonel on the Western Front. If you look at Sean McMeekin’s book, you’ll find that the Dardanelles campaign was shambolically organised, for instance, they didn’t realise that the guns on the ships that were supposed to take out the in placements weren’t very accurate, given where they were positioned, because they had to be positioned off the coast, so that the Turkish guns didn’t, you know, sink the British ships. The military landings were a kind of an attempt to save the position. So what you have to do with most wars, and the First World War is one of them. But if anyone, if you’ve ever been involved in a project, is that what you start with the spec and the plans and the budgeting, never survive, you know, more than six months from the start.
A World War is a huge project and the ability of a politician to survive the embarrassments that happen is really down to that person. So, I mean, it was right to say that the Dardanelles, if they’d managed to succeed there, they would have probably shortened the war by a considerable extent. It is interesting that when the war does finish, it happens because of a breakout from the Salonika Front taking over Bulgaria and threatening Constantinople, which is the Dardanelles. Some people say that the, when the British first went into Salonika in 1915, they weren’t going to remove themselves, 'cause the Dardanelles was a disaster. But then the Civil Service decided that it wasn’t worth doing that because it would cost more to get people out, and back to Europe than just leave them there. But it was the buildup on the Salonika Front that led to what you might call the second Dardanelles that brought the War to an end. I don’t know if that answers your question, but Churchill is, in my view, a remarkably inventive politician. I mean, he’s interested in everything. A lot of inventions and modern ideas come in this period from him, thank you.
- [Host] Thank you, bye-Bye.