Working Together: German-Turkish Military Relations During the War

By Col. William T. Anderson, USMCR (Ret.)

I have been translating Col. Friedrich Freiheer Kreß von Kressenstein's (1870–1948) WWI diary, edited by Winfried Baumgart (2004)," as part of my project to write a biography of Lt. Col. (Ret.) Josef Bischoff. Bischoff commanded the Turkish Camel Regiment in the Sinai Campaign of 1916. 

These particular passages of the author’s introduction are very interesting and provide a rare glimpse into coalition warfare in the Great War: 

"Kreß was a member of the German Military Mission in Turkey, which had a total of around forty officers and was involved in the reform of the Turkish army. The number was increased by members of the German Afghan expedition and by German colonial officers. Kreß' judgment of his comrades was scathing, especially of the members of the last two categories. But he also considered the regular cadre to be 'by no means first-class, either socially or in terms of their service'. Many had fallen on hard times and had been deported to Turkey because of their debts, for example. Kreß condemned the officers of the former Afghan expedition, especially because of their alcoholic excesses. 

"In his memoirs, he accuses those who were responsible for sending such elements abroad: They had 'sinned grievously against our cause.' Another category of unpleasant comrades for him were 'the North German brothers'.” Their brusqueness of manner had already made an unpleasant impression on him earlier in southern Germany, and in the Orient, where people are "so terribly sensitive," they would have had an adverse effect.

Kreß (Seated Center) with His Turkish-German
Staff in Gaza, 1916

For Kreß, the prototype of this type of officer was General Erich von Falkenhayn, who was called to the Palestinian theater of war in July 1917. In his book Mit den Türken zum Suezkanal (With the Turks to the Suez Canal), Kreß elegantly ignores the general's "rough edges." In his memoirs presented here, he portrays him as an adventurer and gambler. He was the typical representative of the Prussian general staff school who believed that he could "achieve and enforce everything with a strong will and stubbornness." He had imagined that he had gotten to know the Orient and the Orientals well enough during his stay in China in the Boxer War. When the German officers in Palestine had tried to make it clear to him that "even with the strongest will" one could not stand up to the "Oriental passive resistance," he had described them as "already completely stupid" and simply replied flippantly: "Why haven't you trained them better during the three years you've been here."

Later, Baumgart comments on relationships with Turks:

"Kreß described it as a serious mistake that German and Turkish officers were deployed together. The conditions for this were simply not right. It was particularly bad that the German officers emphasized their sense of superiority over their Turkish comrades. The German colonial officers, in particular, let this slip: They regarded the Turks as their coolies. On the other hand, the Germans' service in the Turkish army was made more difficult by the fact that their Turkish superiors were much younger than themselves and had little practical experience and scientific training. Kreß points out that the Turkish Minister of War, Enver, was only 30 years old in 1915 compared to his own 45 years. The two “Djemals” ("the Great" and "the Little"), for whom he was chief of staff, were also several years younger than him.

As for the level of training of Turkish officers, Kreß did not speak well of them at all. The main obstacle to cooperation was the great jealousy of the Turks, with which they resisted any real or imagined interference by the Germans in what they called internal affairs. There was also a widespread rumor that the Germans intended to appropriate Palestine as a German colony after the war. The fact that, in addition to many German colonial officers, the former governor of Togo, Duke Friedrich zu Mecklenburg, was also sent to the Turkish battlefield, fueled the rumor.

(Editor's note: Late in the war, Kreß, in command of a small mission, was sent to Georgia, where he helped resist the Red Army. He retired from the German army in 1929 and died in Munich in 1948.)

Sources: Col. Friedrich Freiheer Kreß von Kressenstein's WW1 Diary, edited by Winfried Baumgart (2004); Library of Congress (photo)