The History Of The Italian-Turkish War - September 29, 1911 To October 18, 1912

by William Henry Beehler

This history was compiled from the semi-official publications of the Naval Ministries of Germany, Italy and Austria, viz.: Marine Rundschau, Rivista Marittima, and Mittheilungen aus dem Gebiete des Seewesens, corroborated by the facts as described in other foreign publications such as Le Yacht, the British Army and Navy weeklies, the London Illustrated News and Graphic, besides Ueberall, the organ of the German navy league. In this compilation conflicting or doubtful statements were eliminated and only such details that are thoroughly reliable are given.

The writer served for a period of three years and nine months as Naval Attache to the United States Embassies in Berlin, Rome and Vienna, and he knows that these semi-official publications are thoroughly reliable and therefore he claims that the facts herein recorded are true.

The account was primarily compiled for the information of the United States Navy and was submitted by the writer to the Board of Control of the Naval Institute for revision. This waa thereupon published in a series of four articles in the current quarterly Proceedings of the Naval Institute for June, September and December, 1912, and March, 1913. The type of these articles was distributed and in order to preserve the data in book form the four series of articles were reprinted in a limited edition for general circulation.

The book contains the four articles that were published with considerable additional data, such as the complete account of the defences of the Dardanelles and Bosphorus taken from the Journal of the Royal Artillery for January, 1913, embodying the translation from the Russian Artillery Journal by Lieutenant J. K. L. Fitzwilliams, Royal Horse Artillery on The Coast Defences of Turkey. The Honorable Philander Knox, Secretary of State, "Washington, D. C., also kindly sent the writer the full text of the Treaty of Peace of Lausanne with the decree of the King of Italy and the Firman of the Sultan of Turkey. This treaty and accompanying documents are embodied in the appendix.

126 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1913

Reviews

[Peter Aronson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting account of an obscure war that was important in the run-up to World War One. There's a lot of detailed information here, but what is missing is equally interesting: there are no Turkish sources referenced, and there's no mention of the Tripoli massacre or the events leading up to it. Beehler definitely had an agenda in his writing, shown in his belief in the legitimacy of bombarding undefended towns as legitimate measure of warfare, or his casting of the Italian victory as the result of their well organized military, and ignoring the fact that their army was unable to advance very far from the coast, and if the Balkan States hadn't attacked Turkey, the Italians likely would never gotten very far inland, resulting in the sort of stalemate that the Middle East is all too well known for.