At the end of November 1934, the 10th anniversary of the Southern Fleet of the Ottoman Navy was celebrated in Bandar Abbas, southern Persia. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 infoIn order to show the world the strong revival of this ****** empire across the Eurasian continent in the era of great industry, the Ottoman Empire transferred their newly commissioned capital ships from the Mediterranean, and invited Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Ireland stationed in the Persian Gulf region to send ships to participate, and Japan, the only Eastern Alliance country that expanded its power to the east coast of the Bay of Bengal, was also invited to send a viewing group.

Although the Ottoman Sultan Mejid II did not attend the grand celebration, Ahmet, the heir to the throne, came to Bandar Abbas, and the Grand Vizier (equivalent to the prime minister) Enver, the commander-in-chief of the navy, Abbas, and other dignitaries appeared. Who would have expected that such a well-guarded political show would turn into a political catastrophe - during the ceremony, Ahmed's ceremonial ship "Suleiman I" suddenly exploded and capsized in less than 15 minutes, and the heir of the empire left the ship in panic under the protection of his servants, but the lifeboat he was riding accidentally flipped during the hoisting process, and Ahmet fell into the water from a height of more than four meters. In the end, he drowned.

The reason for the sinking of the "Suleiman I" is varied, some believe that it was torpedoed by an American submarine, because some surviving sailors claimed that they saw the torpedo track before the explosion, and some people believe that it touched the mines laid by the Allies, you must know that in order to prevent the US and British navies from entering the Persian Gulf, the Allies laid thousands of mines in the waters near the Strait of Hormuz, and after the US and British troops withdrew from South Asia, the Allies took several months to clean up a small part of them, and some speculated that it was a mistake by the crew. The most direct evidence of this was the explosion and sinking of another Ottoman warship in the Dardanelles in the summer, and the investigation concluded that the torpedo crews had accidentally maintained the torpedo and caused the tragedy.

Regardless of the truth of the incident, the new warship, which cost 32 million marks, finally sank in full view, and it was not only the face of the Ottoman Empire that was damaged, but also the moment the heart of the man named Ahmed stopped beating, and the ******-nation that looked like a dead wood was hit hard from within. Hearing the bad news, the old Sultan Mejid II, who was not in good health, fainted on the spot and almost went to Allah, but his condition deteriorated and he soon became terminally ill. The Guards commander Vasibi Pasha supported the succession of Mejid II's youngest son, and used his control of the capital Istanbul to make it impossible for other princes and royal relatives to approach Mejid II, which made Mejid II's brother-in-law, Enver, who held the political power of the Ottoman Empire, and Fatih, a cousin of Mejid II and the youngest son of the former Sultan Mehmed V, very unhappy, knowing that since the 17th century, the Ottoman law of succession to the throne has been primogeniture, that is, the eldest male of the royal family succeeds to the throne of sultan.

As soon as the news of the old sultan fainting again, the people of all walks of life immediately tore their faces, and the Ottoman warships anchored in the Golden Horn pointed their guns at the royal palace in Istanbul, and the troops who obeyed Enver's orders rushed to the capital from all over the city, and Vasibi Pasha in Istanbul tried his best to overthrow the primogeniture and restore the primogeniture......

Taking advantage of the political turmoil in the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Russian government, which had always been angry about the Allied occupation of the South Caucasus and the partition of the Baku oil fields by the "New Baku Agreement", suddenly attacked - before Christmas, the Soviet Russian border guards launched a counterattack on the grounds that the Ottoman patrols had crossed the border to attack the Russian sentinels, and in less than two weeks they recovered all the Caucasus territories lost during the Tsarist period, and cut off the Allied troops in Baku from the rear by land. The German government urgently intervened and demanded that the Russian troops stop the offensive and retreat to the side of the border agreed in the 1931 "Novo-Baku Agreement", but the Russian government strongly refused. The Russians ordered all Allied troops to withdraw from Baku within three days, otherwise they would attack by force.

The Caucasus dispute has been going on for a long time, and the reason why the Allies had a certain advantage earlier relied on the super combat power of the German army, but from any point of view, the Ottoman army was the main force against Soviet Russia in this direction, and now the political situation in the Ottoman Empire is turbulent, and the various factions in the army are either ready to move, or they are wise to protect themselves, and few people still have the heart to fight with the Russians, not to mention whether the logistics support of the army can be maintained is still a big unknown. Even so, the Germans were reluctant to abandon Baku, supplying the Baku garrison through the Caspian Sea water routes, while pressuring the Russians from Eastern Europe - the 1st and 2nd Panzer Corps, which had returned from Britain to recuperate, marched to Belarus and northern Ukraine, and thousands of warplanes moved from Western and Central Europe to various air bases in Eastern Europe. Correspondingly, the Russian army moved massively in the Estonian-Belarusian-Ukrainian border area, all deployments shifted to a defensive posture, and military mobilization began in the western and southwestern cities - after 18 years of obscurity, the Russians finally showed the muscles of a fighting nation!

In the era of Bismarck and Moltke the Elder, Prussia successfully avoided fighting on two fronts, thus winning the victory of the two important wars of Prussia and Austria and Franco-Prussia, laying a solid foundation for the rise of the German Empire, but in the era of Schlieffen, how to win the two-front battle became the subject of German generals and staff officers, and the brilliant victory of the First World War made them more confident. Therefore, in the summer of 1933, Germany will resolutely launch a war against the United States and Britain with only Ireland giving a guarantee to enter the war, and the price is that during the most stalemate period of the war in Britain and the Azores, Germany also had to retain 40% of its army strength and 30% of its air force in Eastern Europe to prevent Soviet Russia, which had concluded a secret agreement with the United States and Britain, from advancing westward with a million-strong army. According to the intelligence found by German spies, Soviet Russia carried out at least two secret mobilizations in September and November 1933, and the German military judged that if the United States and Britain took the Azores, the Soviet Russian government had more than eighty percent probability of declaring war on Germany, so in October 1933, Germany carried out the second movement, more than 600,000 school-age young people were conscripted into the army, and the eastern region also carried out national defense mobilization accordingly, and only a little more than a month later, Due to changes in the strategic situation, the German General Staff put forward the first plan for remobilization, and listed the 600,000 reservists and 200,000 front-line troops on the list of reductions. Soon after, with the entry of Italy, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Spain, the pressure on the German army in the occupied zone was further reduced, but the first resumption of the deployment plan was temporarily postponed due to the active planning of the Crown Prince William the Younger's plan to attack North America across the ocean, and a large number of troops began to gather in the Azores. Soviet Russia made a tough move at this time, which naturally made the people of Germany very indignant; under the condition that the two ace armored clusters had already been deployed to Eastern Europe, the German General Staff had transferred seven more front-line corps, four heavy artillery divisions, and six aviation regiments from the mainland and Western Europe, and the border areas were suddenly covered with war clouds.

Under the strong pressure of the German army, the attitude of the Soviet Russian government eased, and they agreed to negotiate a settlement of the South Caucasus and Baku issues through negotiations, during which the ships of the Central Powers were allowed to enter and leave the port of Baku freely. On December 27, 1934, Mejid II died at the Istanbul Imperial Palace, and the commander of the Guards, Vasibi Pasha, and several Viziers, the 17-year-old prince Mahmud, ascended the throne. Although the Ottoman guards stationed in Istanbul numbered only more than 30,000 men, far less than the army supporting Enver, and were unable to drive the Ottoman fleet commanded by Fatih from the Golden Horn, relying on the high walls of the capital and the fear that the other side did not dare to use artillery on a large scale, they blocked the seizure of power from round after round of attacks. The reason why Vasibi Pasha dared to challenge Enver and Fatih, who held the naval power of the Ottoman army, was ostensibly because he had always been at odds with them and feared that they would be liquidated in the future, but in fact he had already made very tempting terms to the two countries through the German and Italian ambassadors to the Ottomans: as long as the two countries expressed their support for Mahmud as the new sultan, the newly explored oil fields in eastern and southern Persia would be handed over to the two countries for exploitation free of charge.

The Italian government coveted the new oil fields and was happy to get as much benefit as possible from the civil strife, and the German heads of government felt that a weak young monarch and a military and political head who was willing to sell the interests of the country were more suitable than those candidates who had achieved outstanding military and self-reliant interests, so before the Vasibi Pasha uprising, the political leaders of both countries secretly expressed their support, but when the parties met each other, a major change occurred on the German side: the personal tendencies of the Kaiser and his son overrode objective and rational choices, Because of their support for Enver, who had a friendly relationship of more than 20 years, and because the staunch pro-German faction elected another cousin of the late Sultan Mejid II, the fifty-year-old and disabled Sulman, to succeed as Sulman, the German government finally condemned Mahmoud and Vasibi Pasha for violating the rule of law and usurping power.

Enver and Vasibi continued to fight each other in Istanbul with the support of the German and Italian governments, and although the legitimacy of the new sultan was still in doubt, with the help of Italian diplomats, a large number of official letters of appointment were sent to various places in an attempt to allow supporters to take over military and political power in various places, the most direct consequence of which was to cause great chaos throughout the country.

(End of chapter)