Turkey's Role in World War II

[@ScoromX25]

One of the biggest advantages of the Turkish Army was their officers were one of the most experienced officers at the time. Most of them were former Ottoman Officers with fighting experience from Balkan Wars, WW1 and Turkish War of Independence. Like you mentioned even İnönü himself was a Ottoman Artillery Officer so even if Turkey didn't have proper equipment, they would do well in tactical means.

[@Graess]

As a turk who is in germany born and someone who did some research on Turkey during the 2nd world war period i can tell you that your video and analysis is totally accurate. Ismet Inönu feared that russia will atttack just as they attacked finnland. Turkey had 800.000 Men mobilized just to make sure the russians would think twice about attacking turkey. He knew that germany would not attack unless turkey stopped delivering chrome among other raw materials. So they kept the trade up till late 1943 and stopped it when it was obvious that germany would not be able to win the war. He tried to negotiate a non agression pact with the russians without success. He had an extremely introvert personality , he was quite and never lost his sight normally. But the day when germany attacked russia in the morning when germanys attack was only a few hours old and he was woken up and was told while he was wearing his pijamas that german crossed the border to poland and atacked russia he started to laugh out loud like a mad man and started to dance ciftetelli( a turkish dance ). For him it must have been a dream come true. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your description of the state of the turkish army is also 100% accurate. They had absolutely no offensive capabilities. They had 800 planes but the majority of those where double deck aircraft which were obsolute and would had no real impact in an all out war against germany or even russia. Also they had like 500-600 tanks BUT those were small tankettes which were used during world war 1. Man power , Machine guns ( the majority of the Machine guns where Maxims from the first world war with ratio of 600 bullets per second ) and a lot of artillery( bu no anti tank guns wich were soo important against those mechanized armies) was all the turkish army could muster. An attack vs turkey where the turks use their terrain to their advantage would have been a costly war of attrition for any attackers but the turks themself posing a threat as attacking force was non existant. Also having 800.000 men mobilized was a heavy toll for the young and underdeveloped country. Roughly 40.000 turkish soldiers died alone from deseases even without a single bullet fired. And the civilians had to suffer from shortage of food because so much stuff was confiscated for the military. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- There was only one incident where turks came into combat actions during world war 2 when american bomber planes attacking the oil fields in romania somehow managed to fly over turkey . Anti aircraft Flakk units stationed in istanbul shot down a few of those planes. The majority of the crews of those bombers could parachute and became prisoners . They were treated as guests and were well looked after and went back to USA after the war----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- P.S.: Dont be suprised about all those hatefull comments here. We Turks are hated from all our neighbouring countrys cause of our ottoman past even till today . Even if a turk would invent a perpetuum mobile they would find a way to make it bad thing cause a turk invented it ;-)

[@ThersitestheHistorian]

Thanks for your insights. I actually didn't know that 40,000 men under arms died due to disease in the Turkish forces. It never even occurred to me that those kind of losses could occur to an army in the 1940's. I guess it is a very good thing that the Turkish army remained aloof from the conflict.

[@Graess]

Absolutely

[@nedim9143]

Graess thank you sir

[@SotoAdvert]

Bullshit

[@sinanayaz]

Mükemmel bir yazı hocam eline sağlık

[@henrikg1388]

"They pretty much wanted the Gernans to crush the Soviet Union, and the Allies to then crush Germany". Whoa. The Turks were smarter than the allied commanders.

[@onat7697]

Lol! Great comment. I can't say that this was the exact mind set but the main goal was survival. So you have a solid point there.

[@simplehuman487]

I like this video, I really do. However, in my opinion, there are a lot of shortcomings which is expected considering the lack of English research concerning WW2 Turkey. My first point would be the fact that Turkey wasn't merely 'neutral', it was 'out of the war'. You briefly mentioned it, but I think you should've stayed on that point a bit more. Turkey was very openly supporting Britain and France. Before the war Britain, France and Turkey signed an agreement called the 'Triple Alliance' (ironic isn't it), which required Turkey to join the war if a Balkan country close to Turkey gets invaded which as we know happened. However, Turkey resisted Allied requests using a condition on the alliance which wrote in order for Turkey to join Britain and France would have to send arms and ammunition. Since they weren't able to supply Turkey, Turkey never really joined the war. Churchill and İsmet İnönü had a couple of meetings, most notably Adana Conference and Cairo Conference. Britain really wanted Turkey to join because Thrace, Turkey's western border, would be a suitable place to invade Germany as it's shown in the poster at 04.15 Turkey also gave in to some requests from allies such as finishing all trade with Germany which consisted around 90% of all Turkish imports and exports. Turkey also had economic hardships due to the standing army. In order to stay out of the war they needed to have a deterrent force against Germans, however, this army proved to be incredibly costly, which was just worsened by the lack of global trade. I think that the Turkish internal policy is also worth mentioning. In order to account for the economic hardships, Turkey enacted new taxes on their people. Agricultural Tax is one of these which alienated the Turkish farmer from the ruling party (considering Turkey had a huge rural population back in the day farmers were crucial for legitimacy), this eventually led CHP to lose elections against Democratic Party in 1950 and cause the coup of the '60s, both of which affected Turkish policy during the Cold War. However, most notable tax reform was the 'Wealth Tax' (Varlık Vergisi) which was supposed to be a one time tax on every citizen according to their wealth. Unfortunately, corruption of the government led this tax to be only collected from ethnic minorities, especially Armenians and Greeks, and to be collected in higher amounts than what they could originally pay (for an example they would register a blacksmith as a jewelry store owner and tax them more than they own in the first place). The government used this pretext to confiscate minority properties or in some cases send minorities to Labor Camps (i.e. Aşkale Labour Camp). I think you did a great job and I like the video. I am just a nitpicky history lover so I wanted to add these notes to your very-well researched video.

[@eminemishh]

The Turkish army in that period was solid relatively speaking, almost all nations from 1930-1950 were weak. Turkey had 320k troops in 1942, they had a very good airforce for a minor nation, roughly 600-700 planes. After the major powers turkey was the next strongest country. I wouldn't rate their offensive capabilities that well but defensively fighting in the Anatolian mountains against turkey would be brutal.

[@ThersitestheHistorian]

Turkey was definitely the strongest neutral power during World War II. I wish that there were more WWII sims with "what if" scenarios for a Turkish front.

[@ercan1001]

@TheoXaris wow you are so wrong in the head if you believe that crap you wrote

[@onura2710]

Its true Turkey had some planes but best ones were Polish P24(which was producing in Turkey, very unluckly This was actually a Know-how transfer. But with war starting all Polish personnel returned to their own country).P 24 was fastest and most heavily armed plane on pre ww2 but spanish civil war showed that upper winged planes like p 24 inferior compared to fw 190 so Turkish planes will have hard time against German planes. www.ole-nikolajsen.com is a great site for Turkish and Danish aviation history.

[@bodoor8172]

@@ThersitestheHistorian overall Turkey was still recovering from past wars. It didn’t had the economy for another war.

[@Polo-rn8ly]

@@bodoor8172 half of Turkey economy was directed to army at that time.. Source:Britannica

[@thebruhman8388]

Peace in the country,peace in the world!

[@zexal4217]

Turkey did surprisingly well, didn't expect they'd have been able to do so well but maybe I'm just used to the founder being a cool guy then once someone else takes over they mess it all up. Thankfully it seems though that his subordinates were pretty likeminded.

[@hannibalbarca4372]

Soviet Union helped Turkish Republic during the 1920s against against British and French ,the two countries had good relationship till 1930

[@blgram]

It's not Soviet Union. Turks in Soviet Union sent money/gold to Turkey, and as you can imagine most of the money was taken by Moscow. Russia/Soviet Union didn't help Turkey, they had agreement. I can't remember the details, but in result Turkey didn't intervene into Caucasus.

[@alikuzyaka2152]

Most of the money and gold sent by Turkic authorities in central asia was confiscated by Soviet government.

[@Richard_is_cool]

The map at the start is a solid candidate for some Tigerstar's list of horrible maps.

[@MrHds46]

Maybe turkish role is not very big but turkic role(all turkic nations from USSR) is. There's a lot of turkic Soviet heroes who fought against Germany. Yakut, Tuvan, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Turkmen, Qaraqalpaq, Tatar, Bashkir, Chuvash, Gagauz, Kumuk, Karachay, Balkar, Nogai, Azerbaijani and many others were brave warriors. Many of turkic soldiers died in war, also many citizens from famine and diseases. Without them USSR cannot win Germany War Machine. God Bless all fallen turkic warriors.

[@tezcanuyank3446]

we don't join in 44 because we fear russia will attacks in back while we sended our army to balkans or italy and we fear germany will finish nuclear bomb before defeated (yes inönü know about that weapon project)

[@ThersitestheHistorian]

That makes sense. Turkey was wise to stay out of it since the territorial concessions that the Allies were offering would have renewed Turkey's conflict with the Greeks and their other Balkan neighbors, who were now in the Soviet sphere.

[@maxpayne4686]

tezcan uyanık We FEAR NOBODY!!!

[@Brightshne]

Turkey did consider attacking Germany along with France and Britain with reassurances that the French and the British would help the Turks if the Russians invaded them afterwards. Once France fell and Germany signed the pact with Russia the idea was scrapped. Turkey then signed a friendship pact with Nazi Germany in the hope they would not attack the Turks. Ismet Inonu knew that the Germans would ultimately fail and did not want to drag his country through the mud with them.

[@cartmaninlove]

Hats off to you, sir!

[@ramboxd2475]

2:32 wrong map dude there was no Kurdistan its was British zone

[@yanmak2363]

This is good. The only thing I would add, is that Ataturk was one of the few leaders, whom chose in Inonu a competent successor. Churchill chose Eden.

[@Obrez1]

İnönü wasn't chosen by Atatürk as his "successor".

[@zonzeven]

Difficult to hear the audio, even at 100%

[@1deep289]

A-GREE .)

[@DanPEden]

Great video!

[@tomeko8285]

The map at the beginning of the video is so wrong in so many places. Disgraceful

[@_robustus_]

But but but Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade shows a strong Turkey willing to help the German war effort. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg let me down man...

[@hulusiakar3252]

Robustus what scene?

[@_robustus_]

The nazis have told the “sultan” that the Joneses have come to Turkey (depicted as stereotypically middle eastern as possible, as this is of course meant to entertain laymen that have come through the US education system). The “sultan” likes the nazi’s car and and trades tanks and what not for it. Spielberg and Lucas are quite educated in history but the Raiders universe is of course fantasy.

[@salt27dogg]

Robustus correct!!! In Iskenderun. The Republic of Hatay!! I looked it up . It existed for about a year but did not have a king

[@albion2139]

we joined in 23 february 1945 but no one actulally knows it lmao

[@hannibalbarca4372]

Better late than NEVER! :)))

[@xxxxxPr0xxxxx]

nice video, thanks.

[@ThersitestheHistorian]

I'm glad that you enjoyed it. I have a couple of similar videos coming out in about a week.

[@berkcanorhan4957]

I am from turkey to

[@selvoselvo1]

There was an interesting episode when Turkey took Antakya, with a fabricated referendum excuse, just a year or two before the start of the war.

[@daviswest688]

Could you refer me to any websites that provide accurate uniforms for the turks in WW2?

[@ThersitestheHistorian]

I had a lot of trouble finding accurate pictures of Turkish soldiers and equipment from the WWII era. Most of what I found was by surfing the Blogosphere, where people occasionally geek out on some obscure stuff. I would recommend looking at the WWII blogs or anything that covers Turkish military history. Good luck.

[@mm2mm0]

You can see it here kzbin.info/www/bejne/o3Ocl2uCoJWYrK8

[@51clash]

When the ww2 start all government asked all the citizens to came army turkey at time has have 2 million soldier but has have economicial problem all mens come the army and this influnce de economy very bad turkey president did the best thing to stay natural

[@morrisbuschmeier2047]

Map is wrong. In 1939 ⅔ of Lithuania territory was Polish.

[@nezircaglar2381]

i think 3.rd reich army was a colleteral army... so it did not attack turkey..and attacked russia... because turkey had bosphorus and gallipoli straits... turkey established general çakmak defence line at trachia (west side of straits) ... i think turkey planned to slow down germans at trachia and opened the straits for british navy... there was no brigde at bosphorus then... if turkish and british navy holds the bosphorus and gallipoli straits reich panzers could not step on anatolia... instead of this risk hitler choosed the flat and wide plains of ukraine for blietzkrieg ... actually i think turkey is a straight route for baku patrol fields and ıraqi patrol fields and egypt... but hitler prefers lebensraum at ukraine instead of these... he had rumenian patrol fields and would take turkey after war easily... he did not want to lose time and force at turkey for assault on russia... turkey and iraqi patrol could wait until soviet caputulation...

[@tituspullo9768]

Turkey had nothing Germany really wanted all that much. Turkey had few resources would not even be worth the effort. Had they wanted to, they could have smashed turkey

[@merketarif126]

@@tituspullo9768 but chrom was very important for germany, france and britain.

[@danforbes4513]

turkey can fight ask oz guys ww1

[@berkaybbc]

🇹🇷

[@emrezkc]

Nice video but you pronounced inönü very poorly

[@ThersitestheHistorian]

Damn, I wondered if it sounded a bit too familiar, like something from Hawaii.