by Hew Strachan
After the battle Liman blamed Bronsart von Schellendorff for the plan and its execution. He called on Bronsart to resign. Enver protected him, not least because to have done otherwise would have acknowledged that a German, not he, was the de facto commander. Bronsart himself both downplayed the scale of the disaster and claimed that his advice had not been heeded by Enver. Thus German military thought evaded its share of responsibility.78 But the whole of Enver’s conception bore Schlieffen’s stamp. It concentrated strength against weakness. It left weakness to fix strength. It put the weight on planning and timetabling, not on flexibility and improvisation. It set a march programme that took little account of human frailty or of supply problems. And it sketched out the entire campaign right through to its victorious denouement.
The public confrontation on the planning for Sarikamish focused on Liman von Sanders and Enver. The subtler and implicit, but far more important differences must have occurred between Bronsart and Guse. By December 1914 Guse had been with the 3rd army for six months. He did not oppose the attack, as Liman did. Indeed, the idea of an envelopment of the Russian right through Id and Oltu had been germinating at 3rd army headquarters before the arrival of Enver and Bronsart. But Guse did favour a plan that was grounded in reality. The advance from Köprüköy had shown him the problems of forced marches. The 3rd army was capable of short leaps after careful preparation, not of deep penetration. It would need one day’s rest for every three or four days’ advance. Guse knew, therefore, that the terrain and the weather would present far greater constraints than the Russian deployments. The snows had just begun. And yet IX corps was told to leave its coats and packs behind to ease the burden of its march through the drifts. X corps was given the greatest distance to go. Nonetheless, its forward formations were recalled by Hakki to Erzurum so that he could concentrate his corps before beginning. Thus, X corps’s climb was extended. Its equipment was still incomplete. The only comprehensible element in the preparations was the rigidity of the timetable: the absence of transverse links between the three corps and of wireless communications between them and Enver’s headquarters left no other option if a plan of this ambition was to be executed.79
Up until Christmas Eve the Turkish plan unfolded with reasonable success. Hakki talked of a ‘race to Sarikamish’ and announced that he would need only ‘a few hours’ to destroy the Russians.80 In fact the advance of X corps was slow, but it took Oltu on 23 December. The leading division of IX corps entered Bardiz on the 24th. Bronsart now urged a day’s rest. X corps had not pursued the Russian garrison in its retreat from Oltu to Avçali; Hakki’s men were exhausted by the march and the battle, and disordered by looting. IX corps was strung out, the 17th division in its rear reporting 40 per cent of its strength as stragglers. But a Russian prisoner of war told Enver, who was himself well forward at Bardiz, that Sarikamish was only weakly held. Furthermore, the Turks’ supplies were scheduled to run out on 25 December; by then they must have secured the Russians’. The 29th division of IX corps was therefore pushed on to Sarikamish. At the same time Enver issued fresh orders to X corps. He was alarmed by the reports of a Russian concentration at Yeniköy, south of Bardiz; presumably this was the right flank of II Turkestan corps, centred on Karaurgan. Enver requested X corps to move on Bardiz. By now, however, two of its divisions had already set off down the road to Ardahan.
Turkish intentions began to become evident to Myshlayevskii’s headquarters from 20 December. The Oltu garrison reported movements from Id. Yudenich had tried to make preparations for Bergmann to reinforce Oltu. But the threat to Oltu, at least from Bergmann’s perspective, seemed exaggerated. He knew that XI corps faced him; he did not know of X corps’ presence. Not until 22 December had the Russians identified X corps, and on the 24th Bergmann still insisted that its attack was a local affair. Bergmann’s solution was to advance I Caucasian corps towards Köprököy, thus threatening the rear of IX and X corps. For Yudenich, on the other hand, the threat to Sarikamish and to the right and rear of II Turkestan corps was the immediate priority. Indeed, he had already begun moving reinforcements towards Sarikamish. Thus, Myshlayevskii was caught between two opposing interpretations of what was afoot. He compromised, and then compounded the split by appointing Yudenich to the command of II Turkestan corps.81
At 11.30 a.m. on 24 December Myshlayevskii finally cancelled Bergmann’s attack and ordered the withdrawal of I Caucasian corps. On the following day the commander-in-chief was shot at on the road to Mecinkirt. In his subsequent panic he ordered a general retreat to Kars, emphasizing the need to withdraw through Sarikamish before the Turks seized the railhead. Bergmann’s advance, although criticized by Yudenich’s supporters, had retained for the Russians freedom of manoeuvre. I Caucasian corps put pressure on Turkish XI corps, not vice versa; nor had the Turks mastered the Karakurt-Sarikamish road. Thus the Russians still had the advantage of interior lines. The longer Sarikamish could hold, the more feasible became the prospects of a Russian escape.
The Turkish attack on Sarikamish did not begin in earnest until 27 December, two days later. The 29th division, leading IX corps, was misled in its march from Bardiz by the inaccuracies of its maps. The night of 25/6 December was particularly cold. By the morning, the 29th division, without having yet fought a major action, was reduced by frostbite and exposure to half its strength. Furthermore, the Turks, confident of being unopposed, placed three out of their eight mountain guns too far forward, where they were silenced by the two Russian pieces in Sarikamish. Enver therefore decided to await the arrival of the corps’ other division, the 17th, and of X corps. Given his belief that XI corps would stop the main Russian forces from redeploying, the delay seemed acceptable.
Between 25 and 27 December the Russian garrison at Sarikamish was swelled from two reserve battalions, one squadron of cavalry, and two guns, to ten battalions, seven squadrons, and six guns. By the 27th, with the advent of the 17th division, IX corps mustered about 10,000 of its original complement of 25,000. Its attacks, although determined, were held. Not until 29 December did Hakki’s X corps enter the battle from the north. Following its original orders, it had reached Merdenik before doubling back to Bardiz. Its march across mountain peaks, reaching heights of 3,000 metres, where the snow was above waist level, took nearly four times longer than anticipated by its German chief of staff, and reduced its strength by a third. On 28 December it had to rest. On the 29th both IX and X corps attacked Sarikamish, bringing a total of 18,000 men against 14,000 Russians, and cutting the latter’s communications with Kars. In the night the 17th division got into the town, but it was repelled. The crisis at Sarikamish had passed. Enver’s orders of 31 December did no more than express the hope that his troops could hold their positions on the morrow.
The Russian opportunity to turn desperate defence into devastating counter-attack was recognized by Yudenich. During the evening of 26 December the chief of staff of the Turkish 28th division was captured. From him Myshlayevskii learnt the full scope of Enver’s intended envelopment. Sarikamish he counted as lost: his only hope lay in blocking the Turks between Sarikamish and Kars. On the 27th Myshlayevskii was far from the front, in Tiflis, spreading panic and telling his forces in Persian Azerbaijan to fall back. Using the same information, Yudenich came to different conclusions. Both the Turkish enveloping corps were grouped on one line of communications passing through Bardiz; they could not, in the middle of a Caucasian winter, hold their ground long. Moreover, to pull back the two Russian corps while they were engaged with Turkish XI corps risked turning retreat into rout. Therefore, for Yudenich, Sarikamish, far from being abandoned, should become the pivot of a manoeuvre of the Russians’ own. His II Turkestan corps was to hold the line Mecinkirt-Karaurgan-Yeniköy, so guarding Bergmann’s left flank. From his own right he spurred on the two regiments at Yeniköy to march north across mountain passes, and so strike the communications of IX and X corps at Bardiz. The guns of this column opened fire on Bardiz on 30 December.
Yudenich�
��s powers of persuasion had now to be applied to Bergmann rather than Myshlayevskii. Bergmann was a brave, if foolhardy man, committed to the offensive; there is no reason to believe Yudenich’s supporters who bracket Bergmann’s conduct with that of Myshlayevskii’s in the crucial days of 27–30 December. Certainly his intention was to pull back from his forward position, still 13 kilometres south-west of Mecinkirt on the 28th; certainly too he continued until at least 31 December to envisage the possibility of a full-scale retreat back through Sarikamish. On the other hand, he left two divisions to shore up Yudenich’s front. Thus a general retreat was not the only option in his mind. He sent the equivalent of two Cossack cavalry divisions under Baratov east of Sarikamish to link with reinforcing elements moving south from Kars. By the night of 2/3 January 1915 Baratov’s group was near Selim, on the railway north of Sarikamish, ready to threaten the retreat of Hakki’s X corps. Bergmann was slow to take the opportunity thus presented: he had envisaged Baratov’s primary task as that of clearing the Sarikamish-Kars railway. But it seems far-fetched to give the credit for this manoeuvre to Yudenich, given the fact he had no direct responsibility for Baratov and was preoccupied with a desperate battle on the Russians’ other flank. Indeed, by this stage the thrust which Yudenich was advocating was a Russian advance from Sarikamish, a much more limited envelopment and one probably beyond the physical powers of the exhausted garrison despite its growing numerical superiority. Ironically, neither Yudenich nor Bergmann saw the opportunity for Baratov to strike X corps; the idea was Myshlayevskii’s. Thus all three had a role in the great Russian counter-envelopment, and the manoeuvre itself was the product of improvisation and of flexibility, not of long-term planning. But on 6 January Yudenich replaced Bergmann as the commander; Yudenich’s was therefore the version of events that came to dominate.82
Yudenich’s contribution to victory between 31 December and 6 January was nonetheless vital, albeit more prosaic. With IX corps reduced to 1,000 men fit, Enver recognized that his only hope lay in XI corps’ frontal attack between Yeniköy and Karaurgan. He himself escaped through the Russian net to join XI corps. The withdrawal and redistribution of I Caucasian corps left II Turkestan corps holding the line with nineteen battalions to the Turks’ thirty. It did so. On 10 January II Turkestan corps counter-attacked, a column of 1,500 men passing through the mountains on the Turks’ left, covering 3 to 5 kilometres a day across thick snow, to strike at Zivin in their rear. On 16 January XI corps commenced its retreat.
X corps began to pull back from its position north of Sarikamish on the night of 1/2 January. Baratov’s manoeuvre was both delayed, partly thanks to fog on the 3rd, and frontal, principally due to Bergmann telling him to conform to the movements of those on his left. X corps described an arc around Sarikamish and then trudged back along the Çakir-baba ridge. The Russians retook Ardahan on 3 January and Oltu on the 12th, but halted at Id on the 18th. Hakki led 3,000 men back into Hasankale. The remnants of IX corps, taken in the rear from Bardiz and in the front from Sarikamish, surrendered on 4 January.
Only at the very end of the battle had the Russians outmanoeuvred the Turks. Guse concluded that, up until the night attack on Sarikamish on 29/30 December, Enver might have succeeded. But Guse’s conclusion, that the outcome was therefore dictated by the Turks’ inexperience in night operations, seems far-fetched. It was the terrain and the weather, and the failure to plan for these, not fighting the Russians that broke the Turkish 3rd army. The Turks had already lost 25,000 men, and with them their numerical advantage, before they had even made contact with the Russians. The temperature at Ardahan never rose above minus 31 degrees centigrade, and dropped as low as minus 36 degrees. The Russians found 30,000 frozen bodies around Sarikamish alone, and reckoned that 20,000 lightly wounded Turks died through lack of medical care. The precise figures for Turkish losses are nonetheless elusive. Russian calculations included 27,000 prisoners of war and 30,000 dead; 12,000 deserters were rounded up in Erzurum: 75,000 as a total is the lowest estimate; some rise to 90,000. The 3rd army’s effective strength on 23 January was put at 12,400 men.83
The significance of Sarikamish lies not only in the operational defeat, but above all in its strategic repercussions. Enver had broadcast his offensive as the beginning of a great pan-Turanian movement. The panic in Tiflis had aroused Georgian expectations; in the area around Batum the Adzharis had risen in support of the Turks. But most Muslims had preferred to wait and see. The Russian Armenians had declared their hands, calling for popular resistance to the Turkish invasion and raising units of volunteers. Enver’s defeat was followed by ruthless Russian repression of the Adzharis, the Muslim population of the Coruh valley falling from 52,000 to 7,000 between February and April 1915. Elsewhere conciliation was more prevalent than persecution.84
The defeat of pan-Turkism and the consequent loyalty of the Caucasian populations to Russia freed Stavka from worries about its southern front in 1915. However, the strategic ramifications of Sarikamish were more extensive and decisive than that.
Pan-Turkism regained vitality as Russia weakened in 1917. Pan-Islam never recovered. Although pan-Islam was not a primary objective in the campaign, its melding with Ottoman and pan-Turk objectives made it also a loser. The defeat came within six weeks of the summons to holy war. Victory in the Caucasus might well have provided the impetus to turn aspirations into reality. But the conjunction of the declaration and of the catastrophe were too close to be subsequently erased. However considerable the Turkish military achievements of 1915, and however strenuous the efforts of German and Ottoman propaganda, first impressions proved vital. Throughout Asia, Sarikamish confirmed the image of Ottoman decline. It was a major coup in limiting a war that otherwise had only expanded during its first six months. It was a decisive battle.
SUEZ, EGYPT, AND LIBYA
In Germany the planned attack on Egypt was a means to an end; for Turkey it was an end in itself. The Suez Canal constituted the most direct route between Britain and its eastern empire. To threaten it would draw off British and Indian troops that might otherwise be destined for Europe; to seize it would cut British trade and maritime power in half. The project was, therefore, clearly related to the wider objectives of the war.
Turkey, however, had little interest in blocking the Suez Canal per se. Much more important was the integrity of the Ottoman empire and the loyalty of its Arab population. Formally speaking, Egypt was still part of that empire, but since the nationalists’ revolt of 1881–2 the Sultan’s sovereignty had been no more than nominal. Real power was exercised by Britain through its consul-general, Lord Kitchener. To the south the Sudan was governed as an Anglo-Egyptian condominium, although its governor-general and the sirdar of the Egyptian army was an Englishman, Sir Reginald Wingate. To the west of Egypt lay the lands of Libya, Cyrenaica and Tripolitania. Here Turkey had been obliged to cede its sovereignty, but as recently as September 1912, and not without first reminding Italy ‘that to demand that the Imperial Government amputate from itself so vital a member of its Empire was equivalent to proposing that it commit suicide’.85 Turkey wanted back its lost territories.
The fulfilment of Turkey’s aims would still serve Germany’s. But the reverse did not also apply. Conquest of such a large land mass would require considerable planning and a numerous army. The logistical considerations in a theatre made up predominantly of desert argued that preparations on a sufficient scale would be so lengthy as to stretch almost to infinity. What the Germans wanted was action now. Thrusts on Egypt, however ill co-ordinated or weakly mounted, would be sufficient to draw British troops from other theatres.
The grander Ottoman conception created a second tension with its ally. On 2 August 1914 Moltke called for revolution in Egypt. Thus, during the period of Turkish neutrality Berlin looked to Egyptian nationalism to effect its strategy. Wangenheim’s negotiations in Constantinople with Abbas Hilmi, the Khedive of Egypt, alarmed the Turks. Abbas was recovering from an assassination attempt which he attributed to a c
onspiracy on the part of the Turkish government. He hoped to exclude the Turks from his dealings with the Germans. But the Turks had no intention of presiding over the birth of full Egyptian independence. Said Halim, the grand vizier and also an Egyptian, was rumoured to aspire to be Khedive himself. Enver was angered by Abbas’s claim to be Caliph of all the Arabs. The Turks therefore emphasized the spiritual authority of the Ottoman Caliphate, while playing down its corollary—the temporal rule of the Sultan. Both powers pinned their hopes of military success on local Egyptian support, and yet the message they conveyed to the nationalists was contradictory. Germany held out the prospect of full independence, but to achieve that it ended up using Turkish troops, who—if successful—would replace one suzerainty with another.
In any case, Egyptian nationalism, although the fundamental premiss on which the campaign rested, was at a low ebb. Strong enough in 1882 to throw off the Turks, and able in 1921 to command full independence, in 1914 it was fractured and incoherent. The larger of the nationalist parties, the Watanists, simultaneously advocated Egyptian territorial patriotism and solidarity with the Ottoman empire. The contradictions in this position were more evident at the religious level than at the political: the Watanists embraced pan-Islam while preaching the unity of Muslim and Copt within Egypt. Politically, the two threads fused as means and ends: Ottoman rule was a stick with which to beat the British so as to achieve independence. The smaller of the nationalist groupings, the Umma party, was more logical in resolving these conundrums. Its leader, Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid, rejected any political links with Turkey, and embraced British economic and social reforms as a preliminary to formal Egyptian independence from Constantinople. Although isolated from majority Egyptian feeling when pan-Islamic nationalism revived during the Turks’ war with Italy, Lutfi enjoyed British backing. The Watanists, on the other hand, fell into disarray after the death in 1908 of their main spokesman Mustafa Kamil. His followers welcomed the Young Turks’ revolution, but at that stage the Committee of Union and Progress was more concerned to secure British than Egyptian backing, and thus the Watanists received no encouragement in return. By the time the Committee took a more positive line, in 1911–12, the Watanists were in no position to respond. Sheikh Abd al–’Aziz Jawish went into exile in December 1911, and became a spokesman of pan-Islam rather than of Egyptian nationalism, eventually editing Die islamische Welt from Berlin. Kamil’s successor, Muhammed Farid, refused the financial support of the Khedive, broke with his more prosperous Egyptian supporters, and followed Jawish to Constantinople in March 1912. The Watanist press folded. The Umma party’s paper, al-Jarida, survived, its more moderate line earning it British toleration and the British being rewarded with wartime loyalty, even as the Turks advanced on the Suez Canal. Thus, in 1914, when probably most Egyptians were sympathetic to the Ottoman cause, the party best qualified to articulate their feelings was in confusion. At the same time the more resilient of the nationalist parties was the smaller in terms of popular support.86