Part Three: How Lawrence of Arabia Invented Modern War

is this port city. It's got a bunch of guns that are trained on the sea, and after the disaster that had been you know, Gallipoli, the British aren't really interested in trying to take this critical port city by like a sea a naval invasion because that just doesn't tend to work out very well for them in this period.

The kind of back of this city is to this vast desert that is considered impassable because like how would you get a bunch of guys on foot across this right, Like, it's just absolutely some of the deadliest terrain on planet Earth.

And Lawrence is like, if we get a small force, you know, we can take this tiny gorilla and it's literally just a few dozen guys across this vast desert and then cross into the portion of Syria where the Hawatat keep their spring pastures, and we can find all the people who live in this area, rally them to our banner, and attack Akaba. According to Lawrence, when he broached this plan to Aouda, Aouda's response was all Gondor Yeah, yeah,

where was gondor when the when the Westfold fell? No, although he does give like I would say, an equally cool response to anything in the Lord of the Rings, he says, all things are possible with dynamite and English gold. That's an that's an an eternal truth. Enough dynamite and English gold, I feel like I could do anything too. Yeah, yeah, now this is you know, there's a bit of debate here as to like the extent to which Lawrence was

kind of central to all the planning here. In twenty fourteen, Iraqi historian Ali Alawi published a biography of Faisal, who, after the Great Arab Revolt, went on to be the first King of Iraq. His reappraisal of Feisal suggests that Lawrence was not the one to suggest Akaba as a location to attack, and that Feisal made that call on

his own. Now, I kind of feel like the the fact that Lawrence gets a lot gets credit for coming up with the idea of going after Akkaba in the first place is less Lawrence's fault and more sort of the fault of that Peter O'Toole movie. Because I went through Seven Pillars of Wisdom and I read the portions of the book which discuss Akaba, and there aren't a whole lot. There's not a whole lot of a Kaba talk in the book, not a whole lot of Akaba Takaba.

And it does not seem like what's in there from what's in there, I know I had to do it. I had to do it. It doesn't seem like to me like Lawrence was taking credit for the idea itself

just to attack the city. In fact, he notes that Feisal was unable to participate in the attack, which quote through the Ungrateful load of this Northern expedition upon myself, which sounds like he's saying it was not my idea, but Feisal was, you know, had to stay his base for this, so I had to like handle the implementation,

right oka. And he describes the fact that like he had to be the one on the ground doing it as leading to a dishonest implication, which I interpreted him being kind of uncomfortable with being given credit for dreaming up and executing the whole campaign.

shot guy. He's not the only shot he's certainly not the major shot collar on the British side either, right, Like General Allenby up in Palestine is making a lot of calls and making a lot of direction, Feisal is a major player here, and I think actually seven Pillars gives a pretty fair accounting of how that all actually worked out, and despite how central Akaba is to the movie, the actual battle the capture of the city only merits a couple of sentences in but really just a sentence

because all he writes about it in the book is we tricked the Turks and entered Akaba with good fortune, right, which is not like to be blown up into the absolute like center of this like four hour epic movie. Very funny is this?

and forty five men and each of his fighters. All they have on them is a forty five pound sack of a flower and all of the water they can carry. That's all they have. With them to keep them alive, rubber heroes. Just a huge sack of flower. Well, it won't go bad, you know, not in the time that you're out there. And I guess, like, yeah, that's that's all you got, flour and water to keep you moving.

So after two hideous months, it takes them two months to cross the desert. Like that's how long they're living off with a sack of flower desert oased a huge desert. Yeah, like this is an incredible feat. Lawrence and his guys reach the outskirts of Akaba, and by the time they get to the city itself, their numbers have grown to about a thousand. They recruit all these guys from the local tribes in the area and the Turks, who were slightly more competent in real life than in the movies.

The movie just shows Lawrence and his guy's writing and this glorious rowhim cavalry charge and they just smash the Turks. That's not at all what happens. They don't even actually fight in Akaba. What happens is the Turks send a five hundred and fifty man relief force to bolster a Kapa's defense, and before they can get to the city, Lawrence and his cavalry fall upon them in Ambush fort or forty or so miles north of the city, in

a place named Wadi Abba Alissan. And this battle, there's like a kind of funny like clown shit moment and that like it starts with this again very lord of the Ring shit. There's this argument between Lawrence and I think it's Outa about like who's going to attack where first, And finally Outa and his guy's charge in on one side, and so Lawrence is like, fuck, we have to charge it on the other, like just go, just go, just go, you know, we can't let them like beat us to there.

And then as they're running, Lawrence is just like like emptying his pistol like while charging on campmel back and he shoots his camel in the head. auDA loses his camel too. Outa has like fourteen bullet holes in his gear when this battle ends, and I don't think any of them actually hit his body. Like this guy is just a like a fucking dull key Character's amazing. He's got blot armor. Yes, he's got to. He's the main character.

Hell yeah. So as much of a shit show as that kind of sounds like, the battle goes incredibly well. They kill like three hundred something Turkish soldiers, absolutely destroy this entire force, and Lawrence loses. Lawrence and and out loose two men. Wow, yeah, which is like that's a that's a big dub. That's about as well as the battle could go. Yeah, so that's part of why this becomes so like famous, you know overseas is like, wow, what a fucking what a fucking coup. Now.

there's a lot of debate. We don't really know when he became aware of the sikes Pico agreement, which we're going to talk about and explain here, but that's basically the British French agreement that like split up the Middle East under their spheres of influence. Right, we don't know when Lawrence knew about it, But the actual answer is probably that doesn't really matter, because he was aware of the debate around what became sikes Picot right from pretty

much the beginning. So maybe he didn't know until late November, you know, nineteen seventeen, when it got leaked out that like this specific agreement had been signed, but he knew that his leaders and the French were talking about carving up the Arab world and he didn't want that to happen. Right, He was okay with the idea of the British having

a sphere of influence in the Arab world. He didn't want the French because again the French the genocide and stuff, he's not happy with them, and he's in general like he feels like there's this guilt that he's got kind of this whole time with the idea that like, I am fighting for Arab independence and I'm pretty sure my side is going to betray these people, right, that we're

not going to live up to our promises. So a big part of why he wants to take Akaba and he wants the Arabs to take Akaba is the more cities that they are in military control of when this thing ends, the better their odds of keeping those cities under their control. Right, Like, if the British or the French occupy Akaba, there's no getting them out, you know, like they're not going to lead, right, They're gonna set us a sheep.

He didn't tell them that he's planning to even attack Akaba this way, right, Like they don't find out until the city gets taken because he doesn't want them to make a move that would put them in the city. Right, So he is kind of he's kind of I mean, he's he's the situation he's in. He's kind of fucking over everyone to some extent. But I think he is overall trying to trying to secure what he sees as a good outcome for the Arabs, right again, doing the

paternalistic thing. If he's not going to tell them necessarily he does. There's some evidence that he eventually does kind of that he does talk to like come out about some of this to like Faisal, But it's all very murky right Like again, this is skulduggery and spycraft.

keen instinctive understanding of the moment that he inhabited. One of the things that makes him like such a such a an incredible figure here is that he has an understanding not just of all these dynamics of insurgent warfare, but of how propaganda plays into insurgent warfare and plays

into actually securing victory here. And he knows that now that the British are invested in his success because they need these wins, this is my best chance to get them, to force them to deliver guns and support from my Arab allies, which will allow them to take and hold more cities, which is going to give them the best odds of winning a state of their own and not just being cut apart by the great powers. So again, Lawrence is kind of aware of the broad strip strokes

of Syke's Pico. And to be clear, Sykes Pico never actually gets instituted. When we talk about these significance. It's not because they actually do Sykes Picot. It's because Sikes Pico is an evidence of the ways in which the British and French are talking about carving up the Middle East, and what finally gets done looks a lot like what Sykes Picot was planned to be, right, but it's not

exactly the same thing. Just to be clear here, because like actual scholars will be like well, they never really did, Sykes Picicau. It's just what happened was very similar, and it's evidence that this is how they'd been talking, right, yeah, for a long time. So at this point, the Brits are still reeling from several failed assaults on Jerusalem, where the Turks had beaten them back and established a dusty desert version of the trench stalemate on the Western Front.

A general named George Allenby was brought in to clean up the mess. And Alanby is more competent than most British generals, we'll say that, right, Like, not that he's got a spotless record here, but he's definitely like better than the guys who had been doing this before. And Lawrence knew that, you know. Once Allenby comes in as the only British officer with a major victory behind him, he was in a position to get a lot out

of it new boss. So he travels to where ALANB is and I think I think Allenby's and Palestine at this point, and he sits down with his boss to get alan B to send guns to his men. Lawrence's motivation here, according to Scott Anderson, was to sell allan B the World War One general equivalent of heroin, which is a promise that he can break a stalemate in front. Right, Lawrence is like, I can stop the Turks from getting

relief forces from Medina up to I think Jerusalem. And I can also, like basically ensure that you have as good a chance to break this stalemate as possible by carrying out my own offenses that pulls Turkish strength away. Right, Just give me the guns, Just give me the guns.

And here's how Anderson describes it. Lawrence vastly exaggerated both the strength and capability of those rebels already under arms to paint an enticing picture of a military juggernaut, the British advancing up the Palestine coast as the Arabs took the fight to the Syrian interior. Now that's succinct and overall accurate. But Laura, here's his own account of his meeting with Allenby and Seven Pillars is much more colorful. So I'm going to read that here because I just

really like the guy's writing. It was a comic interview. For Alan b was physically large and confident and morally so great that the comprehension of our littleness came slow to him. He sat in his chair looking at me, not straight as his custom was, but sideways, puzzled. He was newly from France, where for years he had been a tooth of the great machine grinding the enemy. He was full of Western ideas of gunpowder and weight, the

worst training for our war. But as a cavalryman, was already half persuaded to throw up the new school in this different world of Asia and accompany Donne and chetwode along the worn road of maneuver and movement. Yet he was hardly prepared for anything so odd as myself, a little barefooted silk skirted man offering to hobble the enemy by his preaching, if given stores and arms and a fund of two hundred thousand sovereigns to convince and control his converts. Alan b could not make out how much

was genuine performer and how much Charloton. The problem was working behind his eyes, and I left him unhelped to solve it.

what he's trying to sell. Alan beyond right, he doesn't he doesn't really believe, you know, he knows the reality of the strength of his forces, and he wants all these guns to build a more disciplined insurgent movement that will be kind of the core of this Arab state, right, and part of what he wants, Like he's he's kind of less focused on these big offensives that Alan be wants because he understands that the tactics these Western Front tactics had led his you know, were not the way

to win in the desert. So after Akaba he takes he embarks on yet another like historically significant recon campaign. He takes two men with him and alone against a vast desert. They travel like a thousand miles or something like, this massive journey scouting out all of these Turkish positions. The whole operation was inspired by a recognition on Lawrence's part that thus far the war had involved haphazard playing with men in movement, and he saw that this had

worked for them, but largely out of luck. And quote vowed to know henceforth before I moved where I was going and by what roads.

from Akaba to Damascus. Describing this plan, James Schneider writes the nature of the operations would be like naval war in mobility, ubiquity, independence of bases and communications, ignoring of ground features, of strategic areas, of fixed locations of fixed points. Lawrence would command the desert camel raiding parties, self contained like ships, might cruise confidently along the enemy's cultivation frontier, sure of an unhindered retreat into their desert element which

the Turks could not explore. That's so interesting to be that he's thinking about this like a naval war. Each of these small insurgent squads is like a ship right independent alone on the sea.

of flour and a pint of water. They could operate alone for like six weeks, right, that's his assuming.

quote from Schneider again. Because of long standing feuds and jealousies, it became virtually impossible to integrate or amalgamate the various tribes, nor could one antithetic tribe operate in the territory of another to overcome this organizational constraint, Lawrence operated in the greatest dispersion possible, which contributed greatly to his agility, fluidity,

and mobility. Maximum disorganization created maximum articulation. As with a box of legos, Lawrence could any organization and function as unique as the new task at hand, for each mission was unlike any other and had to be considered afresh. The lego like articulation meant that the enemy response could never develop a classic order of battle, for there was no order, only disorder. His system was unsystematic.

As Schneider describes it, But you also do need a vision, a central vision, because you have you have this ultimate disorganization, this incredibly flat hierarchy compared to the other militaries of the day, but you also have Lawrence at the center of this spider web, pulling in each direction, right, like making the actual like polls, which is is very tough. There's not a lot of Lawrences out there.

is debatably true. Like Auta, who we've been talking about, is going to make an approach to the Turks and like be like, hey, if you bribe me, I'll switch sides. And he may have been considering switching sides, but he also just robs the Turkish guy with the money. But it's unclear because of when everyone else finds out what he's done. It's unclear was his plan from the beginning just to rob, just to rob the Ottomans, or did

he move? Did he decide, well, I guess I'll just rob this guy once he got caught because he didn't want to. He didn't want to get like, you know, murdered or whatever. Right, Like, was he actually trying to beat turned trader? Or did he just was his plan from the beginning, Hey, I bet these guys are dumb enough to send a bunch of money my way and then I just have to kill the guy bring it, And I don't give a fuck. I am a sand pirate, you know.

One was being wasted. Our ideals should be to make our battle a series of single combats, our ranks a happy alliance of agile commanders in chief.

And Lawrence is very influenced by Desaks, but Dessaks is certainly not influencing like British strategy at the sam You know, right, nothing but machine guns are really influencing that, right, It's all these guys who want to be Hannibal but can't think of anything more creative than throwing their men into the teeth of a bunch of German guns. What's interesting about Lawrence is that, you know, for all that he is an imperialist, he does not fall to the temptation

of imposing British standards on these Bedouin fighters. His only thought is to give them modern English guns so that they can fight their way. And he's writing the whole time he's got to try it. He's trying to argue to his superiors as to why this is how they should handle the whole era of revolt. He writes a series of twenty seven articles meant for publication among British

officers stationed in Arabia. Now these are part propaganda. Some of what's in these is Lawrence lying about the strength of the Bedouins to make a case, you know, as to why they should be supported. But he also includes a lot of very good advice on how European officers should change their thinking to avoid bringing Western Front problems to this new war zone. Like he is trying to explain like why they ought to respect the Bedouin, and how to respect the Bedouin, how to kind of let

these people do what works. The next phase of the war sees Faisals raiders launched this bl lizard of attacks against Ottoman positions around the Jjah's railway, destroying sections of track and bridges, but also things like watering holes that train operators relied upon for coolant. Lawrence again leads many of these raids from the front. He counted that during this period he personally destroyed seventy nine bridges, which is that's like hurricane level of bridge destruction.

you can rebuild it. Whereas it just blow it up. Then all they have to do is like clear records are.

and let her rip. You know, Now you can go take out bridges, which you shouldn't.

company out there. There's lots of legal reasons to destroy a bridge right now. The bulk of the insurgent work that Lawrence does in this period is done by Camelback, but for his own team of raiders. Lawrence is going to eventually settle on a different mode of transportation, which is these armored Rolls Royce cars. They do get they do. They are by the end of this like cruising around and Rolls Royce as blowing up bridges, which is pretty gangster.

The Americans were almost to the Western Front, and with the possibility of victory came the sweet prospect of carving up the Ottoman world for European consumption. If you spend literally any length of time talking to people in the Arab world today and asking them, in brief why is everything so fucked up? Every conversation will at some point circle back to Sykes be Go. During the fighting against isis.

I talked about Sykes Pico with like twelve year old boys, right, people know it over there, and it's the thing I think a lot of Americans don't really know much about. It is, as one New Yorker article aptly described it, the curse that still haunts the Middle East.

mother's London home. He traveled the Ottoman Empire regularly as a tourist with his dad, and then when he became a young man, he joined the military and participated in

the Boer War. He became a Conservative member of Parliament and he writes books about like the Ottoman Empire and the you know and kind of the Islamic world right, and he is during the First World War kind of one of the first major at He's a major advocate within the British government for the independence of Arabs, Armenians, Jews and Turks, right, so long as that independence existed

under European control and profit. And his thinking here is less these people deserve their independence, and more if we cut them up into individual little like quasi states under our control, it's going to be a lot easier to keep everyone dominated, right, Oh shit, uh huh yeah. Over the last for a few pre war years, Sykes had become the Empire's red is it an expert on the Arab world based on the strength of him like vacationing there a bunch, right, and the fact that he was a baronet.

Sykes was paired with Francois George Picot, a French diplomat, to portion out the Ottoman Empire into little bits to various powers. As the war worked towards a close, there were a lot of hopeful claims. Italy wanted the Aegean Islands, Greece wanted traditional Byzantine territory in modern Turkey. Russia wanted that some good some of that good Asia minor shit as well, although they're not going to be, you know, at the table for very long here because of that

whole Bolshevik revolution. And of course the Zionists wanted a

Jewish homeland in Palestine. And it's interesting one of the big I was actually kind of unaware of this, one of the big like, one of the reasons why there's a support for the Zionists is people who are is like people in the British government who are scared that Russia is going to collapse under a socialist revolution and are like, well, if we give the Jews a homeland, obviously, all socialists are Jews, right, so if you give them a homeland, you know, in Palestine, then maybe they'll leave

Russia and they won't destroy Russia, right like that. That's literally why a lot there's a lot of early support for Zionism among the British government. It's like this super concentrated racism.

they got most of what they wanted. The fact that they were doing a fifty to fifty genocide ratio in the Muslim majority areas that they had governed in the past should have been a warning that, like, this is not going to go well. But no one anywhere has ever learned a lesson ever. Know, that's the primary lesson of history is that no one learns lessons, and no one has learned any lessons from France fucking around in Algeria.

they did a genocide in Tunisia. So really, I mean like it's kind of impressive they've got you know, they got more responsible.

before they did a genocide in Tunisia. Now, under the final agreement between France and England, a large region of the Ottoman heartland directly above Syria would be under direct French control, while a triangle that included a Leppo, Damascus and Mosel would be like kind of independent but under heavy French influence, whereas the British would have an area of influence that was like this large chunk of the desert on the peninsula south of the French mandate, and

they would hold direct control over much of modern Iraq stretching to the Arabian Gulf. Sykes would go on to solidify his role as one of the most harmful dudes to ever cause harm by also pushing the Balfour Declaration to the British Cabinet in November of nineteen seventeen. He's like one of the forces behind the Balfour Declaration.

desire for a homeland in Palestine. The actual text of the declaration, like of the agreement being made, is like that, of course, no one will be displaced, none of the none of the current like inhabitants of Palestine will be displaced as result of this.

of the Czar. The Bolsheviks get a hold of a bunch of different like paperwork, right that you know, had been in the hands of the Tzar's government, and some of that is the sikes Pico agreement, and yeah, later government you get the Yeah, Trotzky actually seeks a copy of sykes Pico to a newspaper, right, and then The Guardian publishes the details in English media for the first time after this In early reporting on the manner, Lennon called sikes Pico quote the agreement of colonial theeves. And

there's really no fact based argument against that. Yeah, that's that he was just right. He was just correct on that.

as settled as it was by November. The British government's official line and still was that it was inciting an Arab revolt to secure their total independence. Lawrence clearly knew that there was some extent to which this was bogus from the beginning, which is why he wrote in Seven Pillars, hardly one day in Arabia passed without a physical ache to increase the corroding sense of my accessory deceitfulness towards the Arabs and the legitimate fatigue of responsible command. Right.

So the fact that this is all a lie is wearing on Lawrence, especially since the greater part of his job was to personally negotiate deals with various Arab tribes to fight the Ottomans with the promise of independence after the war. In letters back to his superiors. Lawrence protested what became Sykes Pico. Anthony Satin describes this for an article in Al Jazeera. He objected loudly to the agreement

for several reasons. He thought that the French should be allowed nothing, having behaved so badly in Algeria and elsewhere in Northwest Africa. He thought a post war commonwealth of Arab states under British tutelage might work, and he protested it having to ask Arab forces to fight on what he called a lie. I can't stand it, he insisted.

And yet he continued. And if we're looking for like Lawrence as a bastard, this is this is getting into some of the better cases for it, right because, like he talks about how much he hates this, he is trying to like trying to work against Sykespico on the ground, but he also knows what his government is planning, and he's he's kind of being a pied piper to these guys that he cares about as it goes on.

that month he was captured by the Ottomans. If it now, we're this is actually one of those ifs, because we this may be something he lied about, but if it happened, this happened while he was conducting one of his many recon missions. He describes in Seven Pillars of Islam that he was hiding himself as a circassian in the city

of Derah when he was drafted. Basically, like they see a young man walking around and they're like, you're in the army now, buddy, right, because he's good, he's good enough at hiding that he's like a circassian, right that they think, okay, well, we got a time for you to be a member of the army that you're fighting now. Lawrence says, basically, like the draft was just kind of

an excuse to take me in the custody. What happened really is the governor wanted to fuck me, right, And he describes lengthily how he was beaten and tortured and then gang raped by the governor and his guards in Seven Pillars. This is like and it's interesting because like this is a page is long description of like torture and rape. He doesn't quite describe openly sexual penetration but basically everything else, right, And it is ultimately published in

nineteen twenty two. I don't know if Lawrence was the first famous man of the twentieth century to write publicly about being raped, but the list ahead of him can't have been long, right, Like, there can't be a lot of competition for that role you were.

torture and sexual assault. In recent years, some Lawrence biographers, namely James Barr, who authored Desert on Fire, have argued that Lawrence could not have been in deraw when he claimed this happened, and have even found evidence that he doctored his notes to further this lie. Barr's argument is that Lawrence came up with this story later after the war to quote discredit Arab militants in the precarious postwar climate. I find this an odd argument, which is not really

in line with Lawrence's other post war behavior. But in my research for this, I did run across a couple of pieces of evidence that might be seen as evidence that Lawrence's lye continues to work in the present day, like discrediting on Arabs. But like these these kind of like some of these local fighters. Here's a segment I found from the website on the website first World War dot com, and this is talking about like the Ottoman

use of rape as a weapon. This indig was more often inflicted on members of the officer class and the belief that it robbed them of their authority as a leader of men, sometimes resulting in the victim's suicide. The Ottoman Turks were infamous for inflicting it throughout the Great War on captured Indian troops, beating and gang raping enemy officers. Often as a matter of due course. Prisoners and garrisons often had personnel who specialized in this abuse, although there

was nothing homosexual about it. And this is kind of contra to Lawrence's description because he does describe this as being a very like the the governor and his men are homosexual, right, they like they want to fuck Lawrence. And that's kind of the result of all this.

like Adrian Greeves. Greeves make some points that I find compelling, particularly that the Turks were unlikely to have believed for days that Lawrence was really an Arab captive or Circassian captive. But he also takes issue with the fact that Lawrence didn't bring this up until nineteen nineteen. Right, That's one of Barr's pieces of evidence that like this is probably fake, is that Lawrence didn't talk about it. And I'm like, no, it's not really weird that you'd wait, like a couple

of years to talk about your gang rape. Like, yeah, that's not I don't really think that counts the way that you seem to think it does. Yeah, And there's also some gay panic adjacent stuff in some of these arguments. Historian David Fromkin has suggested Lawrence made up the rape to explain marks from his alleged sato masochistic kink. I don't know who is right here, but I do want to read this line from an article on Cleo's Visualizing

History website. Biographer John E. Mack, however, accepts the story and Lawrence's later assertion at that what happened to him at Deraw apparently did permanent damage to his psyche, and there is compelling evidence for this damage. Although separating what might have been caused from the rape, what was PTSD? Right because of the war and all of the illness, right like you get PTSD from nearly dying repeatedly, a

various like shit yourself to death illnesses. There's no way to separate this, right like Lawrence is after about a year or so, because he's really not there all that long. He's there like a like two years. In all, he is just a pile of PTSD stitched together together into the crude image of a man.

it was Dera for some reason. There's they're also just like people fuck up, right, Like Lawrence is going.

drafts of this book and have to rewrite it. So like some errors probably got introduced, but it is now agreed and even and Barr even writes that, like, broadly speaking, Seven Pillars is quite accurate as in its descriptions of what happened in the Arab revolt, right, And I tend to think this probably happened to Lawrence, And part of why is because he has a personality shift after this point and it kind of loses his mind in a way that seems very much like, oh, yeah, I bet

if you were gang raped and then suddenly had an army and a bunch of Turkish soldiers surrendering to you, this might be how you'd act, right, is.

like it's fine that he did this. It's just that like, well, anyone in this position would have would be out of their minds by a certain point, because that's just what like personally, like orchestrating an insurgent campaign in the desert while shitting yourself to death and nearly dying every single day, and gunfights like it just ruins, you you know, like he is just shattered as a man, and there's a very good chance part of that science he's tortured and

gang raped. Yeah, like who would be doing well after this?