297. Gaza in WW1: A Rematch For Gallipoli (Part 7)

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0:29Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durham Hall. And I'm delighted to say we are joined once again by the brilliant Eugene Rogan, author of The Arabs and The Fall of the Ottomans. In the last episode, Eugene, we were talking about the simmering tensions that existed and the way in which the Ottoman Empire was not in favour of any kind of nationalism at all because it was basically a signal of the end of the Ottoman Empire. if you had places breaking away and having their own identity and not referring to the centre, that would be it for them. And we are talking largely about World War I in this episode, which will inevitably lead to the end of the Ottoman Empire.

1:12So can you paint us a picture of this region on the eve of war? What is actually happening and how much are they aware that the war is going to affect them? Well, in a sense, for the Arab world, the First World War was going to bring certain transformative realities home to roost. So the Ottoman Empire, which had for four centuries been the only state they'd ever known, would fall. And national identities would emerge to carve the region at the same time that European imperial powers are going to be defining their own interests in the Eastern Mediterranean. And through all of this, the position of the Zionist movement was going to get an unprecedented boost when it received an endorsement from one of the great powers of the world.

1:53So really, the First World War is the great transformative moment that takes us from the old world of the 19th century and propels us forward to what would be the nation-state realities of the 20th. Eugene, how far do you think anyone in the region was aware what was about to hit them? Was there any sense that they were on the eve of this major transformative step, or did the whole thing come out of the blue? Because it wasn't given that Turkey would join the war at all, was it? I mean, it was a series of missteps, partly by Winston Churchill and seizing of an Ottoman warship in Tynan Weir by the British that made Turkey join the war, which is something that could easily have been avoided in other circumstances.

2:31Oh, and I think that maybe Russian threats on Turkish territory. Remember, the Russian Empire had set its eyes on occupying Constantinople, the Ottoman capital. So there were drivers for the Ottoman decision to enter the First World War, but the Arab world had nothing to do with it. And for the Arab citizens of the Ottoman Empire, they were furious that the state drew them into a war in which they had no cause. And they were terrified because for the first time in the modern history, they were going to go to war with the greatest powers of the age, Britain, France, and Russia. And the first thing that happens in the summer of 1914 is the call for conscription as young Arabs were being drawn into the Ottoman army with great fear and great foreboding.

3:13But no, they had no idea of what lay ahead. No country going to war ever does. If they were to win that war, their situation coming out of the war would have been strengthened. But were they to lose the war, they would lose control over their land, their lives, their territory. Well, one of the things that is on the horizon is something we've covered in a previous empire season on the Ottoman Empire, and that is the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, where James Barr ably held us by the hand and took us through what was a division of a map with crayon, lines in the sand, he called it. So just to remind you, this is a time when the British promised the Middle East to three different parties during the war.

3:54The French with the Sykes-Picot Agreement, they also have an understanding with the Sharif of Mecca, certainly something that T.E. Lawrence thinks that Britain is going to honour, Lawrence of Arabia. And you also have a promise made to the Zionist movement. I mean, this is, again, these fissures and these deals that are being made at the same time to three different parties are never going to end well. There's also, of course, a sense of the British promising themselves a slice of the cake. Eugene, they promised themselves Mesopotamia in Sykes-Picot, don't they? And also in this correspondence that takes place with the through Mecca.

4:28Absolutely. I mean, we use Sykes-Picot as a shorthand for a diplomatic process that really went on right through the four years of the First World War, where I think Britain, France, and Russia, the Entente allies, were really concerned about achieving a balance of imperial power rather than trying to create a stable Middle East in a post-Ottoman world. They didn't even think of the Middle East as a region in its own right. They were really concerned that should they come out of the First World War victorious, they wouldn't then fall out among themselves over imperial claims to Ottoman territory.

4:59And in a sense, by the time you get Sykes-Picot, you've already had one agreement struck between Britain, France, and Russia in 1915, the Constantinople Agreement. You've already had the promise to the Sharifs of Mecca to establish an Arab kingdom in return for an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. And then you have Sykes-Picot, where Britain and France actually want to start putting real lines down on exactly what territory they're promising each other. And this process will continue as Italy, Greece, other powers are drawn into the war, and it kind of culminates in the Balfour Declaration where the Zionist movement comes into the discussion.

5:35So it's a shorthand for partition diplomacy that was one of the diplomatic features of the First World War. Now, in terms of actual action during the First World War, we had an episode with you, Eugene, in our Ottoman series on Gallipoli, when Churchill has this idea of invading the Gallipoli Peninsula, and it's a famous and catastrophic failure. What is happening in Palestine during the early years of the war? Because the British are in Egypt, aren't they? Palestine is basically on the front line, but there's no action in the early part of the war. Is that right? Well, there is action, and the action really causes the British concern.

6:11The frontiers of Egypt and Palestine are at the extremity of the Sinai Peninsula. But the British, recognizing that there is no water in Sinai, you cannot post troops to Sinai, chose to defend Egypt from the Suez Canal. So basically, the Ottomans had free run over the Sinai Peninsula, and they chose twice to try and cross the peninsula to threaten the British position in Egypt. The Ottomans hoped, in so doing, they might provoke a jihad among Egyptians against the British. There had been this call for the First World War to become a jihad, and I think that they hoped that Muslims would respond with more enthusiasm.

6:44But for the British, the critical thing was the Ottomans had massed enough soldiers in Palestine to threaten the Suez Canal. They learned through this that if a hostile power held Palestine, the British could not guarantee the security of the Suez Canal. The second attack by the Ottomans, they pulled cannons to within five miles of the canal and were able to fire artillery very precisely on Allied shipping in the canal. So it really hammered home the point that the security of the canal lay in Palestine, when the first available water resources lay in the wells of Beersheba and Gaza. You mentioned, Eugene, this hope that a jihad would break out in Egypt.

7:23This was actually the Germans who were allied with the Turks. They had an active policy, I think, in Persia too, didn't they, to try and provoke a jihadi uprising against British interests. This was part of a wider German plan. Am I right about that? You are, and I think many view Max von Oppenheimer as a kind of Orientalist agent who'd lived for years in Cairo and got the ear of the Kaiser as having planted the seed of this idea, which really is one of the foundations of Germany's alliance with the Ottoman Empire in World War I. The Germans knew the Ottomans were weak militarily, but believed that through the Ottomans' involvement in the war, it could lead to colonial Muslims rising up in India, in North Africa and West Africa, and in the Caucasus to undermine the Entente war effort in their empires and then lead them to collapse on the Eastern and Western Front of the First World War itself.

8:15So that idea was made in Germany, no doubt about it. But the Ottomans actively believed that the unpopularity of the British in Egypt meant that all it took was a bold gesture by the Ottomans to inspire the Egyptian Muslims to rise up against their British occupiers. And you might see a movement that could begin to defeat the British. And on the other side, you have the idea which Lawrence is encouraging, encouraging the Arabs to rise up and seize power for themselves and throw out what Lawrence is calling their Ottoman Turkish occupiers. Are many people in this region enthusiastic about that idea?

8:54I mean, we've all seen in the movie Lawrence of Arabia, you know, making these wonderful speeches and encouraging the Arabs to rise up. But do you get the impression that in towns like Nablus, and particularly a town like Gaza, that many people are up for Lawrence's idea that they regard the Turks as oppressors and look to the British as liberators? It's an interesting question, and we don't have many documentary sources, but there's a wonderful diary by a notable of Jerusalem named Isan Turjman. And he was a literate, well-educated man, and his friends were as well. And he talks about discussions with his friends about what the beginning of war held for Palestine.

9:29And they seemed to converge around the idea that this would lead to a British occupation. And then they just wondered what Palestine's future under the British might be. That already in 1914. It's interesting because I think at the outbreak of war, Palestinian notables were actively concerned about what their future might be. And if we take just the example of the diary of one notable of Jerusalem in the Ottoman army, Ehsan Turjman, his circle of friends would gather regularly and talk about politics. And they imagined that the British would invade Palestine and take it over. And they were concerned about their future under British rule, just because the British in Egypt hadn't really looked an attractive proposition for Arab people.

10:11So when the Sharif's revolt in Mecca is announced in 1916, Tujman responds with great enthusiasm, and he wishes that movement well, and he hopes that it will lead to the liberation of the Arab peoples. But I think, on the whole, the Sharif's appeal did not really fall on fertile ground. Most in the Arab world were so wedded to the Ottoman order, they could not imagine a future without the Ottoman Empire. And they knew that any disloyalty to the Ottoman Empire could lead to massive retribution. Jamal Pasha, the governor general of greater Syria, including Palestine, during World War I, notoriously hanged Arab nationalists in Damascus and Beirut to set the example.

10:54So I think that the response was muted, but the future was in question, and I think people were nervous. And people presumably were looking also what was happening at the Armenians who had risen up against the Turks and suffered this brutal genocide in 1915-16. Knowledge of the Turkish action against the Armenians only began to filter into Syria and Palestine in the later 1916-1917 period when surviving Armenian refugees made their way through greater Syria and came to settle in towns and villages around Palestine and Transjordan. And the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem had many refugees. In my early travels in Jerusalem, I remember meeting people who'd come from the Black Sea area.

11:35Absolutely. So, I mean, the British are still eyeing Ottoman Palestine because, you know, if you're going to defeat the Ottomans, you've got to do it comprehensively. And they first, they start operating out of the Sinai border town that we have come to know the name of very well, Rafa, in January 1917. But it is really difficult to operate in the middle of ostensibly, what is a desert? You need water, you need to have supply lines. And so there is an idea that actually, you know what, there is a place not far from here. Gaza would be a much better site. And so actually, I think operations are paused until you can have enough men moved up to then take Gaza.

12:16And so you have this sort of extended railway building, don't you, to try and get to Khan Yunus, which again, another name that we know very well through the news, in 1917. Just tell us what a feat it is and how quick it is for the British to set up this railway and how pivotal it is to what happens next. Absolutely. I think first off, the British had set their sights on Gaza from the outset. They recognized the only way that they were going to get there through the arid wasteland of Sinai was to provide water through a pipeline. So basically, the campaign force only progressed at the speed in which they could lay a pipeline and a railway, because modern armies needed provisions and supplies if you were to carry the heavy ordinance of modern warfare, artillery, ammunition, the works.

13:05So really, across 1916 and into 1917, you had this frenzy of laying a railway, laying a pipeline, and advancing British troops at the pace that the infrastructure was going down, while being harassed by Ottoman forces who were taking advantage of British exposure in Sinai to try and inflict casualties on them. You say British forces. Now, who are those British forces? Where I live in Delhi, we have a plaque very near our house, which says, from this village of Meroli, two or 300 young men went off to fight for the British Empire in the Middle East. Are many of these British forces actually Indian?

13:43Yes, good point. Certainly, a number of Indian units are involved in the Egyptian expeditionary force as the Palestine campaign came to be known. But I think that a large number of the troops were actually Anzacs from Australia and New Zealand. You see them in their recognizable hats and whatnot, drafted into units of camel corps, so the cameliers, with their whalers, as they called their horses, into cavalry units because on this landscape with no roads, the only means for an army to advance was on horseback or on camelback. So you've got this parallel track of water pipe and railway heading towards Gaza.

14:25I'm sure the people of Gaza would have seen it approaching because, you know, it doesn't happen overnight. So what is happening in Gaza itself as these two tracks are getting closer and closer to their city? What the people of Gaza themselves know is a mystery to us because it was happening over the further horizon. It's a time where you don't have aerial surveillance. But certainly the Ottomans and Germans were aware that the British were on the move towards the frontiers of Palestine, and they began to establish entrenched positions to defend this territory against what was apparently a very large army.

15:01Yeah. And the man who is sort of leading the charge, if you like, is a man called General Murray, or Old Archie is his nickname. Now tell us who he is and tell us his story. General Murray was an old soldier. He'd fought in the Boer War and he'd actually served in France before being dispatched to Middle Eastern service. So he only took lead of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in January of 1916. And all you could say is he was a very conventional soldier whose experience in the First World War suggested he was the kind of general that was leading to the frontal assaults that led to such high casualties.

15:40And so he would do in Gaza. Well, I mean, he was used to high casualties. I mean, he served in the Second World War as well. So you know the sort of style of combat that he was used to. He was also involved in France in the Battle of the Mons. So at what point does he decide that the only way we are going to take Gaza, we need Gaza, there's no question that we're not going to take Gaza, is to lay siege to Gaza. And I think we have to give Murray a little credit, because history has not been kind to his memory, that in the first battle of Gaza, he did lay out a victorious battle plan. They were delayed by fog when on the 26th of March, 1917, they launched their battle.

16:22They were forced to delay until noon, an assault that they'd expected to take place first thing in the morning just because they had fog. They didn't have the visibility they needed to prosecute the war. And the other thing is we forget our methods of war today mean that instant communication is part of strategy. They had none. And they were sending troops around a wide circle around the city of Gaza. And as it turns out, they were literally on the cusp of defeating Ottoman positions in Gaza to take the city. But they were very nervous because this was literally a horse-ridden cavalry making war in a very arid zone where if they did not get to water at the end of the day, their mounts would die.

17:05A day of battle for a horse means it must be watered or it will die. And so while they were on the verge of taking Gaza, the commanders did not know and feared that having started late, they hadn't gotten far enough, and they called the troops back. And retreating under fire is the worst situation for an army, and the British army suffered terribly, turning the First Battle of Gaza from the brink of victory to the despair of defeat. Eugene, we've talked about who the British troops are, and many of them, as we said, are Indian and Anzac. Tell us about the Ottoman troops. Where are they from? And many of these men, I think, are veterans of Gallipoli, aren't they?

17:41Including some of their commanders. Absolutely. And we have diaries and memoirs of several soldiers who served in both Gallipoli and were on the defense of Palestine. And they were very proud of their record as having driven the British and French out of Ottoman territory in Gallipoli. When these soldiers drove the British away from Gaza, they felt they'd given the Brits a good drubbing and that the Brits would never dare take them on again. And you've got, as you say, General Murray getting a real drubbing in the press and being blamed for this sort of catastrophic failure of British troops having to withdraw under heavy fire.

18:16A second British assault on Gaza takes place. How long after the first and how is it different to the first? Well, poor Murray was, in a sense, a victim of his own braggadocio. Rather than acknowledging how badly the campaign had gone in the first battle of Gaza, he claimed to have suffered fewer casualties in his own forces and to have inflicted far more on the Ottomans than, in fact, he did. And so the high command, having their doubts about Murray's reports, called his bluff and said, if you did so well and the Ottomans are so weakened, then you must seize the initiative and send your troops back into a second campaign.

18:55Now, Murray, before launching a second campaign, called for massive modern arms to help make the difference, to tip the balance in his favor. So this is the first battlefield in the Middle East, that is, in which the British will use gas weapons. They get gas-tipped artillery. They call in tanks, which have been used on the Western front to very good effect, to put a little shock and awe into battle formations. In this way, Murray hoped that he'd be able to send a second campaign force into Gaza that would then make the breakthrough. I know all of the subsequent criticism of Murray and the humiliation of Murray, but are you saying at the time, in between the first and second assault of Gaza, people still back at home aren't clear that this has been a disaster for them the first time around?

19:41So they fully invest in the same man to do it again? Well, we know that the Ottomans were aware. Right, because they were shooting at them. Exactly. There's a lovely anecdote about the Ottomans dropping leaflets to the British saying, you may have won the Battle of Communiques, i.e. claiming to have won this, but we know we beat you. But this message, if it had gotten back to the British high command - They wouldn't have trusted him to do it. They had no one else to go with. He was the commander of the EEF. And as I said, I think they called his bluff. They basically said, General Murray, if you've done so well, then go finish the job.

20:14And so on the 17th of April, a little over a month later, he was at it again, armed with terrible new weapons. And again, remember, these gas-tipped artillery shells, they were able to provide British soldiers and Commonwealth soldiers with gas masks. But of course, the Ottoman soldiers were completely unprotected. Are we talking about mustard gas? You know, the kind of things that we saw in the trenches claim so many lives. And when you say poison-tipped gas shells, what are we talking about? Well, it was a weapon that I think had not really proven its merits in the Western Front, which might be why they were willing to part with so many shells.

20:48I think, actually, the explosion of the artillery probably was destructive on the gas itself. And I don't know whether there was mustard gas in those shells, but getting ahead of our story here, the shells did not seem to have had a lethal impact. Certainly, the gas did not seem to have a lethal impact. Either the explosion of the shells or the winds of Gaza dispelled the gas. But the intention was there. The intention was to use the kind of weaponry that had caused such chaos and carnage on the Western Front here in a place in the desert. Okay, so you've kind of given us a clue, but let's go through it.

21:20What happens next? So, you know, the battle plan is laid. The man in charge is still in charge, and they've called his bluff. How does it go for him? Well, everyone is calling poor Murray's bluff. And here, once again, he lines his troops up and does a frontal assault on Gaza. So he just sends his forces against the entrenched Turkish positions. Now, any scholar of the First World War will tell you that it was always the attackers who suffered the highest casualties. Defenders were dug in. They had more protection. And I think the British hoped that between gas warfare and eight fearsome modern tanks, they would be able to overwhelm Ottoman lines.

22:02But yes, as the spoiler alert already gave away - Yeah, you're telling stories like William does, and I expected so much more from you. Thank you for that vote of comment. Yeah, I'm honored as well. I'm very proud. I mean, honestly - Well, let me tell you about the tanks in Utah. Go on. Because, of course, tanks are a magnificent target. And while I think they raise the morale of the British side, and you have lots of huzzahs being shouted from the front lines as the British follow these tanks towards and over Ottoman lines, they are wonderful targets. And the Ottomans basically had at the tanks with everything they had, artillery and machine gun, and they just started blowing up.

22:41And as the tanks blew up, it raised the morale of the Turkish soldiers and defeated the morale of the British soldiers. And suddenly the Brits found themselves deep into Ottoman territory without their mighty tanks to protect them and being picked off by brutal Turkish gunfire. And I'm afraid the second battle of Gaza ended yet worse for British forces than had the first. Higher casualty figures, the British lost about three times the number of dead that the Ottomans did. About 6 ,500 British killed, about 2 ,000 Ottomans killed. So the second battle of Gaza, an even worse catastrophe. And adding to a record of defeat at the hands of the Ottomans, that starts in Gallipoli, continues in Mesopotamia in the siege of Kut, and now in the second battle of Gaza.

23:26They've lost twice at the gates of Gaza. It's not going well. And these poor Australians and these Sikhs, there are pictures of them on their camels. The tanks are blowing up in front of them. And these guys are exposed on these camels to Turkish machine guns, well-entrenched, well-hidden, and it's a massacre. It was a dreadful battle. And I think from the distance of over 100 years and geography, we have a bit of detachment from it. But if you were in Gaza and you heard the guns, the sounds of battle, then I think the fear must have just been devastating. And of course, in what comes next, Gaza is going to really become a target.

24:03Well, I mean, one thing that does happen is that General Archie Murray cannot rewrite history again in such a short space of time. So news of his failures do finally get out and reach Britain. and he loses his job. He is replaced by a man called General Allenby. Join us after the break when we talk about what Allenby does.

24:31Welcome back. Anyone who has crossed from Jordan into the West Bank will have to cross over the Allenby Bridge. It's one of those old imperial place names that still sits on the map. But who was he? Eugene Rogan. Welcome back. Who was the man after whom the bridge is named? Sir Edmund Allenby was going to prove the decisive general for the British Army's efforts in Palestine. He too was an old soldier of deep experience going back to the Boer War. And he brought to the Palestine campaign a whole new set of strategies. If I were to distinguish Allenby from Murray, it's the conventional Murray who believed in the frontal assault is replaced by Alan B.

25:10the trickster. He was constantly using ruse and subterfuge to fool the Ottomans on British intentions and achieve success where all of his predecessors had failed. And when it came to taking the gates of Gaza, his methods would prove entirely successful. And just one other sort of little side note on that. He very famously took on Earl Haig in a full frontal assault. Haig, who had been sending countless men into the Mincer by just telling them to go over the top and go straight for it. Allenby was very critical of the way Haig prosecuted a war. So he is a new thinker in the British military establishment, a sort of a maverick, if you will.