Naval War College Review Volume 64 Article 18 Number 3 Summer

2011 The Berlin–Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bidfor World Power, 1898–1918 Thomas E. Seal

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Recommended Citation Seal, Thomas E. (2011) "The Berlin–Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bidfor World Power, 1898–1918," Naval War College Review: Vol. 64 : No. 3 , Article 18. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol64/iss3/18

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150 NAVALSeal: The WAR Berlin–Baghdad COLLEGE REVIEW Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bidf

self-proclaimed Southern strategist, is Russian rivals) by linking the farthest simply and reasonably dismissed as a reaches of the Ottoman Empire with fantasist. the seat of power in Istanbul. The com- Given the number of bad books that pletion of the railway, first to Baghdad have been written about the Civil War, andthenextendedontoBasra,would it is a pleasure to find a good one. have profound political, economic, and Stoker is a solid, competent author who strategic importance. makes his points in clear convincing To achieve this end Germany designed prose. Written from a refreshing view- a strategy to undermine the cohesion of point, The Grand Design is a book the British Empire through Islamic holy worth reading. war. That strategy was an outgrowth of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s reckless and ama- RICHARD NORTON Naval War College teurish meddling in Oriental affairs. The kaiser believed that his affinity for Sultan Abdulhamid II, Caliph of the Faithful, and for all things Islamic would enable him to engineer a jihad

McMeekin, Sean. The Berlin–Baghdad Express: against the hated British, targeting the The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for empire’s large Muslim populations in World Power, 1898–1918. Cambridge, Mass.: India, Egypt, and beyond. The kaiser, in Harvard Univ. Press, 2010. 496pp. $29.95 league with the sultan and later the If ever there was a story of epic unin- Young Turks, embarked on ambitious tended consequences and “might have propaganda and military campaigns de- beens,” Sean McMeekin’s The Berlin– signed to rally Muslims to the sultan’s Baghdad Express is it. Approaching the call for jihad, despite the facts that most First World War in the Middle East educated Muslims had long given up from the German and Ottoman per- the idea of the caliphate; that there was spectives, McMeekin expands our no distinction in Islamic jurisprudence Anglo-centric understanding of the or practice between a bad infidel (Brit- conflict. In doing so, he unveils a ish, French) and good one (German, breathtaking catalogue of misunder- Austrian, American, or maybe Italian); standings, miscalculations, simple mis- that Sunni and Shia Muslims had vastly takes, and missed opportunities that different views of jihad; and that the would be comic if not so horribly British had for years controlled access tragic. to Mecca for the hajj. McMeekin also points out the oddness of German While the title conjures images of the support for jihad juxtaposed with the fabled Orient Express, the book is a German-based Zionist movement, first-rate history of the diplomatic jock- which actually anticipated Britain’s eying of the German and Ottoman Em- Balfour Declaration to establish a Jew- pires to gain advantage over their ish homeland in Palestine. respective archrivals, Britain and Rus- sia. The railway would be a tool to en- The cast of characters includes soldiers, able Germany’s Drang nach Osten statesmen, adventurers, charlatans, hu- (drive to the East) while strengthening manitarians, and thugs from across Eu- the Turks (bitter enemies of Germany’s rope, the Caucasus, Africa, and the

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Naval War College Review, Vol. 64 [2011], No. 3, Art. 18 BOOK REVIEWS 151

Middle East. Many are familiar, such as McMeekin’s treatment of the struggle Kaiser Wilhelm, Abdulhamid II, and T. for control of Baku in August 1918 pro- E. Lawrence. Still more are rather ob- vides a brief but illuminating example scure. Central among this group are of just how complex that corner of the “Baron” Max von Oppenheim, a Jewish world can be. With British, German, scion of the famous banking family, Russian, Turkish, Armenian, Azeri, and and Curt Prufer, a scholar assigned to other factions vying for control of the the German embassy in Cairo. Both city (and its oil), fighting was not only were Orientalists, both were devotees of savage but included intramural attacks Kaiser Wilhelm, and both shared the upon allies. As we look at Afghanistan, kaiser’s vision of jihad. Together they Pakistan, the Caucasus, and other tribal worked to foment holy war from Libya regions today, we can see that the same in the west through Egypt, Abyssinia, elements of complexity and confusion Sudan, Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, and that bedeviled earlier Western strate- India.Afterthewartheyemergedinthe gistsisourstodealwithagain,and forefront of Nazi anti-Semitism and the again. atrocities that it produced. Sean McMeekin is assistant professor of A common theme found throughout international relations at Bilkent Uni- the narrative is that of miscalculation versity, in Ankara, Turkey. His work is born of ignorance or misunderstanding based on German, Turkish, Austrian, of basic historical, cultural, political, Russian, and American archives, as well and religious truths. A prime example is as secondary sources. It is carefully re- Germany’s tendency to see the Muslim searched, well documented, and pre- world as either for the Germans or sented with a lively style that combines against them, while missing the vast analysis, insight, and a mix of irony and range of options in between, a problem wry humor that makes the book as that persists in varying degrees today. readable as it is informative. Another is the complexity of the region COL.THOMASE.SEAL,U.S.MARINECORPS,RETIRED that breeds such miscalculations. Stafford, Virginia

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