Berlin–Baghdad railway

The Baghdad railway, also known as the Berlin–Baghdad railway (Turkish: Bağdat Demiryolu, German: Bagdadbahn, Arabic: سكة حديد بغداد, French: Chemin de Fer Impérial Ottoman de Bagdad), was started in 1903 to connect Berlin with the then Ottoman city of Baghdad, from where the Germans wanted to establish a port on the Persian Gulf, with a 1,600-kilometre (1,000 mi) line through modern-day Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

The line was completed only in 1940. By the outbreak of World War I, the railway was still 960 km (600 miles) away from its intended objective. The last stretch to Baghdad was built in the late 1930s and the first train to travel from Istanbul to Baghdad departed in 1940.

Funding, engineering and construction were mainly provided by the German Empire through Deutsche Bank and the Philipp Holzmann company, which in the 1890s had built the Anatolian Railway (Anatolische Eisenbahn) connecting Istanbul, Ankara and Konya. The Ottoman Empire wished to maintain its control of the Arabian Peninsula and to expand its influence across the Red Sea into the nominally Ottoman (until 1914) Khedivate of Egypt, which had been under British military control since the Urabi Revolt in 1882. If the railway had been completed, the Germans would have gained access to suspected oil fields in Mesopotamia, as well as a connection to the port of Basra on the Persian Gulf. The latter would have provided access to the eastern parts of the German colonial empire, and avoided the Suez Canal, which was controlled by British and French interests.

The railway became a source of international disputes during the years immediately preceding World War I. Although it has been argued that they were resolved in 1914 before the war began, it has also been suggested that the railway was a manifestation of the imperial rivalry that was the leading cause of World War I. Technical difficulties in the remote Taurus Mountains and diplomatic delays meant that by 1915 the railway was still 480 kilometres (300 mi) short of completion, severely limiting its use during the war in which Baghdad was captured by the British while the Hejaz railway in the south was attacked by guerrilla forces led by T. E. Lawrence. Construction resumed in the 1930s and was completed in 1940.

A recent history of this railway in the specific context of World War I neatly outlines in the prologue the German global interest in countering the British Empire, and Ottoman Turkey's regional interest in countering their Russian, French and British rivals on all sides. As stated by a contemporary 'on the ground' at the time, Morris Jastrow wrote:

"It was felt in England that if, as Napoleon is said to have remarked, Antwerp in the hands of a great continental power was a pistol leveled at the English coast, Baghdad and the Persian Gulf in the hands of Germany (or any other strong power) would be a 42-centimetre gun pointed at India."