Page 80 - All About History - Issue 70-18

Greatest Battles

Hands up!
Approximately 217,746
Ottoman soldiers were taken
prisoner during WWI, 150,000
of them falling into the hands
of the British. For their part,
the Ottomans captured 34,000
Allied troops, a high number
of which perished in captivity.

Doomed ambitions
The Ottoman Empire entered World
War I with the hope of preserving
its existence and possibly even
expanding its territory. Instead the
Armistice of Mudros (finalised on 30
October 1918) saw them agreeing to
let the Allies occupy the Straits of the
Dardanelles and the Bosporus.

A lthough the Ottoman Empire had secretly

allied with Germany on 2 August 1914, it
was with a bombing raid on Russian ports
in the Black Sea on 29 October that year that
it
entered
really
a
of 210,000 men and, in World War I. With an army
Enver Pasha, war minister
hellbent on keeping the ‘sick man of Europe’ from
a
the Ottomans
were formidable foe.
dying,
BATTLEO MEGIDDO Britian tried to tackle it head on but this resulted in
the Eastern power posed,
Recognising the threat
the disasterous Gallipoli Campaign. Having failed to
force a passage through the Dardanelles, Britain took
a different tact, deciding to
exploit the resentment
fomenting within the Ottomans’ own borders.
PALESTINE, 19 25 SEPTEMBER 1918 bin Ali declared an uprising against his Ottoman
by the name of Hussein
an
When
leader
Arab
overlords on 10 June 1916, the British spotted an
Written by Charles Ginger opportunity to hamper the enemy war machine

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