World War One Through Arab Eyes Episode 1 PDF

Preview

Summary

Short response paper on the first episode of the documentary "World War One Through Arab Eyes"...

Description

World War One Through Arab Eyes Episode One! Lisa Lacy! HIS - 1300! " The first episode of the three part documentary “World War One Through Arab Eyes” begins to introduce the Arabs into the Great War. Ordinarily, most history talks about the European focus of the war, as it is where the war mainly took place, but the significant contributions of the arabs are often forgotten. This documentary helps bring light to these events, and to people whose impacts are far greater than anyone Imagined.! " This episode talks about the Arabs from North Africa, which were conscripted by the British and French in the early 20th century. These troops were conscripted by the instated leaders and government of the imperial nations on these smaller African nations. This can easily be connected to “Overthrow”, a book by Stephen Kinder. In the book, Kinzer mainly focuses on imperial foreign interventions of the United States, but the documentary highlights an example of European foreign intervention. Early in the documentary, it mentions how French conscripted many Moroccans due to prior events. In 1911 France invaded Morocco, and instated a general as colonial governor. This provided basis to conscript tends of thousands of Moroccan soldiers, around 45,000. Similar events occurred in Algeria and Tunisia, each conscripted 170,000 and 80,000 respectively.! " The documentary also showcases many surprising and suturing events of the war. First, the documentary goes over how Allied generals would often decimate their troops due to insubordination. Records of these are scarce, but a few are written down. The biggest issue was how the Arabs were often forced to fight other Muslims. Many refused to do so, and were punished. Often general would force troops unwilling to fight, to walk unarmed across the battlefield in order to be shot by the enemy, if the enemy didn’t shoot the unarmed soldiers, the general would order his soldiers to kill their own. This religious issue cause a lot of in-fighting in the British and French ranks. Other examples include how Tunisians after learning they would be fighting the Ottomans, would simply refuse to board the boats going to the war, and rebellions would break out, the French tried to block this news. Additionally, in 1915, Muslim Indians in Singapore rebelled, believing they were supposed to fight the Ottomans too. Many examples of this exist, and it caused a lot of problems for the Allies. Other reports state Arab death counts were greater than French due to the generals often placing the Arabs in the front line, as cannon fodder.! " A similar and quite terrifying tale is that of the battle at Gallipoli. The Ottomans had been hurting during the war for a while now, and the Allies were planning to invade Gallipoli. Immediately the Ottomans there, and there general Mustafa Kemal called reinforcements, but they had to hold the British off, with little to no ammunition. There he gave his famous quote, “I don’t order you to fight, I order you to die.”. And so they

did, and most of the Arabs there died, Kemal survived, and eventually became the first president of turkey. This example goes to show some of the atrocities that the arabs in WWI had to often go through.! " The final important point the documentary covers is the “Half-Moon Camp”, a prisoner of war camp in Germany. The interesting thing about “Half-Moon Camp” is that it consisted of almost exclusively muslim prisoners. The Ottomans and the Germans realized that the Arabs fighting for the Allies weren’t too happy about fighting other Muslims, so the camp was very well maintained, and prisoners were treated fairly, given enough food, allowed to relax, and do activities and exercise. Essentially it was the best prisoner of war camp in all of World War One. The next step of the German and Ottomans, was to try and convince the Arab prisoners into starting a jihad, and going against the French and British. It was called the “Jihad Experiment” and it was led by Max Von Oppenheim. Unfortunately for the Germans and Ottomans, the experiment was unsuccessful.! " Overall the documentary does a good job at highlighting and exposing those stories which are often not told in European and American history books. Arabs during World War One had a very hard time, everyone did, but Arabs fought wars for a country that they did not like, that mistreated them, and that forced them to fight agains people they did not want to. Very different perspectives of the war come from different people, from the British, it might be possible to get a slightly better outlook of the war, as the British were directly fighting for their interests. But the Moroccans, Algerians, and Tunisians weren’t and that is a patter that has been repeated for centuries....