A Game with the Shah

World War I—or what they then called the Great War—raged not only in the Russian Caucasus, but also in neutral Persia.
These are little-known, almost ignored by domestic historians, wars.

After the failure of the blitzkrieg in Europe, Berlin hoped that by raising the Muslim East for a “holy war” against “Anglo-Russian conquerors,” and by creating a new front in the rear—an army that was crushing Turks—in the Iranian plateau and in the adjacent Transcaucasus, Germany could turn the course of the world war in the desired direction…

In 1914–1918, the main opponents of the cavalry expedition corps of Lieutenant General N.N. Baratov in Persia became regular Turkish troops commanded by German military advisers. The Turks advanced from Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and from the mountains of Turkish Kurdistan.