Enver Pasha

Kazakhs, Turkmen, Azeris, you name it.

But al-Rashid, during the First World War, he served on the general staff of the Ottoman Empire with Enver Pasha, who was one of the young Turks, for those who know the history.

and during his time there two things happened he developed a strong admiration for otto lehman von sanders who he met sanders was this prussian aristocrat who was a non-observant racial jew who became this hero of the ottoman empire after spending his life there and and and training their people and waging war when the ottoman empire went to war and commanded turkish troops el rashid wrote a biography of sanders later that got published in berlin in the 30s that got a lot of fanfare anyway during the war during the great war he converted to islam and then he that's when he became haru and el rashid bait um After his conversion, he met up with...

As the Great War was ending, there was a whole glut of POWs from the Russian Empire at Wunsdorf camp.

It would be a mistake to imagine that Mustafa Kemal's role within the CUP during these years is that of an undisputed leader.

The committee's structure in Macedonia is dominated by a somewhat younger and, in the estimation of many historians, more moderate group of officers, men like Enver Bey, whose charisma and connections give him an outsized influence within the organization's inner councils.

Mustafa Kemal, for all his organizational talent and his evident sincerity, occupies a more contested position, respected for his intellect and his earlier initiative in founding Vatan ve Hürriyet, but also regarded by some within the CUP's leadership as a man whose independence of mind makes him difficult to fully trust with the movement's most sensitive secrets.

There are tensions, subtle but real, between Mustafa Kemal's instinct to question and challenge the strategic judgment of the CUP's central figures and the organization's need as a clandestine movement facing existential risk from Hamidian surveillance for absolute discipline and unity of purpose among its members.

He has, after all, given years of his life and risked his career and quite possibly his life to bring about exactly this outcome, and there can be no doubt that he shares in the genuine exhilaration that sweeps through the ranks of the CUP and its sympathizers in these weeks.

But he watches, too, with the same clear-eyed skepticism that has always distinguished his political judgment from the more romantic enthusiasms of some of his comrades as the revolution's leadership begins to organize itself in ways that leave him, once again, somewhat at the margins of the movement's inner councils.

The men who emerge as the public faces of the CUP's triumph in the summer of nineteen oh eight, Enver Bey most prominent among them, command a level of popular adulation and organizational authority that Mustafa Kemal, whatever his earlier contributions to the cause, does not share.

There is, in the private correspondence and later recollections of those who knew him during this period, a discernible strain of frustration in Mustafa Kemal's assessment of how the revolution's aftermath is being managed, a sense that the CUP, having achieved its central demand of constitutional restoration, is proving less disciplined and less strategically clear-eyed about the harder work of actually governing than it had been in the conspiratorial years leading up to the revolt.

Chapter 4.

A Letter to Enver Pasha.

Rochefort, September 4th, 1914. my dear and great friend forgive my letter for the sake of my affection and admiration for yourself and of my regard for your country which to some extent i have made my own in the country round tripoli you played the part of splendid hero without fear and without reproach holding your own ten men against a thousand in thras it was you who recovered adrianople for turkey and this feat the recapture of that town of heroes you effected almost without bloodshed everywhere with the violence necessitated by the circumstances you suppressed cruelty and brigandage i witnessed your indignation against the atrocities of the bulgarians and you yourself desired me to visit in your service motor-car the ruins of those villages through which the assassins had passed well i will tell you a fact of which you are doubtless yet ignorant in belgium in france and moreover by order the germans are committing these same abominations which the bulgarians committed in your country and they are a thousand times more detestable still for the bulgarians were primitive mountaineers under the influence of fanaticism whereas these others are civilized civilized so fundamental is their brutality that culture has no grasp of their souls and nothing can be expected of them turkey to-day desires to win back her islands this point no one who is not blinded with prejudice can fail to understand but i tremble lest she should go too far in this war Allas, well do I divine the pressure that is brought to bear upon your dear country and yourself by that execrable being, the incarnation of all devices of the Prussian race, ferocity, arrogance, and trickery.

Doubtless he has seen good to take advantage of your fine and ardent patriotism.

The only peculiar feature is the headgear.

a curious, uncouth-looking combination of the turban and the German helmet, devised by Enver Pasha to combine religion and practicality, and called it in his honor Enver.

With commendable thrift, Enver patented his invention, and it is rumored that he has drawn a comfortable fortune from its sale.

An excellent uniform it is, on the whole, but to our disgust we found that in the great olive-drapped pile to which we were led there was not a single new one.

Of these, about 20,000 were Antolian Turks, trained soldiers, splendid fighting material, as was shown by their resistance at the Dardanelles.

The rest were Palestinian Arabs, and very inferior troops they were.

the arab as a soldier is at once stupid and cunning fierce when victory is on his side but unreliable when things go against him in command of the expedition was the famous jemal pasha a young turk general of tremendous energy but possessing small ability to see beyond details to the big broad concepts of strategy Although a great friend of Enver Pasha, he looked with disfavor on the German officers, and in particular on Bach Pasha, the German governor of Jerusalem, with whom he had serious disagreements.

This dislike of Germans was reflected among the lesser Turkish officers.

During our most depressed moments, however, we could always raise a smile over the thought that we were the honoured guests of Turkey.

Enver Pasha himself had told us so at Rosel, where we halted on our four-hundred-mile march across the desert after the fall of Kut-el-Amara, so it must have been true.

At the time we write, this unscrupulous adventurer, Enver, a man of magnetic personality and untiring in his energy to further his personal schemes, has but lately fled to Caucasia.

He is a young man, and having held a position of highest authority in Turkey for some years, presumably a rich one.

Horrified at such ill-timed levity on the part of the onlookers, he seized upon a major standing by and had him escorted to his room, there to be confined till Twefik's anger should abate.

To the Turk this tank was the latest thing in fire engines.

To carry the story to its happy ending we may add that after three days of confinement the major addressed a letter to H.E. Enver Pasha through the commandant which ran somewhat as follows.

Sir, I have the honour to report that, owing to the close confinement to which I have been kept, my health has now entirely broken down.

If America would only take the initiative in this respect, he shrugged and smiled, well, we would support her with our whole heart.

End of section 7 No man I ever met lived so completely in the immediate moment as Enver Pasha.

The past he puts behind him, the future he leaves to Allah.

His only hero is Napoleon.

kihan in a lesser degree has many of those qualities of lenin which make him a leader of men if he had been as great a man as lenin he would have thoroughly purified the church and led a great religious revival in russia the section x chicherin commissar of foreign affairs and his subordinates gregory vassilievich My first interview with Chicherin was at midnight, and my last interview was at five in the morning.

This happens to cover a fairly complete rotation of the official hours of the Soviet Foreign Office.

One evening at a box party in the Bolshoi Theater, Enver Pasha remarked, I have to kill time somehow for three hours after the play.

halil pasha and i have an appointment with mr chicherin at two o'clock in spite of his smiling oriental inscrutability and a palpable diplomatic duty to conform to everything russian one could feel an amused disapproval of such official unconventionality this eccentric habit of turning night into day with every floor of the foreign office blazing like a lighthouse in a city which by municipal decree is put to bed before midnight in order to save fuel naturally creates an almost fantastic air of whimsicality mr chicherin makes no excuse for this vice as one of his secretaries very cleverly phrased it he simply finds night more harmonious for his tasks than day and with that lack of consideration which dreamers always consciously or unconsciously assume he forces his whole staff to follow his example

During our most depressed moments, however, we could always raise a smile over the thought that we were the honored guests of Turkey.

Enver Pasha himself had told us so at Mossul, where we halted on our four-hundred-mile march across the desert after the fall of Kut-el-Amara, so it must have been true.

At the time we write, this unscrupulous adventurer, Enver, a man of magnetic personality and untiring in his energy to further his personal schemes, has but lately fled to Caucasia.

He is a young man and, having held a position of highest authority in Turkey for some years, presumably a rich one.

Horrified at such ill-timed levity on the part of the onlookers, he seized upon a major standing by and had him escorted to his room, there to be confined till Tewfik's anger should abate.

To the Turk this tank was the latest thing in fire-engines.

To carry the story to its happy ending we may add that after three days of confinement the major addressed a letter to H.E. Enver Pasha through the commandant which ran somewhat as follows.

Sir, I have the honour to report that, owing to the close confinement to which I have been kept, my health has now entirely broken down.