This volume examines how the Ottoman Army was able to evolve and maintain a high level of overall combat effectiveness despite the primitive nature of the Ottoman State during the First World War. Structured around four case studies, at the operational and tactical level, of campaigns involving the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire: Gallipoli in 1915, Kut in 1916, Third Gaza-Beersheba in 1917, and Megiddo in 1918. For each of these campaigns, particular emphasis is placed on examining specific elements of combat effectiveness and how they affected that particular battle. The prevalent historiography attributes Ottoman battlefield success primarily to external factors - such as the presence of German generals and staff officers; climate, weather and terrain that adversely affected allied operations; allied bumbling and amateurish operations; and inadequate allied intelligence. By contrast, Edward J. Erickson argues that the Ottoman Army was successful due to internal factors, such as its organizational architecture, a hardened cadre of experienced combat leaders, its ability to organize itself for combat, and its application of the German style of war. Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War I will be of great interest to students of the First World War, military history and strategic studies in general.

This is a comprehensive new operational military history of the Ottoman army during the First World War. Drawing from archives, official military histories, personal war narratives and sizable Turkish secondary literature, it tells the incredible story of the Ottoman army’s struggle from the mountains of the Caucasus to the deserts of Arabia and the bloody shores of Gallipoli. The Ottoman army, by opening new fronts, diverted and kept sizeable units of British, Russian and French forces away from the main theatres and even sent reinforcements to Austro-Hungary and Bulgaria. Against all odds the Ottoman army ultimately achieved some striking successes, not only on the battlefield, but in their total mobilization of the empire’s meagre human and economic resources. However, even by the terrible standards of the First World War, these achievements came at a terrible price in casualties and, ultimately, loss of territory. Thus, instead of improving the integrity and security of the empire, the war effectively dismantled it and created situations and problems hitherto undreamed of by a besieged Ottoman leadership. In a unique account, Uyar revises our understanding of the war in the Middle East.

The Ottoman Army had a significant effect on the history of the modern world and particularly on that of the Middle East and Europe. This study, written by a Turkish and an American scholar, is a revision and corrective to western accounts because it is based on Turkish interpretations, rather than European interpretations, of events. As the world's dominant military machine from 1300 to the mid-1700's, the Ottoman Army led the way in military institutions, organizational structures, technology, and tactics. In decline thereafter, it nevertheless remained a considerable force to be counted in the balance of power through 1918. From its nomadic origins, it underwent revolutions in military affairs as well as several transformations which enabled it to compete on favorable terms with the best of armies of the day. This study tracks the growth of the Ottoman Army as a professional institution from the perspective of the Ottomans themselves, by using previously untapped Ottoman source materials. Additionally, the impact of important commanders and the role of politics, as these affected the army, are examined. The study concludes with the Ottoman legacy and its effect on the Republic and modern Turkish Army. This is a study survey that combines an introductory view of this subject with fresh and original reference-level information. Divided into distinct periods, Uyar and Erickson open with a brief overview of the establishment of the Ottoman Empire and the military systems that shaped the early military patterns. The Ottoman army emerged forcefully in 1453 during the siege of Constantinople and became a dominant social and political force for nearly two hundred years following Mehmed's capture of the city. When the army began to show signs of decay during the mid-seventeenth century, successive Sultans actively sought to transform the institution that protected their power. The reforms and transformations that began frist in 1606successfully preserved the army until the outbreak of the Ottoman-Russian War in 1876. Though the war was brief, its impact was enormous as nationalistic and republican strains placed increasing pressure on the Sultan and his army until, finally, in 1918, those strains proved too great to overcome. By 1923, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk emerged as the leader of a unified national state ruled by a new National Parliament. As Uyar and Erickson demonstrate, the old army of the Sultan had become the army of the Republic, symbolizing the transformation of a dying empire to the new Turkish state make clear that throughout much of its existence, the Ottoman Army was an effective fighting force with professional military institutions and organizational structures.

“The author delivers in fine detail, supported by excellent appendices and notes, the role of officers and men in the defense of the Dardanelles.” —Michael McCarthy, Battlefield Guide The German contribution in a famous Turkish victory at Gallipoli has been overshadowed by the Mustafa Kemal legend. The commanding presence of German General Liman von Sanders in the operations is well known. But relatively little is known about the background of German military intervention in Ottoman affairs. Klaus Wolf fills this gap as a result of extensive research in the German records and the published literature. He examines the military assistance offered by the German Empire in the years preceding 1914 and the German involvement in ensuring that the Ottomans fought on the side of the Central Powers and that they made best use of the German military and naval missions. He highlights the fundamental reforms that were required after the battering the Turks received in various Balkan wars, particularly in the Turkish Army, and the challenges that faced the members of the German missions. When the allied invasion of Gallipoli was launched, German officers became a vital part of a robust Turkish defense—be it at sea or on land, at senior command level or commanding units of infantry and artillery. In due course German aviators were to be, in effect, founding fathers of the Turkish air arm; while junior ranks played an important part as, for example, machine gunners. This book is not only their missing memorial but a missing link in understanding the tragedy that was Gallipoli. “A great addition to any Gallipoli library.” —The Western Front Association

In King of Battle: Artillery in World War I, a distinguished array of authors examines the centrepiece of battle in the Great War: artillery. Going beyond the usual tables of calibres and ranges, the contributors consider the organization and technology of artillery, as well as present aspects of training, doctrine, and other national idiosyncrasies. Artillery dominated the battlefields of World War I, and forever changed the military doctrine of war. No nation that had participated in significant ground combat would blithely assume that morale could ever replace firepower. The essays included in this volume explain how twelve countries, including all the major combatants, handled artillery and how it affected the Great War. Contributors include Filippo Cappellano, Boyd Dastrup, Edward J. Erickson, Bruce Gudmundsson, James Lyon, Sanders Marble, Janice E. McKenney, Dmitre Minchev, Andrey Pavlov, Kaushik Roy, Cornel and Ioan Scafes, John Schindler, and David Zabecki.

Oasprey's study of Ottoman infantrymen during World War I (1914-1918). The Ottoman Army was the first to employ the 'triangular division', starting from 1910, which contained three infantry regiments of three battalions supported by an artillery regiment of three battalions. This structure went on to become the world's standard. In the years immediately prior to the outbreak of World War I, the Ottoman Army undertook a massive retraining program to rebuild its forces following the Balkan Wars of 1912-13. When World War I began, the Ottoman Army consisted of 36 combat infantry divisions, giving it a strength of some 200,000 enlisted men and 8,000 officers. These troops are usually described in terms of a huge amorphous mass with little to no attempt to see these men as individuals; indeed, no book has yet focused specifically upon the infantrymen, or 'Mehmets' as the Ottomans called them, who formed the backbone, and the bulk, of the Ottoman Army during World War I. This is not only a significant gap in the literature of the war, but is highly misleading, not least because such troops were recruited from the culturally and linguistically different peoples who made up what was, in 1914, still a huge and diverse empire. This army, this period and these troops formed the immediate background to what might be called the modern Middle East. The average Ottoman soldier, or asker, was hardy, well trained and courageous and formed the solid base on which the Ottoman Army rested. Ottoman troops campaigned in astonishingly varied geographical and climatic conditions during the war, including on the Gallipoli Peninsula, in Mesopotamia and in the Caucasus. This title explores their recruitment, training, and combat experiences.

Nearly fourteen million people died during the First World War. But why, and for what reason? Already many contemporaries saw the Great War as a "pointless carnage" (Pope Benedict XV, 1917). Was there a point, at least in the eyes of the political and military decision makers? How did they justify the losses, and why did they not try to end the war earlier? In this volume twelve international specialists analyses and compares the hopes and expectations of the political and military leaders of the main belligerent countries and of their respective societies. It shows that the war aims adopted during the First World War were not, for the most part, the cause of the conflict, but a reaction to it, an attempt to give the tragedy a purpose - even if the consequence was to oblige the belligerents to go on fighting until victory. The volume tries to explain why - and for what - the contemporaries thought that they had to fight the Great War.

The Ottoman Empire was unprepared for the massive conflict of World War I. Lacking the infrastructure and resources necessary to wage a modern war, the empire's statesmen reached beyond the battlefield to sustain their war effort. They placed unprecedented hardships onto the shoulders of the Ottoman people: mass conscription, a state-controlled economy, widespread food shortages, and ethnic cleansing. By war's end, few aspects of Ottoman daily life remained untouched. When the War Came Home reveals the catastrophic impact of this global conflict on ordinary Ottomans. Drawing on a wide range of sources—from petitions, diaries, and newspapers to folk songs and religious texts—Yiğit Akın examines how Ottoman men and women experienced war on the home front as government authorities intervened ever more ruthlessly in their lives. The horrors of war brought home, paired with the empire's growing demands on its people, fundamentally reshaped interactions between Ottoman civilians, the military, and the state writ broadly. Ultimately, Akın argues that even as the empire lost the war on the battlefield, it was the destructiveness of the Ottoman state's wartime policies on the home front that led to the empire's disintegration.

This is the first study of the Ludendorff Offensives of 1918 based extensively on key German records presumed to be lost forever after Potsdam was bombed in 1944. In 1997, David T. Zabecki discovered translated copies of these files in a collection of old instructional material at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He presents his findings here for the first time, with a thorough review of the surviving original operational plans and orders, to offer a wealth of fresh insights to the German Offensives of 1918. David T. Zabecki clearly demonstrates how the German failure to exploit the vulnerabilities in the BEF’s rail system led to the failure of the first two offensives, and how inadequacies in the German rail system determined the outcome of the last three offensives. This is a window into the mind of the German General Staff of World War I, with thorough analysis of the German planning and decision making processes during the execution of battles. This is also the first study in English or in German to analyze the specifics of the aborted Operation HAGEN plan. This is also the first study of the 1918 Offensives to focus on the ‘operational level of war’ and on the body of military activity known as ‘the operational art’, rather than on the conventional tactical or strategic levels. This book will be of great interest to all students of World War I, the German Army and of strategic studies and military theory in general.

The first general history in English of the Ottoman Army in the First World War, Ordered to Die is based on newly available Turkish archival and official sources. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Ottoman Army performed astonishingly well in the field and managed to keep fighting until the end of the war, long after many other armies had quit the field. It fought a multi-front war against sophisticated and capable enemies, including Great Britain, France, and Russia. Erickson challenges conventional thinking about Ottoman war aims, Ottoman military effectiveness, and the influence of German assistance. Written at the strategic and operational levels, this study frames the Turkish military contributions in a unitary manner by establishing linkages between campaigns and theaters. It also contains the first detailed discussion of Ottoman operations in Galicia, Romania, and Macedonia. Erickson provides a wealth of information on Ottoman Army organization, deployments, strategy, and staff procedures. He examines with particular attention the army's role in the Armenian deportations and the intelligence available to the Turks in 1914 and 1915. Appendixes include biographies of important commanders, the efforts of the Ottoman Air Force, Ottoman casualties, as well as a wartime chronology.