"Palestine: The Ottoman Campaigns of 1914-1918" Topic

"The campaign fought by the Ottomans against the British in Palestine is often neglected in accounts of the Great War, yet it is fascinating from the point of view of military history and critically important because of its impact upon the modern Middle East. Edward Erickson's authoritative and absorbing account of the four-year struggle for control of Palestine between 1915 and 1918 opens up this little-understood aspect of the global conflict and it does so in a strikingly original way, by covering the fighting from the Ottoman perspective. Using Turkish official histories and military archives, he recounts the entire course of the campaign, from the initial attack by German-led Ottoman forces on Sinai and the Suez Canal, the struggle for Gaza and the outbreak of the Arab Revolt to the British offensives, the battle for Jerusalem, the Ottoman defeat at Megiddo and the rapid British advance which led to the capture of Damascus and Aleppo in 1918."

Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

I did read the same author's account of the Ottoman army in the Balkan Wars 1912-13 called Defeat in Detail (I think, I don't have it with me as I type). It was an excellent read and though they lost that war, the Turks were not the inept bumbling folks they are often unfairly painted as.

Thanks for the info!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Ericksson is a very very good author (he does have some pet peeves that are problematic for me, but they can be forgiven) and pretty much the official Ottoman account for these campaigns. Defeat in Detail is imho the best operational/strategic history of an army I have read.

Will have to give this one a look as well. That said I wonder what new or different does it offer over his earlier "Ordered to Die"

A less downbeat title?

Haha! Well both tiles nicely capture the reality :p