This week 100 years ago was the week of the Easter Uprising in Ireland, a pivotal point
in Irish history, but that’s not my “hook” today. Instead we made a whole special episode
about it so I can look at it a little deeper. But something else happened this week 100
years ago that still has major repercussions today; 100 years ago the Allies were planning
how to divide up the Middle East after the war.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the spring floods had come and the scattered action on the Eastern Front was
mostly in small boats since the rivers had burst their banks and the roads were non-existent.
Flooding on the Tigris had also helped prevent the British relief force from reaching the
British army under siege at Kut, and in Anatolia the Russians had taken Trabzon from the Turks,
while sending nearly 20,000 men to fight on the Western Front, where the Battle of Verdun
was now two months old.
I want to look at some naval stuff for a minute first this week.
Last year, Sir John Jellicoe, Commander of the British Grand Fleet, was worried that
small German naval successes, U-Boat warfare, and the need to send part of the fleet to
secondary theaters of the war was slowly eroding British naval superiority. Near the end of
the year the ratio of British to German dreadnoughts had sunk to 17-15, down from 20-13 months
before, and that of battlecruisers was only 5-4. But by now the balance had swung back
toward Britain’s favor. The end of Gallipoli, the addition of the Italian fleet to the Mediterranean
operations, and the destruction of German raiding cruisers had now made clear that the
Grand Fleet had superiority. I read in John Keegan’s “the First World War” that
this month it had 31 Dreadnoughts and 10 battle cruisers while the German High Seas Fleet
had only 18 Dreadnoughts and 5 battle cruisers. The British also had a big advantage in light
cruisers and destroyers.
So it made sense to adopt a passive policy by which the navy would justify its existence
simply by causing the German navy to protect its harbors, but German naval pride didn’t
allow Germany the passive option, and in Germany the navy was junior to the army and not senior
like it was in Britain, and this was a time of great German blood letting in the army.
The German navy needed to gain the esteem of the German people and Admiral Reinhard
Scheer made clear that the navy needed action, and he had been sending the fleet out looking
for it, and this week he got it.
On April 25th, the day after German naval forces bombarded Lowestoft and Yarmouth, came
a battle between zeppelins, battle cruisers, and submarines on the German side, and destroyers,
land batteries, airplanes, and seaplanes on the British side. The airplanes and seaplanes
had flown up to attack the zeppelins that were heading west and flying high. The zeppelins
turned out to sea and the planes followed, bringing them within range of the naval guns.
Four U-boats appeared and began firing at the planes, one of the airplanes was actually
destroyed by fire from a zeppelin and two seaplanes were damaged by fire from the subs.
That sounds pretty mundane, but the timing of this, coming on the heels of the Irish
Easter Uprising, caused a lot of concern and also big anti-German anger in civilian Britain,
but showed that, as long as the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow blocked off the exit from the
North Sea, German operations would be hit-and-run against targets close enough to run from to
home before the big ships of the British could head south and intervene.
And intervening is something the Allies were quite good at.
The Sykes-Picot agreement, named after Englishman Sir Mark Sykes and Frenchman Georges Picot,
was signed April 26, 1916, although some sources say May 9th and May 16th. This was a secret
agreement between Britain and France, with Russian approval, which divided the Middle
East between them. France would control Lebanon, with a capital at Beirut, there would be a
sovereign Arab state in Syria, based around Damascus, which would still be under French
protection. Britain would be in charge of the Port of Haifa and the city of Acre, controlling
the bay that would make a Mediterranean terminal for Mesopotamian oil. Palestine would be under
protection of Britain, France, and Russia combined. France would get Southeastern Turkey
and Northern Iraq, Britain would also get southern Iraq, and Russia Istanbul and the
Armenian regions of Anatolia. The map was divided pretty much with straight lines
100 years later this agreement still defines many of the conflicts of the region. It defined
the borders of Syria and Iraq, certainly helped precipitate the conflict between Israel and
the Palestinians, and was a big turning point in Western-Arab relations since it, in advance,
negated all the promises Britain would make to Arabs for an Arab homeland in Greater Syria.
ISIS has even claimed that one of their goals is to reverse the effects of the Sykes-Picot
Agreement, which would be made public in 1917 to the great consternation of the Arab world.
All that had to happen for it to go into effect was to defeat the Ottoman Empire.
Thing is, the Ottoman Empire was far from being defeated, as they were showing in Mesopotamia.
On April 27th- three British officers, including Captain T.E. Lawrence, soon known as Lawrence
of Arabia, offered the Ottomans two million pounds in gold to allow the besieged British
and Indian troops at Kut to go free and rejoin their comrades. The Turkish commander replied,
“Your gallant troops will be our most sincere and precious guests.” Russian troops were
driving west from Persia, from the Paitak Pass, trying to reach Kut, but were still
150k from Baghdad, and by the 28th Kut was finally out of food.
And looking just a bit to the west, we see some developments at the Suez Canal.
Last month, General Sir Archibald Murray had taken command of the Egyptian Expeditionary
Force, the EEF, which had been put together from some of the leftovers from Gallipoli,
which had finally ended as the New Year was getting rolling. By this summer, the EEF would
number four infantry divisions, a cavalry force, and the Imperial Camel Corps, a Corps
that would number one British battalion, one New Zealand, and two Australian.
Now, it was over a year since the Turks had tried to attack the Suez Canal, but Murray
thought an active defense was his best bet anyhow, so he planned an advance to the coastal
town of El Arish from where his men could disrupt any Turkish movement through the Sinai
Desert. The main issue was, as you may guess, water supplies, so this month Murray had secured
the oasis region between Qatiya and Bir el Abd and had sent small forces out to destroy
the Turkish water supply points that they had used in early 1915, which would limit
any future Turkish desert operations.
Finally learning something from their mistakes in Mesopotamia last year, the British wanted
to have a secure communication line back to the Nile Delta, but how do you create a transport
infrastructure in such desert territory? Well, there was actually a simple solution, wire
roads. Yep, wire roads. Ordinary wire netting was simply unrolled to make a “road” that
prevented soldiers from sinking into the sands when they marched. Clever. But the railway
was the only way for a larger force to travel and it went out to Romani, like 40 kilometers
from the Suez Canal. Thing is, a large force would need a large amount of water, so a 12
inch pipeline was laid and water was pumped forward, and there were storage tanks from
where camels could carry water to forward positions.
Too little water at Suez and too much water in Europe. Rains prevented any big action
at Verdun in the West and the Eastern Front was still flooded.
Though on April 28th, German artillery began a bombardment of the area near the village
of Stavarotche. Back on March 20th, the Germans had lost a series of important trenches there
and a strong attack was now launched to regain that ground, and they captured not only the
territory in question but went on to take a series of Russian trenches. Losses were
high on both sides, but became higher for the Russians when they made a night counterattack
in the face of machine guns. I don’t know the numbers killed or wounded, but the Germans
took 56 officers and 5,600 men prisoner, as well as 28 machine guns and five big artillery
pieces.
And that was the week, a quiet and wet Europe, desperation in Mesopotamia, and action off
the English Coast.
National borders in much of the world are often natural boundaries or have developed
over the centuries between ethnic groups and different peoples or tribes, but the partitioning
of the Middle East ignored this and was completely fabricated from thin air in straight lines.
These boundaries and the failure of the Allies to keep their promises of liberation have,
in large part, led to 100 years of conflict, violence, and death in the whole region. That’s
beyond the scope of this channel, though, but it serves as a huge example of the fact
that the horrors of a war are never restricted to the boundaries of that war, and have far-reaching
consequences that can affect the lives and deaths of millions of people decades, or even
centuries after that war is over. War is hell.
As I said earlier, the Irish Easter Uprising also shook things up on the British Isles
this week. It is an extremely important event not only for the Irish but with a lot of ramifications
for the rest of the world. So, we made a whole special episode about it and you can check
that out right here.
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