A Peace to End all Peace

by David Fromkin

  A key, but overlooked, point is that the Ottoman government did not learn for the first time of Churchill’s seizure of the battleship when officially informed of it in the 3 August cable. The Turks knew that the battleships were being taken on 31 July, and on or before 29 July strongly suspected that they were going to be taken. The significance of these dates will become clear presently.

  II

  In Berlin the onset of the war crisis on 23 July led to some second thoughts about the value of Turkey as an ally. On 24 July 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II personally overruled the negative decision of his ambassador to Constantinople, and ordered that Enver’s offer of an alliance should be explored. An Austrian ultimatum to Serbia—the ultimatum that initiated the war crisis in Europe—had been delivered the previous evening, and the Kaiser decided that “at the present moment” Ottoman interest in contracting an alliance should be taken advantage of “for reasons of expediency.”16

  Secret talks began at once in Constantinople. On the Ottoman side, the negotiators were Prince Said Halim, the Grand Vizier and Foreign Minister; Talaat Bey, Minister of the Interior; and Enver Pasha, Minister of War. Although Enver had told the German ambassador that a majority of the members of the C.U.P. Central Committee were in favor of an alliance with Germany, the three Ottoman leaders kept their negotiations secret from the Central Committee and even from their powerful colleague Djemal Pasha, Minister of the Marine.17

  On 28 July the Ottoman leaders forwarded their draft of a proposed treaty of alliance to Berlin. Despite the Kaiser’s views, the German Prime Minister, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, remained unenthusiastic about the potential entanglement. On 31 July, the day the General Staff told him to issue the order to go to war, Bethmann Hollweg sent a wire to his ambassador in Constantinople, instructing him not to sign a treaty of alliance with the Ottoman Empire unless he was certain that “Turkey either can or will undertake some action against Russia worthy of the name.”18

  August 1 was the crucial day in the negotiations. Details of what was said in the course of the bargaining are still not known. On the German side, von Wangenheim was operating under direct instructions from the head of his government: the Chancellor in Berlin had made it quite clear that the Ottoman proposal should be rejected unless the Turks had something unexpectedly significant to contribute to the German cause in the war. In fact, the Turks did not want to join in the fighting at all. As later events were to show, the Grand Vizier and his associates hoped that they would not be dragged into the war. Thus on the face of it they had little to offer. Yet by the end of the day the three Young Turks had wrung an alliance agreement from the Germans, which both sides signed the following afternoon.

  Not merely had the negotiations been conducted in secret, but Article 8 of the treaty provided that the agreement should continue to be kept secret. Article 4 was what the C.U.P. leaders had chiefly sought: “Germany obligates itself, by force of arms if need be, to defend Ottoman territory in case it should be threatened.”19 Germany’s obligation was a continuing one for the length of the treaty, which was scheduled to expire on 31 December 1918.

  The Ottoman Empire in turn undertook to observe strict neutrality in the then current conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary and to go to war only if Germany were required to enter the fighting by the terms of her treaty with Austria.* In such circumstances, and in such circumstances only, the Ottoman Empire pledged that it too would intervene, and would allow the German military mission in Constantinople to exercise “effective influence” over the conduct of its armies.

  The day after the treaty was signed, the Porte ordered general mobilization to begin, but also proclaimed neutrality in the European conflict. The treaty remained a secret; and Enver and his co-conspirators claimed that the program of mobilization was not directed against the Allied Powers. The Ottoman leaders went out of their way in conversations with Allied representatives to stress the possibility of friendly relationships, and Enver went so far as to suggest that Turkey might join the Allies.

  Berlin, hitherto skeptical of what the Ottoman Empire could contribute, now became anxious to obtain Turkish assistance. On 5 August the Chief of the German General Staff, who only weeks before had said that the Ottoman Empire at Germany’s side would not be an “asset,” began to press for Turkish aid against Britain as well as Russia;20 but the Turks refused to be hurried into taking action. Indeed the lack of transportation facilities made it impossible for the empire to mobilize swiftly.

  The army had been guided for several years by a German military mission, so the German ambassador presumably had been informed that it would be physically impossible for the Ottoman Empire to enter the war until the late autumn or the winter. Since almost everybody’s assumption on 1 August was that the war would be over within a few months, von Wangenheim had granted the Young Turks an alliance even though he must have believed that the Ottoman Empire would not be ready to fight until the war was almost over. Yet his instructions from Berlin were that he should not conclude an alliance unless the Young Turks could prove to him that they had something meaningful to contribute to the German war effort. What was that “something meaningful”?

  The common assumption of historians seems to be that the Turks offered nothing new that day—that, in effect, von Wangenheim ignored his instructions from Berlin. If so, he may have been seeking to please the Kaiser; or it may be that the threatened outbreak of a general European war led him to view the Ottoman Empire as more significant militarily than he had believed ten days before. If, however, von Wangenheim did attempt to follow the instructions he had received from Berlin, then the question which historians have not asked becomes intriguing: what did Enver offer Germany on 1 August that was so important that the German ambassador changed his mind and agreed that, in return, Germany would protect the Ottoman Empire?

  III

  A couple of decades ago, a curious fact came to light. A student of the German diplomatic archives disclosed that they showed that on 1 August 1914 Enver and Talaat, in a meeting with Ambassador von Wangenheim, suddenly offered to turn over to Germany one of the most powerful warships in the world: the Sultan Osman.21 Von Wangenheim accepted the offer; and British Intelligence reports from behind German lines two weeks later showed that officers of the German fleet had eagerly expected to receive the vitally important new warship—and apparently were bitterly disappointed when Churchill seized the vessel instead.22

  Historians have not examined this episode in any great detail, possibly because on the surface it seems so difficult to explain. Enver and Talaat could not possibly have intended to give away Turkey’s prize battleship, in which the populace had invested so much emotion as well as money; and in which the empire took such pride; it would have been political suicide for any Ottoman leader to even propose to do so. Yet the evidence cannot be disputed; in secret, they made von Wangenheim the offer.

  In another connection, some twenty years ago a student of the Ottoman archives mentioned, in passing, a conversation that might provide an explanation. On the same day that Enver and Talaat made their offer to Germany—1 August 1914—Enver revealed to fellow Young Turk leaders that Britain had seized the Osman.23 Thus on 1 August he already knew! Indeed—since it is now known that, in London, the Turks suspected on 29 July that Churchill was about to seize the Osman, and on 31 July protested that he had already done so—it is entirely possible that even before 1 August Enver knew that the battleship had been taken by Britain.

  Might this not provide the answer to an earlier question? Von Wangenheim was not supposed to grant the Ottoman Empire an alliance unless the Turks could show that they would make a material contribution to the defeat of the Allies. But nonetheless he agreed to an alliance on 1 August, when the week before he had not believed that the Ottoman armed forces could make such a contribution. Was not the offer of the Osman on 1 August, therefore, the material contribution that bought Enver and Talaat their German alliance?

  If Enver and Ta
laat knew before making their secret offer that they had already lost the Osman to Britain—that it was therefore no longer theirs to dispose of—they could have made the offer; they could have made it with impunity. In fact the Germans never discovered that they had been duped. They seem to have assumed that Enver and Talaat meant to keep their side of the bargain, and only learned they could not do so when they received official notification of Churchill’s action several days later—after Germany had already signed a pledge to protect the Ottoman Empire against its enemies, largely in return (it is speculated here) for Enver’s and Talaat’s worthless promise.

  7

  AN INTRIGUE AT THE SUBLIME PORTE

  I

  In the course of the secret negotiations between Germany and the Young Turks in Constantinople on 1 August, Enver, the Minister of War, held a private meeting in the German embassy in Constantinople with the German ambassador, Hans von Wangenheim, and with the head of the German military mission, Otto Liman von Sanders.1 The three men discussed the form that military collaboration between their countries might take if Turkey and Bulgaria should contract with each other to join in a war against Russia on Germany’s side. It seemed to them that naval mastery was essential if a successful campaign were to be mounted. They concluded that the German Mediterranean fleet, consisting of the powerful Goeben and its sister ship, the Breslau, should come to Constantinople to strengthen the Ottoman fleet in the Black Sea so as to give the Turkish-Bulgarian armies a free hand in invading Russia. Significantly, none of the three men appears to have believed that the Osman might be available to fulfill that function. Presumably Enver already knew that he had lost the battleship to Britain; while the Germans believed that the vessel—under orders from Enver—was going to join the German fleet at a North Sea port, so that the Goeben and the Breslau, which already were in the Mediterranean, could more conveniently come to Constantinople.

  After the conference, Liman and von Wangenheim requested their government to send the German ships to Turkey. On 3 August the German Admiralty dispatched orders to that effect to Rear-Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, commander of the Mediterranean Squadron. The wireless message reached Souchon in the early morning of 4 August, when he was close to the coast of Algeria where he intended to disrupt the flow of troops from French North Africa to the mainland of France. Deciding not to turn back immediately, Souchon first shelled two port cities of Algeria, and only then turned back to refuel in the neutral Italian port of Messina in Sicily, where German coaling-stations awaited him. Slowed down by defective boilers on the Goeben, the squadron did not reach Messina until the morning of 5 August.

  At his refueling stop, Souchon received a telegram from Berlin apparently changing his orders again. Enver had not consulted his colleagues before inviting the German warships to Constantinople; they were by no means anxious to be drawn into the fighting, and when the Ottoman government learned that the ships were en route, it warned Berlin not to let them come. Berlin cabled Souchon that his call on the Ottoman capital was “not possible” but Souchon chose to interpret this merely as a warning rather than as an order, and determined to proceed to Turkey to force the issue. This personal decision of the German admiral was a turning point in events.

  Meanwhile, the British, whom Churchill had ordered to shadow the Goeben, had lost sight of her under cover of night on 4 August; but on the 5th she was sighted again, and the commanding English admiral positioned his naval squadron to intercept her when she should come out of the straits of Messina after refueling. He placed his squadron west of Sicily, to meet her as she returned to attack North Africa again, which is what he supposed she would do. A much smaller force was already stationed in the Adriatic Sea, far to the northeast, to block her should she attempt to return to her home port of Pola (in what was then Austria, but is now Yugoslavia).

  On the British side there was as massive a failure of political imagination in London, as there was of military competence at sea. It seems never to have occurred to the Foreign Office, the War Office, or the Admiralty that the Ottoman Empire ought to figure in strategic calculations. Neither in London nor in the field did anybody in command consider the possibility that Admiral Souchon might be headed toward Constantinople. They assumed that when he headed east it was in order to elude them and double back toward the west.

  When the Goeben and her sister ship, the Breslau, emerged from the straits of Messina on 6 August, Admiral Souchon expected to find his way blocked by a superior British force. Instead he found the way clear, and set his course toward the Aegean.

  “It was all the Admirals’ fault,” the Prime Minister’s daughter later told Churchill. “Who but an Admiral would not have put a battle-cruiser at both ends of the Messina Straits, instead of putting two at one end and none at the other?”2 She advised him to retire all his admirals and promote captains in their place.

  Souchon did encounter a British naval contingent as he steamed eastward, but it withdrew rather than risk battle with the formidable Goeben. After prodigies of exertion on the part of the Germans, and of blundering on the part of the English pursuers, Souchon’s force arrived at the entrance to the straits of the Dardanelles.

  II

  At 1:00 in the morning on 6 August, the Grand Vizier discussed the fate of the Goeben and Breslau with the German ambassador. The British Mediterranean Squadron was following close behind the two German ships, so that if Turkey refused them admittance to the straits, they would be trapped between the Turkish forts in front of them and the British squadron behind them. The Grand Vizier, Said Halim, announced that his government had decided to allow the German ships to enter the straits so that they could make good their escape. But, he said, conditions were attached to this permission; and when he announced what they were, it became clear that his terms were steep. They showed that—contrary to what British observers believed—the Young Turk government intended to escape domination by the Germans, as well as other Europeans. The Porte demanded that Germany accept six far-reaching proposals, the first of which was high on the list of C.U.P. priorities—abolition of the Capitulations, and thus of privileges hitherto accorded to the Germans and other Europeans. Other proposals guaranteed Turkey a share of the spoils of victory if Germany won the war. From a German point of view these proposals were outrageous, but unless von Wangenheim wanted to abandon the Goeben and Breslau to the long-range guns of the British navy, he had no choice but to agree. The Turks had him at gun point.

  At the Admiralty in London, Turkey’s decision to admit the German warships looked like collusion between Constantinople and Berlin. Churchill and his colleagues had no idea that what really was going on was extortion; and Churchill angrily dashed off a telegram to his forces ordering them to institute a blockade of the Dardanelles.3 He had no authority to issue such an order on his own and, had the order been carried out, it could have been construed in Constantinople as an act of war. In reply to a request for clarification, the Admiralty cabled back that there had been a “mistake in wording” and “no blockade intended.”4 Instead the British ships were to wait in international waters for the German ships to come out.

  Britain protested to the Sultan’s government that under accepted conventions of international law Turkey, as a neutral, was obliged either to send the German ships back out or to intern them. The Ottoman government did neither. Instead, the legal situation prompted the Porte to extract further concessions from the Germans.

  Von Wangenheim had barely recovered from the extortionate demands of 6 August when, on 9 August, the Grand Vizier had more news for the German ambassador. Said Halim announced that the Ottoman Empire might join with Greece and Rumania in a public pact of neutrality in the European conflict. If so, something would have to be done about the continuing presence of the Goeben and the Breslau in Turkish waters so as not to compromise Turkish neutrality. The Porte proposed a fictitious purchase of the two warships: the Turks would take over ownership of the vessels, and would pretend to have paid for them. In that w
ay there could be no objection to the ships remaining in Turkey; there would be no breaching of the laws of neutrality.

  On 10 August the German Chancellor cabled von Wangenheim from Berlin rejecting this Turkish proposal and urging immediate Turkish entry into the war. The Young Turk leaders, however, were reluctant to involve the empire in the European conflict. Von Wangenheim was summoned that day to the Sublime Porte, where the Grand Vizier angrily reproached him for the premature arrival of the Goeben and the Breslau. Ignoring his own government’s complicity in the affair of the German warships, Said Halim repeated his proposal that the ships should be transferred to Turkish ownership. Von Wangenheim refused the proposal.

  The Ottoman government thereupon unilaterally issued a public declaration falsely claiming that it had bought the two German cruisers and had paid eighty million marks for them. Public opinion throughout the empire was elated, and on 14 August a frustrated von Wangenheim advised Berlin that there was no choice but to go along with the “sale” to disavow it risked turning local sentiment violently around against the German cause. His advice was heeded, and at a ceremony on 16 August the Minister of the Marine, Djemal Pasha, formally received the vessels into the Ottoman navy.

  The Turks did not have the trained officers and crews that were needed to operate and maintain such sophisticated vessels, and decided that, for the time being, the Germans should do it for them. Admiral Souchon was appointed commander of the Ottoman Black Sea Fleet, while his sailors were given fezzes and Ottoman uniforms, and went through the forms of enlisting in the Sultan’s navy.5 In London the entire episode was viewed as a calculated German maneuver designed to show that Germany was generously restoring to the Ottoman Empire the type of modern warships that Churchill had wrongfully taken away; and, even today, historians continue to repeat that account of the affair.