Berlin-Baghdad Railway Part Zwo
The "Eisenbahn zum Mesopotamia" ran short of funds, friends, money and time--and helped exacerbate frictions between Europe's Great Powers


German locomotive captured on the Berlin-Baghdad Railway, 1918. From
flickr.

A part of the equation to the success of the Berlin-Baghdad Railway is how the Germans, through the Deutsche Bank, couldn't afford to finish the road without extending themselves to their rivals, the French and British. They altered the course for the Russians, fine, but how could one of Europe's most prosperous nations--perhaps the must industrious--not have the jack to build this railroad?

True, it was in remote, rough country and entailed tunnel building and station construction, but seems to me--like most everything leading up to the historic World War I--this could've been handled better.

I say, to the vainglorious Willy Deuce, build a cruiser or two less and quit this stupid naval race that Tirpitz has put you on, that you cannot win with Britain, and finish the railway where you can subvert their Mesopotamia strategy and run troops right down to Egypt's doorstep. I mean, Willy Nilly and the Junkers are trying to latch on to some grand militarist scheme to capture the national imagination to dilute the power of the Social Democrats and the growing middle class: big ships with big manly guns that go boom-boom. The naval expenditure bills were tough fights through the Reichstag, anyway. Some votes go this way or that way, or somebody does some back-room dealing to emphasize rail strategy over capital battleships...

The British are going to object to the railroad by 1903 anyway and through the French force concessions ,and the rail line will be delayed more than a decade. Germany needs that road built according to schedule.

David M. Castlewitz in his blog summarizes this crucial dysfunction in the B to B plan -- German arrogance overmatched by German undercapitalization:

Oddly, Britian, ensconced in Egypt, their sights on their Indian Empire, welcomed German influence in the region. It acted as a counterweight to French activity in Syria and Russian ambitions. But German dreams were just as vast. By 1903, with the first stretch of the railway to Baghdad complete, the economically sinister aspects of the enterprise began percolating to the top. Following the historic highway of the ancient caravans, emerging from the Taurus Mountain Range onto the plains and through the Cilician Gates and across Amanus, east to Mosul and south to Baghdad, the iron freeway promised to be just that -- free.

Germany had no intention of paying customs as it crossed the borders. From Baghdad, through Anatolia and across Eastern Europe, the route was to be duty free. Germany would control land rights wherever the rails lay and the prospect of the Reich gorging itself on the riches of the Ottoman Empire alarmed the European Powers to the same degree as had Russian military machinations.

Luckily for the European Powers, they exerted more than a small degree of leverage. Turkey's finances were administered by the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, an organization created to the foreign debtors who panicked everytime the Sultan's enemies, ranging from recalcitrant Greeks to plotting Turks, went to war or mounted the barricades. Bonded together by the West's desire not to see the Ottoman Empire dissolve into anarchy and chaos through mismanagement, the organization consisted of representatives from Great Britian, France, Germany, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and Italy. As representatives of the foreign bond holders, they exercised absolute control over the Turk's taxes and expenditures. The Ottoman Empire was not just the "Sick Man of Europe," but an economically enslaved invalid as well.

So the Ottoman Turks are kind of like the South after the Civil War. Lands and businesses are bought up by outside interests and the revenue stream heads elsewhere. Or, how in Richmond, Virginia, when New York Dutchman ex-Confederate tobacco tycoon Lewis Ginter failed to grasp the practicality of the cigarette rolling machine--after he sponsored a contest to have one built.

Ginter sold the rights to James Buchanan Duke, whose American Tobacco firm was denied a corporate license by the General Assembly, and all those profits got siphoned off to New York. Richmond in a fundamental way became a vassal to outside commercial interests.

The Ottomans lacked an industrial base with which to produce the sinews of war, their decentralized government did not promote effective administration and their military was not well led and riven by secret societies (some of which were pan-Ottoman) and low morale. Yet, as one historian has noted, the Ottoman military (with German command assistance) defeated the Allied army in the Dardanelles, held off British forces in Iraq for several years, and kicked out the French, Greeks and Italians from Anatolia in 1920. That they were able to do anything at all is due to the intensive activities of he reformist Ottoman Freedom Society that evolved into the Committee of the Union of Progress (CUP) that in 1907 merged with the Young Turks organization.

A delay in the outbreak of general war prevents the disastrous Ottoman winter offensive against the Russians in December 1914-January 1915 that led to reprisals against the purported fifth columnist Armenians, and the eventual genocide about which Hitler seems to have made a later and infamous observation in defense of his own pogroms, "Who now remembers the Armenians?" Well, in our new world order, neither the Anatolian massacres nor Hitler's rise occur.

Armenians of Eastern Anatolia were farmers and their destruction, in the end, prevented the Ottoman army from receiving proper supplies.

If our alternative time line is put into place, none of that happens. The Young Turks are able to work without the sped up necessities of war.

If I'm waving a bio-chemical-electro-magic wand over members of the Black Hand to prevent their formation, I may as well tinker with the forces involved in the construction of the Berlin-Baghdad Railway.

Victorious Germans in 1914 means no Nazis and no Stalin in 1941.

Basically, it's like this:

A) Black Hand lopped off in 1911

1) Synapses of Serbian conspirators rewired by electro-chemical-bio means; get their shot of  "Scrooge On Christmas Day," realize their terror could plunge the entire world into death and destruction, the Black Hand disperses and collapses in the spring of 1911. Likely the Austro-Hungarian secret police get blamed for causing the disruption by who ever is left, and there'll be other sectarian violence -- these things never really end. 

2) Regional conflicts sputter and spark causing conditions to escalate, but a general outbreak is avoided.

3) General war doesn't occur in 1914. 

   A significant way to avoid the outbreak is to have the elderly and dying Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph die of the pneumonia that came close to killing him during early 1914. The more moderate and contemporary Franz Ferdinand then comes to power; though he has problems with the Hungarians. Still, he would've led massive reformations in the power structure, and may have had to defend himself from more conservative plotters. 

Fact is, by this time the Hapsburg monarchy was played out and the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a working model obsolete. The nation was due to fly to pieces, the only question whether it would peaceably deconstruct, or fall down like a tower constructed of a child's blocks.

B) Berlin-Baghdad Railway

1) Germans find the money to build the road themselves without internationalizing the process. They give further assistance to the Ottomans.

2) Germans somehow negotiate way around political obstacles.

3) Reduce level of capital ship construction to appease British--with more magic wand brain rewiring-- because, in the end, the railroad is more important.

C) War

1) Presume something drags Great Powers into conflict around 1917.

2) Germany axes Schlieffen plan, instead, goes into Russia and sustains great victories.

3) Russian regime collapses.

Perhaps Kerensky takes over. In the historic procession of events, Kerensky repealed anti-Semitic laws and removed the boundaries of the "Pale of Settlement" that restricted Jews to certain impoverished sections. But in this alternative worldline, most of this region comes under the control of the Germans, who, in the historic 1917-1918 timeline were far more gracious toward the Jews living in the Pale than their descendants would ever be. The absence of pogroms against Jews, and citizenship within independent nations, would make a huge difference in future history.

[Image from 1917, Kerensky in white uniform, via danielcutler.]

4) A more liberal-minded Germany liberates states from Russia --

--including Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia, and sets them up as independent nations allied to Germany. A 1917 German soldier gives sustenance to a Polish Jewish boy, in this image.

The realization of nation status of this group of former Russian lands will cause trouble later, once the Russians get a new government and wants its breadbasket back, and access to the Caucasian oil fields. [Image via Daniel Cutler.]

5) Germany locks up the French

German defense in depth prevents French invasion. Perhaps a more amenable arrangement can be made about German-occupied Alsace-Lorraine; however, accommodation with the French will cause outrage among conservative German militarists, and the revanchists among the French won't be happy  until they burn down the Ruhr factories. This is the situation that could bring down the Kaiser and perhaps give rise to a representation, constitutional government like Weimar. Franco-German industrial agreements -- a half century ahead of their time -- result.

6)Britain and Germany get into proxy wars in Mesopotamia and Africa that threaten again to upset the balance. German covert efforts  to aide anti-British independence forces in India also take place. With the railroad built, Germany upsets the balance of power with the Suez Canal that gives Britain complete access to Mesopotamian petroleum. One way or another, here would occur the first oil-wealth conflict.

Given this situation, the 1916 British compact devised with Sharif Hussein, the Emir of Mecca, and the eventual involvement of T. E. "Lawrence of Arabia" may have less probability of working. The tensions within the foreshortened Ottoman Empire and pan-Arabism will erupt, however; it's just a matter of time.

7) Germany meanwhile may see the displacement of the Kaiser and establishment of a less militaristic constitutional republic. With the rise of socialists and the middle class, less desirous of military adventures, there could come a clash between the commercial and Junkers ruling élite -- civil upheaval, if not outright conflict. The communists would have less influence without a ruling soviet in Russia but socialists like Karl Leibknecht and Rosa Luxemburg would have greater influence in the restive population. Other stirring nationalist forces, though, might prove more attractive among returning soldiers and their families. 

Much depends on what all else is occurring. If Germany is striding Europe as a cultural and industrial colossus, and many of its national aims achieved for the most part through economic and diplomatic means, with some off-stage wars, then there is less demand for a violent revolt.


D) No Great Depression. And the world is a very different place...

The world remains troubled; but with a different set of problems, and without the cataclysms of two world wars and Nazis and Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Kim Jung Il and so forth.

The Berlin-Baghdad Railway

There was one--or most of one--and it helped start World War I

Steel road to an alternate world: The Baghdad Railway near Aleppo. Image: Reinhard Dietrich.

The notion seems incongorous like Richard Brautigan's "Tokyo-Montana Express."  

But industrious Wilhelmine Germans, seeking to shore up their status in the Levant, feed their growing petroleum and industrial needs, and prop the faltering circumstances of their new best friends, the Ottoman Turks,  in 1888 founded the euphonious and metaphorically rich Anatolian Railway Company. Sounds to me like an early 1970s guitar-driven band.

Work on the railroad proceeded in a quiet way from 1899 to 1902--the British had German naval power to worry over and didn't say much otherwise-- then the Germans, in order to defray costs, offered shares to their fremenies France and Britian. And thereby hangs a tale which I'll get into later.

Map of nearly completed Berlin-Baghdad Railroad that would have enabled Germany to ship tank cars of crude from the oil-rich province around Mosul had war not broken out. The rail line ran through lands controlled by the German-Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany's ally Turkey, which then controlled what would become Iraq after the Great War of 1914-1918. Not inconsequentially, it would have also outflanked the British and French-controlled Suez Canal, through which Britain's own supply of oil from Iran flowed by ship. [Image and caption from evworld.com] Part of this route was already established by the Orient Express line.

Before He Was The Desert Fox
Rommel's book and his wartime experience would've been very different, if I could have my way...



Erwin Rommel, a decorated World War I battalion commnder, here displaying at his throat the coveted Pour le Mérit. He wrote an operational memoir Attacks published in 1934. [Image: houseofice.tripid.com]

"Rommel, you mag-nifi-cent bastard! I read your book!"

This is what George Patton, at least in the 1970 movie, shouts when he sees that his repulse of Rommel's forces is taking effect. [Note: the actual exclamation occurs at the very end of this clip; at 3:09 and by an inventve YouTuber received a rock music bed. Interesting]




I caught a portion of a chopped up Rommel biography on the History Channel last night and it got me to thinking about Rommel in conjunction with my own alternative history fantasy. That is, somehow stop the historic World War I for occurring as it did. Plan B is for Germany to basically realize the Schlieffen Plan is just a crock, not holy writ, and that with changing political realities, it's best to leave Belgium alone and try a "speak softly/big stick" approach with France. Plan A is rewiring the brains of the Black Hand cell to cause them madness and distraction, long before they assassinate Franz Ferdinand.


Rommel served in France 1914-5, Romania 1916-7 and Italy 1917. If my alternative world occurs, wherein the historical World War I vanishes and becomes something else, in all likelihood Rommel might've just sat out the opening phases of the war, and perhaps most of it, facing down France across the border in a "Phony War" variant. Instead of crossing into Belgium and triggering British retaliation, Germany instead puts its full weight against Russia.

With Russia attacked, this puts Britain and France in an interesting situation. They are both allied with Russia through the 1907 Triple Entente. France could--perhaps would--use this pretext to get its Revenge for 1870 licks in against Germany while the bulk of Wilhelm's army is shipped East. Given Britain's ambivalence about a Continental war unless absolutely necessary, I can't see them sending the British Expeditionary Force to support the French unless something goes very wrong on the battlefield and somehow Britain feels threatened. 

Germany needs swift, decisive victories against Russia --just as they did with Tannenburg an the Masurian Lakes in the historic timeline. Since they have more troops in our scenario, this shouldn't be problem. The key is: what does France do? If they attack, the Germans are in the defense mode, with interior lines of supply. They must either hold, or run the French home, and in any case, Britain will be pressured to declare war and get involved. 

I don't know if the 124th Wurttemberg Infantry Regiment in the 26th Infantry Division of the German Imperial Infantry was among those who would've been sent east -- the German rail road office had by 1913 had worked out such a possibility to a near-science, and would have the unit dispersal in a manifest somewhere. Just looking at his positions at the outbreak of the war, he may have been among those trained to Russia, and Attacks, if he survives to write it, will be about a totally different sphere of conflict and within a changed context.

And as for Rommel's foe, George S. Patton, his life would've also taken a far different course if the historical World War I didn't/doesn't occur. Perhaps there still is a running border battle with Pancho Villa for Patton to get his first taste of battle with; but if the Continental war doesn't evolve as it is in the books, there is little reason for the United States to get involved on the ground in 1917. Patton won't command tanks, at least not in France.

Without World War I to provide the overture for World War II's opera of catastrophe, there's no Nazis. What there could be, depending on which of my streams works itself out, are revanchist and nationalist France and Russia spoiling to get their cracks in at a big, dynamic, successful Germany.

Whether the German Empire would retain the silly old Kaiser is just one of several Big Questions. Germany could sit back, finish building the Berlin-t0-Baghdad railway, and start counting up its oil dollars. But the Kaiser would have to fight Britain for that privilege, too. Another reason to prop up the Ottoman Empire. [Image: projectgutenberg.org]. And the cold war, while the naval arms race between Germany and Great Britain continues, could turn hot.

But a wise and just Germany (not known so much for either characteristic under the neurotic ninny Willy Deuce) should have, upon defeating Russia and establishing a Treaty of Brest-Litovsk arrangement, set up autonomous states -- Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, the Baltic countries, and Finland, the Kingdom of Poland, to provide buffer satellite states. If those nations are empowered and their populations have reason to be thankful for German liberation, Russia will have a more difficult time sweeping back across the steppes to get at Berlin.

Either way, there is bound to be another conflict, probably in the approximate time frame of World War II, but without Nazis or Stalin. [Image: guidetorussia.com].

If the U.S. intervened at that point it might be on the side...of the Germans. But otherwise, there's no Battle of the Bulge, no Patton's Third Army for Barack Obama's grandfather to drive a truck in...see how I bring this around?


Meaningless Barack Kerfluffle No. 178

I do have concerns other than rearranging and altering past events. Like the unfathomable present. Making observations of current politics is wearying because, well, it's so fluid and anything can happen. And there are many score other places to go for such parochial punditry and I have little of note to add. Nothing meaningful will occur until the vice presidents are chosen and the conventions--hardly conventions, more like infomercials these days--have released their balloons and the guys with the push brooms are sweeping up the confetti. 

Despite my personal preference for Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, and what I see as plusses for him and what he'd bring to the O'bama ticket, (Catholicism, anti-death penalty, pro-gun, Virginia swing state, etc.) my gut says Gen. Wesley Clark. 

I know, Bayh and Biden are getting the look over. But I think this is for The Show. Clark's from Clinton territory and isn't a Clinton, he's a career military officer who used to run NATO, comes across well on teevee, and won't overshadow POTUS. There's some lingering dispute about some decision he made around Sarajevo, and deployments, but I don't think it'll be that important. And I think Romney is going to be McCain's. And I'm ready to be wrong, too.

I read this off the Huffington Post, the poster has the intriguing name of "Sepiastar." S/he's responding to Kathy Hilton's remarks about the waste of time and money spent on attacking Obama in conflating his appeal with that of Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton (Kathy's mum)  --who are --Holy Bejeebus! White wimmin! Sepiastar's observations are similar to my own. So I'll let her/im speak for for me here.

"Senator Obama has to walk a thin line that other candidates can gleefully transcend. He's being held to standards that other candidates have not been measured against. If he seems to aggressive, he's labeled uppity, an elitist, and arrogant. If he remains poised and ignores the ignorant rant of his challengers, then he's viewed as weak and passive.

The mainstream media and the US citizens should have been this objective and analytical of every prior candidate they overwhelmingly elected in office for the past 20 yrs. That is the reason why the country is on a decline now, when you had inferior candidates, they were openly accepted.

Now, you have a viable, progressive candidate and his time is wasted on addressing menial distractions instead of focusing on his strategy to progress a stalled nation on the brink of a major decline. No one is even remotely addressing Senator McCain's voting patterns on important matters. He has 20+ years of congressional experience to choose a myriad of issues to attack him on but the mainstream media is obsessed with attempting to "expose" anything that may be negative to link to Senator Obama.

His advisors are providing "safe" strategies that will present major obstacles for him in the upcoming months. I don't think spending all of his time still attempting to expose voters to who he is will be advantageous for him." More here.

Perhaps he's "viable" but just how "progressive" Obama really is remains to be seen. He has taken "bundled" corporate money, despite rationalized protests to the contrary; he voted to renew FISA, and he's saying what he needs to for preventing panic and keep moderates and centrists on his side. I have to agree with Nader, who notes that Obama is speaking words he doesn't really mean in order to get elected --which makes him no better than any other politician, no matter his race.

Stay tuned for the next irrelevent dust up. Actually, don't - and I say this as a part-time consumer of CSPAN, Democracy Now! and Keith Olbermann.  But I feel bad about this at times and have for some days at a stretch not watched anything. So. This summer, take the time when you'd be glued to the news program of your choice and read that Russian novel you've been putting off. Try Dostoevsky's The Possessed/The Devils. It'll tell you more about politics than you ever thought possible. One of my favorite lines--paraphrased from memory: "If you have a guillotine in front of your programme, you philosophically really have nowhere else to go." Like all great books, there's a simple through line: a group of revolutionaries turning in on themselves and killing one of their own.