The 20th-Century Dictator Most Idolized by Hitler (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk)

Stefan Ihrig's exhaustively researched new book, Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination, charts the outsized role that Atatürk and the New Turkey played in the minds of Germany’s Weimar-era far right—an influence that extended through the Nazi years. Turkish Revolution was the most hotly-debated foreign issue in the early 1920’s. Not only did the Nazis model themselves after the Turkish National Movement, but Nazi leaders from Hitler and Goebbels were personally entranced by everything Atatürk did.

In the aftermath of World War I, Germans—conservatives became consumed with the idea they had been unfairly treated at the Paris Peace Conference (‘raped’ is a word they often used), and stabbed in the back by supine bureaucrats and minorities in Berlin. Yet even as the Germans wallowed in bitter self-pity, another defeated superpower underwent dramatic turnaround.

When the last vestiges of the Ottoman Empire were dismantled by the Allies in the Treaty of Sèvres, modern-day Turkey was also chopped up, with large portions going to Greece and Armenia, as well as major powers like Britain, Italy, and France. However, beginning in 1919, Turkish nationalists—led by Atatürk in Ankara—transformed from beleaguered underdogs into a determined force that beat back the Greeks, French, and Armenians on multiple fronts. Over a tough few years, they defeated the seemingly invincible forces arrayed against them— more importantly, they were able to negotiate a new treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne, in 1923, which established modern Turkey.

“In the eyes of a desperate and desolate Germany,” writes Ihrig, “this was a nationalist dream come true, or rather something like hyper-national pornography.”

Nazi texts proclaimed that the annihilation or expulsion of the Armenians was a “compelling necessity.”

Over the next four and a half years, the conservative paper Kreuzzeitung would run a total of 2,200 articles, items, and reports on Turkey.

I lived in Turkey for a year - active duty. Ataturk’s claim to fame was that he forced a secular government and modernized the written language of Turkey.

For that, he was revered. What the current govt in Turkey is doing is a slap in the face of Ataturk.

Turks are fierce fighters.

Let me tell you two stories from my tour:

The locals would say that American men beat and abused their wives because they did not want their daughters becoming Americans. Because they couldn’t understand women working on the base, they claimed that our women soldiers were just there ‘to service the men’. This created a double standard where our women were openly leered at by the locals, but looking twice at one of their women was grounds for action.

One of our women was downtown and got groped by a drunk Turk in a tea bar. She came back on base, told the MPs, they got our liaison, and went down to the chief of police to make a report. He brought them all to the tea bar and asked her if she saw the guy. She pointed him out. Via the liaison translator, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He says something in Turkish, six guys get up and beat the guy into a bloody pulp.

“Are you satisfied justice was done?”

“Ummm, I guess.”

“Good, no sense making an international incident of it.”

Second story: this was the late 80’s. A small group of Iranians showed up in town and began harassing the Americans who came off base to eat and shop.

As a result, the base issued an order restricting Americans to base.

Lasted three days.

The Turks beat those damned Iranians and ran them out of town on a rail. Mayor came up to base and certified there would be no more harassment from Iranian riffraff: “You’re free to come spend money with us again.”

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