Only 30,000 out of 150,000 Turks returned from the winter offensive

At the turn of the year 1914/1915, the Ottoman 3rd Army dragged itself over the mountains of the Allahuekber Mountains towards the Caucasus. The Turkish family man Ali Riza Eti, who served as a non-commissioned officer in a medical unit, was among the nearly 100,000 soldiers. In his diary, he also recorded observations about the residents of the region previously occupied by Russian troops: "When the Armenians of this area joined the Russian army, they were very cruel to the poor villagers." A few weeks later he noted: "I wonder if something won't happen to the Armenians after the war."

In June 2016, the German Bundestag passed a resolution that almost unanimously described the murder of up to 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War as genocide. The deportations and massacres began in the spring of 1915, but the prehistory has largely been forgotten, as most depictions of the world war in the Middle East are at best treated as a sideshow.

On April 24, 1915, a dark chapter in Turkey's history begins - the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Federal President Joachim Gauck speaks of genocide for the first time.

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The new book by Martin Kröger - published in the series "Wars of the Modern Age" by the Bundeswehr Center for Military History and Social Sciences - therefore closes a sensitive gap. With "The First World War in the Middle East", the historian and consultant in the Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin offers a condensed overview of the fronts on the Suez Canal, in Mesopotamia, on the Dardanelles and on the Caucasus.

Enver Pasha was one of the most influential spokesmen who urged Turkey to join the war on the side of the Central Powers in 1914. In the coup of the Young Turks against the Sultan's regime, the officer rose to the leadership circle of the insurgents and, as Minister of War, formed the leading group in the "Committee for Unity and Progress" from 1913, together with Interior Minister Talât Pasha and Navy Minister Cemal Pasha, which had effectively established a dictatorship . As a "vice-generalissimo", who was only formally subordinate to the sultan, Enver was commander-in-chief of the army.

Even before the Tsarist Empire officially declared war on November 2, 1914, Russian troops had crossed the border and occupied the town of Köprüköy. Most of Armenia, including Yerevan, has belonged to Russia since the defeat in the Russo-Turkish War in 1877/78. The counter-offensive of the Ottoman 3rd Army failed. Instead, the Russians were able to dig in a few dozen kilometers this side of the border.

Since the Turkish commander-in-chief Hasan Izzet Pasha did not believe in the success of an offensive because of the wintry temperatures, the front also froze in eastern Anatolia in trench warfare. But Enver had other plans. Since he had succeeded in recapturing the old Ottoman capital of Edirne in the Second Balkan War in 1913, he considered himself a successful general who followed the example of the German generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff.

In August 1914 they surrounded and destroyed an entire Russian army in East Prussia. The fact that completely different conditions prevailed in wintry Anatolia was no obstacle for the generals of the First World War. At the same time, the Austrian high command threw several armies into the winter battle in the Carpathians.

Enver managed to reinforce the 3rd Army by 60,000 men unnoticed by the Russians, so that 150,000 Turks faced only 60,000 opponents at the front. But there was a lack of proper winter gear to endure temperatures as low as 30 degrees below zero. Guns had to be hauled over the snowy passes by mules, and the supply cables could not get through.

Enver also recognized that his people were not optimally equipped. Nevertheless, he explained to them: “I saw that you have neither shoes on your feet nor cloaks on your shoulders. And yet the enemy fears you. We will soon attack and take the Caucasus.” Enver's optimism was based on two factors: First, after his successful offensive, he would find “everything in abundance” in the Russian camps. On the other hand, he relied on the solidarity of fellow Islamic believers among the Tsarist soldiers, because "the whole Muslim world is looking at you".

In fact, the offensive that began on December 22 surprised the Russians and quickly pushed them back. But then the situation deteriorated, writes Kröger: "Communication broke down more and more often, snowstorms swept across the mountains, supplies failed to materialize and combat effectiveness waned." , the central base on Russian territory. There they stopped the Turkish troops and threw them back. "Only about 30,000 of the original 150,000 men returned to Erzurum from the winter offensive," says Kröger, summarizing the Ottoman catastrophe.

Enver quickly found a scapegoat for his defeat: the Armenians. This suited the mood of his people, who accused all Armenians of making deals with the Russians. But this created a connection that did not exist, writes Kröger.

With the beginning of the war in the Caucasus, the Armenians were caught between the fronts. Since large parts of their settlement area had belonged to the Tsarist Empire since 1878, it was easy for the Russian authorities to set up volunteer units. Armenians from the Ottoman Empire also reported to them. However, many of their countrymen followed their conscription orders there, demonstrating their loyalty to the sultan.

The situation was aggravated by the propaganda on both sides. While Russia referred to the common faith in Christ, the Young Turks proclaimed the jihad of all Muslims against their imperialist oppressors and were already dreaming of a common march to (British) India.

In order to get the Armenians on their side, the Ottoman government offered its national representatives to grant autonomy to the provinces inhabited by their people, including areas still to be conquered, provided that all Armenians participated in the fight against the Tsarist Empire. However, this was rejected on the grounds that Armenians should be loyal to the government on whose side of the Russian-Ottoman border they lived. "However, this reasonable view only increased Ottoman distrust of Armenian loyalties," writes the American historian Eugene Rogan.

During Enver's winter offensive, distrust grew into conviction. When Armenian peasants left their villages to seek safety from the approaching war, this was considered evidence of collaboration with the enemy. Even Tsar Nicholas II's full-bodied appeal that "Armenians are flocking from all countries to join the glorious Russian army" was hardly suitable for dispelling the basic Ottoman suspicion.

The Turks reacted to attempted desertions by Armenian soldiers with lynch law: "We buried the guy," NCO Eti noted impassively. This was not punished, writes Rogan: "More and more frequently, the Armenians were no longer seen as comrades of the Ottomans." An eyewitness wrote: “I remember very well seeing a soldier sitting on the side of the road in the snow. He hugged the snow, grabbed handfuls after handfuls and stuffed it into his mouth while shaking and screaming.” From February 1915, the Turks began to disarm Armenian soldiers and organize them into labor battalions.

Since the Armenians in the region still remembered earlier persecutions well, they decided to take preventive action against the expected Turkish attacks, Kröger writes. When Ottoman troops advanced on the van filled with refugees in early April 1915, 1,500 irregulars defended the city. As a result, Interior Minister Talât Pasha banned all Armenian political organizations on April 24.

A month later, on May 27, the order was issued to deport all Armenians from the south-eastern provinces to the deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia. Up to 1.5 million people, including members of other Christian groups, lost their lives as a result of massacres, poor organization and hunger marches, and members of the elite were deliberately killed.

Martin Kröger: "The First World War in the Middle East" (Reclam, Ditzingen. 159 p., 17.95 euros)

Eugene Rogan: "The Fall of the Ottoman Empire". (Translation by Tobias Gabel and Jörn Pinnow. wbg/Theiss, Darmstadt 2021. 591 p., 38 euros)

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