Depth of War - Episode 5

The Middle East was diverse in 1914, with Arabs, Armenians, Turks, and Bulgarians. The Declaration of Jihad brought the Ottoman Empire into World War I, calling on Muslims to fight for the Sultan. Arabs aimed for a unified Arab state with British support. However, the resulting kingdom was smaller than promised due to an agreement with Ibn Saud. Britain and France divided the Middle East, going against promises to the Arabs. America initially had a neutral stance in the war, but shifted to support the Allies after the sinking of the Lusitania and the Zimmermann Telegram. As of 1914, the Middle East was an extremely diverse place. There were Arabs, Armenians, Turks, and even Bulgarians. It wasn't until the Declaration of Jihad that brought the Ottoman Empire, a state that controlled much of the Middle East, into the Great War. The Jihad Declaration called on Muslims living throughout the allied empires to rise up against their colonial overlords, and fight against the Allies on behalf of their Ottoman Sultan, Caliph, in order to score victory for the Central Powers. The Ottoman Sultan had the label Caliph, which literally means successor to the Prophet Muhammad, which was a major figure in Islam. This effectively meant that the Ottoman Sultan was the head of the Islamic world, of which at the time was the second biggest religion and could solidify a Central Powers victory if bounded together on behalf of the Sultan. As recently mentioned before, the Ottoman Empire was an extremely diverse place. Many of these ethnicities wanted more independence. A huge factor to note is that the Arabs in today's world are divided into Arab groups like Syrian, Egyptian, Lebanese, and Moroccans. But as of 1914, these separations did not exist. They considered themselves one single race, and the Arabs living in the Ottoman Empire, alongside Arabs living in the Arabian Desert, aimed to create a unified Arab state. With the help of Britain and their promise to support this unified Arab state, a man by the name of Sharif Hussein launched a revolt against the Ottoman Empire, named the Arab Revolt. It was initially planned when Sharif Hussein sent a proposal to the British officials stationed in Cairo, of which would state that if Britain promised to recognize the state, the Arabs would help them in a war against the Ottomans as long as Britain would give these promised lands to the Arabs. But what did these promised lands look like? It was basically an Arab kingdom that would encompass all of the Arabian Peninsula, spanning up to the modern border of Turkey we share today. If we were to look at the map of the Middle East after the end of World War I, you would notice this kingdom was far smaller than the lands promised in the original agreement with the British. Why did this happen? Well, another Arab official, maybe fully a myth, is the name of Ibn Saud, who would go on to establish Saudi Arabia signed an actual treaty. In the British legal imagination, treaties are far more important than agreements. This effectively meant that Britain produced either the deals to go by, or which they chose in Saud's. To clarify, Sharif Hussein was sorted out by the British. Britain and France would then go on to agree about the Middle East between themselves, of which the borders look similar to the borders of the Middle East known today. The agreement would go against the promises to the Arabs and would put much of the Middle East under European colonialism, effectively ripping them off. When the First World War broke out, America had many ethnic Germans who widely supported the German Empire's cause. This led to America adopting a stricter than partially neutral stance on the war. While America had a large pro-Central population, they were mostly pro-British and would divide their troops for the entire First World War. America kept this stance up until the 7th of May, 1915, when a British-owned futures, Lusitania, was sunk by German B-Boats, killing 1,195 people, including 128 Americans. Distincting alongside the atrocities the German Empire were performing in Belgium, quickly switched the neutral stance of America to a definite pro-Entente stance. As the pro-German population had died down, the minute Germany committed war crimes in Belgium. Although America was pro-Entente, the action was taken against the central power due to a German telegram named Zimmermann Telegram, which proposed that German Allies to Mexico if they declared war on the United States would be intercepted by the British. The British soon played a war-dynamic role in the telegram, and this was the last straw. America soon began randomly pledging troops in Europe in the following few weeks.