Germany -- Foreign relations -- Turkey; Turkey -- Foreign relations -- Germany; World War, 1914-1918 -- Turkey
Early in January, 1914, Enver became Minister of War. At that time Enver
was thirty-two years old; like all the leading Turkish politicians of
the period he came of humble stock and his popular title, “Hero of the
Revolution,” shows why Talaat and the Committee had selected him as
Minister of War. Enver enjoyed something of a military reputation,
though, so far as I could discover, he had never achieved a great
military success. The revolution of which he had been one of the leaders
in 1908 had cost very few human lives; he commanded an army in Tripoli
against the Italians in 1912--but certainly there was nothing Napoleonic
about that campaign. Enver himself once told me how, in the Second
Balkan War, he had ridden all night at the head of his troops to the
capture of Adrianople, and how, when he arrived there, the Bulgarians
had abandoned it and his victory had thus been a bloodless one. But
certainly Enver did have one trait that made for success in such a
distracted country as Turkey--and that was audacity. He was quick in
making decisions, always ready to stake his future and his very life
upon the success of a single adventure; from the beginning, indeed, his
career had been one lucky crisis after another. His nature had a
remorselessness, a lack of pity, a cold-blooded determination, of which
his clean-cut handsome face, his small but sturdy figure, and his
pleasing manners gave no indication. Nor would the casual spectator have
suspected the passionate personal ambition that drove him on. His
friends commonly referred to him as “Napoleonlik”--the little
Napoleon--and this nickname really represented Enver’s abiding
conviction. I remember sitting one night with Enver, in his house; on
one side hung a picture of Napoleon; on the other one of Frederick the
Great; and between them sat Enver himself! This fact gives some notion
of his vanity; these two warriors and statesmen were his great heroes
and I believe that Enver thought fate had a career in store for him not
unlike theirs. The fact that, at twenty-six, he had taken a leading part
in the revolution which had deposed Abdul Hamid, naturally caused him to
compare himself with Bonaparte; several times he has told me that he
believed himself to be “a man of destiny.” Enver even affected to
believe that he had been divinely set apart to reëstablish the glory of
Turkey and make himself the great dictator. Yet, as I have suggested,
there was something almost dainty and feminine in Enver’s appearance. He
was the type that in America we sometimes call a matinée idol, and the
word women frequently used to describe him was “dashing.” His face
contained not a single line or furrow; it never disclosed his emotions
or his thoughts; he was always calm, steely, imperturbable. That Enver
certainly lacked Napoleon’s penetration is evident from the way he had
planned to obtain the supreme power, for he early allied his personal
fortunes with Germany. For years his sympathies had been with the
Kaiser.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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