The Impact of the Confiscation of the Turkish Dreadnoughts and of the Transfer of Goeben and Breslau to Constantinople upon the Turkish Entry into WWI

Abstract

When Winston Churchill then First Sealord of the Royal Navy had the two Dreanoughts, ordered and paid for by the Ottoman Empire before World War I, confiscated he created the preconditions for the Goeben-and Breslau-affair and the entry of Turkey into the war. This “act of piracy” (B. Tuchman) shifted the weight from the so far stronger neutralists to the bellicists with in the Turkish Government towards war minister Enver. Without this mistake Goeben and Breslau would never have sought shelter in Turkey. And these two men of war were the reason for Turkey’s entry into the war when they bombarded Russian harbours in the Black Sea.

Keywords

• World War I
• Goeben
• Breslau
• Ottoman Empire
• Çanakka
• Çanakkale