The World's War

by David Olusoga

  Like all the local Islamic leaders caught up in the German–Ottoman Jihad, Sayyid Ahmed ash-Sharif sought to play his hand as best he could. Caught between competing empires, which all now came knocking as potential suitors, he wanted the best price for his neutrality – or involvement – in the war. To British officials, the Grand Senussi spoke unctuously of his determination to remain neutral and not offend Britannia. To the Ottoman delegations and German agents in his midst, he made reassuring noises about Jihad and religious duty, while biding his time to see which way the tide of war turned. He skilfully played these suitors off against one another, ultimately sparking what amounted to a bidding war for his alliance, all the while fearing that one miscalculation or premature move would land him on the losing side in the war. The Senussi, however, could not play the waiting game for long; their people were hungry, and their armies depleted and lacking all the materials of war after their long fight against the Italians. In November 1915, with the British defeated at Gallipoli, and following deliveries of weapons and gold – and promises of more to come – the Grand Senussi finally threw in his lot with the Ottoman sultan and proclaimed Jihad.

  The Allied failure at Gallipoli was a serious reputational blow as well as a military reversal, and that defeat was more visible in Egypt than anywhere else, as it was to Alexandria and Cairo that the defeated armies and the many sick and wounded were evacuated. With the beaches of Gallipoli being slowly abandoned, British prestige sank to a new low. Under the shadow of this defeat, the British now began to sense rising tensions on Egypt’s western borders. In November 1915 Senussi warriors, armed with German Mauser rifles, attacked the coastal settlement of Sollum, on the edge of the Western Desert. A German U-boat supported their advance, sinking British ships in Sollum harbour. The small British garrison escaped by sea, but, worryingly, three-quarters of the Egyptian troops went over to the enemy.30 In the south a series of oases was also captured, and fears about the loyalty of the Egyptian population again gripped the British in Cairo. The Senussi, with around 5,000 men, in white robes and bandoliers, then rushed along the coast, overrunning the settlements of Baqbaq and Sidi Barrani and threatening Alexandria. Kitchener feared for the defence of Cairo, with news of new attacks inland adding to the growing sense of alarm. Armed and equipped by their Ottoman and German allies, the Senussi now had light artillery and machine guns, were led by experienced Ottoman officers, and outnumbered the defenders of the western regions of British Egypt. These last consisted of a cobbled-together Western Frontier Force, made up of troops stationed in Egypt but not required to garrison the Suez Canal: a regiment of the Australian Light Horse, which had suffered terrible losses at Gallipoli; the 15th Sikhs; the Gurkha Rifles; the Bikanir Camel Corps from India; men of the Egyptian Army; and New Zealanders and South Africans. The campaign to defend Egypt was as international as the defence of the Suez Canal nine months earlier.

  The war in the Western Desert turned out to be one of the most exotic and decisive of the First World War. After the Senussi’s initial success, the British Empire forces won a string of victories, pushing the enemy back. By early 1916, men straight from Gallipoli could be thrown into action against the Senussi, and the tide of the campaign shifted. Although almost completely forgotten today, at the time the war against the Senussi gripped the attention of a British press desperate for a distraction from the slaughter in France. The war saw aircraft attacking mounted Bedouin fighters, and German U-boats off African shores. The British press swooned over the Duke of Westminster, who commanded a Light Armoured Car Brigade equipped with six bulletproof Rolls Royces fitted with machine guns. In the recapture of Sollum on 24 March 1916, the armoured cars cut through the enemy ranks, ‘shooting all loaded camels and men within reach’.31 The fighting on the coast was over in this month, though it continued in the deserts until early 1917. Although the British won decisively, the Senussi and their foreign backers did succeed in leeching desperately needed men and materials away from other theatres of war. And for the people of Libya, the Senussi campaign had profound, long-term implications. In 1918 the cousin of the Grand Senussi, Sayyid Muhammad Idris, seized power, eventually becoming King Idris. He remained on the throne until overthrown by Colonel Gaddafi in 1969.*9

  Had the Ottoman attack on the Suez Canal and the Senussi campaign succeeded and sparked a wider Egyptian revolt, as Oppenheim had hoped, Britain may well have been cut off from India, at least temporarily. However, the ultimate prize demanded by the Kaiser, and energetically pursued by Oppenheim and his Intelligence Bureau, was to incite a revolution on the subcontinent itself.

  ISTANBUL, SEPTEMBER 1914. Oskar von Niedermayer, a highly educated, highly capable German artillery officer, arrives at Istanbul’s Sirkeci Station, in the part of the city that lies on Europe’s mainland. He has crossed Europe on the Orient Express. Although he is a pragmatic and ruthless soldier, what makes Niedermayer unusual is his education. As confident in the lecture hall as he is on the battlefield, he has a strong command of languages and a deep knowledge of Islam. He has already travelled extensively in the Middle East and Asia, visiting Persia, India and the Ottoman province of Syria. Like Oppenheim, he is entranced by the Orient – and like Oppenheim, he has been a spy. In later life, Niedermayer will often be compared to T.E. Lawrence, and in truth the German is a more accomplished soldier and a more gifted linguist. It is, perhaps, inevitable that Niedermayer’s unique set of skills are now called upon by Max von Oppenheim and the German Foreign Office to serve their evolving Jihad strategy.

  Accompanying Niedermayer is a small team of fifteen officers. They are all disguised – less than convincingly – as a travelling circus. Their bags and equipment are supposed to follow on later, but in fact never arrive. After Romanian customs officials examine baggage described on the inventory as ‘tent poles’, they identify the contents – accurately – as the aerials of field radios. That discovery leads to a full search, which turns up machine guns, rifles and all the paraphernalia of a military expedition rather than a season under the big top.

  Deprived of their equipment, the German contingent is forced to wait in the Pera Palace Hotel in the European quarter of Istanbul, while they are re-equipped. Eventually, on 5 December 1914, on the same day that French aircraft drop bombs on the ancient German city of Freiburg and German guns resume their bombardment of the beautiful French city of Reims, Niedermayer and his men slip across the Bosphorus to Haydarpasha Station in Asian Istanbul, and they board a train on the railway to Baghdad. Their ultimate destination is, however, much further beyond: Afghanistan. And their goal is to incite the collapse of British India.

  An uprising in India, whether inspired by Islam or Indian nationalism, might well – the theory went – force the British to choose between fighting against Germany in Europe and fighting in India to save their empire. To achieve this critical objective of their joint global strategy, Germany and the Ottoman Empire adopted a twin-track approach. In Berlin, the exiles and activists of the Indian Revolutionary Committee concentrated their efforts on spreading nationalist propaganda within India, while their comrades in the United States attempted to dispatch shiploads of rifles to their homeland in order to equip an armed uprising. They were thwarted in this endeavour.

  The other approach was to persuade the Emir of Afghanistan to march his army over the Khyber Pass and launch an invasion of British India. A mission to win over the emir and convince him to join the Central Powers was thus to be undertaken, and it was this task that fell to Oskar von Niedermayer. In the event, he would lead a small, multinational, disunited and unlikely group of soldiers, diplomats, defectors, agitators and mercenaries in what was the most daring and potentially world-changing of all the expeditions to foment Jihad.

  The theory that Emir Habibullah Khan might easily be induced into declaring war against the British was promoted not just by Oppenheim but also by Enver Pasha, who wanted to ensure that any agreement to that end was negotiated through Ottoman officials.32 Oppenheim had assu
red his masters in Berlin that the emir could muster an army perhaps 50,000-strong. By August 1914, three months before the Ottoman Empire’s formal entry into the war and the sultan’s declaration of Jihad, Enver had already sent a delegation to Kabul. At the same time, in Germany the embryonic core of the expedition team was being formed.

  After leaving Istanbul, Niedermayer’s entourage passed through Baghdad in December 1914, a city that had become a nest of spies. From there they headed for Persia. Technically neutral, Persia was in effect a failed state in which the rule of its shah counted for little, after decades of British and Russian interference. War-time Tehran was a hive of frenetic intrigue, terrorism and espionage. While awaiting an Ottoman Army escort that never materialized, Niedermayer became energetically involved in the destabilization of Persia, launching sabotage operations against British interests and spreading Jihadi literature. In July 1915, after it had become clear that the expedition would have to go on without Ottoman military support, Niedermayer and his men left the city.

  The party now took on its final configuration. Niedermayer was joined by Werner Otto von Hentig, a lieutenant in the 3rd East Prussian Cuirassiers. With a background in law and a career in the German Diplomatic Corps, Hentig was in command of the diplomatic aspects of the mission. The Ottoman state was represented by Kâzım Orbay, a Turkish liaison officer who had served in the Ministry of War. To help convince the emir to invade India, two leading Indian figures were attached to the expedition. Mahendra Pratap was an aristocratic Marxist and a highly intellectual Indian nationalist leader. He had recently had audiences with Kaiser Wilhelm, the exiled Khedive of Egypt and Enver Pasha. Alongside Pratap was the twenty-eight-year-old Pan-Islamist firebrand Abdul Hafiz Mohamed Barakatullah, who had spent much of the war in PoW camps in Germany attempting to persuade Indian prisoners of war to defect and join the Jihad. Accompanying them on the expedition were six other Indians. They included none other than Jemadar Mir Mast, the Indian officer who had led twenty of his countrymen over to the German trenches the night before the Battle of Neuve Chapelle.*10

  The expedition carried £100,000 in gold bullion and an unwieldy haul of gifts for the emir, along with formal letters from the Kaiser and the sultan. To add firepower, their numbers were bolstered by a contingent of Persian mercenaries. The journey from Persia to the borders of Afghanistan involved a crossing of the Dasht-e Kavir, the Great Salt Desert, a barrier that observers in London regarded – over-optimistically – as almost impassable, especially in the appalling heat of the summer. To reach Kabul and avoid being intercepted by the British and Russian patrols that had got wind of the expedition and were forming an East Persian Cordon, Niedermayer divided the expedition into two parties, each of about a hundred men. Following the route of Alexander the Great across Persia, they crossed some bitterly inhospitable terrain. Always fearful of being betrayed by their own Persian mercenaries, or sold out by local villagers, they never stayed long in any of the potentially hostile villages they came across. To avoid contact with the growing number of enemy patrols, which now included several mounted Cossack units, the expedition often travelled at night. Although their progress was hampered by every imaginable form of discomfort – unbearable heat, lack of water and even plagues of insects and scorpions – they made surprisingly good time. One reason for this was that Niedermayer chose to abandon most of the gifts they had brought for the emir. Thus, despite all their hardships, on 21 August 1915 the expedition slipped through the East Persian Cordon, evading Russian and British patrols, and entered Afghanistan. The military phase was over, and the diplomatic phase about to begin.

  The party, having lost only one man in the trek, was eventually escorted to Kabul. As they entered the city to enthusiastic crowds, all of the confidence invested in the mission by Oppenheim and Enver Pasha seemed justified. Here in Kabul, on the very borders of the British Raj, was the tinder-box of anti-British sentiment and religious fervour that might be ignited. The mood in Afghanistan in the period was unquestionably and violently anti-British, a bitter residue of Anglo-Afghan wars in the 1840s and 1870s. However, the £400,000 annual stipend paid by Britain to the emir had been buying his support. What the British authorities feared now was not just that they might be outbid by Germany, and the emir persuaded to change sides by the German and Ottoman emissaries, but that the near universal anti-British sentiments among the emir’s people would either force his hand or lead to his overthrow.

  Having been cheered through the streets, Niedermayer, Hentig and the rest of the expedition had high hopes. But, rather than being ushered into an audience with the emir, they were settled into a smart villa on the edge of the city and told to wait – which they did for a whole two months. It was not until 26 October 1915 that Emir Habibullah Khan agreed to receive the delegation. At the meeting that day, Kâzım Orbay presented him with a copy of the Ottoman sultan’s declaration of Jihad, while the German diplomat Hentig handed to him personal letters from Kaiser Wilhelm promising independence for Afghanistan and German military assistance for an attack on British India. The audiences with Hentig, Orbay and the Indian revolutionaries then continued on an almost daily basis for weeks.

  By 1915, the emir had been on the throne for fourteen years. He was an intelligent, calculating reformer and a cautious operator. With one eye on events on the Western Front and Gallipoli, he carefully weighed up his options. In January 1916 he eventually signed an agreement with Germany and the Ottoman Empire, whereby he was willing to forego his £400,000 annual stipend from London and attack British India – but in return for a payment of £10 million, supplies of German arms, German military assistance and the usual guarantees of independence. Although Germany would have been willing to stump up the money, any offers of German military assistance were unrealistic and impractical, given the inability of Germany to actually supply any arms or march its armies to Kabul. Both parties were silently aware of this, and in the final analysis the emir’s willingness to enter into an agreement on these almost hypothetical terms amounted to another stalling tactic. Habibullah Khan, even more than the Grand Senussi, was playing a double game. Worldly and well-informed, he was not the naive, irrational creature of Oppenheim’s orientalist imagination. The emir kept the Germans believing he was always on the verge of agreeing to an alliance, while he watched the progress of the war and hoped for a better offer from London. Disheartened and disempowered, the expedition slowly began to fall apart, its members beginning their long and separate journeys home. The emir’s invasion, never mind rebellion throughout British India, was not to be.

  ‘FURLING’, A COUNTRY HOUSE IN HAMPSHIRE, 1915. Major Richard Hannay, of the Lennox Highlanders, is convalescing from injuries sustained at the Battle of Loos on 25 September 1915, when he receives a telegram summoning him to the Foreign Office. There, he is briefed by Sir Walter Bullivant on German and Ottoman attempts to incite Holy War. Bullivant warns Hannay: ‘There is a dry wind blowing through the East, and the parched grasses wait the spark. And that wind is blowing towards the Indian border. Whence comes that wind, think you?’ As Hannay remembered:

  Sir Walter had lowered his voice and was speaking very slow and distinct. I could hear the rain dripping from the eaves of the window, and far off the hoot of taxis in Whitehall. ‘Have you an explanation, Hannay?’ he asked again. ‘It looks as if Islam had a bigger hand in the thing than we thought,’ I said. ‘I fancy religion is the only thing to knit up such a scattered empire.’… There is a jihad preparing.33

  Continuing his sermon on Jihad, Bullivant went on:

  I have reports from agents everywhere – peddlers in South Russia, Afghan horse-dealers, Turcoman merchants, pilgrims on the road to Mecca, sheikhs in North Africa, sailors on the Black Sea coasters, sheep-skinned Mongols, Hindu fakirs, Greek traders in the Gulf, as well as respectable Consuls who use cyphers. They tell the same story. The East is waiting for a revelation. It has been promised one. Some star – man, prophecy, or trinket – is coming out of the West. The Germ
ans know, and that is the card with which they are going to astonish the world.34

  In late 1916, the novelist John Buchan reprised his hero Richard Hannay (of The Thirty-Nine Steps) for his new espionage thriller, Greenmantle. It proved a best-seller. A friend of T.E. Lawrence, Buchan was directly involved in Britain’s wartime intelligence programme, working at the War Propaganda Bureau. As events showed, the fictional Hannay was arguably more believable – or at any rate no less believable – than the exotic cast of characters that reality served up: Baron Max von Oppenheim, the half-Jewish, orientalist fantasist; Oskar von Niedermayer, the polyglot intellectual and artillery officer; Emir Habibullah Khan, playing empires off against one another while driving around Kabul in his Rolls Royce. They demonstrated that the Jihad strategy pursued by Wilhelmine Germany and Ottoman Turkey was all too real.

  It was, for the most part, thwarted; but it diverted arms, men, effort and money away from the decisive theatres of war. Where the fire took hold, it spread the violence and the instability of the First World War through towns, villages and communities in North Africa and parts of Asia. There were few winners in the Kaiser’s Jihad. It cost thousands of men their lives, altered the borders of nations and the balance of power between clans, tribes and communities. And eventually, the empire that was toppled by the fatal alliance between Germany and Turkey was not that of Britain or France, but that of the Ottoman sultans itself.