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British campagin in the Middle East

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by Jamie (U14300564) on Sunday, 16th January 2011

  What was distinctive about the British campaign against the Ottoman Empire during the First World war?
  
  I know that the British suffered a heavy defeat against the Turkish at Kut, but regained the initative afterwards dfeating the Ottoman Empire in Palestine and Mesopotamia. But what made it different to the battles fought on the western front?
  
  Thanks
  Robi

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  Posted by LongWeekend (U3023428) on Sunday, 16th January 2011

  The principal difference was that the Middle Eastern campaigns (fronts in Mesopotamia and Palestine/Syria) were much more mobile than on the Western Front. Although trenches and machine guns were significant at key points, there was more room for manoeuvre and cavalry was able to play a much greater role.

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 16th January 2011

  Jamie
  
  Well the public really grabbed on to the Lawrence of Arabia thing- a desert war of rapid movement by horse and camel- originally staged as a slide show by an American entrepreneur.. And then written up by Lawrence himself in the classic "Seven Pillars of Wisdom"..
  
  Lawrence no doubt wanted to describe it as very different, not least because he became a national hero in the Middle East while several [I believe] of his brothers were killed on the Western Front.
  
  But Lawrence also says that in going to that war zone and using his knowledge of Turkish and Arab cultures he wanted to fullfil a schoolboy ambition formed in our old school- the City of Oxford High School For Boys- to personally change the course of history and open the flood-gates of change.
  
  In this way the whole context of the war against the Ottoman Empire was the opposite of the war in Western Europe which was , for Britain at least, a war fought in defence of the 'status quo' and the Belgian settlement achieved at the time of the 1830 Revolution in France that threatened once more to destabilise the "Cockpit of Europe".
  
  In many ways the British treated Lawrence's campaigns as sideshows and useful guerrilla actions that unsettled the Turkish establishment.. But Lawrence does bring up two points that I think were of more general relevance.
  
  The Turks it seems were by this time largely being trained by Germany, and their armies were bolstered by German equipment and the presence of some German units. In Lawrence's experience there seems to have been a huge gulf between the German troops, who built upon the wider German tradition of modern soldiering. It was predominantly such troops that the fought on the enemy side on the Western Front. The Germans that he encountered were prepared to fight to the death, not always the case for the Turks, that- rather foreshadowing Hitler's attitude to his allies- they did not seem to "reckon much".
  
  But perhaps part of that came from the fact that the Ottoman establishment and its forces were drawn from the whole Empire, including those subject peoples whose 'people in high places' were not blind to the national interests of "their own" should the Ottoman Empire break up.
  
  Lawrence seems to have been originally part of the British intelligence expertise in the region, and the various relationships were much more Byzantine than on the Western Front. There appears to have been plenty of people within the Turkish political, diplomatic, administrative and fighting units who were quite happy to ride and back two horses at the same time, so that inside information- which seems to have been singularly lacking on the Western Front- often filtered through the personal contacts that were possible for someone like Lawrence who understood the family, tribal and religious ties that criss-crossed the region.
  
  And Lawrence also appreciated that many who were prepared to fight for him took it for granted that they would be paid in gold; and would be entitled to help themselves to any loot that their enemies happened to be carrying. Lawrence learned to respect an Islamic military code that allowed men to be butchered and robbed mercilessly, but which apparently would not harm women and young children. .. Though I seem to recall that one of the great German moves in the IWW- perhaps even the Schlieffen Plan- got slowed down because the plans had not allowed for the factor of troops getting emcumbered with their loot as they progressed so far.
  
  Cass

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  Posted by Mikestone8 (U13249270) on Monday, 17th January 2011

  Re WW1, you are probably thinking of the Michael offensive of March 1918.
  Advancing Germans overran British supply depots, and often stopped to plunder British rations, which at this stage in the war were far better than their own. That discovery was highly damaging to their morale.

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 17th January 2011

  Mikestone
  
  Yes.. That sounds right... I think that the problems in the later stages of the Schlieffen Plan were much more associated with the congestion of massed German forces as they got closer to the precise target of Paris. Perhaps the French "Marne taxis" solution was more suited to the majority of French roads than a German hammer blow in regions where one might use images of swinging cats.
  
  In fact this theme of congestion and stalemate is appropriate to what I said about the difference between the Middle Eastern campaigns and others.. For surely Gallipoli and the associated attempt to create a more fruitful Eastern Front showed much the same problems of an invasion targetting key strategic points of European History as the Western Front.
  
  The Middle Eastern campaigns, that seem to have been based on Egypt, were- like Napoleons Suez expedition to the same region- designed to hit the enemy Empire in its straggling and exposed "underbelly", where local forces might be persuaded to join in the struggle against the foreign imperialist power.. [In Napoleon's case British India.. and the Mahratta Wars]
  
  Cass

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  Posted by Wyldeboar (U11225571) on Tuesday, 18th January 2011

  the Lawrence of Arabia thing Β 
  
  
  Was T E Lawrence one of the first 'Rockers' ????

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 18th January 2011

  Wyldeboar,
  
  Presumably you are referrng to his later "alter [or should that be lower] ego" who loved motorcycles.. and died in a motor cycle crash.
  
  I am reminded of the saying that a camel is an example of the kind of creature that might be designed by committee.. A bit of a funny mixture.
  
  In terms of Mods and Rockers, surely TE Lawrence was painfully caught between two stools-- Perhaps finding out in his teens that he, like his brothers, was the illegitomate child of an Irish aristocrat and one of his Scottish domestics made him feel a bit like such a creature.. Anyway, he intended his book to be a work of art worthy of the admiration of James Joyce, which he got. And he may not have disliked dressing "Arab" as much as he sometimes tries to suggest in his book. "All strictly necessary to blend in with his chaps".
  
  But he also had an obvious fascination with a capacity to be a "toughie" who could endure physical pain, and as the innucuous motorcycling airman he apparently paid men to beat him., in an age when it was/is largely assumed that this was a form of sexual release.
  
  Cass

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