The Transition Of Turkey Into Our Camp (Chapter 3) (hopefully I am hitting my stride and will get these updates done more timely)
Hitler's military HQ September 1941
Franz Von Papen and Hitler had a very precarious relationship. Having served as chancellor of Germany and even Vice Chancellor under Hitler himself in the early days, he was certainly a well known figure throughout Europe. On the other hand Hitler had been quick to marginalize him upon taking power and had dispatched large elements of his entourage during the light of the long knives and it seemed he was always the wrong word or look or aquaintance away from being packed off to prison or the hangman's noose.
Papen, not for nothing was not only competent but he was a very careful fence sitter and had ridden out the worst of the Nazi's comming to power and their cosolidiation. For the last two years he had been serving in the important post as ambassador to Turkey. He had numerous contacts in the Turkish diplomatic corps and had established cordial relations both with the foreign minister and with President Inoue himself. For years he had carefully tried to bring the Turkish government into the axis with only marginal success. While there where some small factions that favored the Germans or the British, everyone was afraid of Russia whom they knew coveted the Bosphorus and more to the point nearly the entire government and the army where beholden to Inoue who if anything favored the great powers balancing each other out so Turkey could achieve their own policy initiatives
Franz Von Papen was the German ambassador to Turkey charged with bringing her into the fold
Papen however had detected a change in a few attitudes recently. Where Manstein reaching Alexandria and Rabini capturing Malta had raised some Turkish eyebrows, Manstein and Bastico surging over the Suez Canal had opened doors shut since 1918.
In 1939 and again in early 1941 before Manstein went to Africa, Hitler had written long letters to President Inoue, stating Germany's friendly intentions towards the Turks, recalling their shared hardship and comradery from the first world war, and pointing to their mutual interest in limiting the power of the Russians. Innocently, Inoue had been talked into signing a treaty of friendship with Germany in early 1941, which was entirely diplomatic and harmless, but showed that Germany had found its footing on the right path
Turkey and Germany shared many common hardships in the first world war and the two armies where bonded by the experience even if their governments where not.
Hitler and Manstein explained to Papen, their objective of bringing Turkey into the axis camp or at least gaining transit rights for the 1st Panzer and 6th Army to get into the Middle East. Hitler authorized very generous terms for Papen to offer (although fulfilling them would be a different venture)
Manstein's success in Hummel and Half Moon had made it impossible to supply Crete and Cyrpus without a suicide run through the Med in the face of overwhelming axis airpower (a single route soon to be closed by Rommel) and Churchill had reluctantly withdrawn their meagre garrisons to Haifa to bolster the thin lines blocking Manstein's most advanced divisions. German airpower was quick to notice these evacuations and convoys of troops from the 2nd Gebirsjaeger division and the wacht regiment where dispatched to secure the islands and immediately and start restoring airfields the British had wrecked on their way out.
German air and naval dominence in the eastern Mediterranian made Cyprus and Crete untenable
Papen with his instructions clear to him opened negotiations with the Turks. The offer was generous... in return for Turkey joining the axis, they would be compensated with Cyprus, certain Aegan islands, Syria, northern Iraq (Kurdistan) and although the oil producing areas would be excluded... they where offered territory in the caucauses as well which appealed to the Army's pan Turkism. Papen promised that once German forces entered the country they would leave a corps in place to start immediately training Turkish formations, and that Luftwaffe instructors would be made available to improve the quality of Turkish pilots. Papen also promised generous economic assisstance, weapons licenses and help setting up modern production lines.
Despite his ardent professionalism, Papen found himself up against a brick wall in Inoue who wanted to continue to steer an independant course. After a few weeks of this game Hitler grew very inpatient and angry and he ordered that the constellation of power in Turkey needed to be changed
to be continued
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