Dominic Sandbrook

Well, that's the most sensible course.

I mean, as with the Italians.

There's a big internal discussion.

Anyway, Enver, the war minister, is very keen on the Germans.

And in mid October, 1914, he agrees a secret deal with the Germans.

Basically the plan is the Germans will give them a load of gold and the Germans will promise them their Balkan territories back if they win the war.

And so basically the way they get into the war is at the end of October,

Enver sends an Ottoman fleet led by two German cruisers that are flying Ottoman colors for various complicated reasons.

They go up into the Black Sea.

They bombard the Russian ports in Odessa and the Crimea.

The Russians, of course, then declare war on the Ottoman Empire.

And Enver and his colleagues say, brilliant, now it's on.

And a couple of weeks later, the Sultan Mehmed V, they get him to proclaim a holy war, a jihad against the allies.

And this very much, you know, this excites people in Britain.

It seizes their imagination, terrifies them.

It's the context for John Buchan's great thriller, Green Mantle.

Comes out in 1916, doesn't it?

Yeah, which has this great fear of a jihad and a holy war and a sort of general Muslim uprising across Asia.

But actually in real life,

This does not happen at all.