The Erzerum Offensive
road into the Middle East. But could they drive their wedge further, and realize their great plan, Berlin to Bagdad, and so prepare the way for the downfall of the Russian and British Empires in Asia? The answer came on February 16th, 1916: the thunder of the Russian guns before Erzerum told the Central Powers that whatever they were or might be in Europe, they could never be masters in Asia; for their centre of gravity was too far to the West to allow them to be lords of two continents. But England and Russia, both by nature and position Asiatic Powers, began to organize their Eastern dominions during the early months of 1916. From that time forth their success in these areas of the war has developed and increased.
The political importance also to Russia of the capture of Erzerum was immense. It established her finally on the Armenian plateau, and completed a process which had begun in the Trans-Caucasus more than a century before. Once in possession of the great routes that converge at Erzerum from Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Persia and the Caucasus, the conquest of the rest of the Armenian plateau, Mush, Bitlis and Erzinjan, followed as a matter of course. Regarded as tactics the Erzerum operations were perhaps not of great importance. The Turkish counter-attack at Ognut in August 1916 was certainly more important from this point of view, because there for the first time European methods of warfare, close columns of infantry and concentrated artillery fire, were used in Asia. But, in its moral and political effect, there is nothing in the whole course of the war in the East more important than the capture of Erzerum and the establishment of the Russians on the Armenian plateau.
85
