I was up at the National Archives this weekend and had a look at document
AIR 1/2317/223/21/108 (A Short history of Turkish Operations in the Great War, including the Dardanelles Campaign. 1914-1918).

My main reason for looking was the hope that being an AIR file it might contain a summary of Ottoman Air Operations in WW1. Needless to say it didn't!

It does however contain 2 files of a translation of the Turkish Official History of the Dardanelles campaign (ground war) done by a Lt. Col. H.M. Cornwall. No maps that I could see but I thought Pals who study the campaign might be interested to know that such a translation exists in this country.

Cheers

Dominic.

Many thanks for this. I'm off to the NA in a couple of weeks time so I'll dig into this in preparation for recce and later tour to Gallipoloi later this autumn.

Does anybody know of any translations of German or Turkish Official Histories?

Chris

Chris,

regarding your query on any translations of the German or Turkish official histories for the Gallipoli Campaign. I have never seen a translation of the German history and I know that a traslation of the Turkish has never been done (worst luck). I do know that the Australian War Memorial approached the Turkish General Staff proposing to have a translation done by noted Turkish historian Kenan Celik but after rather a lot of going backwards and forwards, the General Staff said no, adding that they might produce a translation of their own one day (no date set naturally). Having seen some English language material produced by the Armed Forces, they might do better to let Kenan do it, or else enlist the help of a proof reader.

I understand the AWM still has an interest but that is as far as it goes. Bad luck.

Cheers

Bill

Thanks, Bill. Kenan accompanied a tour led by Chris Pugsley 20 months ago. I'm hoping he'll accompany us again on our next proposed visit late Oct 05. Kenan's a terrific fellow with huge knowledge. He and Chris Pugsley, together - awesome!

Chris

Dear Chris,

As far as I know the Turkish General Staff has JUST published the official history of the Gallipoli Campaign.
A friend of mine has a copy. I will get all details this afternoon and let you know.

Eric

Eric

I keep my fingers crossed (as, doubtless, will many others on this Forum) that there is a translation available. Very grateful, therefore, if you keep me/us posted on this.

Chris

Dear All,

There is indeed an English version of the official history.

To lay hands on a copy is another story.

My friend is a tourguide here in Eceabat and got a copy (FOC !!) via an official channel.

We have now send a "request" asking where we (and you for that matter) can buy a copy ... don't expect an answer yesterday but I sure will keep you posted ...

Maybe Bill (Hello Bill) will find out through other channels in the meantime.


eric

Eric

I hope to be at TJ's later this year. It would be great to get hold of a copy before then. We'll see.

I note your web site is under construction. Please PM me when it is up and running.

Cheers

Chris

I'm sure there will be a queue of potential buyers - how aboput a bulk purchase Chris!

Thanks to all for alerting us to this.

Martin

Ich dien

Chris

Hi all,

my wife is up in Istanbul at the moment and will be going to the military musuem Wednesday (the museum is closed Tuesdays) to try and get her hands on copies of the new history.

I will let everyone know the price of the tome when I find out. Usually, General Staff publications are not too expensive. Serpil (my wife) is also going to ask about whether the book can be ordered and what has to be done so everyone can get their hands on a copy.

Cheers

Bill

Bill and Serpil



Cheers for this. Here's hoping for a positive outcome.

Chris

Just like to register my interest in acquiring one of these histories.

Quote: Just like to register my interest in acquiring one of these histories

Ditto

With thanks
Michael D.R.

Quote: Just like to register my interest in acquiring one of these histories

Ditto.

Cheers
Geoff S

Hi all,

right, here is the story so far with the English language version of the Turkish history of the campaign. My wife contacted both the General Staff's publication office and the Army Museum in Istanbul. Both said they had never heard of the book.

I then checked with the guide that Eric mentioned who said that such a book exists. Being a truthful soul and a gentleman, he was naturally correct. The book is an abridged version of the three volume Turkish history, brough out recently.

Guven the guide obtained his by writing direct to the General Staff. He is now trying (as is Serpil) to find out how we can get multiple copies of the book (a touch difficult if the publishers deny it exists).

The quality of the English isn't too bad, though it could do with some proof reading from what I saw.

I'll update when I have more news.

Cheers

Bill

Bill



More and more intriguing. Does any Pal know (or has a mate who knows) a member of the UK Defence Attache's staff in Ankara - they might be able to access such a book through their Defence Ministries contacts.

As to proof reading, any quality will do as long as something becomes available.

It's getting exciting. I wonder whether I might have a copy in time for my autumn trip? here's hoping!

Chris

Bill,
I'd of course be interested in a copy as well, if it ever makes it off the 'phantom' list. Say hi to Serpil for me!

Possessing an incomplete set of the Birinci Dünya Harbi’inde Türk Harbi series, I have followed this discussion with interest. I was able to speak with the Turkish liaison officer here at Fort Leavenworth on this translation. He is fairly certain that no English translation has been issued by the Genelkurmay.

In discussion with him, he feels it is possible that an outside organization (possibly a university) might be offering such a translation. However, they would need permission from the Genelkurmay. Again, he has not heard of any such request. He feels it is more likely that this is a separate history of the campaign done by a private source.

If such a translation exists, my guess it is of Birinci Dünya Harbi’inde Türk Harbi V. Cilt Cannakkale Cephesi Harekâti Özetlenmis Tarhi. This is the condensed, one volume treatment of the three part series from the official history.

If possible, can Bill (aka Eceabat) supply any details on title, publisher, date, or anything else that might help identify this book. I am certainly interested in a copy if available (my Turkish isn’t great). There was a translation done by Cmdt Larcher of the French Army of some Turkish General Staff histories written in the 1920s. One on the Cannakkale Campaign was translated into English by a General Staff student here at Leavenworth in the 30s.

Please include me in any findings!

Jeff

As Bill & Serpil found it is extremely difficult to try and find a copy - places such as the army museum in Istanbul deny all knowledge and a round of numerous booksellers (new and 2nd hand) in Istanbul met with the honest admission that it is generally very difficult to obtain Turkish General Staff publications.

I have, however, seen a copy of the volume in question so can confirm that it does exist and is dated 2004 and is published by the Turkish General Staff. I believe there is a photocopy of parts of it in the UK as I write. Shame it's not available on CD at present!

Martin

Martin,

Would it be usefull if I scan it ...

eric

PS : You're right it has been publised officially as there is even an official number : YAYIN NUMERASI 2004/125

And the ISBN is 975 409 3075

If anyone can find it anywhere please tell us all!

Nothing on Abebooks. Robert

Martin, Eric, Thanks for the information. I will ask about this book through official channels. I will also discuss this book with the CARL staff here at the college. I hope to have some answers by the end of the week.

Jeff

All

I have confirmed that the book is available and have some initial contact information. I just sent an e-mail to get a method of ordering and price. I am working this informally, so I don't know whether I can get results. If nothing else, I have asked whether a local bookdealer in Ankara can handle the purchase for us.

More to follow (I hope)!

Jeff

Jeff - in that case can I register my interest also.

Many thanks.

Various enquiries made by myself and others of many book outlets in Istanbul seemed to confirm that the Turkish General Staff publications were typically not availabe through the book trade in general, though there may be the odd exception. I believe "Eceabat"'s wife Serpil drew much the same result when she trawled Istanbul on our behalf.

Martin

It has been my experience that one must travel to Ankara to purchase copies of the official histories. There is a bookstore in Istanbul and another in Ankara with which I have done business. Both have on occasion 'gone shopping' in Ankara for titles in the WWI and Turkish War of Independence series for my library.

I am fairly sure the book in question is a translation of the book below. It is a good overview of the campaign and adds much to the Turkish side of the fight. However, it is not as detailed as the Turkish three volume set, or the UK and Commonwealth histories. It does provide excellent OB data, and some insight in the battles themselves.

Jeff

Click to view attachment

I would also like to register my interest please, would love to get hold of a copy. I was also scouring the bookshops of Istanbul a couple of weeks ago with no luck. The Military Museum weren't very helpful, the staff at the front desk having no knowledge.

Charles

Jeff,

If a bulk purchase is a possibility, please count me in.


Regards,
AGWR

I believe that it is a translation of the 2002 volume with some additional material.

Count me in too if we can purchase a few copies.

Me too!

Update

I have not received any response to my query through military channels. I will send another e-mail, but I am not sure it will get results.

I contacted a bookstore in Ankara with whom I do business. The proprietor will go to the historical office today and see if he can buy the books. I have asked for 11 copies. If he can purchase the copies, you can either deal directly with him (he is on the internet and takes credit cards), or I can buy them all and we can work payment out. He has been able to get books for me from this office before, so there is hope.

More once I know the result.

Jeff

Thanks Jeff, I've got my fingers crossed!

The news

The bookstore in Ankara was able to get the books. I will have 11 copies of the book coming to me. The book will cost $30 plus postage to your address. With the number of books involved, the proprietor didn't wish to wait for indivdual orders. I should have the books in about two weeks time.

If you wish a copy, please PM me. I will give you my regular e-mail address so we can communicate. I need to put together a list. I don't wish any payment until I have the books. We can discuss payment once you have reseerved a book. I will post a scan once I have the book.

Thanks!

Jeff

Excellent news Jeff.

I have just e-mailed you direct. I hope you included me in your count.

Cheers
Geoff S

Geoff

Yes, I received it!

All

Please include your mailing address (and e-mail if you wish to communicate direct) when you PM me. This way I can get the mailing labels prepared. I will get a postage cost to the UK (where I assume most of the individuals responding reside) both air and sea.

Jeff

Okay, the bad news.

The proprietor had purchased two copies yesterday (not knowing how many I would ask for). He returned today and discovered they only had one more copy. The book is basically out of print. I have paid for the three books and asked them to be shipped.

My military contact in Ankara answered yesterday. I will have him ask whether the book will be reprinted. I had been promised a copy or two through other channels, but I won't know whether I will get them until July (I am worried that these copies had not been set aside and no books are left).

Not much else I can do. The store owner was apologetic as the officer at ATASE never mentioned that the supply of the books was almost gone. I am trying to figure out a fair way of deciding who should get a copy.

Sorry

Jeff

Jeff,

Do you have any idea of the number of pages involved? I was wondering about the feasiblity of scanning / photocopying / OCR.

Kate

I am assuming that the book is a translation of the summary volume. That book is 380 pages. I have found that Turkish tends to translate at the same length as English. There are six pages of photos which will not copy well (the photos found in the Turkish officials tend to be poor photocopies). Five of the OB charts and one data chart are multi-fold pages.

The books are paperbacks with glue binding. They don't take hard handling well. Several of my older volumes (70-80s) have loose pages. Decent photocopying (pages flat) will be hard without damaging the book. When I work with them, I never open the book flat.

If making copies is an option, I would recommend disassemblying a book for the best results (especially for OCR). The large fold-outs are 35cm x 24cm. The pages themselves are 24cm x 16.5cm (this latter is the standard size of the Turkish officials. Even my volumes from the 60s are this size). As I am not familar with standard European paper sizes (I do know they are different from US), I don't know how these sizes match.

Hope this helps.

Jeff

Jeff,

I've just PM'd you, but hadn't at that time read the bit about there being no more copies.
I only got to the bit about there being 11 copies, and fired off the message immediately.

Oh well. If any more are printed, and you hear about it, I'll still be interested.

Guys;

I was just steered here by a friend. I had posted a question about the three-volume set on a WW I sub-forum of the Axis History Forum.

I had heard about the three volume set, but without details. Can I pose a few questions on this topic?

The three volume set is an English language history of the Dardanelles campaign? Or of the entire war?

The one volume book is a condensation of the three volume set?

I can certainly agree that the book is likely to self-destruct. I borrowed a new copy of the Lone Pine Diary in English that came out recently, in paper covers (Turkish manufacture) and the glued binding quickly self-destructed, despite careful handling.

I will ask my wife, an international book purchasing librarian for a major research library, to look into this, and 1) see where this book can be found in the US (I don't know if she can do this for abroad, and she just did lose this ability for German language books), and 2) what she can shake out of the tree re: purchasing, although it sounds like you guys have this well covered.

Got to run, but I was in the Military Library at the Askeri Muze in Istanbul recently, and caged an interview with the Turkish colonel CO of the library.

Bob Lembke

Guys;

The last was my first post, so I didn't want to go on at length and have the damn thing vanish into the Black Hole.

I got to see the colonel by mentioning to the guides (army EM, although they are in blazers, not uniforms) that my father fought with the Turks at Gallipoli. He was a volunteer Pionier serving in the German volunteer Pionier=Kompagnie that served there. He seems to have served at the ANZAC bridgehead. Unfortunately I only have a bit of his oral history about it, but a letter of his father's proves to me that he was there.

I have read what I could find in English, German, and French. Rather thin. Turkish is murder; my super-wife, who reads 11 languages well, recently started in on Turkish, but veered off to Arabic.

By the "German official history" I assume that you mean volume 16 (both editions) of the Schlachten des Weltkrieges series. Read it several years ago, I have it in both editions. Don't remember it too well, have notes, or could peek in it again. That series of books is rather variable in quality.

A lot of you guys seem to really be up to speed in this difficult area. I might suggest a bit of a swap, if one of you are up to speed here (in most English-language books on the Dardenelles the defenders could have been Martians) but don't read German; I could ask a few questions and be willing to poke thru the German to look for particular points in trade.

Does anyone offhand know which volume of the other principal "official history" series, Weltkrieg 1914-1918?

Bob Lembke

Guys;

Turned the ISBN # over to my wife, the self-described "librarian-of-fortune", who ran a search across the US, and did not get a hit. She said if I can get the title and/or the author's name (probably none) she could try again. She said that it does not necessarily mean anything, but to me it suggests that there probably are not many copies lying about in US libraries.

Bob Lembke

Bob

I hope I understood your questions, so here goes:

The three-volume history we are discussing are the ones published by the Genelkurmay in Ankara. The volumes are:

Birinci Dünya Harbinde Türk Harbi Çanakkale Cephesi (Haziran 1914-25 Nisan 1915) Vncu Cilt 1nci Kitap. Ankara: Genelkurmay Basimevi 1993 (The Dardanelle Front June 1914 to April 1915 Volume 5, 1st Book)

Birinci Dünya Harbi'nde Turk harbi Çanakkale Cephesi, Amfibi Harekât Vncu Cilt 2nci Kitap. Ankara 1978 (The Dardanelle Front the amphibious operations Volume 5, 2nd Book)

Birinci Dünya Harbi'nde Turk harbi Çanakkale Cephesi Harekâti (Harziran 1915 – Ocak 1916) Vncu Cilt 3ncü Kitap. Ankara 1980 (The Dardanelle Front Operations June 1915-January 1916 Volume 5, 3rd Book)

A bit later, the Genelkurmay issue a summary volume of the campaign. Most of the material was taken from the three-volume set.

Birinci Dünya Harbinde Türk Harbi Vncu Cilt Çanakkale Cephesi Harekati 1nci, 2nci, ve 2ncu Kitaplarin Ozetlenmis Tarihi (Haziran 1914-9 Ocak 1916) Ankara: 1996 (The Dardanelle Front Operations a historical summary of all three books June 1914 to January 1916).

Recently a forum member discovered that the Genelkurmay had published a one-volume history of the campaign in English. We currently believe it is a translation of the summary volume above with some additional material.

A Brief History of the Canakkale-Campaign in The First World War (June 1914 - January 1916) Ankara 2004.

Like all Genelkurmnay publications, this volume is difficult to obtain. Newly published, it hasn’t (IMO) hit the used books stores. Print runs are usually small, and the books aren’t well made. My copy of Lone Pine is much better than the ATASE books, but I think I have a copy from the first print run. If your wife can find copies of this volume, many here will love her (symbolically of course).

The Schlachten des Weltkrieges series really isn’t considered the official history (I believe it was privately published, but will check my copies at home). The Dardanelles volume is rather slim (as all of that series) and provides a marginally useful summary of the campaign. There are (IIRC) 36 titles, of which four have two books each (making a total of 40 books).

Der Weltkrieg 1914-1918 is also marginal in its coverage of this campaign. German participation was very limited, only a few artillery units and the members of the German Military Mission. Since it wasn’t a ‘German Campaign’ (Sanders was the Ottoman 5th Army Commander), it is addressed only in passing. I will check my set tonight as well, but it should be somewhere in volumes 7-10. While I haven’t heard of a volunteer German unit at Canakkale, I will check the Turkish official to see if they make mention of it (you have peaked my curiosity).

I will certainly avail myself of your services. My German is rough, and the script adds another layer of difficulty. Letzter Kreig (the A-H history) is much easier on my brain.

I hope these answers help.

Jeff

Bob

I missed one of your questions. The three volumes only cover the Canakkale Campaign. The complete Turkish official WWI history is 20 volumes, of which two are summary volumes. I posted a complete list in the 'Other' forum in the topic folder 'Official Histories'.

Jeff

Jeff;

Many thanks for your well-organized and comprehensive layout of the series. I will print it off and ask my wife to run these thru her data systems, which generally are not available to ordinary mortals (like us). Then we will have an idea as to where these can be found in the US. I don't know if she has a system that covers the UK. A recent up-grade of her master computer system has cut her off from her German database, which in one "file" covers Germany, Switzerland, and half of Austria.

The "Schlachten" series was produced by the Reichsarchiv, but were generally produced by individual authors, with a resultant wide range of style and perhaps quality. For example, the Antwerpen volume is, in my opinion, really excellent, writen by the Chief of Staff (or "Ia") of the besieging III. Reserve Armeekorps, absolutely the best person on earth to write it (also was the guy on the Generalkommando that my grand-father, the "Id", reported to.), while, for example, some of the Verdun volumes are more poetic than a work of history. I have, with duplicates, about 60 of them; I still lack an example of one volume.

The "Weltkrieg" series is at a different scale of detail, sort of like history written by a committee, which probably is what it is. I only have a few, will buy a few more, and can keep those that my wife's library has at home at some length (The lovely 13 month "faculty" loan period.)

For most of my purposes, the "Schlachten" series often has the detailed tactical descriptions that are useful for my writing, the "old shoot-em-up".

Turkish is really something, isn't it? I have four languages down usefully, and useful bits and pieces of about half a dozen more, and I have not seen anything like it. My wife, with the ability to read 11 languages well, and some dozens badly (but she does it all day long, for 20 years) tried to start it, and peeled off to Arabic in disgust. Probably the most difficult major language in the world, certainly as a spoken language.

I should have some info on these books by tomorrow evening.

Bob Lembke

PS: If I am too chatty give me a hint.

Bob

Don't worry, chatty is good.

Yes, Turkish is a challenge. I don't try to speak or write; I only try to read. Simplier that way. Even so, I am not very good at it. Don't use it enough to retain what I have learned. Always go through the same learning curve when there is a need to find something in the books.

RE Der W. The Dardanelles Campaign is discussed in Volume 9 (173-193).

RE: German engineers. Interesting enough, a German engineer company is shown on the 5th Army OB in August 1915. It was assigned to the Güney Grubu (Southern Group) at group level. No other designation or information is provided. I did a quick scan of the text to see if it is mentioned, but no luck. It appears that it might not have arrived until after the battles in early August.

Have a great evening!

Jeff