The "German Spirit" in the Ottoman and Turkish Army, 1908-1938

A history of military knowledge transfer

Gerhard Grüßhaber

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783110552898
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110552928
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

The study focuses on the mutual transfer of military knowledge between the German and the Ottoman/ Turkish army between the 1908 Young Turk revolution and the death of Atatürk in 1938. Whereas the Ottoman and later the Turkish army were the main beneficiaries of this selective appropriation, the German armed forces evaluated their (prospective) ally's military experiences to a lesser extent. Through the analysis of archival and published sources and memoir literature the study provides evidence for the impact of this exchange on the armies of both countries and on the Turkish civil society. Indeed, the officer corps in both countries was a small but influential group of the society for the further development of their nations.

1Introduction

The ‘German Spirit’

At the beginning of my first visit to the Gallipoli peninsula in September 2009, the major World War One Ottoman battlefield in today’s Republic of Turkey, I was hugged by an elderly Turkish participant of our tour group as soon as he realized that I was German. “Our ancestors once fought here together, we are brothers in arms!” he proudly exclaimed, hugging me yet again. Apart from the odd feeling of being applauded for being German in a (for me at that time) foreign country, this experience raised the question of why the military relationship between these two countries is still remembered. Soon, I began to wonder how it had affected the armies of both countries and whether this transfer of military knowledge might have also shaped the society as a whole.

Part of the German mindset between 1871 and 1914 was the “German Spirit” (“Deutscher Geist”), a nationalist construct of the Wilhelmine era. The use of attributive virtues and qualities was intended to contribute to the inner consolidation and to offer self-confidence to the young nation after the unification of the empire in 1871. Beyond the bourgeoisie those ideas were especially popular among the German military, resulting not least from its implied sense of mission. The “German Spirit” reached its peak in the “Spirit of 1914” and was also welcomed in the Ottoman Empire.1 Several generations of Ottoman officers were inculcated with this nationalist ideology, resulting from their textbooks translated from German and their instructors who “were either Germans or [Ottomans] imbued with the German Spirit [Alman ruhuyla].”2

Even the German liberals ascribed this spirit an important role in German foreign policy. According to journalist Ernst Jäckh,

“[…] Prussian generals revolutionize the Ottoman people through the Turkish army, not on purpose- by no means! – as bearer and transmitter of the German Spirit, which is not even suffocated by the Prussian drill.”3

The author Paul Rohrbach did not advocate a direct German rule or colonization of the Ottoman lands, but “[…] the induction [Hineinleitung] of the German Spirit into the big national renewal process”4 of the Ottoman Empire. These German intellectuals were aware that the ‘German Spirit’ was competing with the French cultural influence in the Ottoman state, especially during World War I. Therefore the Orientalist Carl Heinrich Becker highlighted the favorite military virtues inherent in the German mindset:

“The German Spirit is not as amicable and impressive, but also not as absorbing as the French one. It is more serious and cumbersome, therefore discouraging and does not allure to superficiality but to educating thoroughness.”5

Focus of the Study

I decided to focus my study not on the well-studied German military mission between 1882 and 1918, but rather on the contacts between German and Turkish military members that outlasted the official end of the alliance in 1918. The period of the study covers most of the “Young Turk Era”6 between the 1908 revolution and the death of president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1938. It is against this background that the activities of German military instructors in the Ottoman Empire/Turkey as well as the ‘apprenticeship years’ of Ottoman and Turkish officers in Germany before and after the First World War will be analyzed. This study focuses on the Ottoman land forces.7

According to the historian Hartmut Kaelble, transfer is defined as “adaptation of concepts, values, norms, attitudes and identities at the migration of persons and ideas between cultures and at the contact between cultures”.8 The receiving party picks out the fragments that seem useful and merges them with its own cultural tradition, thereby creating something new.9 In this study, I define this process as appropriation. Part and parcel of these cultural transfers are irritations, insecurities, frustrations and disappointments, especially in the context of the unequal relations between the industrialized German middle power and the agrarian Ottoman multi-ethnic empire until 1918.10 Regarding the transfer of military knowledge not all features of the sending side are applicable to the receiving socio-military culture.11 A selective appropriation of knowledge, based on a grown mutual dependency is therefore assumed.12 Especially during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II., “[a] wariness of Western encroachment of all kinds translated into a more combative approach to the West in general and a more selective appropriation of its institutions.”13

The European military innovations were not entirely separable from the European culture. The material military hardware included immaterial cultural features, and thus it was an Ottoman illusion to appropriate the one without the other.14 Sultan Abdülhamid II. (reg. 1876–1909) was aware of this fact when he commented on sending young Ottoman civilian and military students to Europe: “They remain only as long as it is necessary to take a brief look at the civilization of the West, to see what good there is to learn, and to report home. A short stay bears less dangers related to the harmful influence of the poison of the European civilization.”15 Eventually the appropriation of technology also led to a rapprochement to the German cultural fundament of the military power, especially after Abdülhamid’s careful policy was no longer in charge. The ‘poisonous’ ʻGerman Spiritʼ had a deep influence on the shaping of the Turkish officer corps. It is thus no exaggeration to say that for the Republican army after 1923 “the German military doctrine not only influenced the Turkish war strategy, [but also] the state of mind of the Turkish General Staff’s officer corps, in other words, what kind of officer corps was aspired.”16

This study will concentrate on the content and practices of the military knowledge transfer in order to better understand the impact and the limitations of the German-Ottoman/Turkish military cooperation. It should, however, be pointed out that the transfer between the German and the Ottoman Empire was not restricted to the late 19th and the early 20th century and the German military was not the sole role model for the Ottoman military.

German and Ottoman Military Transfer since the early Modern Age

In the early modern age, the armies of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and the Ottomans often faced each other on the battlefield. These martial confrontations were accompanied by a continuous transfer of military related knowledge on both sides, as was also the case among the rivaling European powers.17 The development of Ottoman firearms was clearly inspired by European models. On the tactical level the Ottoman troops also appropriated European practices, including the volley fire (first reported in 1605), and adapted them for their own conditions.18 In the 16th century, for some of the West European spectators, their adversary’s army and leadership system was advantageous. The discipline of the Janissaries was seen as superior to the own marauding mercenary Landsknecht armies. 19 The European admiration for the Ottoman army’s elite corps continued. In 1670 the Austrian General Montecuccoli even proposed to establish military schools across the entire Habsburg Empire similar to the Janissary training facilities.20 He also argued for the implementation of the Ottoman supply system and for a reform of the own imperial cavalry to counter the light and mobile Ottoman sipahi riders.21 In the ensuing period, the Austrian and later the German cavalry equipment also began to show many influences from the Ottoman horse and riders gear. The Hussar’s uniform, with its dolman jackets decorated with breast lacing and the iconic kalpak fur cap, followed Ottoman uniform patterns. The name of the German Ulan lancers was even derived from the Ottoman term oğlan, i.e. the underage boys selected for service in the Janissary corps.22 But also in terms of technical transfers, the confrontations of the Ottomans and the European powers were fruitful for the development of European military knowledge. The siege of Crete (1667–1669) and the deployment of the Ottoman humbaracı sappers inspired Vauban, the French fortress architect, in his treatises on siege and mine warfare. Mine warfare based on Ottoman principles was also applicable to the French and German army until 1914.23

Especially after the failed second siege of Vienna in 1683, the Ottoman army had lost its threatening character. By the end of the 17th century, the archenemy on the other side of the river Rhine had taken the place of the ‘Turks’, thus fulfilling mobilizing purposes. In many German principalities, the integration of military customs of the former archenemy of Christendom into their own military and self-representative practices increased.24 Since the beginning of the 18th century, the music detachments of most European armies appropriated elements of their enemy’s marching music. Ottoman instruments were included and adapted to occidental tonality. The dominating elements of the so-called “Janissary music” (Mehterhane) as the jingle sticks and the horsetails were united with the ancient Roman aquila standard, generating the Jingling Johnny (Schellenbaum). In the imperial German army after 1871, the Schellenbaum was even crested by a stylized crescent in many regiments, a clear reference to its undeniable origins.25

The application of European military knowledge had become a necessity for the Ottoman state by the end of the 18th century. During the ‘Long French century in Ottoman military reforms’ (1735–1880), the Ottomans went through a “do-or-die-moment”26 that could only be impeded by military reforms, in this case, by the employment of European instructors.

The ‘Long French Century’, 1730–1882

By means of military reforms, the government wanted to prevent further defeats on the battlefield and strengthen the central power. In the course of the 19th century, the latter gained importance against the various independence movements that emerged in the Ottoman periphery. One way to facilitate the modernization was to employ European instructors. French advisors especially were very active in various Ottoman military institutions. The French military mission reached its peak in the decade before and after the French Revolution. The strengthening of the Ottoman state and its army lay in France’s political interest against the Russian expansive policy at the Ottoman periphery.27

Count de Bonneval was a former French officer and adventurer in Habsburg service during the Spanish war of Succession and the Austro- Ottoman war of 1716–1718. Despite his latter deployment, Bonneval converted to Islam and assisted as Ahmed Paşa the Ottoman army in the reorganization of the artillery corps from 1729 until his death in 1747. His work was continued by the Hungarian born French diplomat Baron François de Tott (Ferenc Tóth) during the Ottoman-Russian war (1768–1774). In addition to further modernization efforts in the artillery in 1773, Tott f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Peak of Knowledge Transfer in the Second Constitutional Period (1908–1918)
• 3 German-Ottoman/Turkish Cooperation in the Mobilization of Youth: The Case of Heinrich von Hoff (1916–17) and Carl Diem (1933)
• 4 German-Turkish Military Cooperation after 1918
• 5 Conclusion
• 6 Acknowledgements
• 7 Bibliography
• List of Illustrations
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects