Free Republic

World War I ended with the Ottoman Empire vanquished and facing imminent collapse, its doomed alliance with Imperial Germany costing hundreds of thousands of Ottoman lives and dealing a death blow to the already creaking empire. But 100 years after the surrender of the Ottomans to the Allied powers at Mudros on October 30, 1918, the Great War is in no way seen as a pointless waste or even a defeat by modern Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Rather than focusing on the four years of devastating conflict that ended in the capitulation and eventual dissolution of the empire,...

Bismarck's Blood and Iron Speech 150 Years Later Written by Bruce Walker One hundred and fifty years ago, on September 30, 1862, Otto von Bismarck gave his famous “Blut und Eisen” (“Blood and Iron”) speech before the Landtag, the Prussian legislature. In his speech, Bismarck claimed that the international policy of a modern state is built upon the willingness to fight — “Blut” (blood) — and the willingness to spend vast amounts of public treasure in creating giant armies — “Eisen” (iron). "The great questions of the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions ... but by...

Even on May 1, when Germany was guiding the European Union and International Monetary Fund draft of the carefully crafted rescue plan for Greece, the Greek problems seemed far from over. Many doubt the plan will solve all the troubles that started in Athens and which are now spilling into Europe and the world. This might require far stronger intervention in Greece, although the plan seems a balanced yet possibly insufficient compromise. However, a larger intervention in Greece opens a box of problems, which this time could be properly attributed to Pandora, the originator of the ancient Greek myth. This...