Chapter 6 – Hans

Many details in this chapter, including some dialogue, are taken from Secrets of the Bosphorous , by, Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time of the events described (published 1918). Morgenthau describes his meeting on 26 August 1914, with Baron Hans von Wangenheim, German Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and events around this time, on pages 53-71.

Some details described by Morgenthau include:

p. 53 – Wangenheim often sat on stone bench, out front of a little guard house at the front of the Embassy, twenty feet from waters of Bosphorus. Here he smoked a cigar and blew smoke towards the ambassadors from France and Russia when they walked by.

p. 54 – Morgenthau states “In those early days, the weather for the German Ambassador was distinctly favourable. The good fortune of the German armies so excited him that he was sometimes led into indiscretions, and his exuberance one day caused him to tell me certain facts which, I think, will always have great historical value. He disclosed precisely how and when Germany had precipitated this war. To-day his revelation of this secret looks like the most monstrous indiscretion, but we must remember Wangenheim’s state of mind at the time. The whole world then believed that Paris was doomed, and Wangenheim reflected this attitude in his frequent declarations that the war would be over in two to three months. The whole German enterprise was progressing according to programme.”

Morgenthau proceeds to outline how Wangenheim was summoned by the German Kaiser to Berlin for an Imperial Conference which took place in Potsdam on 5 August 1914, including the  heads of the general staff and of the navy, the great bankers, railroad directors and captains of German industry. At this meeting, the Kaiser put the question to each man “Are you ready for war?”, and all replied “yes” except the financiers who required two weeks to sell foreign securities and make loans.

p. 55 – Morgenthau believed of Wangenheim that “…he was rather proud of the whole performance;  proud that Germany had  gone about the matter in so methodical and farseeing a way, and especially proud that  he himself had been invited to participate in so momentous a gathering.” Morganthou states that Wangenheim told him these things on an August afternoon.

p.58 – Morgenthau describes meeting and talking with Wangenheim on 26 August 1914 while out for a stroll.

p.59 – Wangenheim discussed with Morgenthau the prospect of offering terms of Peace to France, proposing to “settle for $5,000,000,000, but is she persists in continuing the war she will have to pay $20,000,000,000.”

p. 60 – Wangenheim told Morgenthau that he could close the Dardanelles Strait within thirty minutes, and it would be Impregnable, but he would not close it unless England attacked there first. Wangenheim talked to firing shells at England across the English Channel and the superiority of German army due to generations of militarism.

p. 61 – In a later conversation (6 September), Wangenheim revealed to Morgenthau that Germany planned to bomb English harbours with Krupp guns to stop food supply, and that it would be “very dangerous for the United States to send ships to England!”

p. 62 – In August and early September 1914, Germany did not want to draw Turkey into the war, but “her policy was to keep the Entente on tenterhooks”. Because of uncertainty about where Turkey stood “Russia was compelled to keep large forces on the Caucasus, England was obliged to strengthen her forces in Egypt and India, and to maintain a considerable fleet at the mouth of the Dardanelles.”

p. 66 – Morgenthau states “In August Wangenheim boasted to me  that, ‘We now control both the Turkish Army and Navy.’” Also, Morgenthau states that Wangenheim declared the Turkish warships were in a dreadful state of repair, and he blamed the English naval mission.

p. 70-71 – Morgenthau outlines the importance of the Dardanelles Strait to Russia, and states that “nine-tenths of all Russian exports and imports had gone this way for years.” Morgenthau notes the impact of restricting Russian ammunition supplies and observes that by closing of the Dardanelles “Germany destroyed Russia both as an economic and a military power.”

p. 84 – Morgenthau observes: “The diplomatic game that had ended in England’s defeat was one which English statesmen were not qualified to play. It called for talents such as only a Wangenheim possessed—it needed that German statecraft which, in accordance with Bismarck’s maxim, was ready to sacrifice for the Fatherland ‘not only life but honour.’”