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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
56 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Leave The Trenches!,
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This review is from: The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's Bid for World Power (Hardcover)
If your knowledge about World War I is "entrenched" in the Western Front, I recommend that you consider "going over the top" and reading this revelatory tale of Kaiser Wilhelm's bid for world power via an alliance with the Ottoman Sultan.The title may mislead you. This is less about a railway and more about the failed attempts to accomplish the goals of a strategic alliance between Germany's Kaiser and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The Kaiser wanted to gain world power through: 1. the destruction of the British Empire and 2. the creation of German hegemony over the Middle East. The Ottoman Sultan desperately needed to solidify and expand his crumbling empire. The book shows how they attempted to accomplish these strategic goals and why they failed. Besides broadly covering the key battles (the Suez Canal, Gallipoli) the author focuses most of his effort on the attempt to implement a pan-Islamic "jihad" across the Middle East. If the latter wasn't such a serious and deadly initiative, McMeekin's story could easily be nominated as a comical example of western buffoonery, naivety, and stupidity. Also playing an essential element of the strategy was the building of a railway which would connect Berlin to Baghdad. Upon completion, it would have brought vast amounts of sorely needed supplies and ammunition to the Middle East as well as have provide Germany with access to the Persian Gulf via a connection to Basra, thereby bypassing the British-controlled Suez Canal. Although sound in concept, the author notes that its execution was challenging to say the least. In the end, it was bobbled. If it has been finished in 1915 or 1916, instead of August 1918, the author notes that a "decisive blow might well have been struck at the Suez Canal, severing the lifeline of the British Empire and forcing London to sue for a compromise peace-which would surely have seen Germany emerge as the leading power in the Near East." Also covered in this fascinating read is the stories of the birth of German Zionism, the catastrophe of Gallipoli, the rebellion of the Young Turks, and the "massacre" of Armenians by the Turks. The author closes with a short but insightful epilogue which focuses on post-war events, primarily those involving Israel and the rise of the Nazis. McMeekin does a good job of providing colorful and insightful illuminations of the German, Ottoman and Arab cast of characters. They include Kaiser Wilhelm II, Sultan Abdul Hamid II, Abdullah bin al-Hussein of Mecca, Max von Oppenheim, Curt Prufer, Enver Pasha, Ahmed Riza, Heinrich Meissner, Frederich Kress von Kresserstein, Leo Frobenius, Abdul Hamid, Liman von Sanders, Mustafa Kemal, to mention just a few. This is a good read, albeit it is also disconcerting given what we now know about the world wars and the current state of affairs in the Middle East. My recommendation: You should read this history if you wish to expand your knowledge of this lesser known theater of World War I. It may also be useful to you if you want to improve your appreciation of how conceptually sound goals can be thwarted by faulty execution and the shenanigans of naive, foolish, treacherous and sometimes evil people. As a by-product, it may also improve your understanding of the current state of affairs in this troublesome region.
44 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A railway to nowhere,
By
This review is from: The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's Bid for World Power (Hardcover)
One of the most bizzare episodes in modern history was the building of the Berlin-Baghdad railway,whose purpose was to fight and undermine British interests in Asia. This project was completed only in 1940,but its history is full of intrigue and from its inception this project was doomed and has eventually become a farce.The main protagonists were: Kaiser Wilhelm the Second,who got infatuated with the Islamic world and the Ottoman Empire,and,as a result,supported this project after telling his friends that "if we are to be bled, at least the British shall lose India"; Baron Max von Oppenheim,who hated almost everyone including himself because of his Jewish origins. He was the grandson of a founder of the Oppenheim bank in Germany and shared the Kaiser's dream of dealing a fatal blow to the British Empire. To while away his boring hours,he made sure to possess a harem of Arab women in Egypt. The third protagonist was Abdul Hamid,the Ottoman paranoid Sultan who dreaded the Young Turks. These three hoped that a jihad would materialize-a jihad that would include tens of millions of Muslims who "would bring the British Empire to its knees"(p.82)In the words of Oppenheim,"let us do all we can to ensure hat this blow wil be a lethal one!" The first third of the book describes in a very panoramic way the main characters mentioned above,giving the reader much information about their background, motivations and their modi operandi. The next third discusses the historical context of this project and McMeekin does not spare words in order to put the blame for the failure of it on the West,especially on the British, because they did not offer any substantial support to the Young Turks movement. The railway was supposed to carry tens of thousands of German troops to Basra in Iraq. Due to the harsh geographical conditions,the project was started only in 1903. In the Taurus range alone,"the mountains could be crossed at a serviceable rail grade through extensive blasting and the excavation of thousands of tons of rock. In the end,some three dozen tunnels were needed,many of them several kilometers in length".(p.44) Kurds,Bedouin tribes scattered along the Otttoman Empire and the endless conflicts between the Turks and Armenians further hampered this fantasy. Many Germans were recruited in an attempt to launch Islamic risings everywhere. Leo Frobenius was one of them. He was an ethnologist who made up his mind to hurt British interests in the Suez Canal area, which "would sever the shortest supply line to British India for troop ships and merchant convoys,while seriously damaging English prestige in the Orient".(p.144)Despite the massive ammunition and other means supplied to Frobenius and his allies (Arabs and Bedouins),he failed and his ambitions to stir up revolts in the Sudan and Abyssinia were dashed. Another German agent,Oskar von Niederemayer,an ex-Prussian army officer,got the mission to convince the leader of Afghanistan to lead an attack on British India. Niedermayer was once caught in Romania while posing as a German clown in a circus which was full of spies working for his country and was expelled to his motherland. He,too,failed eventually in his attempts,albeit he managed to recruit the Afghanistan leader to some sort of action against the British by using extensive bribery. So did many other German agents who were mainly archaeologists working in those parts of the worlds. McMeekin makes it clear that the project designers failed to see that the hatred and disunity among the various Arabs would not deliver the merchadise. He adds:"Who could have imagined that the Kaiser's pan-Islamic gambit would bring Muslim Central Asia and the Caucasus under the thumbs of the world's first explicitly atheist regime in Moscow,which would prove to be a bitter enemy of Muslims? The German Drang nach Osten proved to be a farce and a tragedy".(pp.338-339) The last part of the book deals with the Nazi-Muslim connections. Oppenheim, the eccentric German, was given a medal for his services "in the name of the Fuehrer and Reichskanzler in 1937", and he continued to play an essential part in recruiting the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,al-Husseini,in organizing the anti-Semitic pogrom of Jews in Baghdad in 1941,as well as helping him become the spitting image of Aryan brothers.The Muslim voluntary SS battalions in the Balkans were regarded, in Himmler's words,as "among the most honourable and true followers of the Fuerher Adolf Hitler due to their hatred of the common Jewish-English-Bolshevik enemy".(p.362)Many of those Muslim SS men started believing that Hitler was like the Messiah. The results of this foolish scheme are still felt nowadays in the Middle East,according to the author. This is a very stimulating and fast-moving book ,with many interesting insights-many of them extremely original. Still,one might ask:why did I not award it five points? Here is the answer:the editing of the book was done in a superficial and perfunctory way, and the adjectives included in each phrase and sentence are repetitive and can exhaust the reader. The word "jihad" seems to be a super favourite and it becomes redundant. This,however,does not diminish from the book's importance and originality of research and the reader will gain new and fresh perspectives about the current conflict between the Islamic and Western ideologies.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating account of western interference in the Middle East and its lamentable results,
By
This review is from: The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's Bid for World Power 1898-1918 (Hardcover)
The Berlin-Baghdad Express explores one of the previously unresearched subjects of the First World War: the harnessing of the Ottoman Empire as part of the German bid for world power.McMeekin's book shows how incredibly high the stakes were in the Middle East with the Germans in the tantalizing position of taking over the core of the British Empire via the extraordinary railway that would link Central Europe and the Persian Gulf. Germany sought the Ottoman Empire as an ally to create jihad against the British whose Empire at the time was the largest Islamic power in the world. The Berlin-Baghdad Express is a fascinating account of western interference in the Middle East and its lamentable results. It explains and brings to life a massive area of fighting, which in most other accounts is restricted to the disaster at Gallipoli and the British invasions of Iraq and Palestine.
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