THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE - Salem Press

The Ottoman Empire 

Dates: 1453-1923 

Political Considerations 

The Ottoman Empire, founded by Osman I (r. 1290- 

1326), dominated much of southeastern Europe, the 

Middle East, and North Africa between the fourteenth 

and early twentieth centuries. Ottoman military 

superiority in the Balkans in the fifteenth and 

sixteenth centuries stemmed from the use of new 

modern armaments integrating infantry and cavalry 

with innovative tactics. The Ottomans borrowed 

methods from their adversaries and even used Christian 

and Jewish soldiers and officers in their cam- 

587 

paigns. In addition to a magnificent army, they had a 

navy that was among the best in the Mediterranean 

area. However, one aspect of the early Ottoman success 

has been greatly exaggerated—that of the Ottomans’ 

superiority in numbers. The Ottomans’ rapid 

conquest of the Christian, Greek-speaking, Eastern 

Roman Byzantine Empire, as well as the other Balkan 

states in the years from 1290 to 1453, came not 

from larger forces but from essentially waiting for 

their Christian rivals to destroy each other in battle 

and then moving in and taking over the remaining 

territory. The Ottoman sultans made alliances with 

Library of Congress 

The Ottoman Turks seize Constantinople from the Byzantines in 1453 to establish the Ottoman Empire.

588 Warfare in the Age of Expansion 

Ottoman Expansion Under Süleyman the Magnificent 

Spain 

Algeria 

Tunisia 

Ottoman Empire in 1520 

Sardinia 

Ottoman Empire at the end 

of Süleyman’s reign 

Venice 

Rome 

Tunis 

Holy 

Roman 

Empire 

Italy 

Sicily 

Mediterranean Sea 

Tripoli 

Hungary 

Bosnia 

Malta 

Vienna 

Serbia 

Poland 

Albania 

Transylvania 

Christian states, and Turkish soldiers served as mercenaries 

in Christian armies, just as Christians fought 

in the Turkish armies. 

National mythology has also greatly exaggerated 

the historical significance of key Ottoman victories 

before 1453, such as the defeat of the Serbs at Kosovo 

on June 15, 1389. In many ways the Ottomans inherited 

the Balkans by default, because the Byzantine 

army collapsed as a result of internal civil wars and 

external invasions by the Western European Christian 

Crusaders and other neighboring Christian states. 

The decisive victory that established the Ottoman 

domination of the Balkans was the Siege of Constantinople 

in 1453. The Turks had prepared for this battle 

for fifty years. According to legend, the city was to 

fall to a sultan bearing the name of the prophet Muwammad. 

Sultan Mehmed I (r. 1402-1421) initially 

appeared to be that man, but an internal contest for 

the throne and a war against Tamerlane in the east 

Wallachia 

Bucharest 

bulgaria 

Morea 

Crete 

Jedisan 

Istanbul 

Rhodes 

Tripoli Alexandria 

Egypt 

Khanate 

of the 

Crimea 

Black 

Sea 

Cyprus 

Cairo 

syria 

Aleppo 

Mesopotamia 

Red Sea 

Damascus 

Georgia 

Armenia 

Medina 

Mecca 

Iraq 

Caspian Sea 

Azerbaijan 

Tabriz 

Baghdad 

Luristan 

made his attack on the Byzantine capital impossible. 

However, when his grandson Mehmed II (1432- 

1481) ascended the throne in 1451, both sultan and 

people were ready. 

By 1453 Constantinople had become a shadow of 

its former self. The city’s population, which had once 

exceeded one million people, had declined to only 

several tens of thousands. Constantinople was no 

longer a unified city but rather a series of villages behind 

walls. Mehmed II prepared his attack carefully, 

building fortresses on both sides of the Bosporus— 

Anadolu Hisari on the Asian side and Rumeli Hisari 

on the European side—the ruins of which still stand. 

He strengthened the janissary corps, raising their 

pay and improving the officer ranks. He constructed 

causeways over the Galati hill north of the old city, so 

that he could have his ships dragged up and over to 

the Golden Horn, the harbor of Constantinople, circumnavigating 

the chain and flotilla that protected

The Ottoman Empire 589 

the entrance to the city’s vulnerable side. Mehmed’s 

fleet of 125 ships and an additional number of 

smaller support craft was five times larger than that 

of the Greeks. With this fleet, Mehmed prevented the 

Byzantines from bringing supplies by sea as they had 

done in the past. The first Turkish troops to reach the 

walls of Constantinople in April, 1453, were a few 

knights, who were successfully met by the Byzantine 

soldiers in a brief skirmish. Ottoman reinforcements 

then drove the Greeks back behind the walls. Massive 

Turkish forces gathered over the next days, 

including cavalry, infantry, engineers, and naval 

forces. Most important were the cannons Mehmed 

had placed at the heretofore impenetrable walls; they 

began a constant bombardment that continued for 

seven weeks until they finally breached the wall. 

Mehmed and his entourage of janissary soldiers, 

advisers, and imams, or religious leaders, took up their 

positions before the city. Mehmed offered the city either 

mercy if it surrendered without a fight, or pillage 

if it chose to fight. The Greeks chose to fight to the last. 

After the fall of Constantinople the Ottomans continued 

to expand throughout the Muslim world in the 

Near East and North Africa. At the height of the empire 

under the sultan Süleyman I the Magnificent 

(1494 or 1495-1566) the European boundaries 

reached beyond the Danube River to the gates of Vienna. 

Süleyman’s failure to take the Habsburg capital 

owed as much to the limitations of Ottoman military 

tactics, especially the definition of its campaigns by 

annual sorties lasting only from the spring to the fall, 

as it did to the defense of the Vien- 

nese. Süleyman also fought and lost 

to the naval forces of King Philip II 

of Spain (1527-1598) in the Mediterranean 

at the celebrated Battle of 

Lepanto (1571). 

After Süleyman the Ottoman Empire 

went into a decline. Succeeding 

sultans rarely left their palaces and 

placed state matters in the hands of 

their ministers, most of whom were 

Christian slaves taken in the child 

tax from Balkan families. The Ottomans 

fought against Austria, Poland, 

the Papacy, and other European 

Turning Points 

states for control of the Danubian plain for two hundred 

years. However, they found a European ally in 

France. In the late seventeenth century the grand viziers 

of the Albanian Köprülü family arrested the 

decline of the Ottoman Empire and spearheaded a revival 

of its former power. However, in 1664 at Szentgotthárd, 

on the Austrian-Hungarian border, the Ottomans 

suffered their first loss of land to the Christian 

powers. After the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) the 

improved European armies surpassed the Turkish 

army in organization, tactics, training, armament, 

and even leadership. The Turks, whose advanced 

techniques and equipment had previously been their 

strong points, now found themselves falling behind 

their adversaries in these areas. 

The Ottomans’ failure to take Vienna in a second 

attempt (1683) began the loss of their territory to the 

European powers. In the eighteenth century the empire 

lost wars and land to both Austria and Russia. 

Inside the empire local warlords carved out virtually 

independent fiefdoms throughout the imperial provinces. 

The sultan’s personal authority in reality did 

not extend beyond Constantinople. The grand janissary 

corps, which had gained the right to marry, were 

less an effective fighting force than a collection of sinecures. 

In 1792 Sultan Selim III (1761-1808) turned 

to France, the empire’s old ally, for assistance in 

modernizing Ottoman armed forces, creating a modern 

corps in addition to the janissaries. However, the 

French Revolution (1789-1799) and the Napoleonic 

Wars (1793-1815) interrupted the partnership. The 

1453 With use of large cannons, the Turks capture Constantinople from 

the Byzantines, establishing the Ottoman Empire. 

1571 The Battle of Lepanto II, fought between the Ottoman Turks and 

the Christian forces of Don Juan de Austria, is the last major 

naval battle to be waged with galleys. 

1792 Modern French military techniques and arms are introduced into 

Turkey. 

1826 The janissary corps are destroyed and the Turkish army is 

modernized. 

1923 The Treaty of Lausanne creates the Republic of Turkey, bringing 

the Ottoman Empire to its official end.


The Ottoman Empire, c. 1700 

Portugal 

Morocco 

Spain 

France 

Algeria 

= Region of Ottoman rule 

Holy 

Roman 

Empire 

Tunisia 

Venice 

Rome 

Tunis 

Austria 

Tripoli 

Vienna 

Adriatic Sea 

Italy 

Tripoli 

empire suffered from internal revolutions, such as 

those by the Serbs and the Greeks, and from uprisings 

by warlords and rogue pashas such as Ali Pala (1741- 

1822), known as the Lion of Janina, in modern Albania, 

as well as wars with Russia and Persia. In a janissary 

revolt in 1806 Selim was dethroned and killed. 

His successor, Sultan Mahmud II (1785-1839), believed 

that the defeat of Napoleon would guarantee 

Ottoman territory at the Congress of Vienna (1814- 

1815), but when the Greek uprising of 1821 split the 

European alliance, Mahmud found himself at war 

against the combined forces of Russia, France, and 

England. In 1826, in order to modernize his forces, he 

did away with the janissaries. 

Mahmud’s successor, Abdülmecid I (1823-1861), 

allied himself to the powers by promising reforms in 

Hungary 

Balkans 

Greece 

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a 

Poland 

Constantinople 

Crete 

Aegean Sea 

Cyprus 

Palestine 

Alexandria Cairo 

Egypt 

Crimea 

Black Sea 

Syria 

Mesopotamia 

Damascus 

Red Sea 

Mecca 

Iraq 

Russia 

Caspian Sea 

Iran 

the treatment of his non-Muslim subjects. In the 

1830’s and 1840’s the powers protected Abdülmecid 

from a vassal revolt. In the 1850’s England and 

France joined Abdülmecid in the victorious Crimean 

War (1853-1856) against Russia. However, in 1877 

Russia again went to war against the Turks to aid a 

Balkan uprising. Although the Russians defeated the 

Turks and liberated the Christian states of the region, 

England, Turkey’s ally, prevented the Russian troops 

from taking Istanbul. 

In the early twentieth century the Young Turk 

Revolution brought constitutional government and 

more westernization to the empire. However, Turkey 

lost wars to Italy (1911) and to a coalition of Balkan 

states (1912-1913), only managing to regain a modest 

amount of European territory around Edirne in the


Second Balkan War (May-June, 1913). After feeling 

betrayed by England and France, the Young Turk 

leaders turned toward friendship with Germany. After 

the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Turkey 

joined with the Central Powers in November of that 

year. Turkish troops faced the Russians in the Caucasus 

and the English in the Near East. The English had 

by then occupied Egypt and supported a revolt of the 

Arabs in Saudia Arabia and Palestine. With the collapse 

of Russia in 1917, the Turks received territory 

in the Caucasus, but the following year the Central 

Powers lost the war and the Allies divided up the territory 

of the empire among themselves. 

However, while the Allies occupied Constantinople, 

Mustafa Kemal (1881-1938), later named Atatürk, 

or Father of Turks, raised the standard of revolt 

in Ankara, where he set up a rival government. 

Kemal led the army to victory over the Greeks (1920- 

1922) and renegotiated the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) to 

his advantage in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), creating 

the Republic of Turkey and bringing the Ottoman 

Empire to its official end. 

Military Achievement 

The Ottoman Empire in its early years successfully 

defeated the Christian powers of Europe and the Muslim 

states of the Near East. This success stemmed 

from the Ottomans’ innovative use of tactics and 

strategy integrating cavalry and infantry. The Ottoman 

cavalry, or sipahi (rendered in English as 

“spahi”), was drawn from the noble free-born Muslim 

class, whereas the infantry, the janissaries, were 

slaves of the sultan forcibly recruited from the children 

of conquered European peoples, converted to 

Islam, and trained as fierce fighters. There were also 

irregular cavalry and infantry troops. The Ottomans 

also did not hesitate, when it served their purposes, to 

use Christian or Jewish commanders, as well as 

Christian allies and mercenaries. 

The Muslims were among the first to effectively 

use cannon and gunpowder. Their success against 

European armies continued into the seventeenth century, 

when the decline of the empire began. 

Weapons, Uniforms, and Armor 

In the early centuries the Ottomans effectively used 

siege weapons and artillery, such as mortars, catapults, 

and large cannons, that fired both iron and 

stone shot. Mehmed II, also called Mehmed the Conqueror, 

wished to have the most modern weapons and 

ordered a Hungarian gunsmith to build him large 

cannons, one of which was used at Constantinople, 

that could fire 1,200-pound cannonballs. Janissaries 

used scimitars, knives, stabbing swords, battle-axes, 

and harquebuses. The Turks were also skilled marksmen 

using muskets. Ottoman archers continuously 

rained arrows on the defenders of cities they attacked. 

The Ottomans were renowned for their 

sappers as well, who attacked the enemy’s fortifications 

with axes. The spahi cavalry, true medieval 

warriors, carried bows, swords, lances, shields, and 

maces. The Ottoman navy consisted of corsairs and 

oared galleons. 

The Turks established local janissaries and other 

regional corps in different parts of the empire, each 

with its own distinct uniforms, pennants, and standards. 

The traditional Ottoman uniforms consisted of 

short, loose pantaloons, a short shirt with a large sash, 

a high turban, stockings that reached above the hem 

of the pantaloons, and Turkish-style slippers. Janissaries 

also wore long, flowing robes and felt hats. 

The akhis, or officers, wore pantaloons, sashes, 

capes, red boots, long fur-trimmed robes, and tall, 

elaborately carved, large-plumed helmets whose 

height depended on the wearer’s rank. Janissary food 

bearers wore black uniforms, sandals, pantaloons, 

short jackets with long sleeves, half-vestlike shirts, 

and conical hats. The sultans rode on caparisoned, or 

decoratively adorned, horses and carried bejeweled 

weapons. 

The janissaries’ standard was the scarlet crescent 

and double-edged sword symbol of Osman, the 

founder of the Ottoman dynasty. The akhis carried 

staffs with tails representing the sleeve of the sheik of 

the Bektashi dervishes, the janissaries’ religious order. 

The number of tails on the akhi’s staff depended 

on his rank. The janissaries’ staff bore a spoon symbolizing 

their higher standard of living. The insignia 

of the janissary corps was the soup pot and the spoon.


Officers bore titles from the kitchen such as the First 

Maker of Soup, First Cook, and First Water-Bearer. 

The soup pot was the sacred object around which the 

janissaries gathered to eat or discuss events and policies. 

In rebellions they traditionally overturned these 

soup pots. 

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Turkish 

armament lagged behind the times. In 1796 the 

French ambassador General Jean-Baptiste Aubert- 

Dubayet brought to Turkey several pieces of modern 

armament and artillery as models for the Turks to 

copy and French engineers and artillery officers to 

teach the Turks modern methods. In the nineteenth 

and twentieth centuries the Ottoman Empire continued 

to modernize its forces and weaponry. Before 

World War I the Germans improved upon Turkish 

arms. German General Otto Liman von Sanders 

(1855-1929) came to Turkey to oversee the training 

of troops. During the war the Turks had excellent 

gunnery. However, two battleships ordered from England, 

which were to be the best of the fleet, had not 

been delivered before the Turks joined the Central 

Powers and were confiscated by the British. In the 

late nineteenth century the Turks adopted typical European 

khaki winter and summer army and blue navy 

uniforms. For officers, the fez—a brimless, flatcrowned 

hat—replaced the turban. 

Military Organization 

Within the Ottoman Empire the government and the 

military were closely linked. The empire was divided 

into two parts: European and Asian, each governed 

by aghas, area governors who administered the empire 

in the name of the sultan. Under the aghas stood 

the provincial governors, or sanjak beys. The sanjak, 

which has come to mean “province,” was literally the 

standard of the governor, or bey. In 1453 there were 

twenty sanjaks in Asia and twenty-eight in Europe. 

The sanjak beys commanded troops, operated the policing 

powers in their provinces, and collected taxes. 

Within the sanjaks there were two types of agricultural 

estates: large zaimets and smaller timars. Ottoman 

theory held that all land belonged to God and 

was managed by the sultan; the managers of these es- 

tates were free-born Muslim noblemen. The spahis, 

knights who served as the cavalry of the Ottoman armies, 

were the most numerous Ottoman warriors. 

The early sultans gave most of the land they conquered 

to these warriors, although a minor portion 

was reserved for government and diplomatic officials. 

The peasants, called rayah, literally “cattle,” 

were the serfs who worked the land. The other governing 

functions were handled by the various Muslim, 

Christian, and Jewish religious authorities who 

ruled their own communities. 

The Ottomans used both regular and irregular 

troops as police forces. The two most important regular 

land forces were the janissary infantry corps and 

the spahi knights. The Ottoman navy was a supplementary 

force that often carried janissary troops, as 

well as naval officers and sailors. 

The janissaries were Christian and Jewish boys, as 

young as seven years old, periodically gathered in the 

Balkans through a child tax, called devshirme. Girls 

were also gathered to serve in various harems. Sultan 

Orhan (c. 1288-c. 1360) started the corps as a bodyguard, 

and Murad I (c. 1326-1389) developed it as a 

militia to guard the European territories. The boys 

were selected for the janissary corps based on their 

strength and intelligence. They were educated as 

Muslim Bektashi dervishes, the religious order favored 

by Ohran, and housed in barracks at Bursa. After 

the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II 

moved the main janissary barracks to the sultan’s 

palace in the capital. During battle, conquered fortresses 

served as their barracks, and local produce 

served as their food. 

Aminority, approximately 15 percent, of the most 

intelligent children were selected for government 

and diplomatic service, while the remainder were 

trained for the janissaries. The boys were educated in 

the palace school, where they studied subjects such 

as Turkish history, Muslim literature, and romantic 

and martial music. They practiced gymnastics and 

sports on both foot and horseback to increase their 

strength and agility. The students became expert 

in archery, swordsmanship, javelin throwing, and 

riding. 

Early janissaries could not own property, marry, 

or perform other service, but they were armed and


well paid and had a strong esprit de corps. They were 

the most respected infantry in Europe: fearless, well 

trained, dedicated troops with intelligent and coolheaded 

commanders. At the dedication of the corps, 

the sheik of the Bektashi, an officer of the corps, 

promised, “Its visage shall be bright and shining, its 

arm strong, its sword keen, its arrow sharp-pointed. It 

shall be victorious in every battle and will never return 

except in triumph.” The janissaries were known 

for their military discipline, which rivaled that of the 

ancient Greeks and Romans. 

In contrast to the “inside aghas,” who were leaders 

of the government and palace service, the chief janissary 

officers held the title of “outside aghas.” In the 

time of Mehmed II they numbered a force of ten thousand. 

They were unique in Europe, where most armies 

consisted almost completely of cavalry. The 

janissaries were commanded only by aghas, who had 

been appointed by the sultan, and the provincial beys 

and pashas had no authority over them. 

When the Ottoman Empire went into decline, the 

Republic of Turkey, 1923 

GREECE 

Crete 

Izmir 

Mediterranean Sea 

Republic of Turkey in 1923 

Istanbul 

ANATOLIA 

Antalya 

janissary corps began to deteriorate. Muslims were 

recruited into the janissaries, affecting the traditional 

camaraderie. Janissaries also worked as artisans to 

supplement their income. During Süleyman’s reign, 

they received the right to marry, and their sons began 

entering the corps, first through loopholes in the law 

and later through quotas. Nepotism grew rampant. 

Murad IV (1612-1640), recognizing the de facto 

practice, abolished the devshirme. Janissaries often 

paid others to serve in the field in their place, while 

still collecting their pay and enjoying their privileges. 

The corps, if they disagreed with the imperial policies, 

would often mutiny in the field or in Constantinople. 

The janissaries began to influence politics as 

early as the fifteenth century, when they backed the 

sultan Mehmed I against his brothers, but in the seventeenth 

century the corps became stronger than the 

sultan. Sultans and ministers curried favor with the 

janissaries as well as the spahis through promotion 

and pay raises. 

Black Sea 

Cyprus 

REPUBLIC 

OF 

TURKEY 

SYRIA 

Erzerum 

Kur ds 

ARMENIA 

IRAQ 

RUSSIA 

PERSIA


The vizier Köprülü Amca-z3de Hüseyin (died 

1702) tried to reverse the downward trend by revising 

the muster roles of the janissaries, improving military 

equipment for both the janissaries and the navy, 

building new barracks, and refurbishing the imperial 

defenses, but the measures proved to be only temporary. 

The Ottoman forces also included renowned artillery 

and engineering units and highly skilled artisans 

who were supported through a guild system. 

These artisans supplied the Ottoman armies and 

maintained their morale and standard of living. 

The Turkish sipahi cavalry were considered to be 

without peer. They were ready at any moment on the 

command of the sanjak beys to leave their fields and 

join in battle. Failure do so would mean loss of their 

position. Although the ranks were not hereditary, the 

son of a deceased spahi might be given a small 

amount of land for his needs. He would then have to 

prove himself in battle to earn a tamir or zaimet. 

There were also mounted soldiers at a lesser rank 

than spahi, and the spahis of the Porte in Constantinople, 

“the men of the sultan,” who formed a separate 

corps. In the seventeenth century the number of feudal 

spahis dwindled, and, like the janissaries, the 

spahi also began to hire substitutes, some of whom 

were unscrupulous adventurers. Spahis were no longer 

suited for all-year duty against the modern European 

artillery. At the Battle of Mezö-Keresztes 

(1596) against Hungary they left the field en masse. 

The sultan dismissed thirty thousand spahis, turning 

a large group of nobles into landless malcontents and 

further increasing the problems of the empire. 

In times of war the Ottoman Empire employed a 

supplemental irregular cavalry, the akinjis. Other irregular 

troops were the azab corps, a reserve infantry 

founded by Orhan. The sixteenth century governor of 

Bosnia used another irregular force to police his 

sanjak. These irregular troops did not receive regular 

pay but were rewarded with spoils of war. However, 

jealous of the pay and privileges of the regular forces, 

they sometimes rebelled. 

In the seventeenth century the Ottoman Empire 

also fell behind in inventory and supply. While the 

great powers of Europe established modern professional 

armies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 

the sultans stubbornly held on to their antiquated 

traditional techniques. They lacked modern financing 

procedures and an industrial system based on 

flexibility, free enterprise, and competition that was 

required for modern warfare. Pillaging and living off 

the land no longer sufficed. The haphazard Turkish 

system of taxes and economic restrictions held the 

empire’s military behind while its European enemies 

forged ahead. Furthermore, the janissaries and artisan 

guilds joined together to protect their traditional 

privileges and maintain the military’s traditional procedures. 

In the eighteenth century all aspects of the army— 

training, discipline, armament, fortifications, field 

maneuvers—fell to a substandard state. Incompetence 

and ignorance ruled even in the most elementary 

matters. Open defiance and mutiny were rampant 

among the troops. Theft of supplies by both 

officers and soldiers was common. Janissaries often 

did not go on campaign but hired people in their 

stead. Janissaries would fight with their officers or 

demand privileges reserved for officers. The corps 

became a parasitic burden, a shadow of the unbeatable 

force it had been in its early days. 

After a loss to the Russians in 1792, Sultan Selim 

III was anxious to reform his army. Although Selim’s 

many reforms were not limited to military matters, 

an overhaul of the army played a key part in his 

plans. Selim looked to France, where the French 

Revolution of 1789 had brought about a new order. 

He sent special ambassadors to the courts of Europe 

and studied their detailed reports. He was particularly 

interested in guns and artillery, about which 

he himself had written a treatise. He was especially 

impressed with the revolutionary French army and 

requested help from Paris to improve the Turkish 

military. The French experts improved Turkish gun 

foundries, arsenals, and equipment. In both the army 

and navy they taught the Turks gunnery, fortifications, 

navigation, and related subjects. The Turkish 

engineering school was brought up to modern standards. 

However, the sultan’s advisers were divided. 

Some insisted on maintaining the old Turkish ways at 

any cost, whereas others advocated the Western techniques 

only to restore the past Turkish glory; still 

others called for a complete overhaul of the Turkish


military and society in the Western manner. Selim established 

the Topiji—a small force of prisoners, European 

deserters, and poor Muslims—and had them 

trained in the Western fashion as a prototype army. 

Impressed by the Topiji’s superiority, Selim tried to 

introduce their methods and arms into the Turkish 

forces. The spahis accepted the new methods, but the 

janissaries continued to resist modernization. Selim 

thus enlarged the Topiji force, which by then included 

some of the French officers who had remained 

in Turkey. In 1805 he introduced a draft but 

was assassinated the following year in a janissary revolt. 

Mahmud II then ascended the throne. 

The success of Mehmed Ali of Egypt in building a 

Western army with Muslims encouraged Mahmud to 

do away with the janissaries and rely solely upon the 

new army. Mahmud replaced the European officers 

F. R. Niglutsch 

The British defeat of the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Navarino Bay in 1827 effectively destroyed the Ottoman 

navy and paved the way for Greek independence. 

training the troops with Muslims and ordered 150 

troops from each janissary battalion to join the new 

corps. On June 15, 1826, as expected, the janissaries 

revolted, overturning their soup pots and invading 

the palace. Mahmud was ready. He had increased his 

loyal artillery troops, placing them in strategic points 

in the streets. They drove the rebels back to their barracks, 

where they barricaded themselves and were 

destroyed by artillery in less then an hour. More than 

six thousand died in the shelling. Mahmud executed 

the surviving leaders, disbanded the corps, and outlawed 

the Bektashi dervish religious order. The remaining 

janissaries were exiled to Asia. 

After the destruction of the janissaries, Mahmud 

reintroduced the old title serasker; originally held by 

a high commander of general rank, it was now given 

to the commander in chief who also served as minis-


ter of war and handled police duties in Constantinople. 

He paid special attention to the new army. 

Twelve thousand men were stationed at Constantinople 

and elsewhere in the provinces. Mahmud turned 

to England and Prussia for assistance training the 

new army. Officers were sent to England, and British 

officers came to Turkey. Prussia sent Lieutenant 

Helmuth von Moltke (1800-1891), who later became 

an architect of Prussia’s renowned army, as a military 

adviser. Von Moltke helped to modernize the Ottoman 

Empire’s defenses and to train and organize the 

new troops. He was dissatisfied, however, with 

Mahmud and the Ottoman army, who resisted instruction 

from foreigners. Turkey and Prussia exchanged 

cadets and officers as well, establishing a 

German tradition that would continue through the 

life of the empire. 

In the 1840’s the army was reorganized into active 

and reserve units, and the term of active service was 

reduced from twelve to five years. Soldiers who had 

actively served for five years would serve the balance 

of seven years in their home provinces as reserves. 

The military was further reorganized along Western 

lines, the number of troops was increased to 250,000, 

and military schools were established. 

In 1808 the Young Turk Revolution brought German 

trained officers forward. Enver Pala (1881- 

1922), one of the leaders of the revolt, had trained in 

German methods as a young officer and now went to 

Berlin as military attaché. The war minister Sevket 

Pala (1858-1913) actually trained in Germany. Thus, 

the German influence that had existed since the time 

of Mahmud actually increased during the nineteenth 

century. 

After the Young Turk Revolution, the use of officers 

in government positions reduced the efficiency 

of the army and navy in the field. Furthermore, capable 

officers opposed to the government were sent to 

distant posts. The defeats of the Italian and Balkan 

Wars impressed upon the new leaders the need for 

massive reform. Enver Pala, who by that time had 

become one of the ruling triumvirate along with 

Mehmed Talât Pala (1872-1921) and Ahmed Cemal 

Pala (1872-1922) took this in hand. Much of the 

problem was the mistrust that the older officers had 

of the young military supporters of the revolution, a 

situation that demanded a general purge of the senior 

officers. Sevket Pala recognized the problem but refused 

to dismiss his friends in the officer corps. 

Therefore Enver Pala took over the ministry and convinced 

the reluctant Sultan Mehmed V (1844-1918) 

to issue a decree retiring officers over fifty-five years 

of age. A new agreement with Berlin brought forty 

German officers to Turkey. They were led by Liman 

von Sanders, who was placed in charge of the first 

army in Constantinople. 

Doctrine, Strategy, and Tactics 

From the early days of the Ottoman Empire, the doctrine 

of warfare called for the conquest of Muslim 

and Christian land in the name of God. In fact, all of 

the empire’s territory was seen to be God’s land, administered 

by the sultan through aghas, beys, and pashas, 

military leaders as well as government officials. 

When the Ottoman sultans became the rulers of the 

Muslims of the Near East, they revived the old title of 

caliph, for the religious leader of Islam. 

The Ottoman strategy was simple. On yearly campaigns, 

which, after 1453, began from Constantinople 

in a formal ceremonial military parade and lasted 

until late fall, their well-trained and courageous armies 

fought and conquered as much land and as 

many cities as they could. Victims who acquiesced 

were shown mercy. Those who resisted suffered a 

brief period of brutal pillage. In the fifteenth and sixteenth 

centuries the Ottomans managed the lands under 

their control well. Even non-Muslim communities 

had a great deal of autonomy. In the later 

centuries, inefficient government and arbitrary actions 

of virtually independent warlords, landlords, 

and local beys and pashas inflicted hardship. 

The Ottomans learned from their adversaries, 

studying Western military forces and strategies. After 

the seventeenth century the viziers, more often 

than the sultan, marched on campaigns and sometimes 

participated in battles. Although the army was 

the main force, a flotilla of hundreds of boats accompanied 

the troops on the rivers of the region under attack. 

Atypical order of battle in the open field consisted


of three armies. For example, at Kosovo Field in 

1389, Sultan Murad I commanded the center with his 

janissary corps and spahi knights. By tradition the 

army of the region where the battle was fought occupied 

the right flank. Thus Bayezid I (c. 1360-1403), 

the sultan’s son and heir, led the army of Europe on 

his right. A younger son led the army of Asia on the 

left flank. At Kosovo an advance guard of two thousand 

archers began the attack. However, the standard 

Ottoman practice was to begin battle with an inferior 

line of irregulars. The janissaries would attack accompanied 

by drums and cymbals and exhorted by 

their non-janissary brothers of the Bektashi der- 

vishes. If the enemy forces outnumbered the Turks, 

the strategy changed, and the Ottomans would wait in 

hiding for the battle to begin. 

The Ottoman forces, well suited for siege warfare, 

used both cannons and mines. They dug trenches 

about 1,500 meters from the besieged city walls and 

set up their artillery behind the ridges. Archers then 

continually rained arrows on the city, while janissaries 

scaled the walls. The Turks were willing to continue 

a siege as long as it took for a city to surrender or 

fall. They often gave generous terms of surrender, allowing 

those who wished to leave the city to go 

freely. 

Contemporary Sources 

The best primary sources on the military history of the Ottoman Empire available in English 

and held in American libraries are memoirs and contemporary accounts of battles. Among the 

best of the former are the memoirs of Sir Edwin Pears (1835-1919), Forty Years in Constantinople: 

The Recollections of Sir Edwin Pears, 1873-1915 (1916), Evliya Çelebi’s (c. 1611-c. 1682) 

Travels in Palestine (1834), and Konstanty Michalowicz’s (born c. 1435) Memoirs of a Janissary 

(1975), an account of a fifteenth century Turkish warrior found in the microform collection 

of the University of Michigan. The University of Michigan is the repository of numerous eyewitness 

accounts of Turkish-Western battle, a number of which have been published. Suraiya 

Faroqhi’s Approaching Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources (1999) is a general 

survey of sources in Turkish and other languages. 

Books and Articles 

Aksan, Virginia. “Ottoman War and Warfare, 1453-1812.” In European Warfare, 1453-1815, 

edited by Jeremy Black. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. 

_______. Ottoman Wars, 1700-1870: An Empire Besieged. Harlow, England: Longman/ 

Pearson, 2007. 

Almond, Ian. “Muslims, Protestants, and Peasants: Ottoman Hungary, 1526-1683.” In Two 

Faiths, One Banner: When Muslims Marched with Christians Across Europe’s Battlegrounds. 

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009. 

Faroqhi, Suraiya. “The Strengths and Weaknesses of Ottoman Warfare.” In The Ottoman Empire 

and the World Around It. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004. 

Gabriel, Richard A. The Siege of Constantinople. Carlisle, Pa.: U.S. Army War College, 1992. 

Goodwin, Godfrey. The Janissaries. London: Saqi, 1992. 

Guilmartin, John F., Jr. “Ideology and Conflict: The Wars of the Ottoman Empire, 1453-1606.” 

In Warfare and Empires: Contact and Conflict Between European and Non-European Military 

and Maritime Forces and Cultures, edited by Douglas M. Peers. Brookfield, Vt.: 

Ashgate/Variorum, 1997. 

Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. New York: Palgrave 

Macmillan, 2002. 

Murphey, Rhoads. Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University 

Press, 1999.


Nicole, David. Armies of the Ottoman Turks, 1300-1400. Botley, Oxford, England: Osprey, 

1985. 

Reid, James J. Crisis of the Ottoman Empire: Prelude to Collapse, 1839-1878. Stuttgart, Germany: 

Steiner, 2000. 

Turfan, M. Naim. Rise of the Young Turks: Politics, Military, and Ottoman Collapse. London: 

I. B. Taurus, 1999. 

Turnbull, Stephen. The Ottoman Empire, 1326-1699. New York: Routledge, 2003. 

Zorlu, Tuncay. Innovation and Empire in Turkey: Sultan Selim III and the Modernisation of the 

Ottoman Navy. New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2008. 

Films and Other Media 

Lawrence of Arabia. Feature film. Columbia Pictures, 1962. 

The Ottoman Empire: The War Machine. Documentary. History Channel, 2006. 

The Ottoman Empire, 1280-1683. Documentary. Landmark Films, 1995. 

Suleyman the Magnificent. Documentary. National Gallery and Metropolitan Museum of Art, 

1987. 

Frederick B. Chary

Literature and Warfare 

Overview 

War is life’s greatest conflict and the ultimate form of 

competition. As such, it continues to provide writers 

with a fertile field for examining the always intriguing 

complexities of human nature. Warfare is often railed 

against, and on occasion it has been chic to view it as 

obsolete. In the overall scheme of things, however, 

war has generally managed to remain popular. Indeed, 

the noted philosophers Will and Ariel Durant once 

calculated that in the past 3,000 years only 268 of 

those years have been free of war. With this in mind, 

it is perhaps not surprising that wars have provided 

grist for some of the world’s most enduring literature. 

Significance 

Literature that focuses on war recognizes how war 

affects human behavior through characters created in 

literature. 

History of Literature 

and Warfare 

Ancient World 

Organized armies have fought against each other for 

at least ten thousand years. Either at war or in anticipation 

of war, military infrastructures have played a 

key role in the organization of human societies. The 

earliest civilizations of China, for example, were established 

by organized armies. 

Accounts of the earliest conflicts were preserved 

in song and story through oral tradition, often setting 

warfare in a mythological context. Rigvedic hymns 

of ancient India, for instance, relate tales of the warrior 

god Indra. A Babylonian epic poem, “War of the 

Gods,” deals with the myth of world creation and the 

establishment of divine hierarchy, which formed part 

of a New Year’s festival. 

873 

The earliest literary work in the Western tradition 

to deal with war is found in the Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; 

English translation, 1611), ostensibly written by 

Homer (c. 750 b.c.e.), but whether or not it is a work 

of shared authorship is a moot point. One of the classics 

of world literature, the Iliad deals with the very 

long and savage war between Athens and Sparta— 

the Trojan War (c. 1200-1100 b.c.e.)—with the culminating 

siege of Troy, which dragged on for three 

decades. The war was originally based on a struggle 

for control of important trade routes across the 

Hellespont. However, in the Iliad, the story centers 

on one incident: the Trojans’ attempt to recover the 

abducted Helen of Troy. When Agamemnon—king 

of the Greeks (who invade Troy), refuses to ransom 

Chryseis to her father, the god Apollo inflicts a 

plague of pestilence on them, compelling Agamemnon 

to return the girl. Not to be entirely thwarted, Agamemnon 

takes Achilles’ prized concubine instead. 

Dishonored, Achilles withdraws his warriors. War 

here is depicted as not only mean and bloody but also 

a process of retaliation and quid pro quo. During this 

process, when a warrior is slain or an attack is perpetrated, 

the fury of the combatants escalates. Such 

endlessly escalating conflict required a resolution, 

and Homer offered one in the Odyssey (c. 725 b.c.e.; 

English translation, 1614), which tells the story of a 

survivor of the Trojan War, Odysseus (or Ulysses), 

who undergoes a series of adventures that function as 

tests and atonements before he can return home to a 

joyful reunion with his wife, Penelope. Both the Iliad 

and the Odyssey draw heavily on the rich storehouse 

of Greek mythology, and in so doing provide a “divine” 

perspective on the issues of loss and redemption 

surrounding the Greek view of war. 

In the Aeneid (29-19 b.c.e.; English translation, 

1553), war is the context for nation-building: The 

Roman poet Vergil (Publius Vergilius Maro) uses literature 

as a sort of genealogical tool to reconstruct 

the beginnings of the Roman Empire. In this epic 

poem, the Greek warrior Aeneas has fled his native

874 Culture and Warfare 

land following the Trojan War and—after a series of 

adventures, some harrowing—arrives in Italy, where 

he proceeds to recount the details of the Trojan War. 

After defeating the Rutulian leader Turnus in battle 

and miraculously recovering from a wound received 

in combat, Aeneas marries Lavinia (daughter of 

Latinus, king of the Latins) and establishes the new 

kingdom on the Seven Hills that has been promised 

to him in a dream. 

Medieval World 

The adopted nephew of Charlemagne, the knight 

Roland, and his bosom friend Oliver, together with 

their valiant comrades, sacrifice their lives to protect 

Charlemagne’s army by defending the pass at 

Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees Mountains in 778 c.e. 

Their epic defense was later immortalized in the 

anonymous Chanson de Roland (c. 1100; The Song 

of Roland). 

Among Germanic peoples, one of the most influential 

works of literature was the Nibelungenlied 

(c. 1200; English verse translation, 1848; prose translation, 

1877), set in the fifth century in north-central 

Europe. Although medieval in origins, the Nibelungenlied, 

like the Homeric writings, draws on numerous 

myths, including Siegfried’s titanic battle 

with a great dragon, including rituals of ancient worship 

that are woven throughout the work. War, again, 

is depicted in the context of national origins and identity, 

with an emphasis not on realism but on the 

mythic and glorified aspects of battle, reflecting an 

ancient Germanic cult of hero worship. 

By the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, 

the literature of war had begun to depart from the reliance 

on mythology found in earlier literature and to 

concern itself more with historical reality. The topic 

of war continues to provide an opportunity for writers 

to speak of glory, honor, and courage, but with increasing 

fidelity to the background against which the 

story is set. William Shakespeare’s Henry plays, for 

example—Henry IV, Part I (1592), Henry IV, Part II 

(1597) and Henry V (c. 1598-1599)—smoothly 

blend poetry and history both to glorify England and 

to explain how the notoriously un-princely Henry V 

evolved from a rakish and somewhat unprincipled 

youth into a revered king, the hero of Agincourt. In 

the belief that he has as much lawful right to the 

throne of France as did Charles, the reigning French 

monarch, Henry V makes his claim for that crown. 

Insulted by Charles’s son, the Dauphin, Henry prepares 

for war. At the decisive Battle of Agincourt, 

Henry’s leadership carries the day, despite the fact 

that his army is outnumbered and weakened by illness. 

Shakespeare glorifies Henry V (r. 1413-1422) 

and his victory at Agincourt, and his contemporaries 

may well have regarded the portrayal as an overtly patriotic 

affirmation of contemporary warfare against 

Spain. However, many critics have seen in the play’s 

language and portrayals a more ambiguous attitude 

toward warfare and perhaps a veiled criticism of contemporary 

events in Elizabethan England (where 

open criticism of the monarchy and its policies would 

not have been safe). The play thus illustrates both the 

growth in literature referencing actual events and the 

sensitivities, and potential dangers, of doing so. 

Modern World 

As world civilizations advanced in age and (especially) 

technology, these achievements were reflected 

in world conflicts. Wars increasingly expanded 

their sphere of impact. Increasingly, battles 

were no longer confined to unpopulated areas. Accordingly, 

literature sought to keep pace with the 

evolution of modern warfare. Although the heroic 

values present in the literature of ancient and medieval 

wars was still to be found in literature the realism, 

the suffering and horror of war became increasingly 

evident. 

As warfare evolved into the so-called modern 

period, writers sought to present their subjects more 

realistically. Literary characters provided the opportunity 

and the voice to reveal a more accurate portrayal 

of the grim horrors found on the battlefield. In 

literature as in real life, war as a glorious confrontation 

of chivalric honor was now depicted as a bloody 

crucible of suffering and death. 

Novels, plays, and poems increasingly began to 

address not only the external events of war but also 

the soldier’s personal experience of such traumatic 

events, from courage to cowardice. In Stephen 

Crane’s classic Civil War novel, The Red Badge of 

Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War

Literature and Warfare 875 

(1895), young Henry Fleming finds himself tormented 

by fear. Having dreamed of glorious battles 

as a young farm lad, he was at first anxious to taste 

combat, as are many soldiers who find themselves on 

the field of war for the first time. Now, as his regiment 

advances, Henry sees battle as an escape from 

the boredom of inactivity. Then comes battle, with its 

cacophony of sounds, followed by an enemy counterattack 

and panic. Henry flees from the field and now 

thinks of himself as a coward. In a subsequent battle, 

he redeems himself, earning the praise of his lieutenant. 

The novel offers the reader an instructive psychological 

profile of one young man enduring the chaos, 

fear, and self-doubt that every soldier must face. 

In his 1929 novel of World War I, Im Westen 

nichts Neues (1929; All Quiet on the Western Front, 

1929), Erich Maria Remarque produced what is generally 

thought to be the best-known work of antiwar 

literature published between the two world wars. The 

novel was subsequently adapted for the screen, starring 

actor Lew Ayres. So forcefully did the film depict 

the horror of war that Ayres became a pacifist 

and later refused to serve in the military during 

World War II. 

Two other haunting and memorable literary statements 

to emerge from World War I are Lieutenant 

Colonel John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields” 

(1915) and the poem “Rouge Bouquet” (1918), by 

Sergeant Joyce Kilmer (perhaps best known for his 

poem “Trees,” 1914). In “Rouge Bouquet,” Kilmer 

memorialized his World War I comrades, who had 

perished at Rouge Bouquet, near Baccarat in France. 

Many other poets emerged from this war, including 

the “war poets” Wilson Owen, who died in battle at the 

age of twenty-five, and his friend Siegfried Sassoon. 

World War I and its fierce trench warfare gave rise 

to what a group of writers called “the lost generation”; 

they not only depicted the horror of war but 

also questioned its value and necessity as a means of 

resolving disputes between nations. In his novel A 

Farewell to Arms (1929), Ernest Hemingway wrote 

what many regard as the strongest polemic against 

war. The story is told through the eyes of a young 

American officer, Lieutenant Frederic Henry, who is 

attached to a medical unit on the Italian front. There 

he meets and falls in love with a nurse, Catherine 

Barkley. Wounded, Henry is hospitalized and eventually 

has surgery on his knee. He and Catherine are 

together during his rehabilitation. She becomes pregnant. 

While attempting to avoid capture by the Germans, 

Henry deserts, and the two manage to reach 

Switzerland, where Catherine and the baby both subsequently 

die. 

One of the most meaningful works of modern literature 

to address the subject of war, Norman 

Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (1948), is regarded 

by some as the best novel of World War II. The author 

set his story on a South Pacific island, focusing 

primarily on one platoon of soldiers: their trials and 

tribulations, their interactions with one another, and 

The Granger Collection, New York 

The original 1929 front jacket cover for Erich Maria 

Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front.

876 Culture and Warfare 

Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images 

Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. 

the same fears and issues with which young Henry 

Fleming grapples in The Red Badge of Courage. In 

the world of The Naked and the Dead, there is little 

empathy among the members of the platoon, and no 

sympathy whatever for their Japanese foes. Mailer 

introduces a second element to his novel, wherein he 

uses his story as a forum to describe ridiculous army 

rules and protocols, always the source of irritation for 

the soldiers. The novel also sets the conflict in perspective 

by providing background for the campaign 

and a critique of military judgment. 

Satire and comedy have been used in many modern 

works to depict and condemn war. Critique of 

war becomes an outright condemnation in Joseph 

Heller’s Catch-22 (1961), which uses satire to focus 

on the futility and sheer idiocy of the way in which 

the military prosecuted war. Heller’s main charac- 

ter, Yossarian, a bomber pilot based in Italy, has 

looked at enough sky. He has no interest in heroism, 

medals, or glory. His one abiding interest is to 

get rotated home. In what almost appears to be a 

contrived setup, Yossarian finds that each time he 

approaches the required number of missions to 

qualify for rotation home, the higher echelon increases 

the number. Determined, Yossarian resorts 

to various deceptions to try to defeat the system. 

Heller provides a supporting cast of characters every 

bit as devious as Yossarian. Hilarious in its satiric 

effect, Catch-22 speaks against war as loudly 

as more serious works—but here by casting war as 

a farce. 

The novel Mister Roberts (1946), by Thomas 

Heggen (adapted for the stage in 1948 by Heggen 

and Joshua Logan, and in 1955 released as a feature 

film), focuses on life as a soldier, making the 

audience aware that men in combat must deal not 

only with fear and suffering but also with the boredom 

of daily life in the backwater of war. The setting 

is a supply ship in the South Pacific commanded 

by a tyrannical captain who cares only 

about his next promotion. The hero, Lieutenant 

Douglas Roberts, who longs for a transfer to combat, 

finally gets his request for transfer approved 

by the captain—or rather by the members of the 

crew, who forge the captain’s signature in repayment 

for Roberts’s having managed to secure liberty 

for the crew by agreeing to give up challenging 

the captain’s authority. 

The Vietnam War (1961-1975) has occasioned 

many novels. In these works, realism has continued 

to be emphasized—including, again, the psychological 

experiences of the individual soldier. In the case 

of Tim O’Brien, a Vietnam War veteran, psychological 

realism renders his novels extremely personal to 

the point where, at times, the narrative crosses the 

boundary between actual fact and internal imaginings. 

Going After Cacciato (1978, revised 1989), 

which won a 1979 National Book Award, examines 

the conflicting moral imperatives of the Vietnam 

War when the point-of-view character, Paul Berlin, 

joins others in his platoon to retrieve the deserter 

Cacciato (literally “the hunted” in Italian), who has 

vowed to escape the war by walking to Paris. The ac-

Literature and Warfare 877 

tual events in the narrative are seamlessly interrupted 

by Berlin’s fantasies and fears, making the distinction 

between reality and Berlin’s psychological state 

difficult to discern. The clear sense, however, is that 

Cacciato, in attempting to carry out his insanely bold 

plan, is a hero—in some ways a goal to be pursued 

rather than a criminal to be hunted—as the soldiers 

grapple with the moral ambiguities of following orders 

not because they believe in the war but because 

they need to avoid the fate that Cacciato will inevitably 

meet when they finally locate him near the Laotian 

border. 

Books and Articles 

Barlow, Adrian. The Great War in British Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 

2000. Elucidates the different ways that World War I has been used in British literature and 

how that literature has impacted people. 

Berkvam, Michael L. Writing the Story of France in World War II: Literature and Memory, 

1942-1958. New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2000. Looks at the works of literature 

that portray French life during World War II, after the fall of Paris, showing that not all 

French resisted the Germans and many later wrote about it. 

Chakravarty, Prasanta. “Like Parchment in the Fire”: Literature and Radicalism in the English 

Civil War. New York: Routledge, 2006. Uses the literature of English sects during the Civil 

War to outline the roots of what would later be called liberalism. 

Dawes, James. The Language of War: Literature and Culture in the U.S. from the Civil War 

Through World War II. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. Analyzes the 

ties between language and violence, looking at how words frame the experience and understanding 

of war. 

Griffin, Martin. Ashes of the Mind: War and Memory in Northern Literature, 1865-1900. 

Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009. Uses the literature of three northern poets 

and two writers of fiction to investigate the social memory of war and its place in cementing 

national values. 

Jones, Kathryn N. Journeys of Remembrance: Memories of the Second World War in French 

and German Literature, 1960-1980. London: Legenda, 2007. Focuses on the memory of the 

Holocaust in the literature of France, West Germany, and East Germany during 1960-1980. 

Mickenberg, Julia. Learning from the Left: Children’s Literature, the Cold War, and Radical 

Politics in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Examines a specific 

genre of children’s books during the 1920’s-1960’s that went against the Cold War rhetoric 

to teach so-called radical viewpoints, many of which are now mainstream. 

Natter, Wolfgang. Literature at War, 1914-1940: Representing the “Time of Greatness” in 

Germany. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999. Ties German literature about 

World War I to the rise of a military ethos that persisted through the German defeat and 

helped prepare the ground for Adolf Hitler’s rise and World War II. 

Phillips, Kathy J. Manipulating Masculinity: War and Gender in Modern British and American 

Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. By using examples from the literature 

from World War I, World War II, Vietnam, and Iraq, this study illuminates how men are 

goaded into war mentality through the feminization of common traits. 

Taylor, Mark J. The Vietnam War in History, Literature, and Film. Tuscaloosa: University of 

Alabama Press, 2003. Uses a case study approach in looking at five episodes during the Vietnam 

War to examine how returning veterans are regarded in film and literature. 

Jerry Keenan

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