How WWI Redrew the Middle East

0:00The MAPS app that came with your phone, it's fine if you enjoy waiting and guessing and inefficient routes. Or you could use MapQuest. MapQuest is back with live directions, real-time traffic and faster routes. It moves when you move. Best of all, no prints are needed, no paper, no more misterns, just you and the app. Get there fast with MapQuest. Download the MapQuest app on the app store or over at mapquest.com. MapQuest, still getting you there. Welcome to another deep dive. Hey there. If you are tuning in right now, you're probably looking for that really thorough, aha-filled breakdown of a massive subject. Right. You know, you want to get completely caught up on a really complex topic, but you don't want to feel like buried under a mountain of academic jargon. Nobody wants that. Exactly. Well, you are in exactly the right place. Today, we are taking a single incredibly dense historical text, and we're looking at the Middle Eastern Theater of World War I. It's a massive topic. It really is. Our mission for this

1:04deep dyes is to explore what was arguably the largest, most complex and honestly most world altering geographical theater of the First World War. Yeah, without a doubt. Because when we think of World War I, our minds usually just go straight to the trenches. The western front, the mud. The barbed wire. But the Middle East was this incredibly volatile chess board of spies, oil grabs, falling empires, and asymmetrical warfare. It was just a completely different kind of war fought across this staggering expanse of territory. But before we get fully underway, it's absolutely vital that we set the stage for you regarding the nature of the information we're going to be discussing today. Yeah, it's really important. The historical text we're unpacking covers some profoundly dark, politically and historically charged subjects. We'll be discussing things like brutal imperialism, nationalistic uprisings, mass famines, and genocides. And we want to be incredibly clear with you right at front. As we go through this, we are impartially reporting the contents of the provided historical text. Yeah. We are not endorsing any

2:08specific political viewpoints nor are we taking sides. Right. We are simply acting as your guides conveying the historical record exactly as it's documented in the source material we're working from today. That is the goal. We're here to help you understand what happened according to the historical records so you can see how it shaped the geopolitical landscape that you live in today. Okay, let's unpack this. To understand this massive conflict, we really first have to look at the chess board and the players. The motives. Right. Why were the major global powers fighting over this specific region in the first place? Let's start with the British. What were their primary goals? Well, the British had two massive overriding priorities. First off, they were just desperate to protect the Suez Canal in Egypt, which was basically their shortcut. It was the vital artery of their empire. It was the quickest route to India and all their eastern colonies. I mean, if they lost the canal, they lost their global lifeline. So priority one priority two was oil.

3:08The British Royal Navy had just recently transitioned from running on coal to running on oil. Oh, wow. Yeah, which meant they were suddenly utterly dependent on petroleum deposits in southern Persia, which they controlled. Exactly. They had exclusive access to this oil through the British controlled Anglo Persian oil company, protecting that pipeline was just entirely non-negotiable for their war effort. So on the other side of the board, you have the Ottomans and their German allies. What were they trying to achieve? Were they just playing defense? Not at all. Their strategic goals were highly ambitious. From an economic perspective, they wanted to cut off Russian access to the hydrocarbon resources around the Caspian Sea. Right. But there was also this massive ideological component driving the Ottoman leadership. The Ottoman War Minister and Varpasha had this grand sweeping vision. A pan Turkic state, right? Yes. He dreamed of beating the Russians and opening the way to Azerbaijan, the Caucasus, and beyond. He wanted to unite newly established Turkic states entirely away from Western influence.

4:13The reality of trying to actually execute that dream seems staggering when you look at the infrastructure they had. I mean, reading the source, it's like a true David versus Goliath situation when it comes to industrial capability. What's fascinating here is just how severe that logistical mismatch was. I mean, let's look at the hard numbers. The Ottoman Empire had a total of 5,759 kilometers of railway to cover that whole territory. Right. A massive mountainous desert filled territory to put that in perspective France, which is way smaller. Right. France had about a fifth of the land area of the Ottoman Empire, but they had 51,000 kilometers of railway. Wait, hold on. So imagine you're trying to move millions of troops, artillery, food across an empire, roughly the size of Western Europe, but you only have the railway infrastructure of a small modern state like Denmark. Yeah. That sounds like an absolute logistical nightmare. It was a nightmare and it wasn't just transportation either. It was raw materials. Ottoman coal production in 1914

5:13was a negligible 826,000 tons. And the British. Britain was turning out 292 million tons. Gee. France was producing 40 million tons and Ottoman steel production was essentially non-existent. How you even fight a modern war without steel and coal? Barely. When you're fighting an industrial war, you need industrial manufacturing. But the entire Ottoman Empire had exactly one cannon and small arms foundry. So so one. One. They had a single shell and bullet factory and a single gunpowder factory. That is insane. And all of them were located right in the suburbs of Constantinople. You really have to picture this almost entirely agricultural economy. We're lying on what? Wool and cotton. Wool cotton hides. And they're trying to mobilize millions of men to fight against the greatest industrial superpowers the world had ever seen. Which perfectly sets up why the war in this theater was fought so differently. Because they didn't have endless factories turning out artillery shells, they had to use every other tool at their

6:14disposal. Here's where it gets really interesting. The unconventional stuff. Yeah, because this wasn't just conventional armies marching in straight lines, it was a shadow war of subversion, espionage, and tribal alliances. How did that actually play out on the ground? Well, the major powers realized that financing internal rebellions within their enemy's territories would force the enemy to divert massive resources just to contain the threat. It's pretty smart. It was a brilliant albeit chaotic strategy. For instance, the British Foreign Office established an entire division known as the Arab Bureau. Their specific goal was to conceptualize and finance the Arab revolt against the Ottomans. They funneled money, weapons, and gold to tribal leaders. This is Lawrence of Arabia. Exactly. This is the operation that featured the famous TE Lawrence working alongside a mere phasal to blow up the very real ways the Ottomans were so desperately relying on. But the Germans were doing something very similar, right? They weren't just sitting back watching the

7:15British stir up rebellions far from it. Right before the war, Germany established the intelligence bureau for the east. Their goal was to foment subversive and nationalist agitations in British India, Persia, and Egypt. And they had their own guy. They did. They had their own legendary figure operating in the Persian Gulf, a German diplomat named Wilhelm Vosmos. The guy they called the German Lawrence of Arabia. That's the one. What made him so effective? Immersion. He was incredibly immersed in the local culture. He learned the local dialects, he wore traditional clothing, and he used German gold to buy the loyalties of various Persian tribes, turning them against the British. He managed to tie down thousands of British and Indian troops who were sent entirely just to hunt them down and secure the oil fields. He was literally a one man insurgency. And when you look at the actual forces fighting in these campaigns, the diversity is just mind blowing. You have troops from all over the world converging in the desert. You did. The British relied heavily

8:15on the British Indian army. Units like the Indian sappers and miners were crucial because they had extensive experience dealing with dissident tribal forces on the frontiers of India. And the French bought in forces too. Yeah, France sent the French Armenian Legion, which fought fiercely in Palestine and Syria. And local populations were drawn in, often lured by massive promises. I was really struck by the mention of the Assyrian people in the source. Yes. They were promised an independent nation by the British and Russian, so they joined the Anton powers, the allied forces opposing Germany and the Ottomans, led by figures like Aga Petros. Right. And they became known as the Assyrian volunteers or quote, our smallest ally. The Kurdish involvement is another perfect example of how unpredictable this theater was. Many Kurds belonged to the Ottoman elite and fought loyally for the empire. Like the Hamidi, right? Exactly. The Hamidi was an elite mostly Kurdish cavalry division that played a significant role in the Caucasus and Persian campaigns. But at the exact same time, you had other Kurdish nationalist factions actively rebelling

9:19against the Ottoman. Or, precisely, they were undertaking uprisings, hoping that allies would help them create an independent nation. As it's a web. A vast, complex tapestry of ethnicities, religions, and tribes. It meant the battle lines weren't just drawn on a map in London or Berlin. They were constantly shifting based on local allegiances, old rivalries, and immediate survival. It really makes you realize how volatile every single military decision must have been. And unfortunately for the troops on the ground, some of those decisions resulted in monumental blunders. Massive blighters. If we look at the timeline from 1914 to 1916, it is essentially a masterclass in military overreach. Walk me through the winter disaster of 1914, a battle of Syracomage. This is a devastating example of ideology just completely overriding tactical reality. Ottoman war minister, Enver Pasha, took personal command and ordered an offensive against the Russians in the rugged Caucasus mountains. Even though his generals said no. Right. His own

10:20seasoned commanders, like Hassan is it, explicitly warned him not to attack. The winter conditions were brutal and the supply lines simply didn't exist. But Enver Pasha pushed forward anyway, and the result was just catastrophic. The troops were entirely unprepared for the freezing temperatures. We're talking about tens of thousands of men freezing to death in their camps. It's horrific. And astonishing 90% of his third army was lost to the cold battle, or a desperate chaotic retreat. And while the Ottomans were suffering in the Caucasus, the allies were about to make their own colossal mistake to the west. In 1915, the British and French decided to launch a massive naval assault on the Dardanelles. The streets leading to Constantinople. Yes. Winston Churchill, who was first Lord of the Admiralty at the time, aggressively pushed this idea. Why did Churchill think he could just sail obsolete battleships straight into the heart of an enemy empire? Did they not anticipate any resistance? They severely underestimated the Ottoman coastal artillery and the ingenuity of German

11:20mind-laying tactics. They basically assumed the sheer sight of the mighty British navy would cause the Ottoman defenses to crumble. Well, they didn't. No. On March 18, that naval assault turned into a complete catastrophe. As they tried to push through the heavily mined streets, the French battleship bouvets struck a mine, exploded mysteriously, and capsized in minutes, taking its entire crew down with it. Unbelievable. And soon after the British ships, HMS Irresistible and HMS Ocean also struck mines and sank. The naval commanders panicked and called off the attack. It proved unequivocally that you couldn't just sail past the Ottoman defenses. So the naval plan fails. What was the Allied backup plan? They couldn't just pack up and go home right? Right. And that led to an even bloodier blunder. Helplie. The amphibious landings equilipally in April 1915. Since they couldn't force the streets by sea, they decided to land troops on the peninsula to take out the forts from behind. It turned into months of brutal, grueling,

12:21trench warfare pinned against the cliffs. The casualties were horrendous. The Allies suffered roughly 131,000 dead and hundreds of thousands wounded before finally withdrawing into feet. But Calipoli is massive, historically, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. It really forged the national identities of Australia and New Zealand, the ANZC forces. And on the Ottoman side, it elevated a lieutenant colonel who proved to be a brilliant tactician, Kimal Ataturk. We will definitely be talking about him more in a few minutes. Right. But the blunders certainly weren't limited to the mountains or the sea. Down in Mesopotamia, which is modern day Iraq, the British command got overly aggressive. General Nixon ordered major general Townsend to advance his troops all the way up the Tigris River to Baghdad if possible. Which seems insane given how long their supply lines were getting. It was. They overextended themselves entirely. They fought an inconclusive battle at Satassifan and ended up having to retreat to a town called Kut Alamara, where they were completely surrounded by Ottoman forces. The siege of Kut lasted from December 1915 to April

13:261916. And the conditions inside Kut became horrific, starvation, disease. The British tried three separate times to break the siege with relief forces, failed every single time. And Townsend was eventually forced to surrender his entire remaining force. It was an absolute humiliation for the British Empire. It was a humiliation for the military, sure. But for the local civilian populations across this entire theater, the shifting front lines weren't just humiliating, they were a matter of life and death. And this brings us to a much darker reality of this war. Yes, this is where we really need to shift our tone. As we discuss at the start, we're looking directly at the historical record provided in our source to understand what happened to the civilian populations caught in the crossfire. The text outlines unimaginable tragedies. In May 1915, during the height of the Russian offensive in the Caucasus, the Ottoman parliament passed the test year law. What did that legislation actually do? The test year law was an authorization for the mass deportation of populations. The interior minister, Kalatpasha, ordered the force

14:31deportation of Armenians from regions under Ottoman control. And the historical text explicitly details this as the Armenian genocide. Yes, it notes the active participation of forces like the Hamidi cavalry and the special organization, which was essentially an Ottoman state intelligence and special operations unit deployed for this exact dark purpose. And the suffering extended to other groups as well, the text documents the Assyrian massacres, often referred to as the Assyrian genocide, which sparked a subsequent Assyrian war of independence. And over in Persia, the civilian toll was equally horrific, wasn't it? It was devastating. The text records that an estimated two million Persian civilians died from famine. Two million? Yes, and this famine was directly exacerbated by the constant shifting military occupations of Russian, British, and Ottoman forces. They routinely requisition local food supplies and just destroyed agricultural infrastructure. It is a devastating ledger of human suffering. And strictly from a military perspective, the casualty rates were also uniquely horrifying in this theater.

15:35This raises an important question for you, the listener, to consider. Why were the military casualties in the Middle East so distinctly different from the Western front? Disease, right? The answer is the catastrophic breakdown of medical infrastructure. We have a shocking statistical comparison to illustrate this. In France and Flanders on the Western front, there were 1.3 non-battle casualties, meaning sickness, frostbite, things like that, for every one battle casualty. Wait, 1.3 to 1 on the Western front, but what was it in the Middle East? In the Mesopotamia and Sinai Palestine campaigns, the ratio was an astonishing 10 to 1. Are you kidding? 10 soldiers hospitalized for disease or environmental injury for everyone wounded in actual combat. 10 to 1. How was that even possible? Were they just not treating people? They couldn't. The Ottoman medical services had almost completely broken down. There was no medicine, no clean water, and no transport for the wounded. Afflictions that would normally be treated and survived in the British army on the Western front, like dysentery or typhus, became fatal in the

16:35Ottoman army. That's grim. More than 3.5 million Ottoman troops fell sick. When you combine military and civilian deaths, total Ottoman losses are recorded as being between 25 and 27% of their entire population. That is roughly 5 million deaths out of a population of 21 million. That has to be the highest proportion of a population lost by any country that took part in World War I. It is. The scale of the demographic collapse is almost hard to comprehend. So by the time we reached the final years of the war, 1917 and 1918, the Ottoman Empire was fracturing under this immense internal and external pressure. General Allen B takes command of the British forces and launches a major offensive into Palestine. The capture Gaza, and then in a massive symbolic victory, Allen B captures Jerusalem just before Christmas in 1917. And the final blow came in September 1918 with the Battle of McGito. Allen B aided immensely by the hit and run tactics of T.E. Lawrence and the Arab fighters tying down Ottoman garrisons in the rear, forced the Ottoman

17:37troops into a full-scale, disorganized retreat. Which brought an end to it. This ultimate military collapse led to the Ottomans accepting the armistice of Mujros on October 30, 1918. The armistice of Mujros basically being the formal cessation of hostilities that officially broke the military back of the empire. Exactly. The fighting stopped, but the political maneuvering was really just beginning. Because the victors now headed to decide what to do with a massive defeated empire, what happened to all that territory. If we connect this to the bigger picture, the Allies hadn't just been fighting, they'd been planning for the aftermath for years. Secret plans by France, Britain, and Italy to partition the Ottoman Empire actually dated all the way back to 1915. Following the armistice, Allied troops occupied the capital of Istanbul. In 1920, they drafted the Treaty of Sev, which was designed to ruthlessly carve up the territory into various European spheres of influence. But the Treaty was never ratifying. Because the British had essentially abolished the Ottoman Parliament. Which sparked massive outrage and led directly to

18:37the Turkish War of Independence. This is where Kemal Ataturk, the hero of Gallipoli we mentioned earlier, rises to lead the Turkish national movement. Yeah. He rejects the European qurb up entirely. The annul the Treaty of Severus fight fiercely to secure their own borders and eventually forced the world to recognize them by signing the Treaty of Lozan in 1923. And then in a move that truly marked the end of an era, Ataturk sought to modernize and secularize the new Turkish state. He officially abolished the centuries old Ottoman Caliphate on March 3rd 1924, permanently closing the book on an empire that had existed since the 1300s. So what does this all mean? We have covered an incredible amount of ground today. We really have. We've seen how a glaring lack of railways and coal factories crippled an empire's ability to fight a modern war. We've seen how spies like Wilhelm Wasmos and T.E. Lawrence along with shifting tribal alliances turn the desert into a shadow war. And we've seen how the strokes of a pen for victorious nations formally dismantled a 600 year old empire amidst unimaginable civilian

19:42and military suffering. He's a profound reminder of how rapidly the global order can change and how the gritty logistical realities on the ground like the length of a railway line or the availability of medical supplies often dictate the grand visions of politicians. As we wrap up this deep dive, we want to leave you with one final thought to mull over. Think about those secret treaties and the arbitrary lines drawn on maps by exhausted European empires in the 1920s. The borders. Right. They carved up vast, deeply diverse populations of Arabs, Kurds, Armenians and Assyrians entirely without their input or consent. Those lines didn't just end a war. They lead the very geopolitical fault lines. They continue to dominate our daily news feeds today. That's a great point. When you look at the modern Middle East with all its ongoing conflicts, alliances and complex borders, you are quite literally still watching the final act of World War One play out in real time. Thank you so much for taking the time to explore this incredibly complex history with us. We appreciate your curiosity and we hope you walk away with a richer, more nuanced

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