A map of the Russian-Turkish front from Der Weltkrieg 1914-1918, a 1930s German history of the war illustrated with hand-pasted cigarette cards, showing the Turkish Empire in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas and the Persian Gulf. To the west is Egypt, a British dominion; to the east Persia. Erzerum in Turkey and Kars in Russia were the great fortresses on the frontier.
Mittelmeer: Mediterranean SeaSchwarzes M: Black SeaKasp. M.: Caspian SeaKleinasien: Asia MinorTürkei: TurkeyRussland: RussiaMesopot.: MesopotamiaPersien: PersiaAgypten: EgyptKairo: CairoStellungen der: Positions of theTürken Jan. 1915. . .August 1916Russen Mai 1915 . . . Frühjahr 1916Engländer: November 1914 . . . Ende 1917Herbst 1918Positions of theTurks Jan. 1915 . . . August 1916Russians May 1915 . . . spring 1916English: November 1914 . . . the end of 1917autumn 1918
"Everyone who spoke to the Emperor at Moscow talked of Constantinople, and all in the same strain :'The acquisition of the Straits is of vital interest to the Empire, far more important than all the territorial advantages Russia may obtain at the expense of Germany or Austria. . . . The neutralization of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles would be an imperfect, hybrid compromise, fraught with peril for the future. . . . Constantinople must be a Russian city. . . . The Black Sea must become a Russian lake. . . .A French manufacturer who has come from Karkov and Odessa tells me that the same thing is being said there. But whereas the historical, political, and mystical aspects inspire Moscow, it is the commercial argument which appeals to southern Russia."
Entry from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Sunday, December 27, 1914. Tsar Nicholas II had returned to Moscow from the Caucasus Mountains where the Turks had battled in the preceding weeks, and where the Battle of Sarikamish had just begun. 'The Straits' are the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, which, with the intervening Sea of Marmora, connected the Black and Mediterranean Seas, giving Russia a warm water port in Europe. Turkey's entry into the war on the side of the Central Powers severely constrained Russia's access to its British and French allies, its exports of grain and other food, and its imports of weaponry. Located on the Bosphorus, Constantinople was also symbolically important as the former center of the Eastern Rite Church.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, page 228, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
1914-12-27, 1914, December, Black Sea, Russian Lake, Constantinople, Bosporus, Bosphorus, Dardanelles
