Tag Archives: Allies

A Century Old, Yet Still New: The Fall of the Ottomans

25 Thursday Jun 2015

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Review: The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, by Eugene Rogan
Basic, 2015. 485 pp. $32
Not everyone will be interested in how and why the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War, and what resulted, but maybe they should be. Pick any current headline about that region, and you’ll find its roots in Rogan’s narrative, whether it’s Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide, machinations over Iraqi oil, or the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Of the four imperial thrones that the war toppled, Westerners probably know least about the Ottomans. (The other three were Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.) Turkey, having fought two revolutions and three wars between 1908 and 1914, needed peace desperately. By playing the Russians off against the Germans, Turkish diplomats adeptly sought promises that would allow their country to remain neutral. But hawks who feared that their empire would break apart unless Turkey backed the winning side, successfully pushed to join the Central Powers.

You have to wonder how history might have played out had Turkey stayed neutral. What, for instance, would have happened to Palestine and the oil-producing regions? I wish Rogan had devoted space to this, but he doesn’t go in for speculation. Rather, using an astonishingly impressive array of Turkish, Arab, and European sources, he traces military campaigns and the politics that influenced or resulted from them, quoting the participants. Rogan argues that the diplomatic promises the Allies made to each other, Arab nationalists, or Zionists, derived from panic (usually overblown fears of jihadists) or fuzzy, short-term thinking. If pressed, Allied diplomats would have insisted they had promised less than the potential beneficiaries believed. Little did they know how their words would be parsed for decades to come.

From the military side, Gallipoli gets much of Rogan’s attention, deservedly so. From the Turkish perspective, the Allied invasion signified the Crusades revisited, an attitude prevalent in the Middle East today concerning Western military power. The Turkish victory, which cost the Ottomans even more lives than the Allies, resulted from tenacity and brilliant generalship. The Allied disaster came about from ad hoc strategy executed by inept tacticians; if you believe, as I do, that the British and imperial soldiery were lions led by donkeys, Gallipoli could be Exhibit A. Rogan captures the misery, the heroism, and the fear, as with this memoir of the last moments before “going over the top”:

The moments appeared like hours–the suspense–then the officer, his eyes glued on his watch following that finger (of death) slowly, so slowly, but surely moving to destruction–maybe a second left to live–for this is sacrifice–this is the moment when all hearts are sad and heavy–when you will hear some muttering a prayer. . . .

But the greatest service Rogan renders in The Fall of the Ottomans is, I think, his thorough, vivid, and decisive handling of the Armenian genocide. To show how the tension between Turk and Armenian increased, he explains Turkish fears of Armenian collaboration with the Russian enemy, for which there was some evidence. As for what followed, Rogan names names, places, dates, and, when possible, numbers. His chilling descriptions recall aspects of the Holocaust, as with eager civilians who participated, or long, forced marches, during which thousands of Armenians, dying of thirst or starvation, were clubbed or bayoneted to death. I didn’t know that Greek Christians were deported and dispossessed (though not killed), or that Assyrian Christians met the same fate as the Armenians. These facts, rarely mentioned, are surely significant.

Turkish soldiers march Armenians to prison in Mezireh, April 1915, photographed by an unknown German bystander (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Turkish soldiers march Armenians to prison in Mezireh, April 1915, photographed by unknown German bystander (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

After the war ended, the Turkish government prosecuted eighteen defendants accused of ordering or carrying out the massacres, hanging a few and convicting the others in absentia. (Armenian agents tracked down the missing defendants and assassinated all but one.) Apparently, the Turks were trying to placate the victors, hoping to gain favorable peace terms. When that didn’t work, the country went to war again, led by Mustafa Kemal, the hero of Gallipoli, and fixed the borders more to Turkish liking. Whether that resentment led to Turkish intransigence about admitting the genocide, Rogan doesn’t speculate.

I’d have liked The Fall of the Ottomans much better had the author written more carefully. The narrative, full of repetitions and clumsy phrases, plods sometimes. But if you read this book, I guarantee that you won’t look at Middle Eastern politics in quite the same way again.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Predator and Prey: In the Wolf’s Mouth

12 Thursday Mar 2015

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Review: In the Wolf’s Mouth, by Adam Foulds
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. 323 pp. $26

I picked up In the Wolf’s Mouth because I saw it on a list of nominees for the Walter Scott Prize in historical fiction (alongside The Lie, by Helen Dunmore, which I loved), and because the setting and premise intrigued me. In the Wolf’s Mouth takes place in rural Sicily shortly after the Allies liberated the island during World War II, which I’ve never read about, so I was curious. The title, the jacket flap says, evokes a Sicilian proverb about good luck, intriguing in itself. What’s more, author Adam Foulds supposes that as the dust settles after Mussolini’s fall, the new Allied occupation overlords, dressed in crisp uniforms and holding army-issued manuals, will inevitably trust the wrong people, to great cost. That’s a strong, plausible premise, a good starting point. Finally, Foulds is a poet as well as a novelist, and it shows:

Randall had the look of poverty, grey and small. His body was tightly knit, with jerking reflexes. In his bleak wrists and the clever joints of his fingers, Ray saw Randall’s grip on things. Firing at the range, Randall produced the quick rhythmical chuck-chuck sound of a well-handled weapon.

I only wish that the novel lived up to its assets or even followed through on its premise. Instead, the narrative focuses on the back stories of the characters who will meet at a Sicilian village, so that their brief interactions become almost an anticlimax. It’s as if Foulds wants you to forget notions of plot and concentrate on the people, how they got to be where and who they are–predator, prey, or both, depending on the circumstances. That’s an intriguing concept, if a bit heavy-handed and authorial, though I might have gone along for the ride had the characters been better company.

Among the Sicilians, the most important are Cirò Albanese, a mafioso who’s returned with the army after having fled the island twenty years before, and Angilù Cassini, a shepherd. I wanted to know them more deeply, especially Cirò, since he’s a mover and shaker and rather repellent–to sense what made him that way, maybe–but he’s more a collection of traditional ideas about blood, power, and money than a real person.

Two British soldiers and an American paratrooper, Avola, Sicily, July 1943 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Two British soldiers and an American paratrooper, Avola, Sicily, July 1943 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

The best-drawn character is Will Walker, a British soldier with the occupation army. The jacket describes him as “callow,” but that’s soft soap; Will’s a bigot, a social snob, self-absorbed, supercilious, and always looking to do great things, which can be dangerous for bystanders. At one point, he decries (to himself) the soldiers who line up with a can of rations, the only payment needed to hire a prostitute on this hungry island. Another day, though, he joins the line, because the young woman is so beautiful, he thinks. But Will’s a complete character, so he has a redeeming trait: an urge to fight back against corruption and treachery.

The other character who drew me is Ray, an American soldier unhinged by combat. Foulds captures his sensitive, private nature very well, poignantly demonstrating how soldiers with those qualities suffer intensely in any army. Also, both Ray and Will are short of stature, and since I am too, I was quick to notice how the author figures that into their psychological makeup. Ray feels innately like prey, whereas Will pushes others aside, two faces of the same coin.

Will complains that the Americans he meets aren’t real; they’re like film versions of themselves, almost parodies. I wouldn’t go that far, but they don’t seem quite fleshed out, either. Ray, supposedly from New York, could be from any American city where Italian immigrants settled. There’s no particular rhythm or outlook or New York-ness to him, and his speech patterns (as with the other Americans) struck me as generic.

So I hope the prize committee passes on In the Wolf’s Mouth. If you’d like to see my review of The Lie, you’ll find it here. The whole list of nominees is here.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.