Enver Pasha

Ismail Enver Pasha (Ottoman Turkish: اسماعیل انور پاشا‎; Turkish: İsmail Enver Paşa; 22 November 1881 – 4 August 1922) was an Ottoman military officer and a leader of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. He became the main leader of the Ottoman Empire in both the Balkan Wars (1912–13) and in World War I (1914–18). In the course of his career he was known by increasingly elevated titles as he rose through military ranks, including Enver Efendi (انور افندي‎), Enver Bey (انور بك‎), and finally Enver Pasha, "pasha" being the honorary title Ottoman military officers gained on promotion to the rank of Mirliva.

After the Ottoman coup d’état of January 1913, Enver Pasha became (4 January 1914) the Minister of War of the Ottoman Empire, forming one-third of the triumvirate known as the "Three Pashas" (along with Talaat Pasha and Djemal Pasha) who held de facto rule over the Empire from 1913 until the end of World War I in 1918. As war minister and de facto Commander-in-Chief (despite his role as the de jure Deputy Commander-in-Chief, as the Sultan formally held the title), Enver Pasha was the most powerful figure of the government of the Ottoman Empire. He decided to involve the Empire in World War I on the side of Germany. Along with Talaat and Djemal, he was one of the principal perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide.

Pasha

Pasha or pascha (Ottoman Turkish: پاشا‎, Turkish: paşa), formerly anglicized as bashaw, was a higher rank in the Ottoman Empire political and military system, typically granted to governors, generals and dignitaries and others. As an honorary title, Pasha, in one of its various ranks, is similar to a British peerage or knighthood, and was also one of the highest titles in pre-republican Egypt. There were three ranks of pashas: the first, or highest class, had the privilege of bearing a standard of three horse-tails, the second of two, and the third of one.

Etymology

Popular view connects it with Turkish baş(-ı) ('head'; cf. "başkan", "president" or "başkent", "capital"), or the similar-sounding compound baş-ağa (the title of an official).

According Josef W. Meri and Jere L. Bacharach, the word is "more than likely derived from the Persian Padishah".

As first used in western Europe, the title appeared in writing with the initial "b". The English forms bashaw, bassaw, bucha etc., general in the 16th and 17th century, derive through the medieval Latin and Italian word bassa. Due to the Ottoman presence in the Arab World, the title became used frequently in Arabic, though pronounced as basha due to the absence of the sound "p" in Arabic.

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire (/ˈɒtəmən/; Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِيّهٔ عُثمَانِیّه‎ Devlet-i Aliyye-i Osmâniyye, Modern Turkish: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti), also known as the Turkish Empire, Ottoman Turkey or Turkey, was an empire founded in 1299 by Oghuz Turks under Osman I in northwestern Anatolia. After conquests in the Balkans by Murad I between 1362 and 1389, the Ottoman sultanate was transformed into a transcontinental empire and claimant to the caliphate. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, in particular at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire was a multinational, multilingual empire controlling much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, the Caucasus, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa. At the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries.

Battle of Waterberg

The Battle of Waterberg took place on August 11, 1904 at the Waterberg, German South-West Africa (modern day Namibia), and was the decisive battle in the German campaign against the Herero.

Armies

The German Imperial Forces were under the command of Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha and numbered just over 1,500. They were armed with 1,625 modern rifles, 30 artillery pieces and 14 machine guns.

The Herero were under the command of Samuel Maharero and – in expectation of peace negotiations – had assembled some 3,500-6,000 warriors along with their families. The total number of Hereros in the area is estimated at 25,000 to 50,000. The rest were armed with traditional close combat weapons called kirri.

Preparations for battle

From the opening of the Herero Revolt in January 1904 until June 11, 1904, the German military efforts had been directed by colonial Governor Colonel Theodor Leutwein. Leutwein combined a policy of military pressure with communication with the Herero to negotiate a settlement to the hostilities. The Germans achieved moderate military success in a series of skirmishes before cornering the Herero at the Waterberg Plateau. However, the Kaiserreich replaced Leutwein with Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, expecting Trotha to end the revolt with a decisive military victory.

World War I

World War I (WWI or WW1), also known as the First World War, or the Great War, was a global war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. Over 9 million combatants and 7 million civilians died as a result of the war (including the victims of a number of genocides), a casualty rate exacerbated by the belligerents' technological and industrial sophistication, and the tactical stalemate caused by trench warfare, a grueling form of warfare in which the defender held the advantage. It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved.

The war drew in all the world's economic great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom/British Empire, France and the Russian Empire) versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Although Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance alongside Germany and Austria-Hungary, it did not join the Central Powers, as Austria-Hungary had taken the offensive, against the terms of the alliance. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war: Italy, Japan and the United States joined the Allies, while the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers.