Trechos de uma resenha de Ordered To Die: A History Of The Ottoman Army In The First World War (2001), de Edward J. Erickson.
The long-term effects of the World War I period in many respects have defined the states and societies of the Middle East. This is true, of course, of the shape of the countries: in essence the borders of the Republic of Turkey, as well as those of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan were drawn in the immediate aftermath of the war. For the Republic of Turkey, the long-term
effects were particularly significant. Firstly, there was the loss of life, due to battlefield casualties, epidemics and hunger. This hit Anatolia particularly hard, because it was primarily from among the peasant population of Anatolia that the
Ottoman Army had recruited its soldiers. All in all the population loss of Anatolia's Muslim population was in the region of 2.5 million. Anatolia after the war was a strikingly empty country, as many travellers tell us in their descriptions. It would take a generation to restore the Anatolian population to its former size. Secondly, the war had given the political leadership of the Committee of Union and Progress the opportunity to rescind the age-old system of capitulations, which gave preferential treatment and legal immunity to subjects and protégés of European powers and to give full rein to their policy of "National Economy" (millî iktisat). Through this policy the Unionists tried to replace the Armenian and Greek bourgeoisie, which together with European interests, controlled over ninety percent of the modern sectors of the economy with a newly created class of Muslim entrepreneurs. Their Kemalist successors continued this nationalist economic policy and from the Nineteen Forties onwards began to achieve its aims. Thirdly, the very creation of the Republic of Turkey, would have been unthinkable without the large-scale "ethnic cleansing" (to use that cynical term from the Bosnian war), which cost 600.000 to 800.000 Armenians their lives and up to 200.000 Greeks their homes. The national struggle (millî mücadele) led by Mustafa Kemal Pasha after the war, which ultimately gave birth to the republic, was largely motivated by the desire to prevent the Greeks and Armenians from reversing their fortunes. Fourthly, the ease with which the Turkish nationalist leadership after the war renounced any claims to the Arab provinces and adopted Anatolia as their new fatherland that had been part of the Ottoman Empire for four hundred years certainly owes something to the fact that Mustafa Kemal and his colleagues had all served at one time or another on the Arab fronts and had become deeply disillusioned with the (lack of) loyalty of the Arabs to the empire. Finally, the degree to which the republic and its political system were dominated by the military cannot be understood without reference to World War I and its sequel, the "national struggle." This legacy is also still with us today.
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Chapter 1 is a description of the Ottoman army as it was organised and reformed in the years between 1908 and 1914. The emphasis is on the disaster of the Balkan War, the reorganisation thereafter and the advent of the German military mission.
- - -
Chapter 2 deals with the entry of the Ottoman Empire into the war, the German alliance and the war aims. Here Erickson draws on the research of Ulrich Trumpener and others, as well as on published memoirs. To put the Ottoman and German war plans into context, he gives a number of relevant statistics. It is sobering to realise that on the eve of this - essentially industrial - war, Ottoman coal production was one third of one percent of that of Great Britain!
- - -
Chapters three to seven then contain the actual description of the Ottoman campaigns, which is presented in a clear and systematic way. Chapter 3 deals with the early offensives, notably the ill-fated Caucasian campaign, which ended with the defeat at Sarikamis. In a very interesting passage, Erickson links the plan for the encirclement of the Russians at Sarikamis to the great German victory in the battle of Tannenberg (August, 1915), because that had convinced both Germans and Ottomans that Russian field headquarters were very vulnerable to encirclement. It is also striking that, in Erickson's view, the fact that the Ottoman army's pincer movement came very close to success, is a vindication of the strategic correctness of Enver's plan, which is usually adduced as proof of his irresponsibility and adventurism. [...]
The author's relative weakness outside the field of military history is shown by the fact that he mistakenly identifies the Dutchman Westenenk and the Norwegian Hoff as military attachés.
- - -
The next chapter is called "Under Attack" and it deals with the crucial period of April 1915-January 1916, when the Ottomans - against all odds and even their own expectations - defeated the Allied attempts to break through the Dardanelles, which would probably have brought the Ottomans to their knees. It was also the period of the Armenian deportations and massacres, of course. Erickson, to his credit, does not try to avoid this sensitive subject and he clearly makes an effort to present a balanced account. He deals primarily with the question of the responsibility and involvement of the Ottoman army. That he sees the Armenian deportations primarily as an outcome of military reasoning and as a perceived strategic necessity in the face of the Russian onslaught is the logical result of the focus of his research and of the sources he has used, but it leads to an underestimation of the political factors involved.
Erickson's treatment of the military developments of 1915-1916 is convincing. He clearly brings out the crucial role played by logistical problems and especially by the lack of modern transport facilities. Whether it is true that better interior lines of communication could have made the difference between victory and defeat, as he says, or not (would not the lack of an industrial base and the sheer lack of manpower have told in the end?), it is clear that the fact that ammunition for the Palestinian front had to be loaded and unloaded twelve times between Germany and the Sinai front; and that Ottoman soldiers had to walk for a month after being detrained before they reached the frontline, was a handicap of tremendous importance.
In chapters five and six the author decribes the events of the years 1916 and 1917, which saw great Ottoman successes on the Mesopotamian and Sinai fronts, but only more disasters and further Russian advances in Anatolia. Chapter seven treats the year 1918, when exactly the reverse was true: the melting away of the Russian army allowed Ottoman forces to reach the Caspian, while in Mesopotamia the British steamroller slowly but surely moved upstream and in Palestine, Allenby's tactical acumen (combined with a huge numerical superiority) routed the Ottoman troops.
The overall conclusion of the author is that, all things considered, the Ottoman army's record in World War I is an astounding achievement, a "saga of fortitude and resilience", if one takes into account the fact that the army had been all but annihilated in 1913 and that it had to fight under desperate logistical conditions. That is a conclusion amply supported by the evidence adduced in this book.
At least as interesting as the main body of the text are the appendices. In these, Erickson makes available sets of data on subjects such as the Ottoman army organisation, the structure of the General Staff and headquarters, German military assistance and Ottoman casualty figures, which are otherwise hard to find. Erickson's figures for the Ottoman casualties are composed by taking the casualty numbers in the official Turkish campaign histories, when these numbers are given (which is the case in two thirds of the campaign histories), and then extrapolating from that base.
- - -
In conclusion, we can say that Ordered to Die is a book with a clear but limited purpose, i.e. to present a purely military history of the Ottoman war effort in the English language, where histories of this type have so far only been available in French or Turkish. In spite of some of the minor criticisms expressed above, it achieves that purpose very well indeed.
The story of the Ottoman Empire in World War I cannot be told in military terms alone, however. As in many other belligerent countries, World War I also set the scene for profound demographic, economic and social upheaval. Side by side with their ethnic policies, which ultimately resulted in the expulsion and deportation of hundreds of thousands of Greek Orthodox and in the death of a large part of the Armenian population, the Young Turks also developed a national economic policy, inspired by German economic thinking. The primary aim of this policy was to allow the Turkish/Muslim majority of the population to become masters in their own house in a situation where the more developed sectors of the economy, especially mechanized industrial production, international trade and financial services were completely dominated by foreign interests and local Christians.
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoEyjoQNCyQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idPP6pn68ZM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eebHtIaTY9U
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1918_in_the_Ottoman_Empire
- - -
Chapter 1 is a description of the Ottoman army as it was organised and reformed in the years between 1908 and 1914. The emphasis is on the disaster of the Balkan War, the reorganisation thereafter and the advent of the German military mission.
- - -
Chapter 2 deals with the entry of the Ottoman Empire into the war, the German alliance and the war aims. Here Erickson draws on the research of Ulrich Trumpener and others, as well as on published memoirs. To put the Ottoman and German war plans into context, he gives a number of relevant statistics. It is sobering to realise that on the eve of this - essentially industrial - war, Ottoman coal production was one third of one percent of that of Great Britain!
- - -
Chapters three to seven then contain the actual description of the Ottoman campaigns, which is presented in a clear and systematic way. Chapter 3 deals with the early offensives, notably the ill-fated Caucasian campaign, which ended with the defeat at Sarikamis. In a very interesting passage, Erickson links the plan for the encirclement of the Russians at Sarikamis to the great German victory in the battle of Tannenberg (August, 1915), because that had convinced both Germans and Ottomans that Russian field headquarters were very vulnerable to encirclement. It is also striking that, in Erickson's view, the fact that the Ottoman army's pincer movement came very close to success, is a vindication of the strategic correctness of Enver's plan, which is usually adduced as proof of his irresponsibility and adventurism. [...]
The author's relative weakness outside the field of military history is shown by the fact that he mistakenly identifies the Dutchman Westenenk and the Norwegian Hoff as military attachés.
- - -
The next chapter is called "Under Attack" and it deals with the crucial period of April 1915-January 1916, when the Ottomans - against all odds and even their own expectations - defeated the Allied attempts to break through the Dardanelles, which would probably have brought the Ottomans to their knees. It was also the period of the Armenian deportations and massacres, of course. Erickson, to his credit, does not try to avoid this sensitive subject and he clearly makes an effort to present a balanced account. He deals primarily with the question of the responsibility and involvement of the Ottoman army. That he sees the Armenian deportations primarily as an outcome of military reasoning and as a perceived strategic necessity in the face of the Russian onslaught is the logical result of the focus of his research and of the sources he has used, but it leads to an underestimation of the political factors involved.
Erickson's treatment of the military developments of 1915-1916 is convincing. He clearly brings out the crucial role played by logistical problems and especially by the lack of modern transport facilities. Whether it is true that better interior lines of communication could have made the difference between victory and defeat, as he says, or not (would not the lack of an industrial base and the sheer lack of manpower have told in the end?), it is clear that the fact that ammunition for the Palestinian front had to be loaded and unloaded twelve times between Germany and the Sinai front; and that Ottoman soldiers had to walk for a month after being detrained before they reached the frontline, was a handicap of tremendous importance.
In chapters five and six the author decribes the events of the years 1916 and 1917, which saw great Ottoman successes on the Mesopotamian and Sinai fronts, but only more disasters and further Russian advances in Anatolia. Chapter seven treats the year 1918, when exactly the reverse was true: the melting away of the Russian army allowed Ottoman forces to reach the Caspian, while in Mesopotamia the British steamroller slowly but surely moved upstream and in Palestine, Allenby's tactical acumen (combined with a huge numerical superiority) routed the Ottoman troops.
The overall conclusion of the author is that, all things considered, the Ottoman army's record in World War I is an astounding achievement, a "saga of fortitude and resilience", if one takes into account the fact that the army had been all but annihilated in 1913 and that it had to fight under desperate logistical conditions. That is a conclusion amply supported by the evidence adduced in this book.
At least as interesting as the main body of the text are the appendices. In these, Erickson makes available sets of data on subjects such as the Ottoman army organisation, the structure of the General Staff and headquarters, German military assistance and Ottoman casualty figures, which are otherwise hard to find. Erickson's figures for the Ottoman casualties are composed by taking the casualty numbers in the official Turkish campaign histories, when these numbers are given (which is the case in two thirds of the campaign histories), and then extrapolating from that base.
- - -
In conclusion, we can say that Ordered to Die is a book with a clear but limited purpose, i.e. to present a purely military history of the Ottoman war effort in the English language, where histories of this type have so far only been available in French or Turkish. In spite of some of the minor criticisms expressed above, it achieves that purpose very well indeed.
The story of the Ottoman Empire in World War I cannot be told in military terms alone, however. As in many other belligerent countries, World War I also set the scene for profound demographic, economic and social upheaval. Side by side with their ethnic policies, which ultimately resulted in the expulsion and deportation of hundreds of thousands of Greek Orthodox and in the death of a large part of the Armenian population, the Young Turks also developed a national economic policy, inspired by German economic thinking. The primary aim of this policy was to allow the Turkish/Muslim majority of the population to become masters in their own house in a situation where the more developed sectors of the economy, especially mechanized industrial production, international trade and financial services were completely dominated by foreign interests and local Christians.
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoEyjoQNCyQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idPP6pn68ZM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eebHtIaTY9U
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1918_in_the_Ottoman_Empire
