Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination

320 Pages·2014·2.849 MB·English

by  Stefan Ihrig

ATATÜRK
in the
NAZI IMAGINATION

ATATÜRK
in the
NAZI IMAGINATION
Stefan Ihrig
the belknap press of
harvard university press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, En gland 2014
Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of
Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing
Map p. 21 (Figure 1.4) by Jeffrey L. Ward, copyright © 2002 by Jeffrey
L. Ward; from Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret
MacMillan. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and
division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Any third-party use
of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested
parties must apply directly to Random House LLC for permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n-P ublication Data
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-0-674-36837-8 (alk. paper)
For Beate and Johann,
to whom I owe everything

Contents
Prologue: Leaving “Enverland” 1
1 Turkish Lessons for Germany: The Turkish War of
Ind e pend ence as a Major Weimar Media Event,
1919–1 923 10
2 “Ankara in Munich”: The Hitler Putsch and Turkey 68
3 Hitler’s “Star in the Darkness”: Nazi Admiration for
Atatürk and His New Turkey 108
4 The “Turkish Führer”: Nazi Hagiography and
National Education 147
5 The New Turkey: Nazi Visions of a
Modern Völkisch State 172
6 The Second World War and Turkey: Another Spain? 209
Epilogue: First to Stone, Then to Dust 223
Note on Sources and Historiography 233
Notes 237
Ac know ledgm ents 303
Index 307

Prologue
Leaving “Enverland”
T
he year is 1908, a de cade before our main story really begins. The
Ottoman Empire is on the verge of revolution. The Young Turks
are threatening to march on Constantinople if the 1878 Con-
stitution is not restored immediately. Abdul Hamid II, the infamous
bloody “red sultan,” concedes and the Young Turks effectively seize
power in the capital and in the empire. The confl ict between the sul-
tan and the new regime lingers on until 1909, when a countercoup
by the sultan is crushed and Enver Pasha, one of the Young Turk lead-
ers, marches on the capital— the parallels to Caesar’s march on the
Roman capital were not lost on German contemporaries. Hitler was
to say later that it was only Enver’s march on the capital that could
have rejuvenated the Ottoman Empire. That Hitler knew this, and
much more, about Turkey was no coincidence. The events of 1908–
1909 w ere closely watched in Eu rope, especially in Germany, but also,
one must assume, in “Hitler’s Vienna.”1 Enver Pasha himself, the hero
of the Young Turks, took up a post at the Berlin embassy of the Ot-
toman Empire as military attaché later in 1909.
German nationalists, especially in Berlin, celebrated the Young
Turk Revolution and fêted Enver Pasha, so much that some authors
speak of a German “Turk fever” (Türkenfi eber) immediately after
1908.2 German nationalists believed that what was taking place on