The Yilderim undertaking, as the Bagdad scheme was described, did not meet with the full acceptance of the Turks.  The ‘mighty Jemal’, as the Germans sneeringly called the Commander of the Syrian Army, opposed it as weakening his prospects, and even Enver, the ambitious creature and tool of Germany, postponed his approval.  It would seem the taking over of the command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force by General Allenby set the Turks thinking, and made the German Military Mission in Constantinople reconsider their plans, not with a view to a complete abandonment of the proposal to advance on Bagdad, as would have been wise, but in order to see how few of the Yilderim troops they could allot to Jemal’s army to make safe the Sinai front.  There was an all-important meeting of Turkish Generals in the latter half of August, and Jemal stood to his guns.  Von Falkenhayn could not get him to abate one item of his demands, and there can be no doubt that Falkenhayn, obsessed though he was with the importance of getting Bagdad, could see that Jemal was right.  He admitted that the Yilderim operation was only practicable if it had freedom for retirement through the removal of the danger on the Palestine front.  With that end in view he advocated that the British should be attacked, and suggested that two divisions and the ‘Asia Corps’ should be sent from Aleppo to move round our right.  Jemal was in favour of defensive action; Enver procrastinated and proposed sending one division to strengthen the IVth Army on the Gaza front and to proceed with the Bagdad preparations.  The wait-and-see policy prevailed, but long before we exerted our full strength Bagdad was out of the danger zone.  General Allenby’s force was so disposed that any suggestion of the Yilderim operation being put into execution was ruled out of consideration.

Several documents captured at Yilderim headquarters at Nazareth in September 1918, when General Allenby made his big drive through Syria, show very clearly how our Palestine operations changed the whole of the German plans, and reading between the lines one can realise how the impatience of the Germans was increasing Turkish stubbornness and creating friction and ill-feeling.  The German military character brooks no opposition; the Turks like to postpone till to-morrow what should be done to-day.  The latter were cocksure after their two successes at Gaza they could hold us up; the Germans believed that with an offensive against us they would hold us in check till the wet season arrived.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See Appendices I., II., and III.]